Why John Rawls’Theory of Liberty Neglected Economic Freedom

Abstract

Even those who value political and civil liberties tend to ignore, or at least downplay, economic liberties. Among the modern philosophers who represent such a trend, the representative figure is John Rawls. He neglected the freedom to own the means of production and the freedom to contract as essential freedoms of a market society, on the grounds that they could not be conditions for developing and exercising “moral capacities”. In the just world he envisioned, extensive economic freedom is not allowed. The purpose of this article is to show, firstly, that severe restrictions on economic freedom endanger civil and political liberties as an institutional condition for the development of a sense of justice, on the ground that economic freedom is the bulwark of all freedoms, and especially that it is the soil of democracy. Secondly, a market society is by no means a society in which people act out of narrow-minded selfishness. People depend on each other to live. Equal freedom is what makes human interdependence possible. Only those who maintain the beneficial bonds of interdependence can succeed in the marketplace. Productive interdependence, facilitated by voluntary associations independent of politics, such as family, public life, moral, religious and business associations, is the source of innovation and entrepreneurship. When Rawls deliberately excluded economic rights from his basic rights list, the intellectual basis toward counter-free society were well settled, through which liberal-leftist redistribution became possible virtually with no limit.