Why does the State exist? The answer is that invaders or insurgents might enslave those who are currently free unless they create a State. If no external or internal threats existed, there may be commercial and religious and other such associations but there would be no need for a State or separate political realm.
This is because 'collective action problems' of a purely economic sort can be solved by mechanisms which stake no claim to sovereignty or coercive power. This, at any rate, is the 'folk theorem of repeated games'.
Rawls didn't understand this even though it was obvious that the State he had himself served as a soldier had only come into existence so as to protect or grab territory and while slaughtering rebellious slaves or indigenous people within their own borders.
It is perfectly possible for a bunch of people to live together with Defence and Law & Order outsourced to a Mutli-National Corporation or International Body of some sort. Such communities might have their own norms and codes of etiquette. There may be some 'politicking' regarding who gets to be on the board of the Country Club and we might even speak of 'ideological differences'- e.g. poorer people complaining that fees for various municipal services are too high. A lower standard of provision of 'club goods' would suit them better.
However, 'politicking' of this sort also occurs in families or among small groups of friends. This isn't actual politics which is about getting control of a sovereign state with the monopoly of legitimate coercion.
Consider Rawls' liberal principle of legitimacy:
Our exercise of political power is fully proper only when it is exercised in accordance with a constitution the essentials of which all citizens as free and equal may reasonably be expected to endorse in the light of principles and ideals acceptable to their common human reason
This may be true of the exercise of power by the board of a Country Club or some other such voluntary association. It is not true of political power. It is true that some country's have an independent Judiciary with the power to rule certain actions of the executive unconstitutional. However, in practice a 'doctrine of necessity' or 'state of exception' obtains such that political power is recognized to be used properly only if preserves its own existence.
Some States may have free entry and exit, however during emergencies both may be suspended. Unlike a Country Club or Condominium board, a State can force its citizens to join the Army or hand over their wealth for a National purpose. What Rawls has described is not a Polity with actual politics. It is merely a fairy story.
According to this principle, political power may only be used in ways that all citizens can reasonably be expected to endorse.
In which case it isn't political power at all. This may be moral power or influence but it won't be confined to any particular State.
The use of political power must fulfill a criterion of reciprocity: citizens must reasonably believe that all citizens can reasonably accept the enforcement of a particular set of basic laws.
This is not a reasonable belief to have. There is no empirical evidence that any set of laws is universally acceptable. In the US, what is murder in one State is justifiable homicide just across the border. Moreover, plenty of political philosophers at that time shared the view that the existence of the Law was a sufficient condition for the existence of social stratification and Income and Wealth inequality.
Those coerced by law must be able to endorse the society’s fundamental political arrangements freely, not because they are dominated or manipulated or kept uninformed.
Also those who are fucked in the ass in jail must be able to endorse all sorts of shit to keep some stupid Professor happy.
The liberal principle of legitimacy intensifies the challenge of legitimacy: how can any particular set of basic laws legitimately be imposed upon a pluralistic citizenry?
But the challenge of legitimacy is like a mouse challenging a cat to a fight. No doubt, it can intensify that challenge by suggesting it fucked the cat's mother but, to be frank, there is no fucking challenge here to speak of.
What constitution could all citizens reasonably be expected to endorse?
None. Everybody thinks there is something wrong with every constitution just as everybody thinks their own State or Family or even their own body isn't perfect in every way.
Rawls’s answer to this challenge begins by explaining what it means for citizens to be reasonable.
Citizens are required to be unreasonable. They must be prepared to fight for their own country even if running away seems the better option. Patriotism is a type of love. It is based on an arbitrary 'uncorrelated asymmetry'. One may speak of 'oikeiosis'- the natural sense of belonging to a family, a community, a country. Something like it is genuinely universal and found in all polities. But it is also found in some communities which have always failed to form States of their own for some economic or geopolitical reason. It may be that some scruple of a 'philosophical' type militated for this outcome but, equally, it may be that exogenous factors were at play. Still, it may be, the day may come when there really is a Kingdom of the Blind and a Confederacy of Rawlsian Dunces.
