By • 7/30/09
My Prologue to a Political Philosophy article raised a fundamental question for the pro-white movement: whether to accept or reject what I called “consensus Western political principles”—mass democracy, respect for rights, and non-discrimination by race, religion, and so forth. Before we can answer this question, we must understand the logic behind these principles. Why do people believe that it is wrong to violate human rights, to discriminate on the basis of race, or to limit the vote to a certain segment of the population?
If you ask these questions of American political scientists and philosophers, they will likely base their answers on the work of John Rawls. This Harvard professor, who died in 2002, is considered by many to have been the greatest moral and political philosopher of the 20th century, particularly for his 1971 book A Theory of Justice, which is still central to philosophical discussions of justice. Despite my profound disagreements with Rawls, I consider his reputation substantially justified. His magnum opus is a masterpiece of logical thinking that has immensely enriched and clarified my own understanding of politics and morality.
Rawls represents a natural starting point in our exploration of political philosophy because he provides the strongest rationale for consensus principles that I am aware of. Moreover, Rawls seems to have captured commonsensical notions of justice; after all, Westerners do their best to build societies on Rawlsian lines, whether they have read him or not. Liberal democracies with welfare systems and other institutions designed to reduce inequalities are precisely what Rawls recommended. Finally, careful and systematic philosopher that he is, Rawls gives a detailed account of the premises on which his philosophy is based. My criticisms of Rawls will focus on these premises. This article, however, will deal entirely with the merits of Rawls’ philosophy, for we must appreciate these before going further.
Rawls clarifies the rationale not only for consensus principles, but also for the version of these principles we call “liberalism.” Liberalism is a notoriously tricky word that means many different things in different contexts. Here it is used in the colloquial American sense of the term, which fits Rawls quite well. In the United States, a “liberal” is someone who believes in the reduction of inequalities of all sorts and in the legitimacy of government intervention to achieve this goal. Because of their egalitarianism, liberals adopt leukophobic attitudes towards whites, who are judged to enjoy an unjustified privileged status. Liberals reject with outrage claims that there are innate racial differences in intelligence and other characteristics, as such differences tend to justify racial inequalities. While Rawls does not explicitly endorse all of these views, his philosophy is nevertheless very egalitarian in spirit and naturally leads to a liberal outlook.
I doubt anyone who reads this site feels much sympathy for liberals, and for good reason. After all, liberals’ blindness to racial differences results in manifestly unfair and destructive policies, as well as the demonization of whites. However, in our contempt for liberals, we often fail to understand the rationale for their worldview. Rawls reveals that there is a profound logic behind liberalism, which I had never appreciated before I read him. If we are to criticize liberalism effectively, we must understand the logic that makes it attractive. Also, to the extent that liberalism is philosophically justifiable, we should seek to include it in our own pro-white political philosophy.
Rawls begins with the reasonable premise that there are “primary social goods”—rights, liberties, opportunities, wealth, and self-respect—that are desired by every rational person.1 Every individual wants the maximum sum of these goods, and thus their interests are in conflict. How these goods are allocated depends on the social order—rights and wealth will be allocated to people differently in a monarchy than in a democracy, for example. A theory of justice is a theory of the fair allocation of primary social goods.
Of course, concepts of what is fair differ markedly from person to person—for example, some consider affirmative action fair because it compensates for historical oppression, and others consider it unfair because it gives some unmerited privileges over others. How are we to define what fair principles are? To answer this question, Rawls invents a version of the social contract, a venerable tool of political philosophy that is also used by Locke, Rousseau, and Kant. Social contract theories are philosophical fictions in which people debate the conditions under which they would agree to live together in a society. Essentially, a social contract theory is a way of imagining what society we would create if we were to design one from scratch. Of course, no one believes that such a contract has ever taken place; rather, social contract theories are fictions that facilitate reasoning about the nature of politics.
