>
>That's a contradiction in terms, a Marxist conception of rights. At least
>Marx would have thought so.
>
>jks
>
>
>^^^^^^^
>
>CB: I think you mean you think Marx would have thought so. How about some
>support for your claim ?
>
>Marx said for socialism , from each according to ability , to each
>according to work. The second phrase is a right principle. Doug often
>refers to Marx's famous essay on the right to freedom of speech.
>
Note that in the CGP, the princple you quote comes after a critique of the very notion of "Recht" (justice), as a "right of inequality," which Marx regards, literally, as a contradiction in terms, the right to equal remuneration for equal work is "a right of inequality in its content, like every right," becu=ause it ignores relevant differences among individuals. It therefore fails to treat like cases alike. Marx thinks that at a very deep level there are no like cases, no similarly situated persons, wo the notion of right must always fail. That is why he does not phrase the needs principle as a principle of right. In the higher phase of communsim, he introduces the principles, "the narrow horizins of bourgeouis right [can] be crossed" and we can write, From each . . . To each. But he does nor call this a principle of right, or say there is a right to what you need. Below I appenda discussion from a published paper on Rawls and equal opportunity.
As for the early essay on freedom of speech in the DFJ, that is clearly a pre-historical materialist, Young-Hegelian essay. Marx believed in free speech--no doubt for fascists and racists too!--but not as a "right," not after 1845.
We covered a lot of this ground in a debate on Marx and equality about a year ago, you can look it up in the archives. I pointed out thatr Marx is no egalitarisn, for similar reasosn to those indicated here.
jks
>From "Rights of Inequality: Rawlsian Justice, Equal Opportunity,a nd the
Family," Legal Theory 2001:
My suggestion is that the antinomy into which Rawls’ fair equal opportunity falls is an instance of a problem that Marx located in a famous if cryptic comment. For Marx, the notion of “equal right” fails on its own terms because any such right is “a right of inequality” (1989: 86). Any principle of justice whatsoever requires treating like cases alike (“the application of an equal standard” (ibid.)), but in doing so necessarily ignores the fact that there really are no like cases. Justice as such is therefore directly self-defeating (see Parfit 1984: 3). It treats as the same persons who are, by the standards of justice itself, dissimilarly situated. No principles of justice can avoid this by capturing all the differences that they themselves hold to be relevant. Criticizing the principle that labor should be remunerated according to its contribution, Marx said this “tacitly recognizes the unequal endowment and thus productive capacities of the workers as natural privileges.” It treats “unequal individuals” as equal “one-sidedly,” merely as workers, and ignores relevant differences among them, such as need (ibid.: 86-87).
Marx therefore rejected, at least implicitly, the fundamental conception of fairness, that the arbitrariness of the world must be corrected for. Any conception of justice must inconsistently allow for arbitrariness on its own terms. So Marx did not seek refuge from arbitrariness in an original position or even advocate its correction in the real world. He rather accepted contingencies of the appropriate sort as relevant bases for distribution of goods. “To avoid all these defects, right would have to be unequal rather than equal” (ibid.: 87). Right cannot do this, however, so for Marx the correct distributional principles were not principles of right. Marx identified justice with the fundamental conception. He thought that rejecting the latter meant rejecting the former. His thesis was that any claim of equal right must fail on its own terms, those of “right” or justice, not that it would be unjust by his standards, which were not those of justice.
This is doubtful as a critique of justice in general. As Wood says, “[w]hether any system of rights could be devised that does not give unequal results seems to be a factual question” (1986: 293), but that is not the issue here. My point is that Marx captured fairly precisely what is at the root of Rawls’ particular dilemma. Marx’s idea explains the antinomy between the family and the ideal of a well-ordered society governed by the two principles of justice. Fair equality of opportunity is a “right of inequality.” The relevantly like cases are persons with like natural assets. This “one-sidedly” neglects their differentially developed cognitive and motivational capacities (see Marx 1989: 86). It “considers them only from a certain side” (ibid.), merely as similarly-abled. The differences due to the family are ignored. Persons with equal natural capacities should have equal opportunities, but because of the social lottery they do not have them. Their natural capacities, moreover, are arbitrary in what is, according to the fundamental conception of fairness, a morally irrelevant way. This is why Rawls struggles unsuccessfully to explain how democratic equality makes up for this arbitrariness by appeal to the difference principle. Moreover, even if the difficulties due to the social lottery could be surmounted, the natural lottery would remain. To define fair equality of opportunity as a way of permitting the full realization of natural talents unhampered by social circumstance (301/265) is to concede this in the most strict and literal sense. It is to “tacitly recognize . . . unequal endowment[s] . . . as natural privileges” (Marx 1989: 86).
In the end, Rawls concedes what Marx asserted, that justice cannot be realized, or, as Rawls puts it, can only be realized “imperfectly” (74/64), at least as long as the family exists. Rawls is reduced to stipulating that a system that satisfies the two principles, including the inadequate principle of fair equality of opportunity, is just by definition. “One is to hold that [inequalities of opportunity] are not unjust . . . ” (302/265, emphasis added). Marx’s critique may not be effective as to justice in general, but it applies to Rawls’ theory of justice.
_________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx