Liberation and liberal freedom: A critique of Rawls's

Abstract

1T.H. Green, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 2000.

How can Rawls's The Law of Peoples serve as a theory of justice that clarifies the responsibility of consumers in affluent societies to workers in impoverished societies whose labor produced the goods being consumed? If it is true that some of the most serious cases of injustice involve labor arrangements in the global economy involving something similar to economic slavery as described by Marx, then an adequate theory of justice should address such problems. I will argue that Rawls's theory in the international application should be revised in order to avoid criticisms of being either irrelevant to crucial cases of injustice or merely a modus vivendi argument that fails to accomplish Rawls's intent. To demonstrate the need for these revisions. I ask: how would his theory be different if Rawls had maintained both the positive and negative dimensions of freedom? I explore the reasons that Rawls dismissed positive freedom as a valuable concept, including the influence of Isaiah Berlin and others. I examine various definitions of positive freedom with special interest in the words of T.H. Green who advocated the "the liberation of the powers of all."1 This liberation assumes both material conditions and moral justification. If Rawls had maintained this notion of positive freedom as social self-expression with enabling conditions then Rawls would have prevented various criticisms. This definition of positive freedom shapes three parts of my argument: first, positive freedom entails resources as enabling conditions; second, positive freedom is social freedom in relationship with others; and third, positive freedom is activity of the will and therefore a labor of self-construction. I link criticisms of Martha Nussbaum, Thomas Pogge, and G. A. Cohen as examples of criticism related to the potential for freedom to be merely formal in Rawls's theory. I conclude that positive freedom is a concept worth retaining because it helps account for Rawls's drift toward socialism. Finally, I conclude that further extension of the Law of Peoples as informed by this robust notion of freedom would lead to connections with liberation and feminist theory and greater relevance for issues of labor justice in the global economy.