Rawls believes that fair principles for the distribution of primary social goods are those that would be chosen by people who were impartial towards any particular interest. However, it is unlikely that real, living people would be able to make truly disinterested decisions, as our interests shape our reasoning and perceptions. In order to explain what decisions people would reach if they were unencumbered by interests, Rawls uses the famous thought experiment of the “Original Position.” In the Original Position, a number of people in a given society are brought together to agree on fair principles. However, these parties to the social contract must choose their principles from behind what Rawls calls the “veil of ignorance.” The parties are deprived of all knowledge of their own identity and of the particular nature of their society. Thus the parties must formulate the principles without knowing what their actual race, sex, social status, or any other quality is. They also do not know whether their society is a wealthy or a poor one, racially homogeneous or heterogeneous, and so forth. In this way, the Original Position “[nullifies] the effects of specific contingencies which put men at odds and tempt them to exploit social and natural circumstances to their own advantage.”2 All of the parties to the contract have equal status in these negotiations, and they must agree unanimously on principles. Though they have no notion of the particular facts of their society, they do know the characteristics of societies in general as these have been ascertained by the human sciences.3
What principles would it be rational for the contracting parties in the Original Position to agree to? Rawls assumes that the parties will want to get the maximum sum of the primary social goods. However, since they must all agree on principles, it is unreasonable for any one of them to expect that he be privileged in any way. Consequently, the first principle that the parties will agree to is the principle of equal basic liberties: everyone must be given the most extensive scheme of basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme for everyone else. Rawls lists as basic liberties freedom of thought, freedom of the person (freedom from physical assault and dismemberment), the right to hold personal property, and freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizure. The parties will also desire equal rights to participation in the society’s political process, and therefore the liberties that make this participation possible: freedom of speech and assembly and the right to vote and hold office.4
The distribution of wealth and income requires a different logic. One might think that the contracting parties would agree to equality of wealth just as they agreed to equal liberties. However, it is clear that some forms of economic inequality benefit everyone.5 Thus, the prospect of gaining great wealth may motivate an inventor to create a new technology that benefits society as a whole. In an economically egalitarian society, in which the inventor had no prospect of gaining great wealth, he would have less incentive to create the new technology, and the society would suffer.
Consequently, Rawls reasons that the parties would agree to accept the inequality in wealth that comes with a free market economic system, but with some restrictions. An economically unequal society tends to lead to social stratification, in which the wealthiest enjoy enormous advantages in opportunity and influence that work against the interests of the least advantaged, that is, those people who are born both without wealth and power and without the natural endowments necessary to attain them. Rawls reasonably assumes that the parties, in recognition of the fact that they could be among the least advantaged themselves, would want to make sure that this class of people has reasonable prospects for happiness. So the second principle that the parties agree to is that economic inequality is legitimate only if it works to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged class in society and if offices bringing high income are equally available to all people.6 Rawls names the two components of the second principle “the difference principle” and “the principle of fair equality of opportunity.”
What would the second principle mean in practice? Rawls envisions a free market system that sets the price of wages supplemented by various programs to increase equality, whether through direct payments to the needy or through an income supplement, whereby the government would add to the wages of low-wage workers. The government would ensure equal access to education through subsidies of schools. Equal access to desirable jobs would be enforced by government policing of the hiring practices of firms and private associations. The goal of taxation policy would be to bring about the greatest equality of income possible without seriously compromising the efficiency of the free market.7
Rawls argues that there are two lines of support for his theory of justice. The first is the deductive line of reasoning that I have laid out so far, in which the principles of justice are deduced from assumptions about human nature and reasoning about the decisions the contracting parties would make in the Original Position. However, Rawls also believes that his theory is valid because it clarifies our intuitive sense of justice. Indeed, Rawls seems even to think that his concept of justice is universally present in man in a confused form and that he is merely clarifying it. He compares his work to that of Noam Chomsky: just as Chomskian linguistics aims to tease out the deep linguistic structure that generates grammar, so Rawls is defining the deep principles of justice embedded in the human mind.8
One of the merits of Rawls’ theory is that it does indeed make sense of many commonsensical moral judgments. From the perspective of the Original Position, it is clear why most Americans consider the racial discrimination immoral, for example. Since the parties to the social contract do not know anything about their real-world identity, they will not choose a racially discriminatory society because it is possible that they themselves are members of the subordinate race. As Rawls says,
From the standpoint of persons similarly situated in an initial situation which is fair [i.e., the Original Position], the principles of explicit racial doctrines are not only unjust. They are irrational. For this reason we could say that they are not moral conceptions at all, but simply means of suppression.9
Though Rawls never devoted detailed attention to matters of race, his principles nevertheless clarify liberal positions on racial issues. Affirmative action is straightforwardly justified by the principle that society ought to be arranged so as to bring the greatest benefit to the least advantaged. The motives for liberal race denial also become clear. Liberals feel obligated to reduce inequalities in wealth and power. They discredit and suppress scientific research proving natural racial differences in intelligence and morality because this research inevitably tends to justify racial inequalities and reduce the zeal to close them. Moreover, if one believes society should be arranged so as to benefit the least advantaged, it is natural to want to shield the members of this class from truths that would demoralize and wound them.
