Introduction
Questions about work and its arrangement are the source of great political
controversy in society. The issues involved are highly divisive, but the divisions
generated do not neatly map onto the familiar political Left-Right spectrum. Even
amongst those of similar political persuasion, there is a considerable disagreement
about whether we should exercise political power to pursue full employment, to
discourage ‘overwork’, to make job-holders more secure, or to incentivise workers to
avoid dependence on state aid.
Whilst we can make some progress with these questions by consulting with our
intuitions, a fully satisfactory response must make use of an account of the political
principles and social institutions that ought to guide society’s arrangement of work. In
this thesis I defend a liberal egalitarian conception of justice, and then use it to
develop such an account. That is, in this thesis I develop and defend a liberal
egalitarian account of justice in work.
The purpose of this introductory chapter is to provide an overview of this
thesis’s aims, structure, and conclusions. This chapter begins by clarifying the subject
matter of my inquiry – work and its arrangement. Following this, I then draw
attention to the political and philosophical significance of questions concerning the
arrangement of work. In doing so, I illuminate the value of having an account of the
political principles and social institutions that ought to guide society’s arrangement of
work. Over the course of the subsequent three sections, I then issue three distinct sets
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of remarks relating to the methods used in this thesis: the first concerns the concepts
of ‘justice’ and ‘legitimacy’ and the relationship between the two ideas; the second
examines and specifies the distinctive requirements of political morality; and the third
addresses the relationship between questions regarding society’s arrangement of work
and questions regarding society’s distribution of benefits and burdens more generally.
Finally, I conclude with a brief preview of the thesis. This preview affords me the
opportunity both to clarify the more specific questions and literature that I engage
with, as well as indicate some of the conclusions that I later establish.
1 Work
This thesis is concerned with work. But, what is work? This is simultaneously a very
good and very bad question for a normative inquiry of this kind to begin with. It is a
very good question to begin with as it prompts a clear delineation of the subject
matter of the thesis. Presumably, an investigation into normative issues relating to
work is in some way distinct from a normative investigation into global justice, the
family, climate change, or bioethics, for example. Moreover, in the absence of any idea
of what is meant by ‘work’, the questions this thesis is concerned with may simply be
impossible to answer: if we have no idea what work is, then it will be impossible to
answer questions about its appropriate arrangement.
However, it is also a very bad question to begin with in that it invites us to
engage in a form of conceptual analysis that is inessential to our ends. Put in stark
terms, we can theorise about what bankers, surfers, or parents are owed as a matter of
Page 2 of 23
justice without recourse to the conceptual matter of whether it is a misuse of a label to
say that banking, surfing, or parenting are properly regarded as ‘work’.1 Normative
theory is primarily concerned with what we owe (to each other) and for what reasons;
it is not concerned with semantics.
In order to circumvent this problem, I instead stipulate a definition of work. By
work, I (stipulatively) mean paid employment. There are three advantages to
proceeding on the basis of this definition. First, as will be explained in the next
section, it enables us to engage with a set of politically and philosophically important
questions. Second, it leaves open the possibility that closely related activities, such as
volunteering or parenting, say, should be governed by similar or identical normative
principles. In short, though this thesis is not concerned with these closely related
activities, it is in principle consistent with my approach that we ought to think about
them in precisely the same way that we think about paid employment. Third, this
definition of work is sufficiently close to the definition utilised by other authors whose
contributions bear upon this inquiry.2 This ensures that my definition of work does
not obscure this thesis’s contribution to the academic literature.
Two clarifications are called for at this stage. First, let me distinguish between
those benefits and burdens that are internal to work, and those that are external to
work. A benefit is internal to work when a worker’s possession of it results directly
from her performance of the task(s) involved. This is the case with self-realisation at
1
In addition to being inessential, the task may also be impossible. A number of authors acknowledge
that, if we attempt to discover a definition of work latent in common discourse, we may be forced to
accept the conclusion that ‘no unambiguous or objective definition of work is possible’. See Keith Grint,
The Sociology of Work: Third Edition (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005), 6. Perhaps a more promising
strategy (for those interested in such things) is to adopt a normative approach to conceptual
interpretation. For an elaboration and defence of this method, see Ronald Dworkin, Justice for
Hedgehogs (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2011), chs. 7 and 8.
2
See, for example, Russell Muirhead, Just Work (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2004), 4-6.
