Reciprocity as Mutual Recognition

Abstract

For Rawls, there is an important difference between competing forms of regimes and what he calls a “property-owning democracy” and “liberal socialism.”1 This difference includes that only the latter best guarantees principles of justice and satisfies the criterion of reciprocity. In this article, I will focus on the importance of reciprocity for this account and what it reveals about the citizens found in property-owning democracies and liberal socialist regimes.2 These regimes do not merely correctly recognize and uphold the importance of central principles of justice, but they also correctly recognize each other in an identity-forming way. These citizens mutually recognize one another as free and equal, but also they identify with others in a common bond of citizenship. Rawlsian justice is more than about principles and reciprocity; it is also about mutual recognition and shared identity. This becomes clearer when we look to the reasons why Rawls favors some regimes over others.The structure of this article is as follows. First, I begin with a brief explication of the relevant background. This will focus on Rawls's two principles of justice. Secondly, I will then explain how these principles are applied by Rawls to demonstrate which regimes may be acceptable for justice as fairness. This discussion will highlight the central importance of the criterion of reciprocity. The article will conclude with an examination of the importance of reciprocity in Rawls's account and how it may say something new about the citizens Rawls has in mind for regimes such as a property-owning democracy.Rawls's discussion of property-owning democracy is within a particular context. He asks: “what kind of regime and basic structure would be right and just, could it be effectively and workably maintained?”3 This context presupposes specific results that arise from Rawls's analysis of the basic structure and two principles of justice.4 I will address this analysis here. The following section will consider whether an application of this analysis supports property-owning democracy and why it does this.Rawls understands political philosophy as “realistically utopian,” or in other words “as probing the limits of the practicable political possibility.”5 It is utopian in that we should aim for the reasonably just, but realistic in not pursuing what is perfect and beyond our horizon of possibilities. Furthermore, we must operate against the background of the fact of reasonable pluralism. This fact limits possible options in that it imposes some restraints, but it also offers new possibilities in how options can be managed. One such possibility is that we must think about political society from a new perspective and Rawls offers several new conceptual devices by which we may attain such a perspective.Rawls's realistic utopia is centred on the idea of society as a fair system of social cooperation over time from one generation to the next.6 This includes the idea of citizens as free and equal, as well as the idea of a well-ordered society regulated effectively by a public conception of justice.7 One key task is determining the principles that will specify fair terms of cooperation.8 These principles will apply to the basic structure securing background justice. Rawls says: The basic structure of society is the way in which the main political and social institutions of society fit together into one system of social cooperation, and the way they assign basic rights and duties and regulate the division of advantages that arises from social cooperation over time.9 The basic structure is the primary subject of social and political justice. We must determine principles to apply to the basic structure and establish a framework for a political conception of justice. Our object is not to settle all political questions from the start, but instead to provide the framework within which such questions should be addressed.We determine principles of justice in the following way. Rawls argues that we should employ the idea of the original position. Parties to the original position are understood to lie behind a veil of ignorance. This veil masks self-knowledge about arbitrary features from a moral point of view. Thus, the parties are forbidden from knowing their ethnicity, gender, native endowments, and social status.10 The idea is that these features are characterized by moral arbitrariness and should not be taken into account in selecting principles of justice that will apply to the basic structure. The original position is a device to help us with this task. Rawls argues that these principles should be unanimously accepted by the parties. The idea is that we have fair terms of cooperation where all those engaged consent.11 These terms will be fair because morally arbitrary considerations are bracketed by the veil of ignorance.Rawls argues that the parties to the original position will unanimously accept two principles of justice.12 These principles are: (a)Each person has the same indefeasible claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all; and,(b)Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society.13 These two principles are in some respect really three: (a) the principle of equal basic liberties, (b1) the principle of fair equality of opportunity, and (b2) the difference principle. Where there are potential conflicts, we should always give priority to (a) over (b1) and (b2). This is because we would accept that the possible justification of socio-economic inequalities permitted by (b1) or (b2) are possible only where equal basic liberties are secured. We ought never sacrifice our basic liberties if faced with such a choice. We should likewise prioritize (b1) over (b2) if in conflict. This is because we should recognize the greater importance of securing fair equality of opportunity to implementing the difference principle.My discussion in this section omits many of Rawls's arguments for the two principles of justice and I have not aimed for completeness in exposition of Rawls's richly complex account. In this article, my concern is not whether the above account is convincing, but what follows if we assume that it is. I will now consider why only some regimes can best accept and secure these principles and why other regimes cannot. While much of Rawls's discussion will focus on whether the principles of justice are likely to be satisfied by a regime type, I believe this discussion reveals much more than that. One example is the central importance of reciprocity for this discussion. The following section will explore these arguments before turning to what precisely reciprocity may illuminate within Rawls's account.Rawls next considers whether any regime type is compatible with his two principles of justice. A regime is found compatible where it is able to best satisfy and safeguard these principles. Those regimes which might fail in this task are unjust and unacceptable. Five different regime types are examined and they are: (a) laissez-faire capitalism, (b) welfare-state capitalism, (c) state socialism, (d) property-owning democracy, and (e) liberal socialism.14 Laissez-faire capitalism, welfare-state capitalism, and state socialism are rejected. Rawls argues that we should only accept property-owning democracy and liberal socialism. His defence may appear somewhat straightforward, but the central importance of reciprocity is most notable and this has some potentially surprising results.Rawls highlights two reasons for why we should accept only property-owning democracy and liberal socialism. The first reason is that only these regime types put economic power in the hands of citizens. In contrast, other regimes are far more likely to concentrate wealth into the hands of a few. This central control of economic wealth by a minority disempowers the majority. Therefore, it undermines fair equality of opportunity and violates the second principle of justice. Furthermore, it fails to respect the equal basic rights and liberties of all.Rawls also offers a second reason: a property-owning democracy or liberal socialist regime is best placed to minimize inequalities between rich and poor.15 Other regimes are far more likely to unjustifiably exacerbate these inequalities. Likewise, they violate the equal basic rights and liberties of citizens, but also undermine fair equality of opportunity.Property-owning democracy and liberal socialist regimes best satisfy and secure the two principles of justice. They also best advance democratic equality amongst citizens. These regimes do this in satisfying the liberal principle of legitimacy.16 Rawls says: Our exercise of political power is fully proper only when it is exercised in accordance with a constitution the essentials of which all citizens as free and equal may reasonably be expected to endorse in the light of principles and ideals acceptable to their common human reason … Only a political conception of justice that all citizens might be reasonably expected to endorse can serve as a basis of public reason and justification.17 The idea is that political power is legitimate where all citizens can reasonably be expected to endorse it. Legitimacy is only conferred in conditions of democratic equality where the principles of justice are satisfied. The fact of reasonable pluralism raises the further challenge that legitimacy also requires citizens to engage each other in a project of political constructivism. Citizens must work out a political conception of justice all can endorse on due reflection and reach agreement concerning constitutional essentials and basic matters of justice that arise.18Other regime types fail this test of legitimacy. For example, laissez-faire capitalism prioritizes economic efficiency over basic liberties.19 The system may empower a minority at the expense of the majority and in a morally arbitrary way. Economic control is not guaranteed for citizens and likely to become lost.20 State socialism should be rejected on similar grounds. State socialism is a regime with a command economy. This regime thus fails to ensure economic power is widely dispersed and in the hands of citizens.21 Instead, this power is held by the hands of a few. Both laissez-faire capitalism and state socialism violate the equal basic rights and liberties of citizens. Furthermore, both regimes violate fair equality of opportunity if not the difference principle as well. When we consider which regimes may be justifiable in terms of their compatibility with and securement of the principles of justice, we find that only property-owning democracy and liberal socialism are acceptable.Rawls has often been thought to be the defender par excellence of welfare-state capitalism. It may be a surprise to learn that, in fact, he rejects this regime type as well. Furthermore, an important difference between these types—which is crucial for Rawls's account—is revealed in his rejection of welfare-state capitalism in favor of property-owning democracy. Thus, Rawls says that it “may tempt us” to believe these regimes “are much the same” when, in fact, “[t]hey are not.”22 Rawls objects to laissez-faire capitalism and state socialism for several reasons, including their greater likelihood to concentrate economic power in unacceptably few hands. Property-owning democracy and liberal socialism are more acceptable precisely because they are most likely “to disperse the ownership of wealth and capital” and best protect against too much economic power becoming concentrated.23 These regimes better safeguard democratic equality ensuring “a footing of a suitable degree of social and economic equality.”24 This is equality for a purpose and it raises a new consideration that plays a crucial role.An important passage from Rawls is as follows. He says: The least advantaged are not, if all goes well, the unfortunate and unlucky—objects of our charity and compassion, much less our pity—but those to whom reciprocity is owed as a matter of political justice among those who are free and equal citizens along with everyone else.25 It is not crucial that all citizens have equal economic wealth, but it is important that citizens have a sufficient level of reciprocity. Note: this is owed to all and it is “a matter of political justice.” Equality is for a purpose: it is necessary for securement of reciprocity.Rawls argues that regimes must satisfy a criterion of reciprocity in order to gain political legitimacy. For example, Leif Wenar explains: The use of political power must fulfill a criterion of reciprocity: citizens must reasonably believe that all citizens can reasonably accept the enforcement of a particular set of basic laws. Those coerced by law must be able to endorse the society's fundamental political arrangements freely, not because they are dominated or manipulated or kept uninformed.26 Political legitimacy is guaranteed by satisfying reciprocity amongst free and equal citizens. A legitimate political regime will take some form of democratic equality. This ensures reciprocity, but also the two principles of justice.Rawls's criterion of reciprocity sheds new light on why property-owning democracy is preferable to welfare-state capitalism. The former fails to secure reciprocity, but why? If inequalities are permissible, then the guarantee of reciprocity may seem overly utopian. I believe that Rawls understands something further about reciprocity and that it is a form of mutual recognition and shared identity.27 The central problem with welfare-state capitalism is not only that economic power may be more likely to become concentrated in the hands of a minority, but that citizens fail to mutually recognize one another as having a shared political identity. They are more than equals: they possess a common source of identity and a shared political life.The next section will explain further how reciprocity takes these forms in Rawls's account. While the discussion remains closely tied with Rawls's texts, it is an idea that requires some further development. We learn something about the kinds of citizens that Rawls has in mind for property-owning democracy and liberal socialism. We also learn something about the role of equality for enabling a crucial good, namely, reciprocal reconciliation.We require some level of equality for reciprocity. However, there are reasons for this and these reasons are in addition to the need to satisfy principles of justice. One reason is that equality best enables mutual acceptance and respect for others and principles of justice. In the essay “Justice as Reciprocity,” Rawls argues that the idea of reciprocity is “fundamental to both justice and fairness.”28 This is because reciprocity between citizens makes possible the “mutual acknowledgement of principles by free and equal persons” lacking authority over each other.29 Reciprocity is then a “condition of equal power.”30Reciprocity as a condition of equal power requires both that citizens are above a threshold of basic needs and that any socio-economic inequalities do not threaten the bonds of common political identity. For example, Rawls says: By basic needs I mean roughly those that must be met if citizens are to be in a position to take advantage of the rights, liberties, and opportunities of their society. These needs include economic means as well as institutional rights and freedoms.31 The satisfaction of basic needs is more than mere existence above a threshold of particular material conditions. Basic needs are satisfied only when we are positioned to make full use of our rights and liberties. While material wealth may bring many benefits, Rawls suggests that political and social justice requires something beyond such material goods.32Reciprocity is an activity between persons. One illustration arises within the context of the problem of political stability. The problem is that different individuals may possess and freely endorse different reasonable comprehensive doctrines. These doctrines may be “religious and nonreligious, liberal and nonliberal.”33 The problem is how best to secure political stability for a community where members have deep and reasonable disagreement on many fundamental matters. This is the fact of reasonable pluralism.34 Rawls argues that stability should be created and maintained for “the right reasons” and not as a mere modus vivendi.35 The project of constructing an overlapping consensus through public reason is an activity requiring the engagement of citizens with one another. Reciprocity is more than a recognition that others have an equal voice, but that they have a voice I ought to hear. Thus, Rawls says that unreasonable persons view cooperative engagement as no more than “a necessary public pretense.”36 Instead, reasonable persons interact in a more genuine fashion requiring greater respect and sincere cooperation.Reasonable persons understand reciprocity as requiring genuine engagement with others. Rawls argues that reciprocity helps us conceive of the reasonable fair terms that citizens accept as members of a system of fair cooperation.37 However, reciprocity is not presented as offering a view of “the general good as such,” but instead helping to provide an idea of “a social world in which [citizens], as free and equal, can cooperate with others on terms all can accept. They insist that reciprocity should hold within that world so that each benefits along with others.”38 Reciprocity offers a “normative (moral) conception with its own intrinsic ideal” although it does not offer something more substantial such as “a comprehensive doctrine.”39Reciprocity may not provide a comprehensive doctrine, but its normative conception is surprisingly thick. Consider our two moral powers. The first is the capacity for a sense of justice. This is defined as “the capacity to understand, to apply, and to act from (and not merely in accordance with) the principles of political justice that specify the fair terms of social cooperation.”40 The capacity for a sense of justice is then an activity of understanding and social engagement within a cooperative enterprise with others as free and equal. Reciprocity is central to the success of this capacity because it can only become realized through reciprocity. The second moral power is the capacity for a conception of the good. This is defined as “the capacity to have, to revise, and rationally to pursue a conception of the good.”41 Again, this moral power is also an activity of understanding and social engagement. Citizens are not asked to derive conceptions of the good in isolation. On the contrary, they are to revise their conceptions through social interaction with others.This activity of understanding and social engagement is perhaps better characterized as a form of mutual recognition. Citizens do more than reciprocate their relations. These relationships are more robust and clearly speak to a more genuine engagement. Instead, citizens mutually recognize each other as free and equal; it is through mutual recognition that their moral powers are exercised and preserved.One reason is that mutual recognition is about trust. It would be unlikely to hear someone say that she merely reciprocates friendship for another. Friendship is a good that is shared as a cooperative enterprise. Mutual recognition suggests a more appropriate sense of engaged cooperation. Mutually recognized citizens view each other correctly as having both a say and a stake in matters of political justice. Each has a say given their political standing as free and equal and their being recognized as such. Each citizen also has a stake because each is engaged in exercising their moral powers in concert with others to construct a common sense of political justice for that polity. Political justice will reflect the deliberative outcomes from these on-going deliberations.A second and more powerful reason is that mutual recognition is also about shared identity. We do not merely reciprocate family membership or professional associations, but instead we recognize a shared identity with others that they, in turn, share with us and on the same terms. Mutual recognition is an activity of understanding and social engagement whereby we not only construct a shared understanding of political justice, but we also construct an important source of our shared identity. The importance of this shared identity is that where it is under threat we also find threats to political liberalism.If we understand reciprocity as a form of mutual recognition, then Rawls's defense of democratic equality becomes clearer. For example, Rawls argues that a property-owning democracy is much less likely to see excess inequality between rich and poor. The problem is not that there may be inequality, but rather we must avoid too much economic power falling under the control of a minority. One reason is the threat to the principles of political justice, but a further reason is that excessive inequality will damage mutual recognition. Those in greater poverty may come to view the political society as alien. Rawls admits that such unfortunate circumstances may produce envy and wound self-respect.42 Where mutual recognition may bring us together, alienation pulls us further apart.The idea of reciprocity as mutual recognition has its roots in Hegel's rich philosophical system. For very different reasons, Hegel also argues that political justice must be understood as entailing a strong element of mutual recognition.43 For Hegel, mutual recognition is secured where persons accept and engage with one another on equal terms.44 It is a position of shared respect and commonality between citizens that constructs an important element of their shared identity. This identity is threatened under certain conditions. The first is the condition of poverty. Hegel says: “It is not just starvation which is at stake … the wider viewpoint is the need to prevent a rabble from emerging.”45 Poverty is not merely the condition of inequality and material scarcity, but it also threatens the bonds of mutual recognition. Where we lack reciprocity and fair equality of opportunity, it becomes more difficult for persons in very different circumstances to mutually respect and trust one another as political equals. One reason is perhaps because persons in poverty lack fair equality of opportunity and so cannot participate equally in political affairs. A second reason may be that persons in poverty view political society as an alien other to themselves. For Hegel, the problem of poverty is a problem of recognition and it may affect rich and poor. Thus, the rabble shares a common state of mind that both the very poor or the very wealthy may possess.46 The rabble is best dealt with by best ensuring that we forbid “disproportionate wealth to be concentrated in a few hands.”47 In these ways, mutual recognition plays a very similar role for Rawls.48 Those alienated are, in the words of Rabindranath Tagore, “the poorest, the lowliest, the lost.”49Hegel argues that citizens should engage in mutual recognition in order to create social and political reconciliation. This is an idea that has caught Rawls's attention. He explains: reconciliation means that we have come to see our social world as a form of life in political and social institutions that realizes our essence–that is, the basis of our dignity as persons who are free.50 Reconciliation becomes possible when we are “at home” with the world and do not view it as alien or contrary to our interests.51 Reconciliation is not a form of resignation, but an activity of mutual recognition. We do not passively accept the world as we find it, but construct the possibility of a realistic utopia with others on free and equal terms. We must each have a stake and recognize others as equal stakeholders in society.52 Again, we do not merely reciprocate interactions with others, but we actively and genuinely engage. We construct much more than a sense of justice, but the bonds of mutual recognition and shared identity. The protection of these bonds serves as a fundamental reason why we can accept some regimes, such as a property-owning democracy, and not others.This understanding of Rawlsian justice highlights something potentially new. Recall his endorsement of property-owning democracy and liberal socialism. Both regimes may support some form of regulated market economy. It is clear that Rawls rejects a largely unregulated market given his arguments against laissez-faire capitalism. It is also clear he rejects a command economy which is evidence in his critique of state socialism. Private property ownership is clearly a right, even a human right, on his account.53 However, it is a right stemming from its ability to best “specify a decent scheme of political and social cooperation.”54 It is not the free market or regulated market that we defend, but rather whether a system best satisfies certain conditions. Consider slaves who lack property. Slavery should be rejected on many grounds. One argument is that slaves lack more than property: they also lack access to participation in a decent scheme concerning fair cooperation with others. Others cooperate on unequal terms in virtue of their having property and better abilities to cooperate with others similarly situated. But note: the slave's disadvantage depends on his exceptional status and not primarily his lack of possessions. Property rights may help foster mutual respect, but it is mutual recognition of persons as free and equal that is crucial.Rawls is quick to criticize economic inequality as a problem of social cohesion. For one example, he says that “such a gap often leads to some citizens being stigmatized and treated as inferiors, and that is unjust.”55 What is unjust is not that someone is viewed as inferior as such, but that a person lacks mutual recognition as an equal. Strictly speaking, an individual may be inferior to others without injustice. Some may lack the rational capacities to properly engage with others in deliberation. Inferiority only becomes a political problem where it leads to a failure of mutual recognition. Such a failure has the potential to escalate into a feeling of alienation. Our political community is a shared source of common identity. This identity arises through mutual recognition and enables political reconciliation, the latter conceived as our self-understanding as having a stake. This identity is not our only identity, but it is an important tie that binds us together in a common project.Rawls's idea of the citizen as free and equal in a well-ordered society includes a rich account of reciprocity. I have argued that reciprocity should be understood as mutual recognition to better account for its nature as an active engagement with others. This engagement is central to the formation of a shared political identity. This shared identity involves a sense of trust, recognition, and respect amongst equals. It is the importance of being recognized and having a sense of being reconciled to the political society that is central. Rawls's argument for democratic equality should include the idea that liberal legitimacy is political reconciliation whereby we recognize one another as equal citizens who belong together in a political community and with a shared identity.This becomes clearer when we examine the reasons that Rawls offers in favor of property-owning democracy. It is not the mere fact of economic concentration that is the central problem, but the fact that this concentration will threaten the bonds of mutual recognition and shared identity. Moreover, there is rich empirical evidence to support this result. In The Spirit Level, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett argue that inequality affects everything from life expectancy to mental illness and violence to illiteracy.56 Equality is good for us, but partly because it best enables mutual recognition and a shared identity.To conclude, we learn much from Rawls's account although there are many questions remaining, not least questions about the possibility of a universal human identity. Nevertheless, I hope to have shed a small light on more important issues that lie ahead.