Société québécoise de science politique

The Liberal Theory of Justice: A Critical Examination of the Principal Doctrines in "ATheory of Justice" by John Rawls by Brian Barry; John RawlsReview by: C. B. MacphersonCanadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique, Vol. 7, No. 4(Dec., 1974), pp. 722-723Published by: Canadian Political Science Association and the Société québécoise de science politiqueStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3230577 .

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722

prospects look worse. He does not see lib- eralism-with-a-difference as a likely prospect; the odds, he says, are strongly against it. But he dwells on it wistfully and at some length, for it is, at any rate, one of a given range of possibilities, and he takes it to be an intellectual's task to elucidate that full range.

Thankfully, Moore's Benthamism is more modest, less dogmatic, than the original. He focuses on avoiding misery rather than on achieving happiness because, in his view, misery is unitary while happiness is diverse. He means, and on this point I find him con- vincing, that social analysis and policy- making based on an idea of happiness (or on positive moral values) are likely to founder on disagreement, whereas there is some prospect of consensus on the negative value of avoiding as much suffering, and consequent unhappiness, as possible. He hints that, given a widespread trend towards secular rather than mythical or religious ex- planations, we might expect and work to- wards a large measure of agreement also on the major institutional sources of suffering which require remedy. He examines them in turn: war, cruelty, hunger, toil, injustice, oppression - and this reader finds no major quarrel either with the list, with Moore's elucidation of it, or with his application of "the criterion of minimal suffering" to assess existing or possible political arrangements.

When Moore turns to the second part of his task, examination of "certain proposals" to eliminate major sources of misery, there is further room for agreement. It is easy enough to assent to his dismissal of political "chaos" and "reaction" as two prospects likely to increase rather than diminish suf- fering. His examination of "revolutionary" alternatives is longer, more complex, more tentative. Despite considerable sympathy with a number of revolutionary arguments, and recognizing that outcomes from politi- cal action cannot be guaranteed, Moore con- cludes that for the United States, "under existing conditions," the costs of revolution- ary upheaval - costs in widespread suffering, and not merely for the privileged - would be almost certainly severe, and gains far from certain. His reasonings on this matter will not seem persuasive to committed revo- lutionaries, but these assessments of proba- bilities at least deserve sober consideration.

It is with respect to the alternative which finds Moore's favour - his democratic, mildly socialistic liberalism-with-a-difference - that this reader is disappointed. The out- line of its characteristics is attractive, but one looks in vain for even the beginning of a discussion of strategies for accomplish-

ment. Moore contents himself with a review of the formidable obstacles to this outcome and remarks to the effect that it does not appear to be "in the cards." Unfortunately, he appears close to succumbing to a malady against which he warns in his first chapter, "the defeatist illusion of impotence." Cer- tainly a description of desired political ar- rangements without any analysis of how to achieve them is impotent: mere preaching, or day dreaming. This does not mean that we expect a blueprint or formula for what is to be done, but some analysis of various possible kinds of "reformist" political action would be welcome: who might perform these actions? what are the probable out- comes? etc.

Ordinarily, a reviewer ought to pay atten- tion to what the author does, rather than upbraid him for what he does not do. But in this case, the internal demands of the subject matter itself, together with the second half of his title, lead us to a legiti- mate expectation of analysis which is not forthcoming. It is to be hoped that Professor Moore will give us the benefit of further reflections.

BENTLEY LEBARON Brock University

Brian Barry, The Liberal Theory of Justice: A Critical Examination of the Principal Doctrines in A Theory of Justice by John Rawls. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973, pp. x, 169.

Rawls' A Theory of Justice has been received everywhere as a work of such undoubted importance, and has been so long in gesta- tion (much, though not all, of its argument having been published in articles over the previous 10 years or so), that anyone com- petent to review Barry's critique is quite likely to have already published something on Rawls. How then is such a reviewer to proceed? There is a temptation to deal only with the differences between his own critique and Barry's. Fortunately this temp- tation is fairly easily resisted, because Barry deals with more than any of the shorter critiques have been able to do.

