Free Market Fairness.
Hemphill, Thomas A.
Free Market Fairness
John Tomasi
Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2012 (348 pages)
In Free Market Fairness, John Tomasi, professor of political
science and philosophy at Brown University, embraces an ambitious
agenda: reconciling the left liberal philosophy of social justice with
libertarian and classical liberal views on the economic rights of
capitalism. To this end, Tomasi introduces a liberal research program
that he calls "market democracy," a deliberative form of
liberalism that reflects sensitivity to the moral insights of
libertarianism. In his first two chapters, Tomasi discusses the origins
of the conflict within liberal thinking between the classical liberalism
and the high liberalism traditions.
In chapter 1, Tomasi reviews the classical liberal revolution
through the seminal writings of John Locke's doctrine of
self-ownership and the natural freedoms of all citizens; Adam Smith,
whose "systems of natural liberty" limit government activity
to national defense, the provision of a limited range of public goods,
and the administration of justice; and others chronicling the early
American experience, including the creation of a Constitution with
enumerated powers balancing economic rights with civil and political
rights. Tomasi concludes his review with F. A. Hayek's writings,
whereby the protection of freedom (including the protection of property)
and the achievement of economic efficiency are married to create an
ideal of formal equality. Hayek's rules of property allow for the
best use of local knowledge governed by the nomos, or "grown"
law, that forms the basis of the spontaneous order of society at large,
while rejecting public policy's pursuing social or distributive
justice. From this rich classical liberal tradition, Tomasi summarizes
three concepts: (1) a thick concept of economic liberty grounded mainly
in consequentialist considerations, (2) a formal concept of equality
that sees the outcome of free-market exchanges as largely definitive of
justice, and (3) a limited but important state role in tax-funded
education and social-service programs.
In chapter 2, Tomasi explores the development of a largely European
project: high liberalism. Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that laws
protecting economic liberty did not really protect people from
domination, while Karl Marx posited that there are no legal guarantees
that the liberal social world will not be marked by fixed, enduring
class divisions based on people's standing in the economic order.
Further, John Stuart Mill argued that progressive beings do not need
economic liberty in order to "pursue their own good their own
way." By the early twentieth century, the idea of social justice
emerged in an era of increasing industrialization, with new liberals
advocating a government with broad economic powers to impartially pursue
a more-substantive ideal of equality. John Rawls, in A Theory of Justice
(1971), presented a justificatory (or distributive) theory he called
constructivism that seeks to identify principles of justice by reasoning
directly (from a device he called the "original position")
about the moral requirements of social life. High liberalism rests on
Rawls's concept of justice as fairness, where institutions are
arranged so that any inequalities that emerge are advantageous to the
least fortunate, with his favored regime types "liberal
(democratic) socialism" and "property-owning democracy"
subsuming economic liberty to civic and political liberties.
In chapter 3, Tomasi challenges the modern orthodoxy of high
liberalism. The positive effects of economic growth and prosperity in
the twentieth century where, for example, the inflation-adjusted per
capita income of the average American has undergone an eightfold
increase since 1900, makes the personal exercise of economic liberty
more rather than less valuable to many liberal citizens. Open-minded
advocates of deliberative democracy should therefore reject the platform
of economic exceptionalism advocated by high liberalism. Tomasi further
argues the importance of a thick concept of economic liberty as a basis
for responsible self-authorship and democratic legitimacy. To this end,
Tomasi offers his new, superior approach to the social democratic one:
market democracy.
In chapter 4, Tomasi maps the conceptual space held by market
democracy by envisioning it as a hybrid, combining insights from
classical liberals (Hayek) and high liberals (Rawls). Like classical
liberalism, market democracy affirms a wide-ranging right to economic
liberty, with regime types strictly limiting the scope of legislative
authority in economic affairs. Furthermore, market democracy emphasizes
the use of markets in pursuit of social justice, pursued mainly through
the forces of spontaneous order. From the high liberalism tradition,
market democracy affirms a robust concept of social justice as the
ultimate standard of institutional or political evaluation. With basic
rights and liberties in place, fully just institutions consistently work
to improve the condition of the least-well off citizens, offering
greater benefits to the poor than any other alternative set of
rights-protecting institutions.
In chapter 5, Tomasi addresses the opposition to social justice as
a fixed premise of the classical liberal and libertarian traditions.
Libertarians reject social justice as a direct assault on unassailable
rights to property, based on either self-ownership or a principle of
natural liberty. Traditional forms of classical liberalism, however,
present less consistent deductive philosophical argumentation in their
rejection of social justice. Tomasi argues that various thinkers in the
free market tradition (Hayek in particular) often employ predictions
(and moral commitments) about the beneficial (or distributive) effects
of capitalism as a necessary condition for defending capitalism's
benefit to the poor. Tomasi proceeds to build an argument for how his
market democratic affirmation of thick economic liberty might be made
compatible with a wide variety of philosophic approaches to social
justice. While questioning whether orthodox libertarians can affirm a
spontaneous order, he believes that classic liberal adherents to Hayek
can affirm a conception of spontaneous order that allows for social
justice.
In chapter 6, Tomasi concludes that society, in its moral essence,
is a public thing. Its institutions must be committed to respecting
citizens and creating conditions in which they can develop and exercise
the moral capacities for self-authorship. Moreover, citizens must
respect the core liberty-interests of their fellow citizens, including
those life-defining economic decisions in light of their own character,
values, and dreams. Finally, the basic political and economic structures
of a free society must be justifiable to all classes of citizens to
ensure that all groups benefit. Tomasi breaks with classical liberal and
libertarian traditions in founding politics on a deliberative ideal of
democratic citizenship while simultaneously correcting for left, liberal
biases and defects in Rawls's theory to fashion his view of a
"free market fairness" that seeks to maximize the personal
wealth controlled by the poor.
In chapter 7, Tomasi addresses the danger of
"philosophilia," or the love of philosophy (with or without
wisdom), so ardent that philosophers come to believe that ideal theory
is the whole of political theory. Philosophilia helps explain why much
of the philosophical community has been slow to take seriously the
sentiments of middle-class citizens that their private economic
liberties matter more rather than less to them as their societies grow
wealthier. For a candidate regime to realize justice as fairness in a
broadly Rawlsian scheme, it must seek justice in a way that is
compatible with the general laws of sociology; for example, operating
under the most favorable--yet possible--set of historical, cultural, and
economic conditions. Thus, if a regime type pursues justice as fairness
by an institutional strategy unrealistic in light of the general facts
of political sociology, that regime type is unjust regardless of the
number of official guarantees it includes. Furthermore, as a corollary,
if some regime type pursues justice as fairness by a strategy that is
within the boundaries of what is sociologically realistic, that regime
type must be recognized as just regardless of how few guarantees it
includes.
In chapter 8, Tomasi focuses on justice as fairness. He proceeds to
complete his sketch of free market fairness by first affirming its
compliance with the general formulation of the difference principle;
second, by affirming the generically conceived "ideal of formal
equality," while supplementing it with the more demanding ideal of
"fair equality"; and third, by recognizing the special status
of political liberties, with free-market fairness requiring a political
system that protects every citizen from domination in the formulation of
the rules and policies that are to govern cooperative life. Ultimately,
the choice political philosophers must make is strictly moral: Which
concept of fairness, the social democratic or the free market regime,
offers us the more inspiring ideal?
John Tomasi has written a spirited, accessible book that
successfully argues the classical liberal tradition (although less so
the libertarian variant) of private economic liberty as a necessary and
equal partner with social and political liberties in a free and just
democratic society. This integrated, constructive approach--what he
calls market democracy--also recognizes the importance of social
justice, a high liberal concept that he redefines by employing the
principles of classical liberal thought. While those orthodox thinkers
in the high liberal and libertarian traditions may indeed not consider
Tomasi's market democracy as a serious alternative to their
embedded philosophies, the "ideologically uncommitted" and
"intellectual adventurers" (to use Tomasi's descriptors)
may want to give market democracy a serious second look. Tomasi has
provided the intellectual and justificatory framework for classical
liberal adherents to robustly explore opportunities in a
market-democracy research program.
--Thomas A. Hemphill
University of Michigan-Flint
