Domination and Distributive Justice
Author(s): Frank Lovett
Source: The Journal of Politics, Vol. 71, No. 3 (Jul., 2009), pp. 817-830
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Southern Political Science
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Domination and Distributive Justice
Frank Lovett Washington University in Saint Louis
Social power is not always troubling. One form of social power progressives are especially troubled by, however, is
domination—meaning, roughly speaking, the arbitrary power that some persons or groups wield over other,
dependent, persons or groups. This paper elaborates on this conception of domination and discusses why
progressives should aim to minimize it. It then goes on to argue that minimizing domination entails a commitment
to a particular sort of distributive justice—namely, some form of unconditional basic income. This argument for
distributive justice is shown to be more compelling in various respects than the arguments offered by traditional
liberal-contractualist theories of justice. Partly building on existing work in the area of nondomination, this paper
aims to develop the largely ignored socioeconomic distributive justice implications of civic republicanism.
Suppose you are a progressive. What sort of
progressive should you be? For a long time, the
main alternatives seemed to be either some version
of liberalism or some version of Marxism. So
long as Marxism was considered a viable option, it
provided what Brian Barry (2001, 4) has called an intellectual
stiffening of the left, even for those who were
not themselves Marxists: liberals could reasonably
argue to those on the right that liberalism represented
an acceptable sort of middle ground. But Marxism is
no longer a viable political doctrine (or at least not for
the foreseeable future), and deprived of the intellectual
stiffening it once supplied, liberals find themselves
increasingly embattled and unable to sustain important
progressive causes. This can be seen, for example,
in the failure of liberals to combat the declining political
support for distributive justice in western societies.
If one is a progressive, then one should be
concerned about this. Something that might help is a
progressive, but non-Marxist, political doctrine that
could serve as a viable alternative to liberalism.
One alternative worth exploring is something I call
justice as minimizing domination. Although some of
the details will be discussed later on, the basic idea is
very simple: namely, that we should regard avoidable
domination as seriously unjust, and therefore that we
should try to minimize domination so far as possible.
Put another way, it is merely utilitarianism with a
conception of freedom from domination taking the
place of utility. In this paper, I will not discuss the
unlikely origins of this theory.1
Rather, I will focus on
answering the following question: does justice as
minimizing domination provide compelling arguments
for reducing socio-economic inequality or poverty
(and, in particular, arguments better than those
offered by liberalism)? I will argue that it does. For
this reason, it is a theory that should be of interest to
progressives concerned with the vacuum left by the
failure of Marxism as a viable political doctrine.
Liberalism as a Political Doctrine
In discussing liberalism, people sometimes fail to
distinguish clearly between liberal institutions on the
one hand, and liberal doctrine on the other. Liberal
institutions are a loosely defined set of political and
social practices that began to emerge in western societies
sometime around the seventeenth century and
came into full-bloom perhaps around the second half
of the nineteenth century. These include, for example,
constitutionally entrenched individual rights,
secularism and toleration, the rule of law, institutionalized
market freedoms, and so on. Liberalism as a
political doctrine, by contrast, can be understood as a
diverse group of arguments in normative political
theory purporting to show that liberal institutions are
a good thing. Often it is not clear which of these a
particular discussion of ‘‘liberalism’’ is meant to
address; many debates concerning liberalism are at
The Journal of Politics, Vol. 71, No. 3, July 2009, Pp. 817–830 doi:10.1017/S0022381609090732
Ó 2009 Southern Political Science Association ISSN 0022-3816
1
Some might be surprised to learn that it is a redescribed and systematized version of civic republicanism, as found in the work of
Quentin Skinner, Philip Pettit, and others.
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cross-purposes because one person is defending
liberal doctrine against a critic of liberal institutions,
say, or vice versa. In this paper, my criticisms are
directed against liberalism as a political doctrine.
Liberalism as a political doctrine comes in a variety
of forms. Put another way, many different arguments
have been offered on behalf of liberal institutions.
Rather than try to address these comprehensively, let
me focus on what might be regarded as the mainstream
or central form of liberal doctrine—what is often called
‘‘political liberalism,’’ or ‘‘liberal contractualism,’’ a
tradition running from Locke through Rousseau and
Kant, to John Rawls, Brian Barry, T. M. Scanlon,
Thomas Nagel, and many others in our own day.
Liberal contractualists typically take two basic ideas as
their point of departure, one descriptive and one normative.
The first is the idea of reasonable pluralism—
that is, the idea that most societies are characterized
by an irreducible plurality of reasonable comprehensive
doctrines. The second is the idea that, from a
normative point of view, societies should be organized
as fair systems of cooperation. Working from these two
basic ideas, liberal contractualists argue that liberal
institutions are good because they can be seen by all
reasonable persons as legitimately embodying the ideal
of a fair system of cooperation in a society characterized
by reasonable pluralism. Roughly speaking, each
member of society agrees to reciprocally privatize the
controversial aspects of their differing comprehensive
doctrines so as to live together under political and
social institutions that treat all persons impartially.
In other words, as Rawls would say, liberal institutions
are good according to the doctrine—namely,
political liberalism—that can serve as the basis for an
overlapping consensus of reasonable comprehensive
doctrines.
Liberal contractualism is an extremely attractive
political doctrine. For one thing, it appears considerably
less demanding philosophically than other political
doctrines, because it purports not to depend on the
truth of any one comprehensive doctrine in particular:
it is ‘‘political not metaphysical,’’ as the slogan goes.
Indeed, the impossibility of establishing a society-wide
consensus on a single comprehensive doctrine (or at
least, not without extensive coercion) enters into the
standard liberal-contractualist argument as a premise:
through its very impartiality towards all (reasonable)
comprehensive doctrines in general, liberal contractualism
is supposed to appeal to each one of them in
particular. And liberal contractualism is appealing for
another reason as well. It holds out the powerful vision
of what might be called a perfectly voluntaristic
society—a society in which no one has been forced to
live under political and social institutions they do not
accept as legitimate. Thus, in Rousseau’s famous
words, despite ‘‘uniting with all’’ under a single institutional
arrangement, each person ‘‘nevertheless obeys
only himself and remains as free as before’’ ([1762]
1987, 148).
Its obvious appeal notwithstanding, liberal contractualism
has come under increasing criticism in the
past few decades. Let me mention just a few examples:
feminists have attacked the liberal-contractualist strategy
of shielding the private sphere from public or
political interference, which they argue masks considerable
gender domination in the family, and obstructs
efforts to redress this injustice. Deliberative democrats
have attacked liberal contractualism for valuing individual
rights too highly over robust democratic participation,
and for providing no more than a weak,
instrumental argument for minimal electoral democracy.
