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transformed. The new reasoning that Rawls hoped to establish was that there are political
and economic conditions that must be satisfied for citizens in a democracy to be able to
apply public reason in deliberations about policies.
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Howerver, is ‘property-owning
democracy’ the only institutional arrangement that is mandated by democratic
deliberations? I want to present and discuss two recent works of Elizabeth S. Anderson
and Joshua Cohen to illustrate how Rawls’s new framework can inform a rethinking of
the relationship between democratic deliberation and the distribution of property.
In “What is the Point of Equality?” Elizabeth S. Anderson argues:
… that in focusing on correcting a supposed cosmic injustice, recent egalitarian
writing has lost sight of the distinctively political aims of egalitarianism. The
proper negative aim of egalitarian justice is not to eliminate the impact of brute
luck from human affairs, but to end oppression, which by definition is socially
imposed. Its proper positive aim is not to ensure that everyone gets what they
morally deserve, but to create a community in which people stand in relations of
equality to others.
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The alternative theory she proposes is of “democratic equality.” Claims for democratic
equality are made by citizens who demand freedom and equal respect from the state and
their fellow citizens. Thus, Anderson chooses to examine the question of the distribution
of property (as well as of other social goods) from the perspective of the conditions that
are required for the functioning of democracy. Regarding the distribution of property, she
argues that “democratic equality would urge a less demanding form of reciprocity” than
Rawls’s difference principle (stating that all income inequality should be in the benefit of
the worst-off member of society).
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The reason being that “[o]nce all citizens enjoy a
Convention