Note: This is a piece far too small to pay proper homage to the depth of the works considered and the ideas discussed. I hope to merely lay down an outline with the thought of turning this into a longer piece later on.
Introduction
The complexities of identity and identity formation are seemingly endless. Many of us go through our lives with a general sense of who we are, which groups (religious, race, class, gender, sexuality, etc) we belong to, and what possibilities or restrictions we are allotted in the United States given pre-existing discriminatory practices related to race, gender, class, sexuality and a multiplicity of other ‘definers’. There are those that are conscious of such allotments given their restrictions from particular areas of society or the realm of the ‘possible’ and there are those that are not conscious of their identities because quite plainly, they do not need to be in order to be successful or renowned in this country. John Rawls, in writing of the abstract individual in a Theory of Justice (1971), reveals himself to be a man lacking in racial and class awareness. In fact, it will be my argument that only an upper class, white male would be able to speak as Rawls does of abstract individualism through his conceptions of the original position, the veil of ignorance, the liberty principle and the difference principle.
Within A Theory of Justice by John Rawls, we are presented with an argument for an egalitarian, liberal sense of distributive justice with the concept of abstract individualism as its foundation. Rawls’ work has been considered by many as one of the most influential works of political philosophy to be published within the last century. Adrian Vermeule argues that the Federal Constitution of the U.S. itself contains a number of rules that are usefully analyzed today in light of the veil of ignorance rules: “provisions, structures, and practices as diverse as the Ex Post Facto and Bill of Attainder Clauses, the Emoluments Clause, the Twenty-Seventh Amendment, Article V’s procedures for constitutional amendment, the doctrine of precedent, and the original mechanism for selecting senators, and the rules governing presidential election and succession”[1]. Within his work, Rawls attempts to find a means to a stable, just society through employing Western liberal egalitarianism. Within this paper, my intent is four-fold: firstly, I will provide a brief biography of John Rawls. Secondly, I will offer a brief introduction to the Enlightenment/liberal ideals that Rawls’ ideas clearly descend from so that we know whose work we are analyzing. Thirdly, I will define and outline John Rawls’ concept of the original position and the veil of ignorance as well as the liberty and difference principle as found within A Theory of Justice. Fourthly, I will present a Marxian class-critique of Rawls’ ideas. And lastly, I will respond via whiteness studies to the concept of abstract individualism. My overall hope is to show that it is the case that only a person with the racial and class privilege such as John Rawls would be able or willing to present an egalitarian concept of justice based on abstract individualism as seen through his use of hypotheticals. And while it will be recognized that Rawls does pay heed to the worse-off in the difference principle, the argument will be made that this brings up pressing questions related to legitimacy (i.e. Can individuals not belonging to a particular group legitimately speak for such a group or is to do so an entertainment of a neo-colonial silencing of the subaltern?).
This is by no means a finished work. This paper is a work on identity, identity formation and the privilege not to see identity at all. It is a paper about hidden power structures, unconscious privilege relation, and the violent act of writing as owning ideas as well as the means to distribute one’s ideas through highly greased channels of historical and racialized power and privilege.
First and foremost, this paper is an interrogative paper and as such, asks questions while offering few answers. It is the nature of identity and identity formation, critical race theory, and psychoanalytic investigations to ask pressing questions, give (hopefully) insightful comments, and bring forth perhaps more questions than answers in an attempt to lead the discussions related to race and privilege towards new formations of speaking and conceptualizing this very complicated topic. As a white male just having recently entered the field of critical race theory (realizing that I have been taking part in such race issues for the entirety of my life, albeit unconsciously) I at times feel like I am stabbing in the dark at an ever-changing amorphous set of ideas and identities but more importantly, attempting to formulate a consciousness of race and privilege as it occurs in my own life. It is the case that it is my privileged position via whiteness that has allowed me to spend a little more than 20 years living unconscious of race and privilege. I therefore find myself in the precarious position of attempting to write through the lense of critical race theory while simultaneously continuing to operate under the power-laden and privilege-stricken identity of whiteness. Before I continue and move on to the main part of the paper, I wish to define a few terms. Race, as amorphous a term as it may be, will in this paper be considered a fictive notion of identity-allegiance sometimes based on skin color, manners of speaking, hair or fashion. The term whiteness is a bit more complex. Noel Ignatiev defines whiteness as such: “The white race is a historically constructed social formation—historically constructed because (like royalty) it is a product of some people’s responses to historical circumstances; a social formation because it is a fact of society corresponding to no classification recognized by natural science”[2]. Abstract individualism concerns the nature of Rawls philosophical formulations as based upon an individual that does not exist in reality. As such, the individual that makes the decisions Rawls posits exists within Rawls’ mind. This is problematic considering that very seldom are humans able to keep themselves from creating images of abstract people in their own image (in this case, an upper-class, white male). In using this abstract individual as his main tool to reveal his concept of justice, many non-abstract individuals are left out of Rawls’ calculations concerning justice. With such terms loosely defined, a brief biography of John Rawls is in order.
Rawls As The Privileged White Looking Glass
Before we begin with Rawls’ thoughts, what of the man himself? Surely an argument can be made that a person’s thoughts, concepts, or views of the world around them are intimately tied to their upbringing, class and race. A brief biography of John Rawls would then behoove us[3].
John Rawls was born into a wealthy family in Baltimore, Maryland in 1921 (at this time an epicenter for port activity on the Eastern Seaboard before economic changes led to a massive white flight from the city center). He attended school for a short time in Baltimore but was quickly transferred to the renowned Episcopalian preparatory school in Connecticut called Kent. Kent is a prestigious boarding school boasting of the following school motto: simplicity of life, directness of purpose, and self-reliance. Tuition for grades 9-12 is currently $42,000 (around $45,000 with all additional fees) per academic year and has an average student to teacher ratio of 8:1[4]. These are of course 2008 figures but hardly ever is it the case that such a school would have been of less stature, cost and prestige when Rawls was attending in 1936. After graduating from Kent, Rawls attended Princeton University, obtaining a B.A. in philosophy. From 1943 to 1946, Rawls served as an infantryman where he toured New Guinea, the Philippines, and Japan during WWII. Upon exiting the army, Rawls retuned to Princeton, obtained his PhD in 1950 and from 1950 to his death in 2002, taught at a number of prestigious institutions: Oxford, Cornell, MIT, and Harvard University. John Rawls, it is important to note for my later arguments, came from a privileged background and circulated in and around prestigious and privilege-laden institutions within the US and England. In light of this upper class, white male’s upbringing, we will now move to an outline of the concept of the original position, the veil of ignorance, the liberty principle and the difference principle as found within A Theory of Justice.
Ties to the Enlightenment
John Rawls’ ideas are direct decedents from the Enlightenment period. As such, the problematic, institutionalized racial amnesia of the time period is inevitably included in his writings and thought.
As it is a key concept to the remaining portion of the piece, I wish to tie to historical thought movements the concept of the original position and the veil of ignorance before moving on to a number of critiques. From Rawls’ brief biography in the beginning of the paper, it is quite clear that he, for the majority of his life, studied or taught within traditionally ‘liberal’[5] educational institutions with conceptual traditions stretching back to the European Enlightenment circa late 17th and 18th centuries which emphasized reason and individualism over tradition. As such, the original position can be likened to the conceptions of original human nature as proposed by a number of scholars, philosophers, and statesmen, most notably Jean-Jeaques Rousseau (Discourses on Inequality, 1774) and John Locke (Two Treatises of Government, 1689) (both of whom were responding largely to Thomas Hobbes’ conception of the original state of human nature as proposed within Leviathan, 1651). As stated earlier, Rawls’ original position is considered a purely hypothetical situation. Likewise, any and all proposals towards the ‘true’ original human nature as presented by Rousseau, Locke and Hobbes are taken to be completely hypothetical as well. This is extremely important to mention as such hypotheticals have had extreme influence on how future generations have not only viewed their own lives but more importantly, how governmental and social institutions have been formed, the very institutions which today we find ourselves operating within or against. The line between hypotheticals and enacted social contract theories as found within governmental institutions then becomes blurred. Is it possible to create hypotheticals without directly affecting the real-world? And if it is not possible (or not desirable to keep them separated) is a hypothetical not merely an ideologically-driven conception of the world created in the hopes of altering the real-world? I will return to this at a later point in my critiques.
Under such humanistic liberalism, the primacy of the individual is paramount. Freedom, reason, rationalism, order, government consolidation, centralization, and primacy of the nation state, rights and most importantly for our purposes here, justice were all concepts being bandied about within the zeitgeist of the late 17th and 18th centuries throughout Europe (although it is nearly impossible to limit the development of ideas to such succinct periods of time, the Enlightenment being no exception).
“Enlightenment philosophy was instrumental in codifying and institutionalizing both the scientific and popular European perceptions of the human race. The numerous writings on race by Hume, Kant, and Hegel played a strong role in articulating Europe’s sense not only of its cultural but also racial superiority. In their writings…’reason’ and ‘civilization’ became synonymous with ‘white’ people and northern Europe, while unreason and savagery were conveniently located among the non-whites, the ‘black’, the ‘red’, the ‘yellow’, outside Europe”[6].