Multiculturalists have attacked liberal contractualists
for failing to perceive the various cultural
injustices inflicted by liberal institutions, and for being
unable or unwilling to do anything about them. All of
these lines of attack strike at the core of liberal contractualism,
for in each case the difficulty arises—
albeit, in somewhat different ways—from the aspiration
to achieve a voluntaristic consensus on shared
institutional arrangements through the consignment
of important moral and ethical disagreements to the
private sphere of civil society. And there is some truth,
in my view, to each of these criticisms, though I will
make no effort here to contribute to the extensive
literatures already existing in these areas.2
Rather, as I have said, my topic will be a different
problem—namely, the problem of distributive justice.
In this paper I will focus somewhat narrowly
on the distribution of entitlements to socioeconomic
goods and services such as income and wealth, education
and training, medical and other sorts of care,
etc. (hereafter, ‘‘the distribution of goods’’ for short),
while leaving aside the distribution of public offices
and civil or political rights.3
Contemporary western
2
As representative of this literature, however, one might consult
MacKinnon (1989, 1993) for feminism; Honig (1993), Habermas
(1998), and Mouffe (2000) for deliberative democracy; Taylor
(1994) and Tully (1995) for multiculturalism. Young (1990,
2000) presses all three lines of attack in her work.
3
I leave the latter aside only because under most theories of
justice their distribution is governed by different principles. In
Rawls’s theory, for example, the distribution of civil and political
rights is governed by the first principle of justice rather than by
the difference principle. (Note that, strictly speaking, it is always
entitlements, and not things themselves, whose distribution is at
issue. When properly understood, this does not affect the main
debates.)
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societies (and many others besides) are all marked by
some degree of socioeconomic inequality and poverty.
Particularly when extreme—as for example in
the United States—progressives believe this state of
affairs seriously unjust. It is thus natural (for a
progressive) to assume there must be some connection
between justice and greater equality. But what
exactly is this connection?
The liberal-contractualist account of the connection
is supposed to be based on consent. I will not go
into detail because the argument is so familiar, but in
rough outline it runs as follows: start with the idea
that society should be viewed as a system of cooperation.
Now suppose that, under suitable conditions,
we ask a reasonable person what fair terms of cooperation
would be. First we point out that the
distribution of natural talents and abilities is morally
arbitrary, and second that whatever benefits one
might derive from those talents and abilities can usually
be realized only through the system of cooperation
itself. Thus it is reasonable to conclude that
these collective benefits of cooperation should be
distributed fairly—which is to say, in the direction of
greater socioeconomic equality. Exactly how much or
what sort of redistribution this requires is not
important for the moment. The main point is that
if the argument goes through, and some degree of
socioeconomic equality is indeed what a reasonable
person would consent to under suitable conditions,
then the liberal-contractualist’s vision of a perfectly
voluntaristic society can be neatly reconciled with the
progressive’s intuition that serious socioeconomic inequality
or poverty is unjust.
From the beginning, however, difficulties were
noticed. For example, it is not obvious how this
argument is supposed to extend to the question of
distributive justice between generations. How are we
to conceive of a voluntary agreement between present
generations and future generations (especially given
that the membership of the latter depends in part on
the institutions and policies adopted by the former)?
What would it be reasonable for them to agree on?4
Another, similar problem arises in the case of international
distributive justice; again, the attempt to
extend the voluntary agreement idea across political
borders has not had much traction.5
In both cases,
the difficulty stems from the liberal-contractualist’s
reliance on the core idea of society as a fair system of
cooperation. The reasonableness of agreeing to socioeconomic
redistribution is supposed to hinge on our
recognition that each of us benefits reciprocally from
agreeing to live together under the same political and
social institutions. Since the cooperation of all is
required to make the system work, it is only fair that
each receive a reasonable share of the collective
benefits. But of course the plausibility of this argument
fades if we do not regard those with whom we
are expected to share benefits as engaged in a system
of cooperation with us. This is necessarily the case
with future generations, from whom (at least on an
ordinary understanding of things) we can receive no
benefit as a matter of logic. And for many people—the
effects of globalization notwithstanding—this is
equally difficult to see in the case of people living in
other lands far from ours.
Increasingly, however, this difficulty afflicts even
the central case of economic redistribution here and
now, within our own societies. Ironically, liberal
doctrine and liberal institutions themselves might
be partly to blame: some have argued that the very
success and pervasiveness of the ideals of individual
rights, privacy, personal autonomy, and so on make it
increasingly difficult for many people to conceive of
their own society as a fair system of cooperation
(much less as one in cooperation with other societies
and future generations). In my view, this may partly
explain why the standard liberal-contractualist argument
for redistribution now often falls flat: it
depends on a community’s willingness to see itself
as engaged in a sort of common enterprise, and
liberal doctrine itself sometimes makes this difficult
to do.6
Of course there are other factors at work here
as well, but the main point is simply that, for one
reason or another, many people do not support
progressive socioeconomic redistribution and would
not agree to it if they were asked.7
The liberalcontractualist
reply appears to be that they are making
some sort of cognitive error, which, even if true,
would hardly convince them. Hence the need for an
alternative.
4
See Barry (1977) and Parfit (1984, 391–93) on this problem.
Barry’s proposed solution to the problem of intergenerational
justice does not in the end rely on a contractual argument.
5
Which is not to say it has not been attempted, most notably by
Beitz (1979) and Pogge (1989). Interestingly, Pogge (2002) has
moved away from contractualist reasoning.
6
This well-known argument was made by the communitarians,
especially Sandel (1982).
7
A recent and well-publicized survey by the Pew Research Center
reported that support in the United States for public welfare
programs has increased somewhat since the mid-1990s. Nevertheless,
nearly one-third of Americans continue to reject the idea
that ‘‘it is the responsibility of the government to take care of
people who can’t take care of themselves,’’ and two-thirds still
believe that ‘‘poor people have become too dependent on
government assistance’’ (Pew Research Center 2007, 12–18).
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Justice as Minimizing Domination
The alternative progressive doctrine I would like to
consider is justice as minimizing domination, or JMD
for short. This section will only sketch the theory, so
far as will be useful for the purposes of this paper.
The following two sections will argue that JMD offers
an account of distributive justice superior in various
respects to the one offered by liberal contractualism.
There are many arguments for JMD. One relatively
simple and direct line of thinking runs as
follows: Considering any theory of social justice, it
would always be serious complaint against the theory
if it countenanced policies or institutions that ignore,
permit, or even encourage domination. So much so,
indeed, that one might be inclined to say (adapting
Rawls’s familiar language) that policies and institutions,
no matter how efficient and well-arranged,
must be reformed or abolished once they are discovered
to result in avoidable domination. Now one
theory of social justice that cannot be accused of
insensitivity towards avoidable domination is a
theory that defines justice precisely as its minimization.
