Serge Kolm on Social Justice and the Social Contract

A Contextual Analysis and a Critique

Bibliographic Data

ID3969660
AuthorsLaurent Dobuzinskis (Simon Fraser University, corresponding author)
Year2000
Volume5
Issue5
Pages687-702
Publication date2000-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe European Legacy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1084-8770 • E-ISSN: 1470-1316
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/713665525
OpenAlexW1970208557
LanguageEN
References cited18

Social" and economic changes associated with the emergence of the "new Europe" in the wake of the Maastricht Treaty have prompted social theorists, politicians and media pundits to call for the drafting of a "new social contract."Similar aspirations are also expressed in North America.This is not surprising.At the close of the twentieth century, few things are less in doubt than the rise of individualism and the ideological triumph of liberalism.This still relatively inchoate consensus has been shaped at a time when the postwar consensus legitimizing the Keynesian welfare state is breaking down.State interventionism no longer has any intellectual or political legitimacy in the Western world.Economic liberalism has become the new orthodoxy.The new consensus is far stronger on economic issues than on social issues, however, especially in continental Europe.The crisis of the welfare state does not translate into a rejection of its egalitarian goals, as evidenced by the recent electoral successes of social democratic parties in many countries.The challenge for these parties is to design in social policies that would be more ef cient from an economic standpoint, less dependent on implementation by large bureaucracies and more respectful of individual freedoms, but would still protect citizens against the worst social consequences of free markets and accelerated technological change.The French economist and moral philosopher Serge-Cristophe Kolm offers insightful answers to such questions.Although Kolm is well known in France and by economists worldwide, 1 his work has not yet attracted the attention it deserves in disciplines that overlap with political economy and normative economics, e.g.political science or philosophy.My hope is that this paper will go some way toward rectifying this situation.In many respects Kolm is an orthodox economists and, philosophically speaking, a liberal.As his Modern Theories of Justice clearly demonstrates, Kolm's conceptual universe shares much ground with the works of leading Anglo-American economists and analytic philosophers.Yet he sometimes diverges from these perspectives.This is in part a re ection of his original, somewhat idiosyncratic, attempt at bridging the gap between Western and Buddhist epistemology and psychology about which I do not intend to comment here. 2But more often than not, these divergences are best understood as echoes of, or responses to, heterodox currents that continue to play a notable, albeit less and less central, role in the French social sciences.Thus Kolm's work is pertinent in at least two ways: as a valuable contribution to a debate on justice and the future of the welfare state; and as a focal point for exploring the contrasts between

Economic Justice · Epistemology · Law and economics · Political science · Social contract · Social justice · Sociology · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Policy and Reform Studies · Social Psychology · Social Sciences and Governance

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