Page 3 of 23
work, for example. By contrast, a benefit is external to work when a worker’s
possession of it results from it being conferred upon her as a result of her performance
of the task(s) involved. This is the case with a worker’s salary, for example. This thesis
is concerned with the distribution of both the internal and external benefits and
burdens of work. For this reason, it is perhaps more accurate to say that this thesis is
concerned with normative questions concerning society’s arrangement of work and
the benefits and burdens that attach to it. Given how cumbersome this phrase is,
though, I shall simply continue to refer to ‘work’.
Second, it may help briefly to comment on the relationship between work and
jobs. Jobs provide vehicles through which citizens are assigned work.3 To assert that a
citizen has a job as a professional darts player, say, is to claim nothing other than that
she undertakes paid employment as a professional darts player. A corollary of this
claim is that, for the purposes of this thesis, volunteering and parenting are not jobs.
This is because they do not involve paid employment.4
2 Theorising about Work
Why bother to defend an account of the political principles and social institutions that
ought to guide society’s arrangement of work? There are at least two compelling
3
Many will also be tempted to draw a further distinction between jobs, careers, and occupations. The
central feature of this distinction, it is sometimes claimed, is temporal. Whereas jobs are short-term,
careers and occupations refer to more long-term projects. See, for example, Norman Care, ‘Career
Choice’, Ethics, 94 (1984), 283-302 at 285. Though something like this distinction may be latent in
common discourse, I see no need to employ it in this thesis. Instead, and for simplicity, I shall stick to
the more restricted language of work and jobs.
4
Some complications are raised by activities that, though not currently paid, should be paid. For the
purpose of this thesis, I put these complications on hold.
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answers to this question. The first makes reference to the fact that work is a huge part
of many citizens’ lives. The relationship between work and citizens’ interests is an
extremely complicated one (which I investigate in further detail in Chapter 1). A
central feature of the relationship is that the work that a citizen undertakes greatly
affects the extent to which she is able to pursue what she regards as a flourishing life.
Or, in slightly more technical terms, arrangements of work greatly affect the extent to
which she is able to pursue her conception of the good.5 An implication of this is that
injustices in this aspect of citizens’ lives are likely to be particularly grievous and, as a
result, especially politically urgent.
Second, aside from questions of wage inequality, normative questions relating
to the arrangement of work have not received either the political or philosophical
attention they warrant. The assumption that jobs ought to be arranged and distributed
according to broadly laissez-faire market principles is one that has been largely
unchallenged both politically and philosophically (at least outside of Marxist theory).
There are signs of change, however. First, as Alex Gourevitch has noted, in addition to
contesting wealth and income inequality, recent anti-capitalist protests have also
focused on the benefits and burdens that are internal to work.6 Protestors have called
for a transformation in the kind of work that jobs typically involve.
Moreover, there has also been a resurgence from within academia in issues
relating to work and its arrangement. Most significantly, this has come from liberal
5
A conception of the good is ‘an ordered family of final ends and aims which specifies a person’s
conception of what is of value in human life or, alternatively, of what is regarded as a fully worthwhile
life’. See John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press,
2003), 19.
6
Alex Gourevitch, 'Labor Republicanism and the Transformation of Work', Political Theory, 41 (2013),
591-617 at 592.
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theorists, who have, with notable exceptions,7 traditionally neglected the topic.8 Even
John Rawls fails to specify in any detail the implications for work of either justice as
fairness or political liberalism.9 Whilst there is a little discussion of how precisely we
ought to respond, there is an emerging consensus that laissez-faire market
arrangements and distributions of jobs remain unjust, even once certain wage
inequalities have been corrected for. Together, these points highlight the political and
philosophical timeliness of a normative investigation into the political principles and
social institutions that ought to guide society's arrangement of work.
3 Justice and Legitimacy
My investigation into society's arrangement of work makes use of the ideas of ‘justice’
and, to a lesser extent, ‘legitimacy’. For this reason, it will help for me to specify how I
use these terms, which is a task that requires a short detour.
7
I have in mind principally, though not exclusively, the contributions of Richard Arneson. See Richard
Arneson, ‘Meaningful Work and Market Socialism’, Ethics, 97 (1987), 517-45; Richard Arneson, ‘Is Work
Special? Justice and the Distribution of Employment’, The American Political Science Review, 84 (1990),
1127-47; and Richard Arneson, ‘Meaningful Work and Market Socialism Revisited’, Analyse & Kritik, 31
(2009), 139-151. See also Kory Schaff (ed.), Philosophy and the Problems of Work: A Reader (Lanham,
MD.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).
8
See, for example, Samuel Arnold, ‘The Difference Principle at Work’, Journal of Political Philosophy, 20
(2012), 94-118; G. A. Cohen, Rescuing Justice and Equality (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press,
2008), ch. 5; Russell Keat, ‘Anti-Perfectionism, Market Economies, and the Right to Meaningful Work’,
Analyse & Kritik, 31 (2009), 121-138; and Stuart White, The Civic Minimum: On the Rights and Obligations
of Economic Citizenship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
9
Rawls makes a number of claims regarding how work will be arranged in the just society, but the
justifications for these claims are often left unclear. Samuel Arnold therefore concludes that ‘Rawls’s
views on work are somewhat of a puzzle’. See Arnold, ‘The Difference Principle at Work’, 95. See John
Rawls, A Theory of Justice: Revised Edition (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1999), §65; and
Rawls, Justice as Fairness, §53,
Page 6 of 23
Within normative theory, broadly understood, there are three types of question
that are normally asked. 10 First, we can inquire into the moral permissibility or
impermissibility of actions. We could ask, for example, ought the government to raise
the minimum wage? Let’s call these action-guiding questions. Second, we can inquire
into the blameworthiness or praiseworthiness of actions. We could ask, for example,
ought I to blame the current government for failing to raise the minimum wage? Let’s
call these ascriptive questions. Finally, we can inquire into the goodness or badness of
outcomes. We could ask, for example, would the world be a better or worse place if
the government were to raise the minimum wage? Let’s call these axiological
questions.
Each of these types of questions can be applied to various aspects of society's
arrangement of work. First, we could ask, which social institutions ought the
government to set up to guide society's arrangement of work? Second, we could ask,
ought I to blame the current government for failing to support these social
institutions? Finally, we could ask, how good or bad is the state of affairs that these
social institutions bring about?
This thesis is concerned with a specific set of action-guiding questions – that is,
with a specific set of questions about morally permissible and impermissible action. It
is tempting, therefore, to adopt a definition of justice that directly tracks moral
permissibility. According to this view, an act is just if and only if it is morally
permissible; and, by implication, an act is unjust if and only if it is morally
impermissible. To say that an institution or set of public rules are just is to say that the
10
The framework that I offer here is similar to, though departs in crucial respects from, that offered in
G. A. Cohen, ‘How To Do Political Philosophy’ in On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice and Other
Essays in Political Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 225-35 at 227.
Page 7 of 23
decisions that brought about that institution or set of public rules were morally
permissible ones.
This position is too simplistic, however. This is because there are some actions
that, though morally permissible, are not just. Let’s consider Rawls’s example of a
democratically-mandated decision to set up legal institutions that seek to maximise
overall well-being subject to a constraint guaranteeing an adequate minimum for
everyone.11 Though this decision is according to Rawls less just than establishing legal
institutions that seek to maximise the position of the least advantaged subject to
respecting certain rights, given that it is democratically mandated, such a decision
might still be morally permissible. In short, we have a decision that is morally
permissible, though not strictly just.
It is tempting to bite this bullet: we could affirm that, according the definition
of justice that has been stipulated, we should simply regard both decisions as just by
virtue of their moral permissibility. An unfortunate implication of this response,
though, is that it deprives us of the theoretical tools to determine which action of a set
of morally permissible actions is the best one. This is unsatisfying both philosophically
and politically. It is philosophically unsatisfying because it would result in many
important normative questions being taken off of the table, and it is politically
unsatisfying because citizens would lack a framework to help them determine which
decision (of a set of morally permissible ones) they ought to support.
A more sophisticated and promising alternative is offered by Rawls, who
distinguishes between justice and legitimacy. 12 Questions of justice concern the
11
12
John Rawls, Political Liberalism (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 1996), xlviii-xlix.
Rawls, Political Liberalism, Lecture IX, §5.
Page 8 of 23
conditions the fulfillment of which ensures that everyone’s interests are given equal
weight. It is axiomatic of a just society that political power is exercised in a way that
respects the freedom and equality of all citizens, and that this is achieved by treating
all citizens’ relevant interests as equally weighty.13 By contrast, questions of legitimacy
concern the conditions the fulfillment of which is sufficient for a decision to possess
political authority, in the sense that it imposes of citizens a pro tanto moral duty to
obey its commands. Decisions that fail to treat all citizens’ interests as equally
weighty, and are hence unjust, may none the less command political authority, and
hence remain legitimate. As Rawls notes:
A legitimate procedure gives rise to legitimate laws and policies made in
accordance with it….Neither the procedures nor the laws need be just by a strict
standard of justice, even if, what is also true, they cannot be too gravely unjust. At
some point, the injustice of the outcomes of a legitimate democratic procedure
corrupts its legitimacy, and so will the injustice of the political constitution itself.
