Existential Comics and Misinterpreting Rawls

I'm a fan of Existential Comics but today's post was quite inaccurate in its presentation of John Rawls's views. Roughly, it relies on the misinterpretation—thankfully less common today than it was 2+ decades ago—that Rawls's theory defends an egalitarian version of welfare-state capitalism.

So, I wrote to the author explaining my concerns with the comic. Here is the main content of that message:

“I normally very much enjoy your comics. Indeed, I look forward to reading them every week. But I found today’s comic on John Rawls to be astonishingly unfair.

Rawls explicitly states in Justice as Fairness: A Restatement that welfare-state capitalism is incompatible with the principles of justice as fairness. Only 'liberal socialism' or 'property-owning democracy' can satisfy those principles. Both LS and POD are radically more egalitarian social systems than existing welfare-state capitalist societies. This is explained clearly in Part IV of Justice as Fairness.

Rawls’s anti-capitalism is in A Theory of Justice as well, but many readers of it – including, unfortunately, Robert Paul Wolff – misinterpreted that work as somehow defending a more egalitarian form of welfare-state capitalism. In his later work Rawls took pains to try to address this misinterpretation (including in the Preface to the revised edition of Theory).

For an excellent recent book on Rawls’s political philosophy, which defends a socialist reading of it, I recommend John Rawls: Reticent Socialist by William Edmundson.

Anyhow, I’m sure that you no doubt have received messages from defenders of other philosophers in the past upset over your portrayal of them in your comics. And nobody, of course, should assume that a comic must be fully fair or accurate with respect to the thinkers it portrays. But as a leftist and a ‘Rawlsian’, I wanted at least to register my dismay at the portrayal of Rawls’s views in today’s comic.”

The author kindly wrote back and added a paragraph at the bottom of the comic’s webpage (the one that starts with "It should be noted..."). That paragraph doesn't exactly address the matter I raised, but I was grateful for the consideration nonetheless.

I followed up with a further reply, but since some of it is specific to the author’s reply to my original message, I will only post the following excerpt:

“As for Rawls’s position on socialism, it is most clearly stated in Part IV of Justice as Fairness (2001). He explicitly rejects welfare state capitalism there. It’s as clear as can be (“Welfare-state capitalism … rejects the fair value of the political liberties … It permits very large inequalities in the ownership of real property (productive assets and natural resources) so that the control of the economy and much of political life rests in few hands. … And … a principle of reciprocity to regulate economic and social inequalities is not recognized.” [pp. 137-138]). He claims that either ‘liberal socialism’ or ‘property-owning democracy’ are compatible with his principles (the latter distributes productive property [capital] to all citizens, the former insists on shared ownership of productive capital). You’re right that both LS and POD continue to use ‘markets’ but I think that markets are not the same thing as ‘capitalism’ (markets existed long before the rise of capitalism, and possibly may exist after the end of capitalism).

You’re right that Rawls himself never clearly sided with either property-owning democracy or liberal socialism – he seems to have wanted to remain agnostic on that question (despite condemning laissez-faire capitalism, welfare-state capitalism, and state socialism). Edmundson’s book argues that Rawls, given his conception of justice, should have endorsed democratic liberal socialism (hence the “Reticent” in the title).”

So that’s that. My work for the day is done.

Of course, I remain a fan of Existential Comics, and very much look forward to reading it next week!