“This vocabulary belongs to, and reveals, a larger world of analytical categories that exists as a universe of discourse, an intellectual worldview, which, in turn, determines (by making possible and constraining at the same time) not only how studies are done, but also what are constituted as objects of scientific, philosophical, or cultural study”[7].
Original Position and Veil Defined
The original position and the veil of ignorance are couched of course within Rawls’ conceptions regarding the principled role of justice. He states, “Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truths of systems of thought,” and “denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others”[8]. In light of the pursuit of justice, Rawls hopes to show that free and rational persons (that are concerned with furthering their own interests) would accept an original position of equality as a means of defining the terms of their social contract. Once these terms have been agreed upon, other types of social cooperation can be entered into and forms of government can be established[9]. Rawls refers to this throughout his work as justice as fairness. The original position is one of a purely hypothetical nature, a mind game to lead us to ponder and reach a particular conception of justice. Explicitly, Rawls defines the original position as thus:
“…no one knows his [note gender] place in society, his class position or social status, nor does anyone know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength and the like. I shall even assume that the parties do not know their conceptions of the good or their special psychological propensities. The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance. This ensures that no one is advantaged or disadvantaged in the choice of principles by the outcome of natural chance or the contingency of social circumstances[10]”.
Liberty Principle and Difference Principle Defined
The liberty principle, the first of Rawls’ two principles of justice can be defined as such: “each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others”[11]. This principle is inclusive of many of the same ideals bandied about during the Enlightenment period in Europe and America: political liberty, liberty of conscience and freedom of thought, freedom of the person (psychological oppression, physical assault, and dismemberment), personal property, and freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizure as defined by the concept of the rule of law.
A second tenet to Rawlsian justice is the difference principle which states that inequalities in life prospects are only justifiable when allowing such inequalities would better the life prospects of those that are considered worse-off[12]. These decisions of justice are said to be made, in the Rawlsian hypothetical sphere of ideas, from the original position. Thus, from the original position, we are asked to allocate resources from behind the veil of ignorance as if we “did not know that actual distribution”[13]. Through such principles, Rawls attempts to “govern the assignment of rights and duties and regulate the distribution of social and economic advantages”[14]. The difference principle is the only time Rawls pays lip service to those that may not reap quite as many benefits as his race, gender, and class would form his justice as based on hypotheticals.
Before moving on, I wish to pose a few questions: is the original position and the veil of ignorance even possible? In other words, is it possible for a person (or a group of persons) to not know their place in society, their class or social status, their psychological propensities? If it is not possible, what good is derived from speaking in hypothetical platitudes? If the foundation for our discussions regarding justice are based on an impossible, unrealistic hypothetical, are not all arguments that follow built upon a shoddy foundation of an imaginative but unrealistic mind game? In fact, I will argue, it is not accidental that Rawls sets up his conceptions regarding justice as such. His manner in doing so is directly linked to the platitudinal nature of the Enlightenment as well as his class and racial privilege. I wish now to move on to a Marxist class critique of the original position, the veil of ignorance, the liberty principle as well as the difference principle.
