A Critique of Distributive Justice

Paper Summary:

This paper argues the concept of distributive justice, the belief that it is within the government's purview to manage the wealth of society and redistribute it when moral and necessary so that everyone in the society may enjoy the benefit of equal opportunity. It looks at how the system, the brainchild of Harvard Professor John Rawls, has been widely implemented and how it has received praise and criticism for its treatment of government, civil society and human rights. Rawls sees distributive justice as being a result of social, political and contractarian arrangements in the context of several different systems of political thought which all value freedom of thought and the ability of all members of society to partake in public life.

From the Paper:

"A comprehensive doctrine is an ideology or political methodology that is self-contained, has its own metaphysical principles and draws conclusions from its own premises. For example, Muslim fundamentalism accepts as a given that there is no God but Allah, and that Mohammed is his prophet. Similarly, the Austrian School of Economics, the basis for modern libertarianism, is based on the praxiological premises of Ludwig Von Mises that hold that all members of a society are independent and rational actors who seek to meet their individual ends via the context of civil society."

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• Analytical Essay # 150119 : "The Implications of Distributive Justice in Locke and Rawls"
• Book Review # 102150 : "Fred Block's "Postindustrial Possibilities: A Critique of Economic Discourse"

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