A Critique of Rawls: The Unknowable Social Order
In A Theory of Justice,
John Rawls elucidates a theory of justice that holds two basic
principles of justice: 1. each individual is to have equal liberties
in a scheme that enables the greatest amount of liberty without
encroaching on those of others, and 2. social, and economic
advantages are to be organized to the advantage of everyone while
being open to the acceptance of all. With these two principles,
society could be organized in such a manner that is, in Rawl's view,
conductive to the equal liberty of each citizen. However, his entire
theory is erroneous in the respect that it speaks of planning society
according to certain rights as if certain conditions can be imposed
upon the social order of the status quo without dangerous
consequences – his most critical error lies in the fact that the
optimal organization of society is inherently unknowable,
so any attempts to mold society according the the whims of
individuals is an erroneous policy.
In the article:
“The Use of Knowledge in Society”, the economist, and political
theorist F.A. Hayek elucidates the impossibility of economic, and
social planning on account of the fact that the social engineer
simply does not have enough knowledge to go about this task. Speaking
on the topic of knowledge, the article reads:
Today it is almost
heresy to suggest that scientific knowledge is not the sum of all
knowledge. But a little reflection will show that there is beyond
question a body of very important but unorganized knowledge which
cannot possibly be called scientific in the sense of knowledge of
general rules: the knowledge of the particular circumstances of time
and place. It is with respect to this that practically every
individual has some advantage over all others because he possesses
unique information of which beneficial use might be made, but of
which use can be made only if the decisions depending on it are left
to him or are made with his active coöperation.
Without a doubt, a direct conclusion of
this would be that any attempt to impose social, or economic order
upon society would fail because of the fact that the planners
involved would simply not have the knowledge to sufficiently design a
social order. Instead, it is the individual who knows what is in his
best interests, and how to pursue them – any attempt to declare any
distribution as “just” is erroneous due to the fact that it
presupposes the possible knowledge of what is the optimal
distribution. On the contrary, the optimal distribution can only be
the result of the free interactions of individuals who have the
knowledge necessary to make the best decisions possible. Any attempt
to plan a top-down order is doomed to result in a sub-optimal
distribution because the social engineers at the top will not have
the necessary knowledge to go about his task.
The decentralized nature of knowledge
in society, and the resulting impossibility of planning a social
order dooms any distributive theory of justice at best practically
impossible, at worst practically disastrous, and the theory of Rawls
is no exception. The social order the enables the arrangement of
economic, and social advantages, and disadvantages so that they are
to the benefit of all is inherently unknowable; hence, it is a
intractable criterion on justice, a platonic form that has little
utility to the empirical world.