What is a just society? For the purposes of this book, I propose the following imperfect definition. A just society is one that allows all of its members access to the widest pos si ble range of fundamental goods. Fundamental goods include education, health, the right to vote, and more generally to participate as fully
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as pos si ble in the vari ous forms of social, cultural, economic, civic, and po liti cal life. A just society organizes socioeconomic relations, property rights, and the distribution of income and wealth in such a way as to allow its least advantaged members to enjoy the highest pos si ble life conditions. A just society in no way requires absolute uniformity or equality. To the extent that income and wealth inequalities are the result of diff er ent aspirations and distinct life choices or permit improvement of the standard of living and expansion of the opportu
nities available to the disadvantaged, they may be considered just. But this must be demonstrated, not assumed, and this argument cannot be invoked to jus
tify any degree of in equality whatsoever, as it too often is.
This imprecise definition of the just society does not resolve all issues— far from it. But to go further requires collective deliberation on the basis of each citizen’s historical and individual experience with participation by all members of society. That is why deliberation is both an end and a means. The definition is nevertheless useful because it allows us to lay down certain princi ples. In par
tic u lar, equality of access to fundamental goods must be absolute: one cannot offer greater po liti cal participation, extended education, or higher income to certain groups while depriving others of the right to vote, attend school, or re
ceive health care. Where do fundamental goods such as education, health, housing, culture, and so on end? That is obviously a matter for debate and cannot be de cided outside the framework of a par tic u lar society in a par tic
u lar historical context.
To my way of thinking, the in ter est ing questions arise when one begins to look at the idea of justice in par tic u lar historical socie ties and to analyze how conflicts over justice are embodied in discourse, institutions, and specific so
cial, fiscal, and educational arrangements. Some readers may find that the princi ples of justice I set forth here are similar to those formulated by John Rawls in 1971.1 There is some truth to this, provided one adds that similar princi ples can be found in much earlier forms in many civilizations: for instance, in Article I of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of 1789.2 1. Especially his “difference princi ple”: “Social and economic inequalities are to be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society.” This formula, taken from J. Rawls, Theory of Justice (1971), was repeated in J. Rawls’s Po liti cal Lib-eralism (1993). The theory is sometimes summarized as “maximin” (the ultimate social objective is to maximize minimum well being), even though it also insists on absolute equality of fundamental rights.
2. “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can only be based on common social utility.” The second part of this proposition has often
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French Revolution or in the US’s Declaration of In de pen dence did nothing to prevent the per sis tence and exacerbation of large social inequalities in both countries throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries, nor did they prevent the establishment of systems of colonial domination, slavery, and racial segregation that endured until the 1960s. Hence it is wise to be wary of abstract and general princi ples of social justice and to concentrate instead on the way in which those princi ples are embodied in specific socie ties and con
crete policies and institutions.3
The ele ments of a participatory socialism that I will pre sent below are based primarily on the historical lessons presented in this book— especially the les
sons that can be drawn from the major transformations of in equality regimes that took place in the twentieth century. In reflecting on how to apply those lessons, I have had in mind today’s socie ties, the socie ties of the early twenty
first century. Some of the items discussed below demand significant state, ad
ministrative, and fiscal capacities if they are to be implemented, and in that sense they are most directly applicable to Western socie ties and to the more developed non Western ones. But I have tried to think about them in a uni
versal perspective, and they may gradually become applicable to poor and emerging countries as well. The proposals I examine here derive from the demo
cratic socialist tradition, notably in the emphasis I place on transcending pri
vate owner ship and involving workers and their representatives in corporate governance (a practice that has already played an impor tant role in German and Nordic social democracy). I prefer to speak of “participatory socialism” to emphasize the goal of participation and decentralization and to sharply dis
tinguish this proj ect from the hypercentralized state socialism that was tried in the twentieth century in the Soviet Union and other communist states (and is still widely practiced in the Chinese public sector). I also envision a central role for the educational system and emphasize the themes of temporary owner ship been interpreted as opening the way to just in equality. See T. Piketty, Capital in the Twenty- First Century, trans. A. Goldhammer (Harvard University Press, 2014), pp. 479–481.