There will be plenty of criticism of Rawls coming in future articles, but first we should understand his theory’s merits as a political philosophy. The first merit, that the theory clarifies intuitive moral judgments, has already been dealt with.
Rawls’ principles also have the merit of being impartial towards any particular interest. This does not mean that people in a Rawlsian society would be treated equally, as the least advantaged would be treated more favorably than others. Rather, Rawlsian justice is based on principles that impartial people would agree to. Such impartiality means that the principles are fair, and, if Rawls’ reasoning is correct, any deviation from them can be legitimately characterized as unfair.
Rawls’ principles have the virtue of being freely chosen—the parties to the social contract freely choose these principles over others in the Original Position. It can be plausibly argued that other principles for organizing a society are illegitimate because people would not have chosen them freely had they been given the choice.
A common criticism of leftist philosophies like Rawls’ is that they are based on the utopian assumption that man is a naturally altruistic creature whose current egoism is merely the result of unjust social conditions. Does Rawls’ make utopian assumptions about the extent of human altruism? I shall argue in the future that he does; however, we should give Rawls credit for the elements of realism that are present in his philosophy. Rawls’ description of the reasoning of the contracting parties is far from utopian. The principles that they agree to are founded in enlightened self-interest in that they represent the best compromise among self-interested individuals. Moreover, Rawls recognizes that the citizens will behave in self-interested ways even in a just society—he criticizes other leftists for their utopian vision of a society from which self-interest has vanished.10 It is for this reason that Rawls supports a free market economy, though a constrained one.
Rawls’ principles reflect enlightened self-interest in another way as well. The Rawlsian social contract requires that the most favored individuals transfer much of their wealth to the least advantaged. However, this sacrifice entitles the most favored to a guarantee that their own interests, and those of their progeny, will be looked out for if they fall from grace. Thus, Rawlsian principles compensate the present sacrifice of favored individuals with long-term advantages.
While I cannot do justice to Rawls’ detailed argumentation in favor of his theory, I can say I find it plausible that the parties to the social contract would arrive at principles at least approximately similar to Rawls’. Certainly, the reasoning that leads to the principles of equal basic liberties and fair equality of opportunity is straightforward. The difference principle, which dictates the fair distribution of wealth, is much more open to doubt; however, it seems reasonably certain that the parties would agree to some principle that attempted to reconcile equality of wealth with the benefits of the free market system.
The final merit of Rawls’ theory is that a society based on his principles, if it could ever be put into effect, would likely be a very happy one. By acknowledging each other’s rights and providing for the least advantaged, citizens in a Rawlsian society demonstrate their respect for each other’s well-being. Rawlsian citizens would be likely to enjoy a high level of self-respect, the most important of all the primary social goods, since this emotion is founded on the respect of others.11 A Rawlsian society would be characterized by a spirit of fraternity, or a family atmosphere of mutual concern.12 Such a society would not be one of winners and losers, but a true community in which no one could win unless all the others did too.
The racial right finds liberalism so obviously destructive and unfair that we tend to imagine that liberals have immoral motives for their beliefs. For many racial right writers, such suspicions extend even to non-liberal advocates of consensus Western political principles. In the worst cases, like Kevin MacDonald, we are treated to a horrific narrative of “ethnic warfare”13 in which a power-hungry Jewish elite, intent on “destroying” white Gentiles, coerces them into accepting non-discrimination by race, minority preferences, and mass non-white immigration. While I have eschewed MacDonald’s anti-Semitism and incendiary language, I have also taken a very black view my opponents’ motives. Many is the article in which I have railed against the liberal elites and their “diversity snobbery.”
This paranoid interpretation of our political reality needs to be abandoned. A Theory of Justice lays bare the moral rationale for consensus Western political principles and their liberal variant. While it would be naive to suppose that motives like lust for power and snobbery play no role in the genesis of liberalism, it is both slanderous and unproductive to assume that these are liberals’ sole motives. Nor is it reasonable to believe that Americans have accepted a non-discriminatory society because they are cowards and dupes who have been swindled by malevolent elites. White Americans chose the politicians who legislated our current policies on race in free and fair elections. It is to hard to see how politicians whom voters perceived as hostile to their interests would ever get elected. Rather, it is much more likely that Americans were rationally persuaded of the morality of non-discrimination.
Doing justice to liberalism does not mean accepting it, but criticizing it in the right way. Future articles on White America will explain why the idealistic dreams of liberals risk making the world into a nightmare when they are put into practice. Ultimately, we will emerge with a conception of justice that is far sterner than Rawls’.