The Nature of Political Theory

126 The Nature of Political Theory

primary goods like self-respect, rights, liberties, opportunities, powers, income, and
natural primary good health and intelligence. Parties would try, as far as possible,
to maximize their primary goods as part of a rational plan. These thin goods are
assumed to be desired by everyone and are distinct from any ‘thick’ substantial goods,
which every person has, but which are more or less incommensurable in a pluralistic
society. Rawls suggests that agreement can however be gained, even in a pluralistic
setting, on a thin conception of goods. The goods that all individuals require can be
derived from a model (which despite being premised on self-interest), nonetheless is
supposed to model ideal moral choice.^17 This initial position thus attempts to account
for our basic deep underlying sense of justice.
Rawls suggests that there would be certain constraints on our choices in this
original situation (see Rawls 1971: 122–6, 131–6). Any principles chosen would have
to be general (embodying no particular interests embodied), universal in application
(thus holding for all moral persons), public (i.e. known by all and embodying no
private administrative rules). They must also have a standard of ordering for conflict-
ing claims between individuals. They must also be the final court of appeal in any
practical reasoning. The precise choice procedure that Rawls adopts is the ‘maximin
principle’ or maximum minimorum, namely, ‘we rank alternatives by their worst
possible outcomes: we adopt the alternative the worst outcome of which is superior
to the worst outcomes of the others’ (Rawls 1971: 152–3). Individuals in Rawls’ view
would naturally tend to be risk averse.
Rawls suggests that a general sense of justice derives from the maximin principle,
namely that liberty, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect would be dis-
tributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any or all of these goods is to the
advantage of the least favoured. This general notion can be broken down into two
basic principles, which affirm equal rights to equal basic liberties for all and second,
the difference principle, which affirms (in a more complex format) that social and eco-
nomic inequalities will be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged and attached
to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportun-
ity. Both principles of justice apparently match our intuitive sense of what justice
is. There is also a lexical ordering of these principles (Rawls 1971: 243). The first
principle is rationally and intuitively prior. Liberty can only be restricted for the sake
of liberty. Thus, Rawls comments, ‘the desire for liberty is the chief regulative interest
that the parties must suppose they all will have in common in due course. The veil
of ignorance forces them to abstract from the particulars of their plans of life thereby
leading to this conclusion’ (Rawls 1971: 543). Distribution, in this context, for Rawls
would be neutral with regard to the good. Individuals would contract to a society and
principles of distributive justice by their own reason and judgement. The actual basic
goods to be distributed would also be agreed by all. Overall, Rawls’ argument is the
most sophisticated defence of a social liberal polity during the twentieth century.
The most committed supporter of Rawls’ earlier theory has undoubtedly been
Brian Barry. For Barry, apart from a few articles after the publication of Rawls’Theory
of Justice, ‘everything [from Rawls] since then has tended to weaken the theory’
(Barry 1995: xii).^18 Barry thus continues to believe in the ‘possibility of putting