Stated more formally:
(JMD) The political and social institutions or practices
of any society are just to the extent that, in expectation,
they will tend to minimize the sum total domination,
counting the domination of each person equally.8
Of course, many elaborations and clarifications are
required here that cannot be addressed in a paper of
this scope, but a few brief comments are certainly in
order. The expression ‘‘in expectation’’ indicates that
we should use probability calculus in weighing cases of
uncertainty, and the expression ‘‘will tend to minimize’’
means that we should consider the cumulative
impact of different options over time. Roughly speaking,
we should aim to minimize present domination, so
far as this is consistent with maintaining or else further
reducing that level of domination in the future.9
As
mentioned earlier, JMD is similar in structure to utilitarianism,
but with the significant difference that freedom
from domination replaces utility. Moreover, let
me emphasize that as a theory of social justice, and not
a general theory of moral philosophy, JMD applies
only to the arrangement of political and social institutions
or practices. Correctly or not, utilitarianism is
sometimes understood as a complete moral philosophy,
applying both to our evaluation of policies or
institutions and to our evaluation of individual
conduct. JMD should not be so understood.10
Two questions obviously arise here: First, what
do we mean by domination? Second, why should it
be minimized? In response to the first, let us say that
persons or groups are dominated to the extent that they
are dependent on social relationships in which other
persons or groups hold arbitrary power over them. I refer
to this as the ‘‘arbitrary power’’ conception of domination.
It is built from three more primitive ideas—
dependency, social power, and arbitrariness—briefly
explained as follows:
Let us say that a social relationship is any group of
persons in a society such that the members of that group
must take one another’s actions into account in formulating
their respective plans for action (Weber
[1922] 1978, 26). A person is dependent on a social
relationship to the extent that their continued membership
in that group is relatively involuntary. In other
words, we can think of dependency as exit costs,
broadly construed. For domination to arise, those
subject to arbitrary power must to some extent be
dependent on the social relationship in question. This
is because without there being any ‘‘stickiness,’’ so to
speak, nothing would prevent people from leaving
social relationships in which they are subject to domination.
This is roughly what Foucault was getting at,
I think, when he defined domination as ‘‘congealed
power’’ (1988, 3). Other things being equal, the greater
the dependency, the greater the domination, and vice
versa. In a theoretically perfect market, all entries and
exits would be costless; it follows that, since no one
would be dependent on anyone else, there would be
no domination under those conditions. As we shall see
later, however, even initially perfect markets are
unlikely to remain free from domination indefinitely.
So much for the first component of the arbitrary
power conception. Next, what does it mean for one
person or group to have power over another? In a
paper of this scope, I cannot seriously engage the
extensive literature on power, so I will merely state
my own view as follows: one person or group has
social power over another to the extent that the former
has the ability (whether this ability is exercised or
not) to change what the latter would otherwise prefer
8
This formulation restricts JMD to the domain of social justice,
narrowly understood; excluded are questions of transitional,
individual, and international or global justice. Suitably generalized,
JMD applies equally well in these other areas.
9
This relatively informal gloss suppresses a number of complex
and technical issues related to population size and future
generations that, while certainly important, would only distract
from the present discussion.
10
Goodin (1995, 5–12, 60–77) discusses and rejects this expansive
understanding of utilitarianism, correctly in my view. I emphasize
the point only to avoid confusion.
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to do. It is fairly obvious, I think, that one person or
group must have power, in some form, over another
in order to subject them to domination. As in the
case of dependency, the greater the imbalance of
power, other things being equal, the greater the domination.
Since it is the net balance of social power that
matters here, domination is generally an asymmetric
relation; if social power were distributed equally between
two persons or groups, neither would dominate
the other.
The third and perhaps most distinctive component
of this conception is the arbitrariness condition.
Social power is arbitrary to the extent that its possible
exercise is not externally constrained by effective
rules, procedures, or goals that are common knowledge
to all relevant parties. By ‘‘effective’’ I mean that
a constraint must carry some material force and not
merely be a normative standard, for example. Without
question, it is wrong for a master to beat his slave,
but is the slave dominated less thereby? I doubt it.
Of course, if masters are actually constrained by
moral opinion, then their slaves’ domination might
be lessened a bit—but the reduction here would be
due to the material effectiveness of the informal constraint,
not to the normative fact of the matter. By
‘‘externally’’ effective, I mean that the effectiveness of
a constraint must be due to something more than the
internal psychological disposition of the power
holder alone. If a particular master happens to have
a benevolent disposition, his slaves might be better
off overall, but we would not say their domination is
any less for that reason alone. This is because the
constraint is not external in the required sense. By
contrast, some constraints on police in the United
States (as for example that they must obtain a warrant
to search a house) count as both external and
effective, or at least they do insofar as they are reliably
enforced by the courts. Other things being equal, the
greater the range within which one person or group
is able to wield power arbitrarily over another, the
greater the latter’s domination.
To sum up, arbitrariness, an imbalance of power,
and dependency are each necessary, and jointly
sufficient conditions of domination; levels of domination
are thus a function of the degrees of dependency,
power imbalance, and arbitrariness, respectively.
This is all I will say here about the arbitrary power
concept of domination (but see also Lovett 2001;
Pettit 1997; Wartenberg 1990). Next, I will consider
some reasons we should consider non-domination an
important human good.
The direct material harms of domination are
perhaps the most obvious: these are the actual injuries
that often result when one person or group wields
arbitrary power over another. Typically, the former
take advantage of their situation to coercively extract
goods and services from the latter. For example, masters
extract productive labor from their slaves, nobles
extract feudal dues from peasants, husbands extract
household and/or sexual services from their wives, and
so on. In a manner reminiscent of Marx, we might refer
to this common feature of domination as exploitation.
It is important not to limit our concern to active
coercion, however. This is because those subject to
domination frequently engage in strategic anticipation,
surrendering goods or offering services on their
own initiative, in the hope of forestalling the unpleasant
experience of coercion. This might be termed
indirect, as opposed to direct, exploitation. Indirect
exploitation is possible because it is common knowledge
that the agent of domination can choose to
exercise her arbitrary power, even if in fact she does
not. Relationships of domination are thus ‘‘infused by
an element of personal terror,’’ as James Scott writes,
such that even when arbitrary powers are not exercised,
‘‘the ever-present knowledge that they might
seems to color the relationship as a whole’’ (1990, 21).