Rawls, an upper class WASP, has an old fashioned notion of the citizen as being essentially a Whig paterfamilias. He begins 'from shared fundamental ideas implicit in the public political culture in the hope of developing from them a political conception that can gain free and reasoned agreement in judgment'. In other words, if a country already has a certain 'political culture' its people will continue to keep that culture. They will say 'we have reasoned agreement in judgement' about all this. The problem here is that no country hasn't seen big changes in 'political culture' over the course of the last two centuries. In my own lifetime, in connection with British politics, I have seen Wilson, Thatcher, Blair, Boris Johnson etc. being accused of having trampled over the fundamental ideas implicit in Britain's unwritten constitution. But this was also true in the days of Robert Peel and Gladstone.
The public political culture of a democratic society, Rawls says, “comprises the political institutions of a constitutional regime and the public traditions of their interpretation (including those of the judiciary), as well as historic texts and documents that are common knowledge”
The problem here is that public traditions of interpretation are highly contested and subject to dramatic somersaults. Roe v Wade appeared settled law. Then, quite suddenly, it wasn't. Moreover, the nature of a polity- e.g. India from 1919 to 1951- can change very drastically by means of incremental constitutional changes. But the outcome was one no one had foreseen viz. the emergence of a Dynasty at the centre.
Rawls’s solution to the challenge of legitimacy in a liberal society is for political power to be exercised in accordance with a political conception of justice.
One may as well say sexual power is legitimate if it is exercised in accordance with a sexual conception of justice. Take your punishment, you naughty thing!
I think it very unfair that Prince Charles did not marry me instead of Lady Di, but I have to acknowledge that Prince William is of legitimate birth and is the heir of the Monarch. Legitimacy must mean something other than what I think ought to be the case otherwise I wouldn't seek to bolster my argument by saying it is legitimate and what every reasonable person would endorse unless they had been brainwashed by Lizard People from Planet X.
A political conception of justice is an interpretation of the fundamental ideas implicit in that society’s public political culture.
There are countless such interpretations. All are arbitrary or idiosyncratic to some degree.
A political conception is not derived from any particular comprehensive doctrine, nor is it a compromise among the worldviews that happen to exist in society at the moment.
It is mere hand waving.
Rather, a political conception is freestanding: its content is set out independently of the comprehensive doctrines that citizens affirm.
Where? Not in Rawls. His book is stupid shite.
Reasonable citizens, who want to cooperate with one another on mutually acceptable terms,
do so without any fucking 'political conception'
will see that a freestanding political conception generated from ideas in the public political culture is the only basis for cooperation that all citizens can reasonably be expected to endorse.
People cooperate all the time without any common culture or philosophy or credo. One might as well say, the only basis for cooperation is mutual fellatio. It is an arbitrary claim. We understand that the person making the claim wants to have sex with us but we disagree that we can't cooperate to put out a fire that threatens both our houses till we have sucked each other off.
The use of coercive political power guided by the principles of a political conception of justice will therefore be legitimate.
No it won't. This is because the principles of stupid shit are themselves stupid shit. Moreover, coercive political power can be annihilated by stabbing those seeking to exercise it. They will then be, quite legitimately, counted as dead and will be buried in the ground.
The three most fundamental ideas that Rawls finds in the public political culture of a democratic society are that citizens are free and equal,
Some citizens are in jail. None has power equal to the Head of State.
and that society should be a fair system of cooperation.
Anything at all could be considered to be fair or unfair by anybody.
All liberal political conceptions of justice will therefore be centered on interpretations of these three fundamental ideas.
Yet, looking around the world, we find none were or are or will be because the thing is stupid shit. Justice is a service industry. It has to raise utility or else it gets disintermediated or becomes a repugnancy market.
Because there are many reasonable interpretations of “free,” “equal” and “fair,” there will be many liberal political conceptions of justice.
