Rawls Reversed

We can't allow those who vote in ignorance to destroy civilisation

As part of an ongoing project in 2026, Bearly Politics has been opening for reader contributions. This contribution is by Mark Braund, who revisits John Rawls’ theory of justice and explores what happens when its assumptions collide with modern mass politics and the rise of the far right.

Readers who value long-form, reflective engagement with political philosophy and contemporary democracy may wish to follow his work below:

---

The late American thinker John Rawls is revered among students of political philosophy. His seminal work, A Theory of Justice, was met with huge acclaim when it was published in 1971, within academia and beyond. The influence of his thinking on the idea and practice of liberal democracy has been immense. In 1989 copies of his book were waved in Tiananmen Square as the tanks rolled in.

A Theory of Justice

Despite the book running to six hundred pages, Rawls’ central idea is a simple one. He conceived of an original position from which people would choose the kind of society they would want to live in if it was being created from scratch. To make things a little spicier, they would make this choice from behind a veil of ignorance about the hand they would be dealt in this new world: they wouldn’t know if they were intelligent, attractive, even healthy; nor if they would benefit from good parenting, a decent education or any other of the factors that determine a person’s chances in life.

In this scenario, Rawls suggested that most people would opt for political and economic arrangements that deliver a society more just and inclusive than the current one. From behind this figurative veil, he believed, they would support two key principles: basic liberty for all, and equality of opportunity. To facilitate these, he thought people would also support a third, which he called the difference principle:according to which, a policy that leads to unequal outcomes is only permitted if it benefits the least well-off.

Rawls’ argument clearly depends on enough people choosing rationally. It also requires people to have sufficient reasoning skills to understand why the choice of a fairer society would be in their interests. And it assumes that people have the capacity to temporarily put aside considerations of their own self-interest and think about what kind of society would be better for everyone. If they can do this, it’s a short hop to the conclusion that their own interests would be best served by a society that cares for the interests of all.

Of course, as a tool to help with our current electoral choices, or to guide those we elect to make policy decisions on our behalf, it is entirely theoretical. Short of a cataclysm like the one that destroyed the dinosaurs, we are never going to find ourselves in Rawls’ original position. But it does remind us that we have a choice, and many of us have access to a ready-made mechanism for making that choice effective, through democratic politics.

Rawls also believed that instead of an inevitable trade-off between freedom and equality, these two ideals could in fact be reconciled. He didn’t argue for an equal society or suggest it was possible, or even desirable, but he did believe that in a world of abundant resources and technological advance, nobody should have to be hungry or homeless. We’re not talking utopia here, just a world in which everybody can work to secure their basic needs.

Rawls Reversed

If Rawls is right: that under these hypothetical conditions most people would choose a fairer society, then we would expect to see evidence reflected in people’s voting choices today. And we do: many people do support the idea of a fairer society when it’s on offer from one political party or another. But we are not starting from the original position, and democracy frequently fails as a means through which majority desires can be expressed and majority interests safeguarded.

This has always been the case, but it’s become far worse over the last decade: millions of Britons voted against their best interests in the 2016 Brexit referendum. Millions of Americans did the same putting Donald Trump in the White House, not once, but twice. And over the next four years, governments of the far right could be voted into power in France, Britain and of all places, Germany, less than a century since Nazism was vanquished at the cost of millions of lives.

Why? Because rather than being inspired by the ideas of John Rawls, too many people vote in ignorance of the consequences of giving power to those who foment hatred and despair.

Too many people allow their world view to be shaped by the lies and prejudices of Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and others, abetted by their chums in the right-wing media. They are ignorant of the real forces driving economic insecurity; they are dishonestly misled in respect of the impact of immigration; and they willingly subscribe to made-up guff about an imaginary golden age. As a result, they vote for charlatans who care nothing for their interests, whose approach to governing will further disrupt their lives and ultimately lead to a world in which their personal freedoms are heavily circumscribed.

It’s not just the poorly educated and ill-informed who are making such choices: educated people in large numbers are also opting for a competitive, aggressive society, one which derides the notion of empathy for others, especially if their skin is a different colour, or they speak a different language.

Millions are being deceived into voting against their interests by a tiny minority whose objective is plain to see: to remove that most irritating of obstacles to unfettered oligarchy: democracy.