But before this point is reached, the outcomes of a legitimate procedure are
legitimate whatever they are.14
Legitimacy is a doubly-permissive concept. It is not merely that shortfalls from strict
justice can be legitimate when they result from a strictly just procedure; rather,
shortfalls from strict justice can also be legitimate when they result from a procedure
that is merely sufficiently just. It is consistent with this view that particularly unjust
decisions can never command political authority, even if produced by a procedure
that, absent the grave injustice, would be strictly just.
13
14
Dworkin, Justice for Hedgehogs, chs. 15-18.
Rawls, Political Liberalism, 428.
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My main concern is with the requirements of justice with respect to society's
arrangement of work. It is, therefore, consistent with the account that I defend that
there are alternative political principles and social institutions that, though less just,
may still command political authority providing that they result from a suitable
procedure. I leave this as an open possibility.
4 Political Morality
One way in which to develop an account of justice in work is by reference to labour
perfectionism.15 Labour perfectionism consists of two claims: (1) meaningful work
(however it is defined) is necessary for, or at least conducive to, living a flourishing
life; and (2) political power ought to be exercised in a way that promotes and protects
flourishing lives. Labour perfectionism has the familiar implication that social
institutions ought to be arranged such that citizens’ jobs involve meaningful work.16
Labour perfectionism a powerful initial appeal. The fact that certain
arrangements of work preclude, or act as an obstacle to, citizens leading flourishing
lives seems clearly to be relevant to the development of an account of justice in work.
Indeed, as Muirhead points out, to fail to pay attention to this idea is to fail to pay
attention to ‘the source of the reasons that motivate us most vitally in politics and
elsewhere’.17 The appeal of the second premise of labour perfectionism is also stressed
15
I take this term from White, The Civic Minimum, 89.
Karl Marx’s writings can be read as providing a partial defence of labour perfectionism. See Karl Marx,
‘Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts’ in Karl Marx: Selected Writings (Oxford University Press,
2000 [1844]), 83-121 at 85-95. This interpretation is not uncontroversial. See Arneson, ‘Meaningful Work
and Market Socialism’, 519-20.
17
Muirhead, Just Work, 24.
16
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by a critic of the position, Jonathan Quong, who concedes that there is ‘enduring
appeal’ to the idea that political power ought to be exercised in a way that promotes
and protects flourishing lives. In particular, he notes that it chimes well with the
‘deeply attractive and intuitively compelling’ thought that ‘the aim of the state (or at
least one of its major aims) should be to improve the lives of citizens’.18
Despite its initial intuitive appeal, however, labour perfectionism is not a
plausible starting position for a normative investigation into the political principles
and social institutions that ought to guide society's arrangement of work. This is
because our reasons to exercise political power in a way that promotes and protects
flourishing lives are reasons that are typically defeated by other reasons. 19 The
argument for this conclusion draws upon the familiar arguments given by liberal antiperfectionists, such as Rawls.
The response to labour perfectionism begins by noting that, at least within
liberal societies, there will be irreducible disagreement about the relationship between
meaningful work and human flourishing:20 there will be disagreement about whether
any kind of work is necessary for human flourishing in addition to disagreement,
among those who think it is, about whether that work has to be ‘meaningful’.
The fact that the relationship between meaningful work and human flourishing
is controversial is significant because it has the implication that when the exercise of
political power is justified by reference to this relationship, some citizens will
inevitably be subject to the exercise of political power that is justified by appeal to
18
Jonathan Quong, Liberalism Without Perfection (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 30.
Rawls, Political Liberalism, Lecture IX.
20
This disagreement is the inevitable outcome of the free exercise of human reason, and is explained by
what Rawls calls the burdens of judgment. See Rawls, Political Liberalism, 54-8.
19
Page 11 of 23
reasons whose validity they reject. Justifying the exercise of political power in this way
is oppressive as it violates a basic liberal right to political autonomy. The right to
political autonomy protects citizens’ interests in being able to identify freely ‘with the
constraints that they face, in the sense that they understand the content and
justificatory bases of the constraints, and freely accept them’.21 The fact that justifying
the exercise of political power by appeal to controversial reasons leads to the violation
of citizens’ right to political autonomy is sufficient to demonstrate that the exercise of
political power in this way is morally impermissible.22 Ex hypothesi, this sanctions the
rejection of labour perfectionism.23
Citizens’ right to political autonomy is violated when the exercise of political
power is justified in this way even if the controversial reasons appealed to turned out
to be correct. That is, even if meaningful work were necessary for flourishing life, it
would remain morally impermissible to justify the exercise of political power on this
basis. This is because, even if correct, some citizens will reject meaningful work’s
importance and hence none the less have their right to political autonomy violated
when the exercise of political power is justified in this way.