But nobody, except some stupid pedagogue, will hold them because the thing is pointless. It is one thing to say that what you want should be granted in the name of Justice or Religion or Truth or Beauty or the American Way. This may get you paid or profit you in some other way. But why bother having a political conception of Justice or Astrophysics or other complicated stuff? If you do, somebody is bound to ask you what your political conception of voir dire is. You reply that everybody should have the right to put things up their own asshole in the privacy of their own home. People then get the idea that you spend your evenings shoving things up your arse instead of binge-watching 'the Good Wife' as you claim.
Since all the members of this family interpret the same three fundamental ideas, however, all liberal political conceptions of justice will share certain basic features:
In which case such conceptions would not change over time in the manner they patently have in 'liberal' democracies like that of the US or Canada.
A liberal political conception of justice will ascribe to all citizens familiar individual rights and liberties, such as rights of free expression, liberty of conscience, and free choice of occupation;
Conservatives may do so as may Monarchists or 'Enlightened Despots'. By contrast, Liberals may curb expressions considered to be obscene or repugnant. They may jail conscientious objectors- like Bertrand Russell- during a War. They may impose conscription- as Asquith was forced to do.
A political conception will give special priority to these rights and liberties, especially over demands to further the general good (e.g., to increase national wealth) or perfectionist values (e.g., to promote a particular view of human flourishing);
But every sort of conception has to alter as circumstances alter or else risk the very existence of the conceiver.
A political conception will assure for all citizens sufficient all-purpose means to make effective use of their freedoms.
If so, this 'conception' has magic powers. Why not say it assures all citizens of superior orgasms?
The truth is, a particular conception of what it means to be human- i.e. a view regarding the 'essence' of human behaviour- may lead us to hold that there is no need for a coercive State. Through reasoned discussion and empathetic give and take, people of all types can live together harmoniously. There may be no need for a 'polis' able to defend itself and thus no need for 'politics'.These abstract features must, Rawls says, be realized in certain kinds of institutions.
If they aren't Rawls will shit himself copiously while screaming his head off.
He mentions several demands that all liberal conceptions of justice will make on institutions: a decent distribution of income and wealth;
why? Must babies or penniless elderly refugees be cast out because their existence would worsen the distribution of income and wealth? In the Torah, the people of Sodom were said not to tolerate the giving of charity to the poor. They must starve to death so the over all population remain wealthy relative to its neighbours.
fair opportunities for all citizens, especially in education and training;
Sadly, there are diminishing returns to education and training for the majority but increasing returns (in line with a Pareto power law) for a talented fraction of the population. Thus, in line with 'Director's law', it turned out that the benefits of the 'Welfare State' tended to get captured by the 'cognitive elites' or those of higher class and material culture.
government as the employer of last resort;
If the government will pay you to dig holes and fill them in- a la Keynes- then government is the employer of first resort. You can always find a way to get paid for not digging holes while running some profitable side business to pay for your foreign holidays.
basic health care for all citizens;
provided by immigrant doctors and nurses- right? But their kids may prefer to get government jobs in the vital 'digging holes and filling them in' sector while concentrating on writing their big experimental novel while at the office.
and public financing of elections.
The Raving Monster Loony Party should be publicly financed.
The use of political power in a liberal society will be legitimate if it is employed in accordance with the principles of any liberal conception of justice.
But, a liberal conception of justice- like Rawls's- may say that nobody should be paid more than those employed to dig holes and fill them in. Legitimacy is all very well, but it may mean everybody starving to death.
By Rawls’s criteria, a libertarian conception of justice (such as Nozick’s in Anarchy, State, and Utopia) is not a liberal political conception of justice.
Sadly, a liberal political conception of justice is not a conception of justice. It says nothing about whether abortion should be legal or if a rapist should have parental rights or any other justiciable matter.
One might as well speak of a Christian conception of Justice as one where the rape victim shows compassion for the rapist and comes to his home to clean it and to cook for him. Meanwhile the police are sent to jail and patriotic soldiers are executed for violating the human rights of terrorists.