In addition to the harms of direct and indirect
exploitation, those subject to domination suffer additional
harms from being in a state of perpetual
insecurity. So long as one person or group holds
arbitrary social power over another, the latter will be
severely restricted in their ability to formulate and
carry out life-plans. This is because it is difficult—
and at the extreme, impossible—to plan in the face of
uncertainty. An ongoing sense of insecurity has both
material and psychological consequences. On the one
hand, insecurity necessitates precautionary measures.
Ever concerned that they might suffer coercion, those
subject to domination adopt a defensive posture—
overcompensating and taking evasive measures,
hoarding goods as insurance, and lowering their life
expectations. On the other hand, those subject to
domination often suffer from psychological anxiety
and even a paralytic sense of helplessness. At the extreme,
this may result in complete resignation and
social withdrawal: recognizing the improbability that
even modest plans of life will come to fruition, the
victims of domination might give up formulating
goals for themselves at all.
Finally, consider the impact of domination on
self-respect. Relationships of domination develop a
distinctive symbolic or ritual structure in addition
to their more ‘‘objective’’ structure of exploitation
and uncertainty. The symbolic face of domination—
which Scott refers to as the ‘‘public transcript’’
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(1990)—involves rituals of respect, deference, and
debasement on the one side, and rituals of disrespect,
dishonoring, and contempt on the other. The reason
for this pattern is obvious: those subject to domination
hope to secure lighter treatment through flattery,
while those enjoying the benefits of domination seek
to rationalize their position. The symbolic structure of
domination tends to undermine the victims’ selfrespect
or sense of personal worth. At the milder
end of the spectrum, we might consider the effects of
the ‘‘courtier spirit’’ encouraged by absolutism:
whereas ‘‘a king must be ador’d like a Demigod,’’
according to John Milton, the citizens of a free
commonwealth ‘‘are not elevated above thir brethren’’
and ‘‘may be spoken to freely, familiarly, friendly,
without adoration’’ ([1660] 1932, 120). Alexis de
Tocqueville was concerned lest an unrestricted power
of the majority might introduce something like the
courtier spirit even in democratic republics ([1835]
1990, 266–68). This symbolic structure of deference
on the one side, and disrespect on the other, suppresses
free expression on the part of those subject to
domination: consider, in this light, how Victorian
society regarded quiet deference a virtue in women
and members of the lower classes alike. As domination
becomes more severe, habitual self-debasement might
lead to self-inflicted psychological violence. Slaves
who suffer no speech impediment sometimes develop
a stammer simply out of fear of speaking incorrectly
(Scott 1990, 30). And at the limit, we find what is
called the Stockholm Syndrome, so named after a
group of hostages in Sweden who developed unexpected
positive feelings for their captors.
For these (and perhaps many other) reasons, it is
clear that nondomination is a particularly important
condition or component of human flourishing. It
follows that we should reduce domination to the extent
that we can, and JMD aims to capture this intuition as
simply and directly as possible. Of course, I have not
shown why we should minimize the sum total domination,
rather than minimize the domination of the
most-dominated group, or minimize the total consistent
with an equal level of nondomination for all,
or something else. In future work I intend to argue
that, given a few reasonable empirical assumptions,
the choice between these principles is less significant
than identifying the human good relevant from the
point of view of justice (i.e., nondomination rather
than, say, utility, or primary goods). Briefly, this is
because for the foreseeable future, any plausible
principle would issue the same practical directive
under most real-world conditions—namely, to focus
scarce political and social resources on reducing the
most severe cases of domination at any given time
first. If I am right about this, we can with reasonable
confidence adopt minimization as a working principle
on the grounds of its simplicity and directness.11
One final note. Suppose we think of political
freedom or liberty as the absence of domination, as
others have suggested (Pettit 1989, 1997, 2001;
Skinner 1990, 1998). Then we can understand justice
as the promotion of freedom so understood—
a theory that is both conceptually elegant and rhetorically
compelling. While I am sympathetic with
this interpretation of freedom, nothing here hinges
on the reader’s willingness to take this extra step, and
thus I will stick with the expression ‘‘justice as minimizing
domination.’’12
Next, I turn to the problem
of distributive justice.
The Libertarian Baseline
Like utilitarianism, JMD is a strictly teleological
theory of justice: that is to so say, it begins with an
independently defined conception of the good, and it
then goes on to develop a conception of the right as
the promotion or advancement of that good. Now it
is notorious that utilitarianism faces special difficulties
when it comes to the problem of distributive
justice. So long as each individual’s utility is weighed
equally, it is a matter of indifference to utilitarianism
how the sum total utility is distributed, unless of
course it happens to matter indirectly.13
It follows
that distributions of income and wealth, education
and training, medical and other sorts of care, etc., can
only be of instrumental concern. Should we likewise
regard this as an objection to JMD? I will argue that
we should not. On the contrary, not only does JMD
provide powerful (albeit instrumental) reasons for
regarding serious socioeconomic inequality and poverty
as unjust, but it moreover offers an account of
11
There are further technical reasons for favoring minimization.
Most importantly, it is the principle most easily reconciled with
the so-called ‘‘person affecting principle,’’ according to which
one situation cannot be better than another if there is no person
or persons it is better for.
12
My preference for this formulation rests on the sense that it
enables us to move beyond the distracting debates surrounding
the concept of political freedom and civic republican historiography.
Though initially inspired by civic republicanism, it would
not trouble me if JMD turns out to generate novel conclusions
not easily reconciled with the classical republican tradition.
13
It might matter indirectly, for example, if an unequal distribution
of utility is likely to undermine public support for overall
utility-maximization in the long run.
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that injustice more attractive on several grounds than
the account offered by liberal contractualists.
Loosely speaking, the problem of distributive
justice can be divided into two main questions. The
first, obviously, is why socioeconomic inequality or
poverty should be regarded as unjust. Sometimes it is
thought that equality needs no justification, whereas
inequality does. If this were true, then the first
question would not need an answer. That it is not
will be obvious once we reflect for a moment on the
second question.
The second question concerns the appropriate
definition or characterization of what would count as
a just distribution of goods. This question has several
interrelated dimensions. One issue concerns whether,
in judging a given distribution, we should be looking
at the bundles of goods themselves, or rather at what
each person is able to accomplish with his or her
bundle, or at how happy each person is with his or
her bundle. Roughly speaking, these are resource, functioning,
and welfare accounts of distributive justice,
respectively. Another issue concerns whether a given
distribution is just when each persons’ share of resources
(or level of functioning or welfare) is the same,
or when it is above a certain threshold, or when the
smallest share (or lowest level) is as large (or high) as
possible, or something else. These are equality, sufficiency,
maximin, and so on accounts of distributive
justice.14
And yet another issue concerns whether it is
the actual equality, sufficiency, etc., of shares of resources,
levels of functioning, etc. that we should focus
on; or rather the opportunity to secure an equal,
sufficient, etc., share of resources, level of functioning,
etc. Nearly everyone would agree that some opportunity
element must be included in a plausible account
of distributive justice, but there is considerable disagreement
about how and where to draw the line
between those choices people should be responsible
for and those they should not.