21
Matthew Clayton, Justice and Legitimacy in Upbringing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 15. As
Rawls notes, the importance of political autonomy is also an idea present in the work of Jean Jacques
Rousseau. See John Rawls, ‘The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus’ in Samuel Freeman (ed.), Collected
Papers (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 426, n. 10; and Joshua Cohen, ‘Reflections on
Rousseau: Autonomy and Democracy’, Philosophy & Public Affairs, 15 (1986), 275-97 at 274–88.
22
It is consistent with this that our interest in political autonomy can, in extreme cases, be defeated by a
concern for other interests. See Rawls, Political Liberalism, 152. See also, Matthew Clayton and David
Stevens, ‘When God Commands Disobedience: Political Liberalism and Unreasonable Religions’, Res
Publica, 20 (2014), 65-84.
23
Quong has suggested that citizens’ right to be treated as agents equally capable of planning, revising,
and rationally pursuing their own conception of the good life is also violated. See Quong, Liberalism
without Perfection, 100-107. It is not clear to me that this is the case. Judging that a citizen got it wrong
in a given instance does not entail that she was, or in general is, less than equally capable of getting it
right. To this extent, justifying the exercise of political power by appeal to reasons whose validity is
rejected need not entail a violation of citizens’ right to be treated as agents equally capable of planning,
revising, and rationally pursuing their own conception of the good life.
Page 12 of 23
The exercise of political power can be coercive or non-coercive. It is coercive
when it is imposes a limitation on a citizen’s liberty, and non-coercive when it does
not. Citizens’ rights to political autonomy can be violated by the exercise of both
coercive and non-coercive political power. 24 This is because, when non-coercive
political power is justified by appeal to reasons whose validity is rejected, citizens are
no longer able to accept the justificatory bases of the constraints they face. Though the
constraints faced have not been narrowed, the defence of these constraints has a
particular character that requires justification none the less. This point is important as
it reveals the way in which citizens’ rights to political autonomy are violated even
when labour perfectionism is pursued through means that do not impose limitations
on citizens’ liberty.
An implication of our concern for political autonomy is that we are required to
exercise justificatory restraint when justifying the exercise of political power. This is in
part what distinguishes political morality from applied moral philosophy. 25 More
specifically, our concern for political autonomy means that we ought to justify the
exercise of political power by appeal exclusively to reasons that all citizens can be
expected to accept, so-called public reasons. Let’s call this principle the liberal principle
of legitimacy,26 and let’s call those who accept it liberal anti-perfectionists.27
24
It should also be noted that many exercises of political power that appear to be non-coercive in fact
turn out to involve coercion. Let’s consider a policy that sought to use financial incentives to encourage
citizens to undertake meaningful work. On the surface, this policy does not appear coercive since it
does not aim at constraining citizens’ options. However, this analysis ignores the fact that the financial
incentives offered to citizens are typically funded through the use of coercive taxation. The policy is
thus coercive in that it involves forcing citizens to contribute to its maintenance. For more on this, see
Bernard Gert and Charles Culver, ‘Paternalistic Behaviour’, Philosophy & Public Affairs, 6 (1976), 45-57.
25
‘Neither political philosophy nor justice is fairness is, in that way, applied moral philosophy. Political
philosophy has its own distinctive features and problems.’ See Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 14.
26
Rawls, Political Liberalism, 137.
Page 13 of 23
Liberal anti-perfectionism has been attacked on many fronts. Since this is a
thesis about justice in work, though, it is not desirable for me to respond to each of
these worries here. Many will, therefore, find my discussion of the demands of
political morality, and in turn my rejection of labour perfectionism, to be too brief to
be satisfactory. It is for this reason that liberal anti-perfectionism is better
characterised as an undefended premise of my investigation, rather than as a
conclusion that I hope to establish.
Having said this, it will help for me to comment on, albeit not respond to, a
particularly common objection: the asymmetry objection. Consideration of this
objection clarifies the structure of liberal anti-perfectionism. The asymmetry objection
claims that the liberal principle of legitimacy proves too much. This is because citizens
disagree about more than the importance of meaningful work; they also disagree
about almost all values, including political values, such as freedom and equality. This
suggests that there are no public reasons. Even when political power is used in
seemingly just ways, such as to serve equality, some citizens will inevitably be subject
to the exercise of political power that is justified by appeal to reasons whose validity
they reject. Doesn’t the exercise of political power in ways that promote equality
similarly violate some citizens’ rights to political autonomy? To claim not would seem
to involve treating this case and the case of labour perfectionism asymmetrically.28
27
Perfectionism ‘is merely a term used to indicate that there is no fundamental principled inhibition on
governments acting for any valid moral reason’. Anti-perfectionism is the denial of perfectionism. See
Joseph Raz, ‘Facing Up: A Reply’, Southern California Law Review, 62 (1989), 1153-235 at 1230.