Libertarianism does not assure all citizens sufficient means to make use of their basic liberties,
Whereas Rawls's nonsense will magically create plenty of gold and diamonds for everybody.
and it permits excessive inequalities of wealth and power. By contrast, Rawls’s own conception of justice (justice as fairness) does qualify as a member of the family of liberal political conceptions of justice.
It is imbecilic. Rawls forgot that 'Knightian uncertainty' obtains and therefore all Social contracts must be 'incomplete'. Moreover, risk-pooling, not 'fair division', is the better way to guard against negative contingencies. This is because an incentive is created to discover Structural Causal Models which actually permit better collective outcomes.
Political power is used legitimately in a liberal society when it is
in accordance with due process of law. Legality and legitimacy are intimately related. Conceptions are irrelevant. I may have a very nice conception in my head when I steal your cat but my action is not legal or legitimate.
used in accordance with a political conception of justice.
If a Judge says, 'for political reasons, I find in favour of the boss of my party' we would deny that what he has delivered is justice.
Yet the challenge of stability remains.
Not to mention the challenge of stopping smart peeps from running the fuck away.
Legitimacy means that the law may be enforced,
No. It merely means that a particular type of authority exists. Sadly, it may have zero power.
but Rawls still needs to explain why citizens are willing to abide by it.
Citizens obey laws if they will be punished or will suffer some other type of loss for failing to do so.
If citizens do not believe that they have reasons to abide by the law from within their own perspectives, social order may disintegrate.
It may disintegrate anyway. If the economy collapses, starvation may occur.
Rawls places his hopes for social stability on an overlapping consensus. In an overlapping consensus, citizens all endorse a core set of laws for different reasons. In Rawlsian terms, each citizen supports a political conception of justice for reasons internal to her own comprehensive doctrine.
We can have an overlapping consensus that America must come and feed us and clothe us and wipe our bums, but this won't magically create social stability in a starving shithole.
Recall that the content of a political conception is freestanding: it is specified without reference to any comprehensive doctrine. This allows a political conception to be a “module” that can fit into any number of worldviews that citizens might have. In an overlapping consensus, each reasonable citizen affirms this common “module” from within her point of view.
Let us all agree that nobody should get sick or die. You may do so because, as a Socialist, you feel death and disease unfairly discriminate against the poor. I may do so because I don't want anybody to have to pay Death Duties. What is important is that 'overlapping consensus' can get rid of Death.
Here is an example. The quotation below from the second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church shows how a particular comprehensive doctrine (Catholicism) affirms one component of a liberal political conception (a familiar individual liberty) for its own reasons:
This Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that in matters religious no one is forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs. Nor is anyone to be restrained from acting in accordance with his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits. The council further declares that the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person, as this dignity is known through the revealed Word of God and by reason itself. This right of the human person to religious freedom is to be recognized in the constitutional law whereby society is governed and thus it is to become a civil right. (1965, art. 2)
The Catholic Church grew and grew because it was highly intolerant. It only became tolerant after its decline was irreversible.
Catholic doctrine here supports the liberal right to religious freedom for reasons internal to Catholicism.
Which is why plenty of Catholics repudiated Vatican II.
A reasonable Islamic doctrine, and a reasonable atheistic doctrine, might also affirm this same right to religious freedom—not, of course, for the same reasons as Catholic doctrine, but each for its own reasons. In an overlapping consensus, all reasonable comprehensive doctrines will support the right to religious freedom, each for its own reasons.
But the thing will simply be hot air. What would be cool is if 'overlapping consensus' could get rid of Death.
Indeed, in an overlapping consensus, all reasonable comprehensive doctrines will endorse all of a political conception of justice, each from within its own point of view.
But there can still be massive internecine conflict over things like abortion.
Citizens within an overlapping consensus work out for themselves how the liberal “module” fits with their own worldviews.