Contemporary political theorists and philosophers
have built up a formidable and sometimes
arcane literature addressing these various problems.15
Often, the strategy in this literature is to postpone
answering the first question, so as to focus narrowly
on some aspect of the second. Judging by the failure
of those contributing to this literature to arrive at any
sort of consensus, this strategy has not been entirely
successful. The reason for this, in my view, is that
working out an answer to the second question obviously
hinges on our solution to the first. Whether it is
more important for people to have an equal opportunity
to secure resources, for example, or instead a
sufficient level of actual functioning, or something
else, clearly depends on our reasons for caring about
distributive justice in the first place (Scheffler 2003).
Our aim, therefore, should be to answer the first
question first; having done this, I will try to show later
on, an answer to the second question follows easily.
Accordingly, let us reflect on the connection
between justice on the one hand, and the distribution
of goods on the other. From JMD’s point of view, the
connection is straightforward: a distribution of goods
will be just when it arises from the operation of those
political and social institutions or practices most
likely, given our present knowledge and expectations,
to minimize domination in the long run.16
The issue,
then, is simply one of determining which institutions
and practices are most likely to do this. It will be
useful in this respect to start with some baseline for
comparison, and an obvious candidate is the common-sense
libertarian ideal of a perfectly free market
and minimal state. The libertarian baseline is a good
one for several reasons. First, it represents (superficially,
at any rate) what many people would regard
as the simplest and most efficient set of social policies
and institutions for governing the distribution of
goods. Second, it represents the most serious challenge
to the progressive view that extreme inequality
and poverty are unjust even when they arise from
purely voluntary exchanges in a perfectly free market.
Now in one respect, at least, the libertarian
baseline will look rather good from a dominationminimizing
point of view: this is because it would seem
to reduce the domination experienced by citizens at
the hands of the state to an absolute minimum.17
14
Less plausible accounts include: the pure entitlement view that
any given share (or level) is just if it was secured without violating
anyone’s rights; or what might be called an ‘‘aristocratic’’ view,
that a distribution of shares (or levels) is just if the largest share
(or level) is as large (or high) as possible.
15
Since this literature is far too large to cite comprehensively, I
will note here only a few signal contributions: Rawls (1971, 1982);
Nozick (1974); Nagel ([1977] 2002); Sen (1980, 1993); Dworkin
(1981a, 1981b); Roemer (1985, 1996); Scanlon (1986, [1997]
2002); Frankfurt (1987); Arneson (1989); Cohen (1989); Temkin
(1993, 2003); Parfit (1995); and Anderson (1999).
16
Notice here that the justice of a distribution is strictly
procedural: it is a question of what the ‘‘ground rules,’’ so to
speak, of society should be, not the actual pattern of holdings
arising from those rules per se. Nozick (1974, chap. 7), attacks
what he calls ‘‘patterned’’ accounts of distributive fairness, of
which he, incorrectly, takes Rawls’s account to be a leading
example.
17
I assume here a minimal state that enforces clearly defined
property rights and contracts unconditionally, not one that
provides protection services contingently, only to those willing
to pay.
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Unfortunately, it accomplishes this only at the cost of
allowing considerable domination in other domains.
My argument to this effect will have several steps. The
first is to point out that, like many other socioeconomic
goods, one’s freedom from domination can be
voluntarily exchanged. For example: a person might
trade away contractual protections against the arbitrary
power of his employer for higher pay; in patriarchal
societies, women might prefer dependency
on a husband’s arbitrary will to becoming a spinster,
given all the social and economic consequences entailed
by the latter; people might sell themselves into
slavery in exchange for protection; and so on. In
other words, there is nothing special about the good
of nondomination that necessarily places it outside
the system of market exchange, broadly understood.
Now to be sure, most people regard their freedom
from domination as a particularly important
good, and so we would not expect many to trade it
away lightly.18
But there are other especially important
goods to consider as well. People have what
might be called basic needs—the need for an adequate
level of nutrition and health, for minimal clothing
and shelter, for an education sufficient to function in
their community, and so on. In order to satisfy these
basic needs, a person must have entitlements to the
goods or services that doing so requires. If someone
needs a life-saving bypass operation, for example,
then she must have either the money to pay for it, or
else an insurance plan that covers it, or else a publicly
funded entitlement to receive it, or else some other
equivalent. When it comes to their basic needs,
reasonable people do not typically regard failing to
meet them an option, and it follows that they might
even be willing to trade away their freedom from
domination—highly valued as that may be—in order
to do so. Thus a poor laborer living in the early days
of unregulated market capitalism might well accept
employment on extremely disadvantageous terms, if
it is a choice between this and starvation.
The exact level at which reasonable people begin
to trade away their freedom from domination in
order to meet their basic needs may vary according to
the time, place, and individual in question. The
minimum acceptable level of education, for example,
differs widely according to the culture and level of
economic development in a given community. But
this is not important for the argument here. What is
important is the general fact that people may be
willing to accept higher levels of domination rather
than fail to meet their basic needs, and this remains
true even if we believe that the meaning of ‘‘basic
needs’’ is culturally or individually relative.
A somewhat different way of making the argument
is to point out that serious poverty exposes
people to domination (Barry 2005, 24–25; Goodin
1988, 167–73; Pettit 1997, 159–60; White 2003, 88–
89). Because we do not regard the satisfaction of basic
needs below some minimum level as optional, when
unable to satisfy them on our own we become
dependent on the charity of those with the ability
to do so for us.19
‘‘Private charity breeds personal
dependence,’’ Walzer writes, ‘‘and then it breeds the
familiar vices of dependence: deference, passivity,
and humility on the one hand; arrogance on the
other’’ (1983, 92). On the arbitrary power conception
discussed above, domination must be understood
structurally, not in terms of how things happen to
turn out. It follows that being dependent on a person
or group with the power to arbitrarily withhold the
goods or services necessary to meet basic needs whose
satisfaction one does not regard as optional amounts
to suffering domination. The fact that the person or
group in question happens to charitably supply them,
if indeed they do, is neither here nor there: the point
is that, at some level, severe inequalities ‘‘give some
people an unacceptable degree of control over the
lives of others’’ (Scanlon [1997] 2002, 44).20
For the second step of the argument, let us return
to the imagined libertarian baseline discussed above
and imagine that we let a perfectly free market run
for several generations. Naturally, there will be
winners and losers. Some people will make bad
choices—as for example, to invest in a business that
fails, or to choose a career in an industry that moves
overseas; and some will suffer bad luck—as for
example, to have a debilitating medical condition,
or to lose their home in a tornado. Conversely, others
will make good choices and enjoy good luck—they
will invent an incredibly popular new product or
happen to be born with highly valued natural talents.
Thus, even if we start out with equal shares of goods,
socioeconomic inequalities will inevitably arise. Moreover,
these inequalities will continue to accumulate,
18
As Mill says with respect to the family law of his day, ‘‘all
women of spirit and capacity should prefer doing almost anything
else, not in their own eyes degrading, rather than marry,
when marrying is giving themselves a master’’ ([1869] 1991, 501).
19
Note that this does not contradict what as said above, that in a
perfect market there would be no domination: once dependency
has been introduced, and some exits become costly, markets are
no longer perfect. The next paragraph argues that, in the long
run, this drift is inevitable.
20
I am grateful to an anonymous Journal of Politics reviewer for
pointing out this reference.
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both over the course of individual lives and, more
significantly, from one generation to the next. Now
some of these accumulated inequalities might be fair
or deserved, and others might not be. Which
inequalities are fair or deserved depends on what
the correct account of personal responsibility happens
to be, and for many accounts of distributive
justice, figuring this out matters quite a bit. For the
account of distributive justice derived from JMD, by
contrast, figuring this out turns out not to matter
much at all, as will be apparent shortly. What does
matter is that, as socioeconomic inequalities (fair or
unfair, deserved or undeserved) accumulate over
time, many people will eventually face the prospect
of having to trade away their freedom from domination
in order to meet their basic needs.
The third step of the argument arises out of what
might be called the paternalism objection. Nondomination,
I argued in the previous section, is a particularly
important good, and thus, to the extent that we
are able to reduce domination, we lie under a moral
obligation to do so, other things being equal. But what
if those subject to domination accept that condition
of their own volition (in order to satisfy basic needs,
or for some other reason)? At this juncture, some
libertarian-minded readers might be tempted to insist
that any effort to reduce the resulting domination
must fail to respect the autonomy of responsible
individuals. Is it not paternalistic to second-guess the
choices of those who, after all, only want to do the
best they can for themselves, given whatever circumstances
they happen to face? Perhaps. For the sake of
argument, let us suppose that we have good reasons
to respect the choices that people make (including
those choices driven by economic necessity), and that
these reasons are indeed sufficient, in some cases, to
cancel any obligation to relieve the domination of
those who have accepted it of their own volition
(which they may not be). Have we then answered the
demands of JMD? We have not. The relevant issue
simply becomes whether or not we can reduce
domination while nevertheless respecting individual
autonomy—say, by making it easier for people to
avoid domination, if they so desire. If we can, then
the paternalism objection (supposing it is valid) gives
us no reason not to.
To review, in the absence of policies or institutions
to combat the accumulation of socioeconomic
inequality, many people will eventually face the
prospect of having to trade away their freedom from
domination in order to meet their basic needs. Quite
reasonably, many will choose to do so. According to
JMD, the domination that results is unjust, and,
other things being equal, we should do something
about it if we can. The next section considers our
options for doing so.
An Unconditional Basic Income
Under libertarian policies and institutions, people
would arguably suffer little domination at the hands
of the state, but the inexorable accumulation of socioeconomic
inequality would lead, through the ordinary
operation of the market system, to considerable domination
in the private sphere. Might some other configuration
of policies and institutions yield less
domination overall? Let us consider some alternatives.
Domination arises through the free market primarily
because people can trade away their freedom
from domination. Thus, a natural response might be to
prohibit the relevant sorts of exchanges. Trading freedom
from domination for other goods would then
become what Walzer calls a ‘‘blocked exchange’’ (1983,
100–03). To some extent, this is already done in
contemporary American law, which prohibits slavery
and does not enforce unconscionable contracts, for
example.21
No doubt, these rules prevent some gross
abuses, but the blocked-exchange strategy cannot
serve as a general solution. There are several reasons
for this. For one thing, any attempt to expand the list
of blocked exchanges beyond these few, relatively
uncontroversial instances will probably fall afoul the
paternalism objection noted above. But even supposing
we overcome our aversion to paternalism, there is
another and more significant difficulty: namely, that
there will always be discovered new and ever-more
subtle means of converting material advantage into
domination. In the long run it is unlikely that public
policy could ever keep pace with, much less anticipate,
such innovations—except perhaps with a regulatory
structure so dense and intrusive as to raise
serious objections on other grounds. (For starters, a
state powerful enough to accomplish this task might
itself become a great source of domination.)
A second natural response also fails. Rather than
regulate the points of exchange, we might attempt to
regulate the relevant social relationships themselves.
For example, various workplace regulations, reforms
in family law, and so forth, might aim to reduce the
arbitrariness with which potential agents of domination
can exercise power over their dependents.
21
Slave contracts are prohibited by the 13th Amendment to the
U. S. Constitution; unconscionable contracts are unenforceable
under x 2-302 of the Uniform Commercial Code.
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In preventing some gross abuses, this second response
might also be useful; as in the case of the first,
however, and for the same reasons, it is unlikely to
provide a general solution.
Suppose instead we approach the problem from
the other end. People might trade away their freedom
from domination for any number of reasons, but on
the plausible assumption that the great majority value
their enjoyment of nondomination highly, few will
do so except when necessary to meet their basic
needs.22
Obviously, then, the most reliable and least
intrusive way to discourage people from trading away
their freedom from domination is have the public
meet the basic needs of those unable to do so on their
own. Not having to trade away their freedom from
domination in order to meet basic needs, few would
probably choose to do so, thus considerably lowering
the aggregate domination experienced. Moreover,
unlike either the blocked exchange or the regulatory
approach, this would continue to respect the choices
that people make, and thus not fall afoul the
paternalism objection.23
Given these advantages, it
is worth considering whether some configuration of
policies and institutions could accomplish this without
introducing new forms of domination as against
the libertarian baseline.
Broadly speaking, there are two ways to publicly
meet the basic needs of those unable to do so on their
own. The first is to adopt a means-testing approach.
For example, we could set up a program or bundle of
programs that would address individuals’ basic need
requirements on a case-by-case basis. Thus, if someone
were unable to meet her nutritional needs, she
could appeal to the public nutrition agency, which
would then supply the shortfall; if she were unable to
meet her health needs, she could appeal to the public
health agency, and so on. Alternatively, we could set
up a defined income minimum that would roughly
correspond to a level of income deemed sufficient to
meet all reasonable basic needs. Individuals whose
income fell short of the defined minimum would
receive a public handout equivalent to the difference.