28
Various versions of this objection have been presented in Michael Sandel, ‘Review of Political
Liberalism’, Harvard Law Review, 107 (1994), 1765-94 at 1782-9; Stephen Mulhall and Adam
Swift, Liberals and Communitarians (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 234; Simon Caney, ‘Anti‐perfectionism
and Rawlsian Liberalism’, Political Studies, 43 (1995), 248-64 at 257-8; and Jeremy Waldron,
‘Disagreements about Justice’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 75 (1994), 372–87.
Page 14 of 23
A compelling response to the asymmetry objection will distinguish between
two different kinds of inevitable disagreement. First, citizens inevitably disagree about
the value of various conceptions of the good. Second, citizens inevitably disagree
about the value of various conceptions of justice. The asymmetry objection gets its
force from the apparent symmetry between these two kinds of disagreement. In order
to respond to this objection, liberal anti-perfectionists must explain why these two
kinds of disagreement differ. In particular, liberal anti-perfectionists must explain why
citizens’ political autonomy is not violated when political power is justified on the
basis of reasons of justice whose validity they reject, but it is violated when political
power is justified on the basis of other reasons whose validity they reject. If this
conclusion can be sustained, then liberal anti-perfectionist can justify restricting the
scope of the liberal principle of legitimacy exclusively to disagreements about the
value of various conceptions of the good.
I do not attempt to take on this task.29 I mention it only because it helps to
illuminate further the content of liberal anti-perfectionism. This section’s clarification
regarding the distinctiveness of political morality is important for two reasons. First, it
shows why we have decisive reasons to reject labour perfectionism, which is a
historically dominant position within accounts of justice in work. Second, it is
important because a commitment to liberal anti-perfectionism informs other aspects
of the investigation. In this respect, this section serves to clarify a further key premise
of my project.
29
There are several notable defences of this position. See Clayton, Justice and Legitimacy in Upbringing,
19-27; Steven Lecce, Against Perfectionism: Defending Liberal Neutrality (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2008), chs. 4 and 8; Quong, Liberalism without Perfection, ch. 7; and Micah Schwartzman, ‘The
Completeness of Public Reason’, Politics, Philosophy, and Economics, 3 (2004), 191-220.
Page 15 of 23
5 Generalism and Integrationism
In this section I address the relationship between the political principles that ought to
guide society’s arrangement of work specifically and the political principles that ought
to guide society’s distribution of benefits and burdens more generally. To serve this
end, I shall distinguish between, and subsequently offer answers to, two distinct
questions: the generalism/non-generalism question and the integrationism/isolationism
question.
The generalism/non-generalism question concerns the grounds of the political
principles that are used to evaluate arrangements of work.30 Generalists affirm that the
political principles that ought to guide society's arrangement of work derive entirely
from the more general political principles that ought to guide society's distribution of
benefits and burdens. Non-generalists deny this. Non-generalists affirm that in order
plausibly to answer political questions about work we must appeal, at least in part, to
good-specific principles concerning paid employment. On this view, the political
principles that govern society's arrangement of work are in some sense sui generis, and
that work thus generates its own internal political principles that either replace or
operate in addition to the political principles identified by generalists.
To illuminate the disagreement here, let’s briefly consider a different case: the
distribution of health.31 One familiar position states that health is special such that we
ought to be more averse to inequalities in its distribution than to inequalities in the
30
Though he uses different labels, the same issues are discussed in [reference removed].
I take this example from [reference removed]. Whereas his case involves the distribution of
healthcare, I prefer to talk about the distribution of health. This is for reasons made familiar in Norman
Daniels, Just Health: Meeting Health Needs Fairly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
31
Page 16 of 23
distribution of other goods that are relevant to justice.32 One explanation for this is
offered by the non-generalist, who is willing to affirm that there are sui generis
political principles that apply to health, perhaps in addition to more general political
principles. An alternative position is offered by Ronald Dworkin, who utilises a
generalist approach. Dworkin begins with a general inquiry into the political
principles that ought to guide society's distribution of benefits and burdens, and then
seeks to derive political principles to guide the distribution of health from this.33 It is
consistent with this position that we ought to be more averse to inequalities in the
distribution of health than to inequalities in the distribution of other goods that are
relevant to justice. It is just that the increased averseness must be explained by more
general political principles.34
By contrast, the integrationism/isolationism question concerns to extent which
considerations about justice in general should affect our evaluation of arrangements of
work that satisfy the particular demands of the political principles that ought to guide
the arrangement of work.35 Integrationists affirm that we should analyse justice in
work in conjunction with considerations about what justice in general requires.
