The Marxist critique of Rawls
pp. 237-243
in: James J. O'Rourke, Thomas J. Blakeley, Friedrich Rapp (eds), Contemporary Marxism, Berlin, Springer, 1984Abstract
Rawls' theory of justice should be of special interest to orthodox Marxists, and this for at least three reasons: (a) Rawls strives to integrate his philosophy with the empirical social sciences and economics, something which for Marx too had been a chief aim. (b) Despite the intimate collaboration between philosophy and the empirical sciences which Rawls proposes, he claims to develop a genuine ethical theory, and ethics is something which is lacking in Marxian philosophy. (c) The Rawlsian ideal of a just society has at least in some respects a strongly socialist flavor: Rawls' Difference Principle states that in a just society somebody's being better off than others can be justified only as far as his being better off simultaneously improves the lot of the worst off.