The advantage of either means-testing method is that
the public pays only to meet the basic needs of those
who cannot do so on their own. But this advantage is
also a potential flaw, for it is doubtful whether
means-testing can be carried out in a nonarbitrary
way: practical experience suggests that state welfare
agencies must inevitably employ extensive bureaucratic
discretion in carrying out such policies, and
that the particular vulnerabilities of persons in need
of public assistance renders the usual sorts of constraints
on such discretion more or less ineffective.24
From a domination-minimizing point of view, it will
not do to replace the arbitrary charity of private
individuals and groups with the arbitrary charity of
state welfare agencies, for this would merely substitute
one form of domination for another. We would
then want to know whether, compared against the
libertarian baseline, a means-tested basic needs guarantee
eliminates (from the private sphere) as much
domination as it introduces (in the public sphere).
In my view it probably would, but this remains an open
question. Fortunately, we do not have to answer it.
The second approach would ensure that everyone’s
basic needs through the public provision of an
unconditional basic income such as proposed by Van
Parijs (1995, 2004) and others (Barry 2005; Groot
2002; Pateman 2004; Walter 1989; Wolff 1998). This
unconditional basic income might take the form of
cash, or else a combination of cash and vouchers for
certain defined benefits (health care, education, and
so on); and the cash portion of the unconditional
basic income might be delivered through regular
government handouts, or else through some version
of the negative income tax. Although important,
resolving these issues is not essential for the argument
at hand.25
What is essential is that we understand the
basic income grant to be unconditional, both in the
sense that everyone receives the same basic income
regardless of means, and in the sense that everyone
22
The exact threshold at which individuals in a given community
begin to do this will vary, of course, depending on local views
regarding basic needs and the value of nondomination.
23
Moreover, this might have the added benefit of eventually
obviating the need for many other sorts of paternalistic protections
as well: workers can comfortably hold out for safe jobs on
fair terms if they do not have to worry about meeting their basic
needs in the meantime. Of course there would still need to be
protections against fraud and so forth, but OSHA-style workplace
regulation and minimum wage requirements might become
unnecessary.
24
In addition, means-testing can often be intrusive and humiliating
(Barry 2005, 209–11; Wolff 1998; Young 1990, 53–55). While
these are not, in my view, questions of justice per se, they do raise
significant moral concerns.
25
Roughly, my own view is that the unconditional basic income
ought to consist of a voucher for health insurance, a voucher for
education through high school, and a guaranteed retirement
income, together with the cash residual delivered as monthly
checks to individuals, not households. The cash portion of
children’s basic income could be put in trust until they reach
majority, at which point they can use it to pay for college or
something else. The unconditional basic income would replace
most other public welfare programs and eliminate the need for
much workplace regulation and the minimum wage. Many
details, obviously, remain to be worked out: interested readers
are referred to the technical discussions in Basic Income Studies
(www.bepress.com/bis).
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receives it automatically, without having to satisfy
some sort of participation or contribution require-
ment.26
With an assured basic income of the sort
described, it is less likely that people would face the
prospect of having to trade away their freedom from
domination in order to meet some basic need. On the
empirical assumption that people value nondomination
rather highly, less domination would thus arise
in the private sphere. Note that this remains true,
even if the value of the basic income grant is not
sufficient by itself to cover all basic needs: the larger
the grant, the less domination we would expect to
see, but even a small grant would reduce domination
at the margin. (This will be important in later discussion.)
At the same time, since an unconditional
basic income lacks any sort of means test or participation
requirement, it would be nonarbitrary in
its operation, and so no new domination would be
introduced in the public sphere. Thus, from a
domination-minimizing point of view, the unconditional
basic income is clearly superior to the libertarian
baseline.27
How great should the value of the unconditional
basic income be? This problem is more difficult than
one might expect. Before addressing it, however, let me
briefly return to a point made near the opening of the
previous section. There I asserted that the problem of
distributive justice can be divided into two main
questions. The first concerns why socioeconomic
inequality and poverty should be regarded as unjust.
Now we have a clear answer: socioeconomic inequality
and poverty are unjust because and to the extent that
they compel reasonable people to trade away their
freedom from domination in order to meet basic
needs. Notice, however, that in developing our answer
to the first question, we have also answered the second.
From a domination-minimizing point of view, the
distribution goods will be just when it arises from the
operation of those political and social institutions and
practices most likely to minimize aggregate domination.
The configuration of institutions most likelyto do
this, I have argued, is a free market together with an
unconditional basic income. In my view, this is
sufficient. In other words, provided that each person
receives an unconditional basic income, whatever
distribution of goods arises subsequently through
the operation of the free market can be regarded as
just.28
Readers who do not share this last view,
however, might at least be persuaded that JMD
captures a necessary condition of distributive justice.
Now let us return to the thorny question of
determining an appropriate level for the unconditional
basic income. What portion of the total
national income should be devoted to providing an
unconditional basic income? (It is useful to express
the problem in this way because the amount each
individual will receive at any given time might
depend on their age and health status, and their
lifetime total on how long they live and how healthy
they have been.) An initially appealing answer might
be: just enough to cover each person’s basic needs,
and no more. Let me explain why this will not do
with the help of Figure 1 below. The vertical axis in
this figure represents units of subjective welfare wi for
some representative individual i; the horizontal axis
represents units x of socioeconomic goods or domination.
Assume that these units have been defined so
that one unit of goods can be exchanged for one unit
of domination, and vice versa. The curve Gi indicates
the welfare i derives from a given amount xG
of goods.
Notice that this curve is concave, representing diminishing
marginal returns: this captures the intuition
that once our basic needs are met, the welfare
gains we derive from ever-greater amounts of socioeconomic
goods are less and less. The curve Di indicates
the welfare loss i derives from suffering under
a given level xD
of domination. This curve is convex,
capturing the intuition that low levels of domination
are relatively tolerable, while greater levels are less
and less tolerable. (This is equivalent to saying that
nondomination, like other goods, is subject to diminishing
marginal returns.) A reasonable person, we
might suppose, will attempt to maximize Gi (xG
) – Di
(xD
), i.e., their welfare gains from goods, minus their
welfare losses from domination.
Now imagine that we provide a comfortable basic
income level b. Let us further suppose that i’s income
26
Note that the plan described contrasts with other proposals
(e.g., Dagger 2006; White 2003) that would require people to
demonstrate that they are willing to participate in the workforce
or contribute to society in some way. While the lack of a participation
requirement might seem controversial, it should be less
so once it is recognized that the value of the basic income grant
will not necessarily be sufficient by itself to cover all basic needs.
