Author: Vida Mira Panitch

Publisher:

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 9780494398975

Liberal egalitarians are typically regarded as having two aims: to propose a theory of justice in accordance with the liberal political morality, and to employ this theory as a basis upon which to justify the redistributive transfers definitive of the welfare state. In this thesis I show that these two aims are in tension with one another, or rather, that because liberal egalitarians take neutrality to be central to the liberal political morality, they thereby encounter considerable difficulty when it comes to grounding the welfare state. I begin by offering an account of the welfare state according to which its central function is the relatively direct provision of a baseline of basic needs. I go on to argue that the liberal egalitarian theories proposed by John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and Philippe Van Parijs, fail to ground the welfare state in this central function. I show that a commitment to neutrality leads these theorists to the view that the state ought to distribute resources in their most abstract form possible and refrain from distributing resources entirely whenever this would privilege any one individual's particular conception of the good. This commitment, I argue, thus underwrites the liberal egalitarian failure to justify the welfare state's direct and unconditional provision of basic needs. Although I show that liberal egalitarians are unable to offer grounds for state welfare, I argue that we need not abandon egalitarianism altogether. The problem, on my view, is that liberal egalitarians take their principle of equality to mandate strict neutrality in all redistributive matters, and I maintain that while neutrality is indeed appropriate with respect to satisfying the wants people have in accordance with their various conceptions of the good, a commitment to equality also mandates non-neutral attendance to the necessities without which people would be unable to formulate, revise, and make rational decisions in accordance with such conceptions in the first place. Insofar as they have failed to recognize this, I conclude, liberal egalitarians committed to neutrality can be said to have presupposed the welfare state rather than having justified it.