Daniel Chandler proposes John Rawls’s theory of justice as a vision for the Labour party (If Labour is to succeed it needs not just new policies, but a whole new philosophy, 14 April). It is a radical and noble vision, but strictly speaking, not socialist. Rawls’s theory is grounded in and a reworking of the “social contract” tradition in political theory.
That tradition constructs a thought experiment with, as its fundamental assumption, self-seeking individuals who bargain and agree on political (and in Rawls’s case social and economic) institutions in order to end the “war of all against all”. Rawls imagines this bargain taking place in an “original position” behind a “veil of ignorance”, designed to ensure that the bargain will be fair to all, and that no individual will be able to choose institutions that privilege himself or herself. To reiterate, his theory of justice as fairness is in its foundations an individualist theory.
But the socialist tradition, certainly in Britain, builds on diametrically opposite foundations. It assumes or seeks to create citizens oriented towards community, service and altruism. The term “socialism” emerges in the early 19th century and derives its meaning as the opposite of individualism.
Paradoxically, these visions, with opposite foundations, could cash out in similar policy proposals. For fairness to individuals is not incompatible with community, service and altruism. Chandler is right to argue that Labour needs a vision: but Labour’s roots lie in a conception and an ideal of human being quite different from Rawlsian liberal individualism.
Prof William Stafford
Leeds
• For Daniel Chandler, Labour’s search for a vision should be built around the pro-equality ideas of the late and influential philosopher John Rawls. It is certainly time that Labour reasserted the egalitarianism of its founders. The party’s commitment to equality was effectively abandoned by New Labour and has yet to be reinstated explicitly by Keir Starmer.
The case for greater equality can be traced to a range of pre-Rawlsian thinkers, from RH Tawney to the Nobel laureate James Meade. Meade argued that a greater share of national wealth should be held in common, with the gains from its use equally shared, and developed a workable plan for achieving this.
Labour flirted with Meade’s ideas when in opposition in the 1970s, but dropped them when in office. Since then, successive governments have allowed the distribution of personal wealth – much more unequal than that of incomes – to return towards the towering levels of concentration of the past, causing immense economic and social damage. Adopting Meade’s perfectly practical ideas would offer a powerful route to a more progressive, fair and economically robust society.
Stewart Lansley
Author, The Richer, The Poorer
• Huge thanks to Daniel Chandler for his refreshing piece identifying the fundamental problem with Keir Starmer’s leadership. I’m not alone in having become frustrated and dismayed at Starmer’s lack of breadth and depth; as Chandler puts it: “Starmer has struggled to set out a vision that could bring these currently rather disparate policy ideas into a coherent whole.”
Chandler writes that rather than being swept away by the idealism of Rawls, his ideas could help formulate that vision. Absolutely: they are urgently needed as an integral part of all of Labour’s statements and speeches “reminding each one of us that a better, fairer world is possible”, in the final words of Chandler’s piece.
Janet Pressley
Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex
• I suggest that Daniel Chandler’s critique that Labour needs a vision should be matched with Prof Peter Hennessy’s recent book A Duty of Care, which divides British history before and after Covid. He identifies five key fields which are virtual principles for a government, a variation on Beveridge’s five giants. While Keir Starmer’s four missions are indisputable, the concept of a “duty of care” provides a moral compass to all that a Labour government will need.
Simon Clements
Sheffield
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