Isolationists deny this claim. Isolationists affirm that we should respond to the
requirement of justice in work in isolation from considerations about what justice in
general demands.
32
See Daniels, Just Health; and Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality
(New York: Basic Books, 1983), 64-94.
33
Ronald Dworkin, ‘Justice in the Distribution of Health Care’, McGill Law Journal, 38 (1993), 883-98.
34
See, for example, Shlomi Segall, Health, Luck, and Justice (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2010), esp. ch. 6.
35
I take these terms from Simon Caney, ‘Just Emissions’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 40 (2012), 255300 at 258-9. Again, though he uses different labels, the same issues are also discussed in [reference
removed]
Page 17 of 23
To illuminate the disagreement here, let’s briefly return to the case of health.
This time, let’s also assume (for the sake of simplicity) that the political principles that
guide the distribution of health dictate that it ought to be distributed equally. In this
case, isolationists will claim that there are equally weighty reasons to bring about any
set of institutions that protects this outcome. This is because isolationists are
committed to evaluating the distribution of health in isolation from other justicerelevant considerations. It is consistent with this view that, of those sets of institutions
that protect equal health, we ought to favour some sets over others on the grounds
that they do a better job of protecting other justice-relevant considerations. For
integrationists, however, the weightiness of the reason to bring about institutions that
protect an equal distribution of health is itself contingent upon the effects that those
institutions have on other justice-relevant considerations. It is even possible that our
reasons to bring about certain institutions will be cancelled if doing so involved too
great a departure from what justice requires in general.36
I favour a generalist, integrationist approach. This means that I defend an
account of justice in work that is (i) derived entirely from the political principles that
ought to guide society's distribution of benefits and burdens, and (ii) sensitive to other
justice-relevant considerations beyond those directly affecting work. There are at least
two reasons for preferring this approach. The first appeals to the fact that simplicity is
a desideratum of a normative theory. That is, it is a desirable feature of a normative
theory that ‘it yields a body of judgments out of a relatively sparse amount of theory,
deriving the numerous complex variations of the phenomena from a small number of
36
For more on cancelling reasons, see Joseph Raz, Practical Reason and Norms (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1990), 27.
Page 18 of 23
basic principles’.37 This consideration counts in favour of the generalist approach only
if we add the further assumption that a generalist normative analysis of society’s
arrangement of work can be at least as compelling as a non-generalist normative
analysis of society’s arrangement of work. In the rest of this thesis I hope to establish
that this is the case.
Second, if we are concerned at all with what we ought to do ‘all things
considered’, then it is more fruitful to theorise about work in a way that is in principle
sensitive to other institutional structures.38 It is myopic to think that (even pro tanto)
reasons regarding how work ought to be arranged are insensitive to facts concerning
that society’s educational system, healthcare system, or the extensiveness of that
society’s welfare state, for example. It is perhaps this kind of thought that motivated
John Rawls to conclude that justice ought to be concerned with ‘the way in which the
major social institutions fit together into one system’.39
An upshot of my endorsement of a generalist, integrationist approach is that
the political principles and social institutions that ought to guide society’s
arrangement of work that are most plausible are ones that make explicit reference to
the political principles and social institutions that ought to guide society’s distribution
of benefits and burdens more generally. Beyond this, further implications of my
commitment to this approach will become clearer as I proceed.
37
Shelly Kagan, The Limits of Morality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 11.
Within the context of climate change, rather than work, similar arguments are offered in Simon
Caney, ‘Global Justice, Climate Change, and Human Rights’ in Douglas Hicks and Thad Williamson,
Leadership and Global Justice (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012), 91-112 at 93-6; Samuel Scheffler,
Boundaries and Allegiances: Problems of Justice and Responsibility in Liberal Thought (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2001), 166-70 and 190-2. Within the context of global trade, similar arguments are
offered in [reference removed]
39
John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 258 [emphasis added].
38
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6 Preview of the Thesis
Let’s consider the following. First, there is Annabel, who values and enjoys her work.
In addition to this, she gets paid handsomely, and gets plenty of time off to spend with
her children. Second, there is Binita, who was brought up to expect so much more
from life than she has accomplished and, though she performs the same actual work
as Annabel, she finds it merely tolerable. Third, there is Charlotte, whose natural
talents are not nearly as marketable as Annabel’s and Binita’s. Charlotte spends
frequent periods involuntarily unemployed and, when she can find work, it tends to be
in time-consuming, dead-end jobs that pay just enough to keep her afloat. Charlotte
gets by knowing that she’s making the most of a bad situation. Fourth, there is
Danielle, who has a rare talent that could be put to use for considerable social gains.