This is equally true of a 'National Security' module. Indeed, because the latter deals with existential threats, we may all pay lip service to religious freedom while quietly voting for the guy who promises to deport everybody of a particular faith.
Some citizens may see liberalism as derived directly from their deepest beliefs, as in the quotation from Vatican II above. Others may accept a liberal conception as attractive in itself, but mostly separate from their other concerns. What is crucial is that all citizens view the values of a political conception of justice as very great values, which normally outweigh their other values should these conflict on some particular issue.
Sadly, we are likely to prioritize our own security over some freedom or liberty of an abstract sort.
All citizens, for their own reasons, give the political conception priority in their reasoning about how their society’s basic laws should be ordered.
No. All citizens may virtue-signal on issues they don't give a fuck about, while voting for the guy who promises to fuck all the bad hombres to death.
Rawls sees an overlapping consensus as the most desirable form of stability in a free society. Stability in an overlapping consensus is better than a mere balance of power (a modus vivendi) among citizens who hold contending worldviews.
In other words, virtue signalling is more important than doing pragmatic deals. Yet, McDonald's may say, as I do, that everybody should have an equal right to a Happy Meal but this doesn't change the fact that I pay for my Happy Meal. I oppose a law which makes McDonald's supply Happy Meals to the indigent because I know they will simply close down their branches in poor neighbourhoods like the one I inhabit.
After all, power often shifts, and when it does the stability of a modus vivendi may be lost.
But a superior modus vivendi is quickly found. The invisible hand of the market assures this outcome. Virtue signalling is useless.
In an overlapping consensus, citizens affirm a political conception wholeheartedly from within their own perspectives, and so will continue to do so even if their group gains or loses political power. Rawls says that an overlapping consensus is stable for the right reasons: each citizen affirms a moral doctrine (a liberal conception of justice) for moral reasons (as given by their comprehensive doctrine). Abiding by liberal basic laws is not a citizen’s second-best option in the face of the power of others; it is each citizen’s first-best option given her own beliefs.
But our beliefs are irrelevant. What matters is whether we can exchange things we have or can produce for other stuff which is useful to us. Economics is about goods and services not our deciding that everybody should be wealthy and have an above average sized dick.
Rawls does not assert that an overlapping consensus is achievable in every liberal society. Nor does he say that, once established, an overlapping consensus must forever endure. Citizens in some societies may have too little in common to converge on a liberal political conception of justice. In other societies, unreasonable doctrines may spread until they overwhelm liberal institutions.
Rawls was descended from very unreasonable people who grabbed territory and got rich. They paid a few Professors a little money to gas on about Freedom and Liberalism and Democracy and so forth. But nobody was fooled.
Rawls’s doctrine of public reason can be summarized as follows:
Citizens engaged in certain political activities have a duty of civility to be able to justify their decisions on fundamental political issues by reference only to public values and public standards.
Rawls violates this 'duty of civility'. The fact is 'public values' have to do with the provision of Public Goods like Defence and Law & Order. Virtue signalling is a nuisance though, no doubt, politicians are welcome to demonstrate their hypocrisy and rhetorical virtuosity by gassing on in a vacuous vein. 'Public standards' have to do with efficiency and rationality in the conduct of public business. It has nothing to do with who can better talk the hindlegs off a donkey.
Each of the highlighted terms in this doctrine can be further elucidated as follows:
The public values that citizens must be able to appeal to are the values of a political conception of justice:
Rawls has a stupid conception of justice. He thinks anybody who disagrees with him is 'uncivil'. They think he is a retarded cunt.
those related to the freedom and equality of citizens, and society as a fair system of cooperation over time.
But no society has been a 'fair system of cooperation' over time.
Among such public values are the freedom of religious practice,
Which is highly restricted in America- e.g. polygamy is still illegal.
the political equality of women and of racial minorities,
which they established by themselves because of the economic power they commanded
the efficiency of the economy, the preservation of a healthy environment, and the stability of the family (which helps the orderly reproduction of society from one generation to the next).