More on this shortly.
27
There are many other arguments, pragmatic and normative, for
a unconditional basic income, of course; here I am only interested
in the argument from JMD.
28
Since, on my view, the justice of a distribution of goods hinges
on the distribution of those goods themselves, and not on the
levels of functioning or welfare provided by those goods, the
account is resource-based. Since individuals are increasingly
more likely to trade away their freedom from domination as
they have fewer resources, it is a version of prioritarianism.
Finally, since the market determines distributions beyond the
basic minimum, there is considerable scope for individual
responsibility and opportunity.
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from other sources is s, and that i does not presently
suffer any domination. Her welfare is thus given by
Gi (s + b), as indicated on Figure 1. Will she remain
content with this income? She will not. Nondomination,
by assumption, can be exchanged for other
goods: trading away some of her nondomination, she
might increase her income still further. Indeed, given
our assumptions, we should expected her to do
precisely this, up to the point where her marginal
welfare gain from additional income equals her
marginal welfare loss from additional domination.
On Figure 1 this point is at s + b + t, where the slope
of Gi (s + b + t) equals the slope of Di (t). It should
thus be clear that no matter how high we set the level
of the unconditional basic income, reasonable people
may nevertheless voluntarily trade away some of their
non-domination.29
No level of basic income is
‘‘enough,’’ so to speak.
However, it should also be clear that the higher
we set the level of the unconditional basic income,
the less nondomination will be traded away overall,
other things being equal.30
This is because at higher
levels of income, the marginal welfare gain from
further increases that could be secured through
trading away nondomination is smaller (i.e., the
slope of G progressively decreases). If we are interested
in minimizing aggregate domination, the conclusion
is straight-forward: JMD demands that we set
the unconditional basic income as high as we possibly
can, so as to reduce avoidable domination to lowest
possible level. This might seem implausibly generous,
but we must consider future generations as well as
our own. Accordingly, the ‘‘highest possible’’ basic
income should be understood to mean the highest
sustainable one: in other words, the present generation
should chose a basic income level such that
succeeding generations can choose the same level, or
greater.31
To sustain a given level of unconditional basic
income, we must take into account two important
constraints: first, domestic market constraints on our
ability to raise the basic income without depressing
economic incentives in the long run; and second,
global market constraints on our ability to remain
competitive with other nations. These constraints
ensure that the unconditional basic income will not
be exceedingly generous. Indeed, it is important to
observe (contrary to the assumption in Pateman
2004) that the grant provided by the highest sustainable
basic income might not be large enough by itself
to cover all an individual’s basic needs. This is not a
defect in the argument, since (as observed earlier) even
a small grant will reduce domination at the margin.
Justice demands that we reduce domination as far as
we can, but there is no assurance we can eliminate it
altogether. How much we can reduce domination in
this case depends on how high a basic income we can
(sustainably) afford, and this can only be determined
through trial and error by economists and policy
makers.32
When we have done everything we are able
to do, justice cannot demand that we do more.
Conclusion
I have argued that JMD underwrites the public
provision of an unconditional basic income. To
review briefly, this is because at low levels of income,
reasonable people will begin to trade away their
freedom from domination in order to meet basic
needs. This effect can be reduced, however, if the
FIGURE 1
Di (xD
)
Gi (xG
)
s+b
Gi (s+b+t)
x
wi
Gi (s+b)
Di (t)
t s+b+t
29
This would not be true if people had lexical preferences for
income sufficient to cover basic needs, freedom from domination,
and additional income, in that order. In future work I hope
to show that basic needs are not like this—i.e., that there is no
clearly defined basic needs threshold, so preferences cannot be
lexically ordered in this way.
30
At least, this is true so long as we hold total national income
constant and ignore possible incentive effects of funding the basic
income. Note however that by obviating the need for a minimum
wage, eliminating ‘‘welfare traps,’’ and so on, an unconditional
basic income might well be an efficiency improvement over
existing state welfare systems.
31
This is also the conclusion reached, on different grounds, by
Van Parijs (1995). Note that the highest sustainable basic income
is not equivalent to Rawls’s difference principle, because the
position of the least advantaged could be further improved over
an unconditional basic income through means testing.
32
As a rough guide, however, the United States is currently
supporting, one way or another, the equivalent of a per-person
annual basic income valued at roughly $7,200. Considering that
other nations are even more generous, this much at least might
be regarded as sustainable.
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public ensures that fewer become destitute, and the
least arbitrary means of doing this is through the
public provision of an unconditional basic income.
Notice that the argument does not rely on our
willingness to view society as a system of cooperation:
rather, it depends only on our recognition that
avoidable domination is unjust (and, of course, that
extreme poverty predictably leads to increased domination).
Thus it avoids the challenges that such a
reliance presents to the liberal-contractualist argument
for distributive justice.
Earlier I mentioned some other areas in which
liberal contractualism has come under recent
criticism. By way of conclusion, let me suggest that
JMD might provide an attractive basis for addressing
these concerns as well. One bundle of complaints
comes from feminists, who point out that the liberal
strategy of shielding the private sphere from public or
political interference masks considerable gender
domination in the family. Clearly, JMD is not open
to the same objection, for it sets the reduction of
domination—wherever it occurs—as the very meaning
of justice. A second bundle of complaints are
leveled by multiculturalists, who argue that liberals
fail to perceive the various cultural injustices inflicted
by liberal institutions; liberals in turn reply that
multiculturalists are insufficiently sensitive to domination
inflicted by groups on their own members.
JMD cuts across this debate. It would not valorize
culture as such, but it would recognize that cultural
attachments can sometimes be exploited in order to
subject others to domination. Thus JMD would
support cultural rights, devolution, and so on, just
so far as doing so would minimize domination, and
not otherwise.
In these two areas, the application of JMD is
straightforward and compelling. And what of the
connection between domination reduction and democracy?
Roughly speaking, the argument would be
that broadly democratic institutions are in most cases
best able to discourage domination. A number of
theorists have begun to explore this argument (see
Pettit 1999; Shapiro 2003), but much remains to be
done. In the meantime, I hope that enough has been
said to convince the reader that justice as minimizing
domination is a progressive political doctrine worth
exploring.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Larry Temkin, Jack
Knight, Andrew Rehfeld, and the anonymous reviewers
at the Journal of Politics for their many helpful
comments and suggestions on earlier versions of
this paper.
Manuscript submitted 5 April 2007
Manuscript accepted for publication 12 September 2008
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Frank Lovett is assistant professor of political
science, Washington University in Saint Louis, St.
Louis, MO 63130.
830 frank lovett
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