Barry's title is well chosen. The liberal theory of justice is indeed what Rawls' theory is well on its way to becoming. And since it is now a common liberal view that the central moral problem of politics is the problem of justice, chiefly distributive justice (which is what Rawls' theory is mainly about), rather than Mill's "improvement of mankind," let alone Marx's alienation, the liberal theory of justice is tantamount to

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Recensions / Reviews 723

the liberal theory of politics. If Rawls' Theory is to be for some considerable time the liberal theory, as seems likely, it de- serves a sustained logical critique. And in Barry it gets it. Not that Barry claims to have covered the whole ground - he specifi- cally disclaims that - or that he would claim to have said the last word. But he has given such an incisive logical analysis of Rawls' main argument that one may safely bet that for quite a while Barry's will be the sub- stantial logical critique of Rawls. Barry's scalpel flashes through the too, too solid flesh. He even allows himself a comment on that solidity: referring to Rawls having shortened the technical term "lexicographic" to "lexical" on the grounds that the former was too cumbersome, Barry writes: "It is difficult to avoid the wish that this sudden passion for brevity might have gripped Rawls in some more effective way than to shorten the total length of the book by per- haps two lines" (51, n. 6). But this chiding note is rare. Barry freely grants that A Theory of Justice is a major work, deserv- ing prolonged and intensive study. Yet what Barry disarmingly calls "the general drift" of his book is "that Rawls's 'theory of jus- tice' does not work and that many of his individual arguments are unsound" (ix).

Barry's dissection is too concise to attempt to summarize. All that need be said here is that while his critique is primarily logical, it happily is not, as that term is often taken to imply, remote from reality. Often his crit- icism is precisely of the unreality of Rawls' assumptions or models. And some of his comment penetrates the supposed impar- tiality of Rawls as between capitalism and socialism: quoting one of Rawls' arguments, he writes: "Surely not since Locke's theory of property have such potentially radical premises been used as the foundation for something so little disturbing to the status quo!" (50). True enough, and perhaps it is for this reason that Rawls' theory is likely to survive even so trenchant a critique as Barry's.

C.B. MACPHERSON University of Toronto

Shlomo Avineri, ed., Marx's Socialism. New York: Lieber Atherton, 1972, pp. xiii, 220.

Boris Nicolaievsky and Otto Maenchen- Helfen, Karl Marx: Man and Fighter. Lon- don: Allen Lane [Don Mills: Longman] 1973, pp. xii, 492.

Marx's Socialism reproduces nine articles - all of them provocative, and some of them

very good indeed - from the period 1959- 68. Predictably, most of them are very much within the perspective of the abstract Hege- lianism and alienation themes of Marx's early works. And this is the chief defect of the collection. For if we have learned any- thing at all from the polemics of that period, it must surely be that this perspective is both mistaken and misleading. To be sure, it was a necessary phase in the development of Marxist scholarship (and politics). But its importance lies less in any answers it pro- vided (for it generated more confusion than insight) and rather more in the newer ques- tions which have emerged from the struggles to displace it. And so one cannot welcome an anthology which seeks to catapult stu- dents back into those confusions. This re- version is all the more regrettable given that Avineri's collection takes no account what- ever of the newer perspectives which have overtaken the preoccupation with alienation, nor of the critical works which have trans- formed these earlier confusions into more productive questions.

The first four articles concern the im- portance and continuity of Marx's early themes. These are easily the most provoca- tive papers in the collection, but they are also the least adequate: for in each essay important points are spoiled by excesses of simplification, overstatement, and academic parti pris. Avineri himself sets the pace with what begins as a fine precis of Marx's 1843 Critique of Hegel. But then, by assuming that the basic elements of the Critique are those also of Marx's mature socialism, Avineri "concludes" that the mature thought "makes no sense outside the specific tradi- tion of Hegelian political philosophy." But this is exquisitely overblown. Apart from the fact that the assumption is question- begging, and apart from the fact that it also reduces Marx's socialism to extraordinarily limited and pallid philosophical terms, Avineri's thesis also parodies Marx's phil- osophy; for the assumption implies that Marx's mature philosophy and politics were basically independent of his encounter with political economy.

None of the remaining papers quite matches this standard of overstatement, but Daniel Bell's 1959 "Rediscovery" paper gives it a good try. Weighing in from the opposite extreme, Bell tries to ambush the entire debate with the hit and run claim that Marx repudiated the concept of aliena- tion completely except as an economic cate- gory. But this is just wrong. As Fetscher shows in another paper, important questions of social alienation recur through most of Marx's works, especially The Grundrisse

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