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Abstract:
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The idea of a ‘property-owning democracy’ became central to John Rawls’s own
re-evaluation of his theory of justice. This article traces the origins of Rawls’s concept of
‘property-owning democracy’ first back to the writings of the economist James Meade
and then back to those of early 20
th
century British conservatives, focusing on the
question of how the meaning of democracy was defined and re-defined throughout this
history. I argue that Rawls inherited a discursive matrix from the British Conservatives
in which the notion of ‘property-owning democracy’ refers to the limits that should be set
on democratic practices to make it compatible with the needs and interests of property-
owners. In addition to tracing the genealogy of the idea of a ‘property-owning
democracy,’ the paper points toward more recent attempts, partially inspired by Rawls’s
‘political turn,’ to re-examine the distribution of property-ownership from the perspective
of what is required for viable democratic deliberations. The paper ends with an
addendum lamenting the fact that when George W. Bush’s administration adopted the
British ideas and policies associated with ‘property-owning democracy’ it chose to omit
‘democracy’ altogether and to describe its initiative as ‘ownership society.’
Keywords: Property-owning democracy, ownership society, John Rawls, James E.
Meade, Noel Skelton.
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