Justice as Illustrated by Karl Marx and John Rawls

While both Karl Marx and John Rawls support the idea of a just society that helps to lessen the effects of natural chance, they differ in the ways that this should be accomplished. According to Rawls, a liberal welfarist, the secret to creating a just society is creating a social contract with a presumed “veil of ignorance” meaning those creating the social order do not know their place in society and are rational and “mutually disinterested”. This concept is a way that Rawls theorizes would lessen the effect that social standing has in justice and equality of a group of people. Since one does not know his standing at the conception of the social contract, inequalities levied against those at the top of the social pyramid would benefit those at the bottom, and since one does not know his place on that social pyramid he would agree to the contract in the event that he were at the bottom. This concept would not be seen by Marx as just however, because it still creates a society in which there is a social hierarchy; a social hierarchy implies class struggle. When discussing class struggle and the evolution of the modern bourgeoisie society Marx states “It [bourgeois society] has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.” The struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeois would all vanish according to Marx if the means of production (i.e. the means that the bourgeois use to exploit the proletariat) would be instead used to further the advancement of the general public.

Marx argues that to achieve a just society, one must first get rid of the class based struggle that has been affecting us since the beginning of history and has been limiting the freedoms of the proletariat through de facto slavery. The struggle of the proletariat, according to Marx, stems from the fact that through the lower classes struggle in work, they acquire nothing, and are forced to work merely to subside in an effort merely to subside. Rawls argues that the just distribution of primary social goods (i.e. rights, liberties, opportunities for income, office, etc.) establishes a level playing-field and thus grants each member of society the opportunity to advance in life based on his or her individual actions. Although one can acquire an unequal distribution of goods, it must be to the advantage of everyone for the individual to do so; thus an inequality is not necessarily unjust. Marx claims that by making everyone’s distribution of social goods completely equal class distinctions will be abolished and things such as political power will cease to exist. “Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another.” He argues that by doing away with this power, and centralizing the means of production, the very basis of class struggle and class supremacy will vanish. This leaves the people to overcome class and take advantage of whatever natural talents and skills that would have lain dormant unless otherwise allowed to flourish.