Liberalism has traditionally been assumed to defend and support the welfare state. Yet comparing the principles of the welfare state and Rawl’s difference principle, liberalism may appear more inclined towards egalitarianism than the welfare state.
Liberalism and the welfare state have a difficult relationship. After World War 2 the values underlying liberal ideologies supported the emerging liberal-democratic model, and therefore also the welfare state that developed alongside it. The publication of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice in 1971 cemented this view. It came as a surprise, then, that in his later works Rawls explicitly sought to distance himself from the welfare state, as he believed that it was not sufficiently egalitarian to satisfy his principles of justice, which emphasise equality of opportunity and improving the situation of the worst-off group in society in addition to the welfare state’s emphasis on social equality.
Liberal ideals are therefore in principle more egalitarian than the welfare state. At the same time, the ideals underlying the welfare, such as the notion of citizenship and how certain inequalities may benefit the worst off the most, can still be found in liberalism. Yet these elements also stand in tension.
Two main implications follow from my analysis. First, the welfare state struggles with realizing the egalitarian ideals of liberalism. Second, liberalism is still tied to the thinking underlying the welfare state and makes it difficult to realize their ideals of egalitarian justice. To realise their egalitarian ideals, it is necessary for liberals to move beyond the welfare state.
The Welfare State
The welfare state is often characterised as an institutional response to the social and economic inequalities caused by industrial capitalism by which the state takes responsibility for providing every citizen with basic services such as health care, education and pensions. It presupposes recognition that all citizens (should) enjoy the same set of civil, political and social rights to ensure social equality.
Furthermore, the welfare state is meant to be reciprocal and relies on citizens receiving the services for their contributions to the economy and society. Thus, the welfare state is mutually advantageous, which explains why it is a relatively stable political institution. The welfare state is efficient in creating this two-way relationship, and serves the interests of a large proportion of the population in most Western democracies. An important consequence of the mutual advantage element is that mutual advantage turns social conflict away from confrontation and towards cooperation.
Most importantly, the welfare state was developed to reverse some of the gravest inequalities caused by industrial capitalism, and is not concerned with egalitarian concerns. This means that large economic inequalities can be accepted by the welfare state if social equality is maintained. This observation leads us to question whether liberalism supports the welfare state.
The difference principle
For liberals such as Rawls, the welfare state’s notion of social equality is a necessary but not sufficient condition to create justice. Social equality, according to Rawls, must be supported by some kind of economic equality to fulfil the ontological requirements of justice.
There are two important differences between the welfare state and liberalism. First, Rawlsian liberalism aims for widespread ownership of capital and land. Second, Rawls is not merely concerned with the social inequalities caused by industrial capitalism but also with mitigating the inequalities caused by bad luck in the distribution of skills and talents. Both aspects reach well beyond the scope of the welfare state and its focus on social inequalities.
However, the so-called ‘difference principle’ in Rawls’s theory remains close to the principles of the welfare state. The difference principle permits inequalities that make the most disadvantaged group better off than it would be with strict equality, if the worst-off group benefits the most from these inequalities. One example of how this logic plays out: it may make sense to pay
The difference principle resembles the logic that structures the welfare state in two ways. First, by accepting economic inequalities if there is social equality and the economic inequalities will improve the prospects of the worst-off group more than strict equality. Secondly, the difference principle relies on the same ‘mutual advantage’-thinking that is characteristic of the welfare state. The question then is whether it is still possible for Rawls to dissociate from the welfare state. I will tackle this in the following section.
Universal Citizenship and Liberalism
Let us now examine the ideal of universal citizenship contrasting it with the difference principle and the welfare state trade-off between social and economic equality.
Both the welfare state and Rawls’s liberalism rely on an ideal of universal citizenship, which means that all citizens enjoy the same set of rights and obligations. This view of citizenship has been criticised because it leads to a notion of social equality where a majority group enjoys a culturally and socially dominant role, and possibly alienates and marginalizes minority groups from participating fully as active members of society, which may in turn lead to economic inequality.
For example, one could argue that economic arrangements more accommodating to able-bodied males would improve the well-being of the most disadvantaged group because this arrangement would increase society’s productivity and efficiency. Women, old people, and (possibly) ethnic minorities would benefit from these inequalities because they would receive more social primary goods than without the inequalities. Providing able-bodied males with incentives that enable them to contribute to economic growth that can be redistributed is in line with the difference principle because the worst-off group may, in such scenario, come out better-off than before. This outcome underlines the reciprocal and mutual advantage elements underlying the idea of universal citizenship found in both Rawls’s liberalism and the welfare state.
The crucial point here is that the difference principle could normatively justify economic inequalities if the worst-off group’s situation is improved by the differences, even if those differences also improve the better-off group too.
The issue of universal citizenship exemplifies how the welfare state and liberalism promote some of the same ideals. Yet it also shows us the limits of that parallel, because its implications run counter to the egalitarian commitment of liberalism. This makes it more difficult for liberals such as Rawls to dissociate completely from the welfare state, but also to completely align with it.
Conclusions
One of the main differences between the welfare state and liberalism is that liberalism is more egalitarian than the welfare state. Schemes such as the commitment to equality of opportunity and widespread ownership of capital are examples of the egalitarian ideals of Rawlsian liberalism. In contrast, the difference principle pulls Rawlsian liberalism toward the welfare state and makes a liberal dissociation from the welfare state difficult.
Two implications follow from this. First, liberals have commonly defended the welfare state and considered it, despite its weaknesses, as an important means for realizing justice in the real world. The welfare state can, of course, be defended for such pragmatic reasons. However, such a pragmatic defence of the welfare state runs the risk of diluting the commitment to equality because it conceals, for instance, the relationship between capitalism and the welfare state.
Second, I believe that the difficulties Rawlsian liberalism experiences in dissociating from the welfare state should urge liberals to move beyond a Rawlsian framework and re-evaluate the institutional implications of their theories if they are serious about realizing their principles of justice.
This article summarizes the main findings of the paper “Liberalism’s difficult relationship with the Welfare State” published on the Erasmus Journal of Philosophy and Economics
Header photo by Markus Winkler - Unsplash