Rawls was deeply out of touch.
Nonpublic values include values internal to associations like churches (e.g., that women may not hold the highest offices) or private clubs (e.g., that racial minorities can be excluded) which cannot be squared with public values such as these.
These may have started out as public values. Should these be 'justiciable'? Rawls won't tell us. His theory is empty or 'anything goes'.
Similarly, citizens should be able to justify their political decisions by public standards of inquiry.
No. They should have a Hohfeldian immunity unless they hold specific types of political office. Being free to do a thing means not having to explain why you did what you did.
Public standards are principles of reasoning and rules of evidence that all citizens can reasonably endorse.
No such standards or principles exist. There is always a trade off between transparency and efficiency.
So citizens should not justify their political decisions by appeal to divination, or to complex and disputed economic or psychological theories.
In which case, Rawls should shut the fuck up. His 'economic theory' ignored Knightian uncertainty. It was stupid shit.
Rather, publicly acceptable standards are those that rely on common sense, on facts generally known, and on the conclusions of science that are well established and not controversial.
Again, no such things exist.
The duty to abide by public reason applies when the most fundamental political issues are at stake:
Nonsense! If a terrorist is trying to detonate an H-bomb in our Capital City we don't want anybody to waste a single second on 'public reasoning'. Kill the fucker and defuse the bomb.
issues such as who has the right to vote, which religions are to be tolerated, who will be eligible to own property, and what are suspect classifications for discrimination in hiring decisions. These are what Rawls calls constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice.
Leave them to the Courts. I don't know and don't greatly care if some crazy cult should be classified as a religion.
Public reason applies more weakly, if at all, to less momentous political questions, for example to most laws that set rates of taxation, or that put aside public money to maintain national parks.
Nope. Fiscal policy is stuff which should be widely discussed because there is an 'information aggregation' aspect to it such that there is an information asymmetry in favour of ordinary people. For other matters you can have a Tribunal taking evidence at public hearings of a Cost/Benefit type.
Citizens have a duty to constrain their decisions by public reason only when they engage in certain political activities, usually when exercising powers of public office. So judges are bound by public reason when they issue their rulings,
No. They are bound by judicial reasoning
legislators should abide by public reason when speaking and voting in the legislature,
No. They should put forward the views they promised to put forward when first elected or else to explain why those views have altered.
and the executive and candidates for high office should respect public reason in their public pronouncements.
No. They should be free to say what they like. Let the voters decide.
Significantly, Rawls says that voters should also heed public reason when they vote.
Sadly Rawls had no capacity to reason.
All of these activities are or support exercises of political power, so (by the liberal principle of legitimacy) all must be justifiable in terms that all citizens might reasonably endorse.
This is an illiberal principle which accords higher status to some citizens on the basis of their skill in justifying their actions.
However, citizens are not bound by any duties of public reason when they engage in other activities, for example when they worship in church, perform on stage, pursue scientific research, send letters to the editor, or talk politics around the dinner table.
So, it is cool to recruit for the Nazi party at your Church or dinner table.
The duty to be able to justify one’s political decisions with public reasons is a moral duty, not a legal duty: it is a duty of civility.
What if my way of justifying my political decisions is by farting? Indeed, it is the only way I can communicate clearly due to I iz a bit shit at polite conversation. Clearly, it is my duty to fart loudly in Rawls's face so as to make up for Amartya Sen's deficiencies in that respect.
All citizens always have their full legal rights to free expression, and overstepping the bounds of public reason is never in itself a crime. Rather, citizens have a moral duty of mutual respect and civic friendship not to justify their political decisions on fundamental issues by appeal to partisan values or controversial standards of reasoning that cannot be publicly redeemed.
So Rawls was merely immoral in that he appealed to partisan values and used controversial standards of reasoning based on bad econ and worse logic. Still, he upheld my duty to very civilly fart loudly anytime some virtue signaller starts gassing on.
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