Danielle is not motivated to maximise her social contribution, though, and so she
happily takes on much less socially productive work instead.
Annabel’s, Binita’s, Charlotte’s, and Danielle’s situations all differ in potentially
morally salient ways. By considering reflecting on their situations, as well as the lives
of other characters in different situations, we are able to identify morally relevant
considerations that any satisfactory account of justice in work must be appropriately
sensitive to. This is the approach that I adopt in throughout the thesis.
Accurately analysing these characters’ lives is tough. It requires consideration
of difficult questions that involve many complications. To mitigate these problems, it
may help to make use of several simplifying assumptions. The logic is as follows: if we
can determine the political principles and social institutions that ought to guide the
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arrangement of work in deliberately artificial cases, then afterwards we can attend to
the subsequent task of amending these conclusions in light of certain complexities
that are thrown up by the real world.
At various points throughout this thesis I make use of three distinct sets of
simplifying assumptions. These are the assumptions of (i) equal talents, (ii) equally
productive work, and (iii) ideal theory. I begin the thesis with all three assumptions in
place and I then remove each of these assumptions as I progress.
When all three assumptions are in place, our attention is channeled into cases
in which differences between citizens arise as a result of their different ambitions only.
These cases can be modeled by comparing Annabel’s and Binita’s situations. Chapter 2
engages with the Rawlsian analysis of cases of this kind. Though Rawlsians correctly
draw our attention to important considerations that any plausible account should be
sensitive to, I show that their position is insufficiently fine-grained to be capable of
yielding instructive policy advice. I conclude that, for this reason, we must turn to an
alternative approach. This approach, which is developed and defended in chapter 3,
utilises a form of resource egalitarianism in order to defend the appeal of a job market.
Of course, in the real world, the assumption of equal talents does not hold:
whereas some have very marketable talents, others do not. This is where Charlotte
comes in. If work were distributed according to the principles of the market, those
who lack marketable talents would end up having many fewer valuable opportunities
than those who have marketable talents. This implication would seem to cut strongly
against the familiar egalitarian conviction that citizens’ entitlements ought not to
Page 21 of 23
depend upon factors for which they are not responsible.40 In chapter 4, I invoke
Ronald Dworkin’s model of hypothetical fair insurance in order to theorise about the
conclusions of the previous chapter ought to be amended in light of differences in
citizens’ talents.41
In chapter 5, I then drop the assumption of equally productive work. This
permits examination of the difficulties raised by Danielle’s situation. In this chapter, I
illustrate how our account of justice in work ought to be amended in light of the fact
that doctoring, let’s say, makes more of a social contribution than gardening. More
specifically, I argue that [INSERT CONCLUSION OF CHAPTER 5].
The third assumption is finally dropped in chapter 6. The task of this chapter is
to inquire into how best to amend our account in light of the fact the conditions of
ideal theory are not always necessarily in place. Ideal theory has two components: the
first is full compliance, and second is favourable circumstances.42 The assumptions
ensure that all citizens (past and present) discharge their duties, and that the
historical, economic, social conditions necessary for the possibility of a stable, wellordered society are in place. Dropping this assumption invites us to consider how we
ought to amend our position in light of, for example, severe global poverty, partial
compliance, and material scarcity. The argument that I advance defends the claim that
these factors should make us generally more willing to bear and to impose greater
occupational burdens than is standardly assumed.
40
This conclusion, which can be called anti-luckism, is most closely associated with luck egalitarianism.
See Zofia Stemplowska, ‘Luck Egalitarianism’ in Gerald Gaus and Fred D’Agostino (eds.), The Routledge
Companion to Social and Political Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 2013), 389-99 at 389.
41
Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard
University Press, 2000), chs. 2 and 9.
42
This definition is stipulated, but it bears considerable resemblance to how the term is used by Rawls.
Zofia Stemplowska and Adam Swift, 'Ideal and Nonideal Theory' in David Estlund (ed.), Oxford
Handbook of Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 373-89.
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Before this, however, I offer a general discussion of how citizens’ interests are
affected by arrangements of work. Here, I flesh out the various ways in which different
arrangements of work can affect citizens’ attainment of purportedly valuable goods,
and, in doing so, I illuminate some of the complexities that an account of justice in
work must be sensitive to. This is the subject of Chapter 1, to which I now turn.
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