Rawls Revived

Given all this, does Rawls hold any lessons for us today? It’s not difficult to imagine what he would make of developments in the years since his death in 2002. But towards the end of his life he expanded his 1981 essay, Justice as Fairness, which was written as a riposte to critics of A Theory of Justice, into a full-length book.

Justice as Fairness: A Restatement is the book I would urge you to start with if you’re coming to Rawls for the first time. It places his philosophical theory firmly into a political context by assessing five common forms of political and social system against the principles he dedicated his life to defending. The five systems are:

1. Laissez-faire capitalism

2. Welfare-state capitalism

3. State socialism with a command economy

4. Property-owning democracy

5. Liberal (democratic) socialism

He concludes that the first three violate the principles of equal liberty and equality of opportunity, dismissing welfare-state capitalism on the entirely reasonable grounds that ‘while it has some concern for equality of opportunity, the policies necessary to achieve that are not followed’.

Since 1945, most western nations have been a mix of 1, 2 and 4, but in recent decades government policy almost everywhere has prioritised laissez-faire over both the welfare state and the commitment to increasing property ownership. In Britain, for example, owner-occupation peaked at 71 per cent in 2003 before falling back to 63 per cent a decade later.

Stopping the Haters

So how might we use Rawls’ thinking to counter the rise of the far right, to roll back the power of the billionaire elite, and neutralise their assault on truth?

We must target the millions who are ignorant of the underlying causes of the current malaise; reasonable people who have become disillusioned with conventional politics but need a reason to believe in the possibility of improvement once again. Let’s ask them the question: what kind of country and world would you like to live in? And let’s show them how it can be achieved.

It would help enormously if mainstream politicians were able to tell a better story about what’s gone wrong, why, and how we might get back on track. I wonder how many of the absurdly young special advisers to UK government ministers had any exposure to Rawls’ thinking during their elite university educations.

The world faces a stark choice: we can recognise that a rules-based order, anchored in cooperation between nations, is most likely to create the conditions in which we can all enjoy improved economic security. Not just out of empathy for others, or because we acknowledge our shared aspirations, but because we also recognise that this objective cannot be achieved through competitive or violent means.

Or we can conclude that nativism, hatred, arch-competition and conflict are the only options available to us, ignorant of the fact that by jumping on this nihilistic bandwagon, we are doing the bidding of a tiny band of egotists, psychopaths and criminals who really are bent on world domination.

Ultimately, it’s a debate about morals, and what is possible for human civilisation. Rawls was in no doubt that inequality undermines democracy. The evidence to support that belief has grown massively since his death. He was also aware of how easily democracy could be subverted for anti-democratic ends. Recent events suggest his faith in the US Constitution was misplaced, but nobody expected a blueprint for governance that has survived 250 years to be so easily trashed by Trump.

Freedom and Justice

Perhaps Rawls was ahead of his time. Perhaps he was too optimistic about the capacity of humankind for collective action in support of common interests. A century ago, Reinhold Niebuhr concluded that the morality of individuals just doesn’t translate into collective moral action. But people’s attitudes and behaviours are shaped by their experience of life, and the institutions through which they engage with others. If those institutions reward competitive behaviour, people will behave more competitively. Imagine what would happen if they rewarded cooperation instead.

Wherever you go in the world most of the people you meet, regardless of class, culture, race or religious affiliation are decent, reasonable people with similar aspirations for themselves and their loved ones. Most of us would prefer a society that guarantees a degree of economic security by providing opportunities for work that pay enough to afford life’s essentials; the things without which personal freedom counts for very little.

There is a small minority, however; vocal and with disproportionate power, who don’t share these aspirations and, motivated by self-interest and a perverse disregard for the wellbeing of others, are determined to impose a different kind of society.

Most of us have been fortunate to avoid the emotional damage that drives such behaviour. But those who haven’t cannot be allowed to dictate the terms of existence to the rest of us.

We must find a way, through reasoned argument, gentle persuasion and the adept use of our immature system of democratic politics, to bring about the kind of society most of us would choose if we were to engage in John Rawls’ thought experiment. He gave us the philosophical tools more than fifty years ago. It’s high time we put them to effective political use.

---

This was a reader contribution from the Bearly Politics community. If you would like to submit a piece for consideration, please feel free to email ideas to iratusursusmajor@gmail.com.

Bearly Politics is a 100% reader supported publication focused on politics, power and propaganda. If you would like to support this work, you can do so through a free or paid subscription below: