The fact that I attribute only partial success to Tomasi’s efforts should not be regarded as a negative evaluation of his book. Free Market Fairness is both an excellent book and an important one. What makes a work of philosophy valuable is not that it arrives at all the right conclusions, but that it asks the right questions, makes us think, and causes us to re-examine our assumptions. Free Market Fairness does all of those things. For this reason, it is appropriate to describe the book as seminal.
Rawls and liberty | It is unfortunate that Princeton University Press chose to place Tyler Cowen’s description of the book as “One of the very best philosophical treatments of libertarian thought, ever” on the front cover. This isn’t because the book is not an excellent work of political philosophy, but because it isn’t a treatment of libertarian thought. If the word “libertarian” were replaced with the word “Rawlsian,” the description may well be accurate.
Free Market Fairness contains a brilliant imminent critique of Rawlsian political philosophy, what Tomasi labels “high liberalism.” An imminent critique accepts the values and premises of one’s opponent as correct and shows that they lead not to the opponent’s conclusion, but to one’s own. Tomasi is meticulous in accepting every aspect of the Rawlsian philosophical project. He subscribes to the high liberals’ definitions of terms, fundamental value judgments, basic premises, and restriction of political philosophy to “ideal theory,” and then proceeds to demonstrate that a correct understanding of high liberalism leads not to the Rawlsian welfare state, but to the classical liberal state of John Locke and Adam Smith.
I am old enough to have read John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice for the first time without antecedent knowledge of its conclusion. I still remember undergoing the dismaying transition from “This is really cool” to “How did this go so wrong?” Consider that A Theory of Justice begins by arguing that a just political system must guarantee individuals the liberty to lead personally meaningful lives. Social welfare concerns come into play only after this has been secured. Further, the value of personal liberty is recognized to be different in kind from that of material welfare such that it must be given priority in a lexical ordering that forbids trading liberty for welfare gains. This appears to be a political philosophy that even Hayek could (and apparently did) love. So how did Rawls go from this promising beginning to the liberal welfare state?
Tomasi explains that it is primarily due to Rawls’ and his disciples’ impoverished conception of liberty. Rawls does not view liberty as monolithic, but as an assemblage of specific liberties: the right to vote and be eligible for public office, freedom of speech and assembly, liberty of conscience and freedom of thought, freedom of the person and the right to hold personal property, and freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizure. Those liberties are what Rawls and Rawlsians believe are necessary for individuals to lead meaningful lives—to be responsible self-authors. Tomasi argues effectively that this list is woefully underpopulated. As important as these political liberties may be, Tomasi points out that we live most of our lives in the private sector, that our work gives our lives meaning, and that the freedom to vote pales in comparison to the freedom to start a family business that will provide a better life for our children. In short, he demonstrates that a thick conception of economic liberty must be on the list of basic liberties for citizens to truly be responsible self-authors.
In addition, Tomasi draws on Hayek’s concept of spontaneous order to show that, to the extent that high liberals are truly serious about promoting the welfare of the least advantaged, they must accept a high degree of individualized economic decisionmaking. In essence, Tomasi shows that Rawls’ Difference Principle—the proposition that inequalities are permissible only to the extent that they benefit the worst-off—requires the mobilization of market forces to a much greater degree than is envisioned by the Rawlsians.
What Tomasi is doing in this part of the book is showing the high liberals what their own paradigm requires. He is essentially telling them how to get Rawls right. The great value of the book is that it requires all those operating within the Rawlsian framework to take the commitment to liberty—specifically economic liberty—seriously.
For the last 40 years, the high liberals’ main strategy for dealing with the insights of classical liberalism has been to either ignore or mischaracterize them. By accepting the Rawlsian framework in every detail and arguing from within it—by bringing classical liberal insights into the high liberal framework—Tomasi has made it impossible for high liberals to continue to pursue this strategy. For high liberals to ignore his argument in Free Market Fairness would be to admit the bankruptcy of their own framework. The great value of Tomasi’s book is that it forces the high liberals to engage with classical liberals. In this respect, he has been successful in shattering the ice around the high liberal bastion.
Libertarian thought? | However, in Free Market Fairness, Tomasi claims to be addressing not merely high liberals, but libertarians as well. Part of his project is to convince libertarians to embrace social justice when it is properly understood. In this, for both semantic and substantive reasons, he is less successful.
A considerable part of Tomasi’s difficulty in reaching the libertarian shore is due to semantics. What is likely to be the most effective way to alienate serious libertarian scholars? That would be to mischaracterize their position and then destroy the straw man that one has erected in its place. On the occasions when the academic left has been unable to ignore libertarian thought, this has been its main tactic against it. Libertarian scholars have endured decades of having their well-reasoned, carefully crafted positions identified with the most unreasonable interpretations of the work of Robert Nozick or Ayn Rand and summarily dismissed. Nothing could be more infuriating to them.
Yet, unfortunately, this is precisely what Tomasi does. In order to craft an effective imminent critique of Rawlsian political philosophy, he is forced to accept and apply all the definitions of the academic left, including its definition of libertarianism. Thus he depicts libertarians as dogmatic by definition. He defines libertarianism as “a doctrine that grounds unyielding rights of property in a moral ideal of persons as self-owners,” (p. 51) and asserts that “[l]ibertarians employ foundationalist or ‘naturalistic’ forms of argument…. In its paradigmatic formulation, libertarianism is founded on an ideal of persons as self-owners” (pp. 53–4). But, under this definition, there would seem to be no libertarian scholars—certainly no living ones. Although under this definition there may be libertarian teenagers, I know of no working libertarian scholar whom it describes. Admittedly, this is purely a matter of semantics, but defining libertarianism as an unreasonable position that no one actually holds is certainly a poor way to make inroads among libertarian thinkers.
Further, under Tomasi’s definition of political philosophy, there are apparently no libertarian political philosophers. Forced by his pursuit of the imminent critique to adopt the Rawlsians’ definitions, Tomasi limits political philosophy to the realm of “ideal theory.” In this realm, no objections based on practical problems of a regime’s feasibility are permitted. Thus, “the choice political philosophers must make … is not in any sense a practical one. The choice is instead strictly moral: which conception of fairness, the social democratic one or the free market one, offers us the more inspiring ideal?” (p. 265). Hence, any thinker who bases his or her arguments on assertions about the limitations on human knowledge or skepticism regarding the motivations of public officials is not a political philosopher. But I am aware of no working libertarian scholar (other than Tomasi) who does not base his or her arguments on such considerations to some extent. Although this is again semantics, adopting a definition of political philosophy that eliminates all libertarian thinkers from the field is not likely to make them receptive to one’s arguments.
Liberty and social justice | However, the most serious semantic problem Tomasi faces in addressing libertarians is his use of the term “social justice.” He wants to persuade libertarians that a just society is one whose basic structure contains strong protections for individual liberty—including economic liberty—and whose institutions are designed to “maximize the holdings of the least well-off citizens” to the extent that doing so is consistent with respect for this liberty. That is, he wants to convince libertarians to sign on to a corrected version of Rawls’ theory of justice. This is a proposition libertarians could and should consider. But instead of stating the proposition directly, Tomasi insists upon describing himself as presenting an argument for social justice.
This is a major impediment to effective communication. Although he uses the term “social justice” to refer to the philosophical standard by which the basic structure of society should be evaluated, the term is guaranteed to be misinterpreted by libertarians (and others) as referring to the type of redistributive social policies that were excoriated by Hayek. As a result, he is forced to spend an entire chapter of his book—Chapter 5: “Social Justicitis”—attempting to distinguish social justice as political philosophy from social justice as public policy, something that he does with only limited effectiveness.
Not all the flaws in Tomasi’s attempt to break the ice around the libertarian camp are semantic, however. Libertarians will, of course, sign on to the importance of economic liberty, but Tomasi wants to persuade them to accept what he calls the distributional adequacy condition as well. This condition requires that “a defense of any version of liberalism is adequate only if it includes the claim that the institutions being endorsed are deemed likely to bring about some desired distribution of material and social goods” (p. 126, emphasis added), or more specifically that “institutional regimes should be evaluated in terms of how those systems are expected to affect the interests of the working poor” (p. 141). Try as I might, however, I am unable to find an argument leading to this conclusion in Free Market Fairness.
In lieu of such an argument, Tomasi reviews the work of all leading libertarian and classical liberal thinkers to show that they either explicitly or implicitly recognize that the material condition of the poor is an important consideration (pp. 127–42). Indeed, he establishes that virtually all of them regard the material condition of the poorest to be a morally relevant factor in evaluating a political regime. However, showing that the material condition of the poorest is a morally relevant factor does not show that it is the essential determinative factor. It does not show that “social justice [is] the ultimate standard of political evaluation” (p. xv).
Tomasi also supplies a careful and quite useful analysis of Hayek’s work to show that, despite his famous condemnation of the idea of social justice, Hayek’s thought is actually not incompatible with social justice correctly understood (pp. 142–61). But, once again, showing that Hayek’s thought is not incompatible with social justice does not show that social justice is the ultimate standard of political evaluation.
After reading Free Market Fairness, I remain skeptical that “maximizing the holdings of the least well-off citizens” (p. 193) is the ultimate purpose of a liberal political system. This is because I am convinced that the way the poor obtain their holdings is just as important—if not more important—than how great their holdings are.
This conviction is not necessarily based on reasoned argument and may simply be the residue of stories my uncle told me about life as an impoverished immigrant. These often concerned the rejection of charitable help from those outside the family’s fraternal society on the grounds that there was nothing shameful about being poor, that poverty was a condition to be overcome by one’s own cooperative efforts, and that what was shameful was asking outsiders for alms. The stories demonstrated that what made life meaningful for the poor—what made them capable of being “responsible self-authors”—was not merely how much material wealth they had, but how they got it.
I believe that many, if not most, libertarians would share my skepticism. To see why, consider the following three illustrative statements:
The first is Tomasi’s claim that “[t]he institutions of a free society must be justifiable to all classes of citizens, including the most poor. This requires that the basic political and economic structures be designed so as to ensure that all groups benefit” (p.172). I believe that it is clear that the second sentence does not follow from the first. It might, if the words “have the opportunity to” were inserted before the word “benefit,” but that would require a major revision to Tomasi’s thesis.
The second illustrative statement asserts that “[l]ibertarians and classical liberals … justify those economic freedoms in a way that makes them incapable of responding officially to the great ills that sometimes befall persons, or whole classes of persons, through no fault of their own” (p. 268). In many cases, libertarians and classical liberals do indeed oppose responding officially to ills that befall persons through no fault of their own. But the reasons for this have nothing to do with the way they justify the importance of economic freedom. The reasons for such opposition are usually that libertarians and classical liberals have read their Bastiat and understand the concept of pareto optimality. Bastiat instructs us to consider both the immediate (the seen) and the remote (the unseen) consequences of our decisions when deciding on a course of action. Libertarians take this to heart and resist official action to relieve the plight of those who can be seen if it would mean creating greater hardship for those who cannot be seen. Libertarians also understand that utopia is not the state of society in which all social ills have been cured, but one in which no additional ills can be cured without making things worse in some other respect. This suggests that our ability to identify unfortunate hardships does not imply that we should undertake official actions to relieve them.
Finally, Tomasi sums up the essence of his theory of social justice with the assertion that “[a]ccording to free market fairness, … a fair share is the largest possible bundle of real wealth that might be procured for (by!) the least fortunate, consistent with respecting the rights of other citizens” (p. 269). Whether the word “for” or “by” is used in this sentence is not a trivial matter for a parenthetical, but the difference between night and day. For reasons abstracted from my uncle’s stories, I would not support free market fairness when it contains the word “for” in its definition. I might if it contained the word “by.”
I suspect that many other libertarians will share my doubts on these points. Until Tomasi can provide a better argument to show why they are ill-founded, his ice breaker will fail to reach the libertarian shore. Hence, for now, libertarians are likely to remain encased in our icy resistance to Tomasi’s siren song of social justice.