3. The principal limitation of the Rawlsian approach is that it remains fairly abstract and says nothing precise about the levels of in equality and fiscal progressivity the princi ples imply. Thus Friedrich A. von Hayek was able to write in the preface to Law, Legislation, and Liberty (1982) that he felt close to Rawls and his “difference princi ple,” which in practice has often been used to justify high levels of in equality to act as a useful incentive (on the basis of little evidence).
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and progressive taxation (bearing in mind that progressive taxes played an impor tant role in British and American progressivism and were widely debated though never implemented during the French Revolution).
In view of the largely positive results of demo cratic socialism and social de
mocracy in the twentieth century, especially in Western Eu rope, I think that the word “socialism” still deserves to be used in the twenty first century to evoke that tradition even as we seek to move beyond it. And move beyond it we must if we are to overcome the most glaring deficiencies of the social democratic re
sponse of the past four de cades. In any case, the substance of the proposals we will discuss matters more than any label one might attach to them. It is per
fectly comprehensible that for some readers the word “socialism” will have been permanently tarnished by the Soviet experience (or by the actions of more re
cent governments that were “socialist” in name only). Therefore, they would prefer a diff er ent word. Nevertheless, I hope that such readers will at least follow my argument and the propositions that flow from it, which in fact draw on ex
periences and traditions of many kinds.4
Note, fi nally, that the options defended here reflect the following thought experiment. Suppose that we have unlimited time for debate in an im mense global agora. The subject of debate is how best to or ga nize the property regime, fiscal and educational systems, borders, and the demo cratic regime itself. The choices I make below are the ones I would defend in such a setting on the basis of the historical knowledge I acquired to write this book and in the hope of persuading the largest pos si ble number of people that these are the policies that should be implemented. However useful such a thought experiment might be, it is clearly artificial in several re spects. First, no one has unlimited time for de
bate. In par tic u lar, po liti cal movements and parties often have very little time to communicate their ideas and proposals to citizens, who in turn have limited
4. Some of the ideas presented here, in par tic u lar on the subject of circulation of property and taxation of inheritances and wealth, are similar in spirit to the ideas of authors in the French Solidarist Socialist tradition such as Léon Bourgeois and Émile Durkheim (see Chap. 11). Note, too, the proximity to the notion of
“property owning democracy” developed by James Meade. The prob lem is that this notion (like Rawls’s concepts) has at times been invoked for conservative pur
poses. See, for example, B. Jackson, “Property Owning Democracy: A Short History,” in Property- Owning Democracy: Rawls and Beyond, ed. M. O’Neill and T. Williamson (Blackwell, 2012). By design, the options defended here are based on the historical experience of many countries since the nineteenth century and therefore combine a number of intellectual traditions.
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priorities in life besides listening to their po liti cal arguments).
Last but not least, if this endless deliberation were ever to take place in real ity, I would no doubt have reason to revise the positions I am about to defend, which inevitably reflect the limited range of arguments, data, and his
torical sources to which I have been exposed to date. Each new discussion fur
ther enriches the fund of material on which I base my reflections. I have already revised my positions profoundly as a result of the readings, encounters, and debates in which I have been fortunate to participate, and I will continue to revise my views in the future. In other words, justice must always be con
ceived as the result of ongoing collective deliberation. No book and no single human being can ever define the ideal property regime, the perfect voting system, or the miraculous tax schedule. Pro gress toward justice can occur only as the result of a vast collective experiment. As history unfolds, the experience of each individual must be brought to bear in the widest pos si ble deliberation.
The ele ments I will explore here are meant merely to indicate pos si ble paths for experimentation, derived from analy sis of the histories recounted in the pre
ceding chapters.