The Red Response To Hypotheticals
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, within the Manifesto of the Communist Party in 1848, state the following: “The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class”[15]. Rawls’ theory of justice as based upon abstract individualism (in particular his notions of the original position and the veil of ignorance) are of no exception. The long history of human activity from Marx and Engel’s point of view, has been forever a class war of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat, the haves against the have-nots. Any improvements in the lots of the worker’s living conditions have been won through class conflict, the bourgeoisie adamantly attempting to hold on to their exploitative gains while the proletariat attempt to find a means to basic human necessities or better living or working conditions. Beginning in the late 17th century, the Enlightenment period of Europe revolutionized the means of production through the advent of the industrial, capitalist machinery. More importantly, an advent of ideas occurred, ideas which were marketed as universal and humanistic that we have today lumped together largely under liberalism or more specifically humanistic liberalism (which the previous section outlined). Under such humanistic liberalism, the primacy of the individual is paramount. Freedom, reason, rationalism, order, government consolidation, centralization, and primacy of the nation state, rights and most importantly for our purposes here, justice were all concepts being bandied about within the zeitgeist of the late 17th and 18th centuries throughout Europe (although it is nearly impossible to limit the development of ideas to such succinct periods of time, the Enlightenment being no exception). Important questions must be asked: who exactly is proscribing these universal concepts, who was buying into them, and who (it must be asked) benefited from such ideas becoming the accepted norm? For answers to all of these questions, we need not look further than the ruling class. Indeed, as Marx and Engels state in their advocacy for Communism, we have seen a continual succession of old ideas from the subsumption of ancient religions by Christianity, Christian ideals by Enlightenment ideals, and one could argue that today we see a subsumption of Enlightenment ideals by materialist deconstructionism trumpeting the primacy of the material and the individual while recognizing the fallacies of universals[16]. What is important to note is that through every historical development of ideas, parts of the old ideas are kept, reformulated, and presented anew and all of these ideas, Marx and Engels would argue, are created and furthered by the exploitative ruling classes. Rawls’ conception of justice is no different given his class background, his educational tenure within the institutions steeped in Western ideals and, I will argue, his unrealistic and in the end, harmful concept of the original position, the veil of ignorance and the liberty and difference principles. We should therefore view Rawls’ work as emanating from the ruling class, for the ruling class even if he makes seemingly honest attempts to pay heed to the “worse off” through one of two of his main tenets for justice, namely the difference principle. Throughout Rawls’ entire piece, the consideration of the worse off is only granted in his discussions of the difference principle. As an individual more than slightly aware of the many injustices committed daily within the U.S. and abroad, this seems strange until I remember where John Rawls comes from. How is it that when one writes of justice as a platonic ideal (as Rawls does) that injustice (and the many real-world examples of such) does not show itself within the opening pages and/or chapters of a book on justice? It is due, arguably, to the fact that Rawls has: a) Never experienced deep-seeded, prolonged, institutionalized injustice as an upper class white male; and b) Was for so long isolated from the world outside of ‘ivy’ league institutions that perhaps he has had the privilege of thinking injustices to be lessening and/or obsolete. Rawls abstract individual as found within the original position, has the privilege to speak of justice without being aware of that privilege.
Considering the difference principle, a very serious question arises: is it reasonable or historically conscious to assume that the ruling classes would, under the difference principle, give up particular benefits in social status or wealth to better those considered worse-off? And while this may be true in Rawls’ hypothetical mind game, this cannot be further from the truth in reality as people are accurately aware (consciously or subconsciously) of their social class and position. Rawls’ theory is understood to be hypothetical and considering this, pertinent questions must be asked: what does Rawls’ theory pave over and what do we lose from such a theory of justice? If it is true that Rawls comes from the ruling class and writes from a privileged position as such, so what? Is not the theory admirable for what it is, especially in light of the fact that he does pay great heed to the worse off in society? I would argue that the theory is admirable but applicable only to the ruling class, the class from which Rawls writes. Can people from privileged positions write about the worse off legitimately? The fact of the matter is that historically it has been the case that the ruling class has created or reformulated ideas and has had the means to disseminate such ideas throughout the state, the country, and the world, marketing them as universals applicable to all. The working classes have been and continue to be inculcated by the ruling classes with such ideas, the entry into the ruling class being set up as the ultimate goal worth pursuing. If we lose one thing through Rawls’ theory, it is the voice of the subaltern, the voice of the voiceless. Would the theory of justice as presented by the working class exist? Would we continue to use the language of the enlightenment (i.e. justice as universal) or would we need to devise something different? If Marx is correct in stating that “there is no social contract that the best-off class and the worst-off one will acquiesce in, except as a result of defeat in class struggle or a tactical retreat to preserve long-term advantages” perhaps any such hypothetical, original-position arguments are completely useless when faced with a very problematic and attention-deserving reality[17]. As Gayatri Spivak states, “…a possibility of political practice for the intellectual would be to put the economic ‘under erasure’, to see the economic factor as irreducible as it reinscribes the social text, even as it is erased…when it claims to be the final determinant or the transcendental signified”[18]. If class is tied to privilege and privilege gives one voice, then social status is paramount and draws its strength from a historical, imperialist, and colonial agenda of speaking for Others. Doing so is arguably not implicitly wrong but I ask, what of the other voices? Have we not heard for centuries the voices of privileged, white males?
“There is still much national solace in continuing dreams of democratic egalitarianism available by hiding class conflict, rage, and impotence in figurations of race. And there is quite a lot of justice to be extracted from plumy reminiscences of “individualism” and “freedom” if the tree upon which such fruit hangs is a black population forced to serve as freedom’s polar opposite: individualism is foregrounded (and believed in) when its background is stereotypified, enforced dependency. Freedom (to move, to earn, to learn, to be allied with a powerful center, to narrate the world) can be relished more deeply in a cheek-by-jowl existence with the bound and unfree, the economically oppressed, the marginalized, the silenced”[19].
Let us look briefly at a critique of Rawls as offered by whiteness studies.
[The following section eluded me every time I sat down to write it. Through bits and pieces of chicken scratch, I have included nothing but the quotes I was intending to include. Perhaps with time I will be able to complete this section appropriately.]
Writer John White Rawls
“No man will treat with indifference the principle of race. It is the key of history, and why history is so often confused is that it has been written by men who were ignorant of this principle and all the knowledge it involves…” Benjamin Disraeli, 1880[20].
“The future hangs on our ability to breathe enough life into the ideal of equal justice under law to fire the imaginations of the world’s angry mobs in order that they might believe our society worthy of respect, and perhaps emulation”[21].
White Liberalism: The Backbone to Rawlsian Justice
“The white liberals are this republic’s new power elite. The liberal’s basic economic and political theories are now being translated into action after centuries of ideological subservience to conservatism”[22].
“The literature of the United States, like its history, represents commentary on the transformations of biological, ideological, and metaphysical concepts of racial difference”[23].
“My project is an effort to avert the critical gaze from the racial object to the racial subject; from the described and imagined to the describers and imaginers; from the serving to the served”[24].
Conclusion
We conclude perhaps knowing less than when we began. The complexities of identity remain obtuse. And yet, there is something hopefully recognizable within the writings of Rawls. We may recognize this ‘something’ as white, class privilege, as connected to a long line of problematic thinking stretching back to the Enlightenment and beyond, or perhaps something different altogether. What is verifiable is that Rawla wrote from a privileged background, privileged in class as well as race as it was (and is) read in the United States. In speaking about justice through the use of abstract individuals, Rawls failed to recognize the many Others that are currently voiceless. He failed to recognize the many-faced, many-colored complexities that constitute the world that we are operating within and the country that so many of us call home, even if at times we do so begrudgingly. Instead, he embraced through his writings a creation of his own mind over reality, that of the abstract individual who knows no reality, breathes no air, feels no pain, and most importantly, has never truly experienced injustice, let alone justice. As those from privilege write (whether that privilege is derived and fed from class, race, gender, or sexuality), how should they write? Who must they remain conscious of and pay credence to? In short, where does their legitimacy lie, within themselves, their subjects or the many institutional inequities that allow them to write and speak for Others in the first place? I leave this question unanswered.
Bibliography
Alcoff, L. M. (1998). “What Should White People Do?” Hypatia 13(3): 6-26.
Harris, C. I. (1993). “Whiteness as Property.” Harvard Law Review 106(8): 1707-1791.
Marshall, I. and W. Ryden (2000). “Interrogating the Monologue: Making Whiteness Visible.” College Composition and Communication 52(2): 240-259.
Marx, K. & Engels, F. (1848). Manifesto of the Communist Party. Retrieved October 1, 2008 from the World Wide Web: http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
Miller, R. (1974). “Rawls and Marxism.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 3(2): 167-191.
Nagel, T. (1973). “Rawls on Justice.” The Philosophical Review 82(2): 220-234.
Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Roemer, J. E. (2002). “Egalitarianism against the Veil of Ignorance.” The Journal of Philosophy 99(4): 167-184.
Sleeter, C. (1996). White Silence, White Solidarity. In Ignatiev, N. & Garvey, J. (Eds.), Race Traitor (pp. 257-265). New York: Routledge.
Spivak, G. C. (1982). “The Politics of Interpretations.” Critical Inquiry 9(1): 259-278.
Spivak, G.C. (1988). Can the Subaltern Speak? In Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., & Tiffin, H (Eds.), The post-colonial studies reader (pp. 24-28). London and New York: Routledge.
Spivak, G. C. (1992). “Acting Bits/Identity Talk.” Critical Inquiry 18(4): 770-803.
[1] Vermeule, A. (2001). “Veil of Ignorance Rules in Constitutional Law.” The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 111, No. 2, 400.
[2] Ignatiev, N. & Garvey, J. (Eds.) (1996). Race Traitor, (p. 9). New York: Routledge.
[3] This information is widely available over the internet but I specifically consulted the biography base website (www.biographybase.com/biography/Rawls_John.html)
[4] www.kent_school.edu/admissions/admissions.html
[5] According to the Oxford American College Dictionary (2002): “Favorable to or respectful of individual rights and freedoms”
[6] Eze , E.C. (Ed) (1997). Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader. (p. 5). Malden Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers.
[7] Eze , E.C. (Ed) (1997). Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader. (p. 7). Malden Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers.
[8] Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice. (p.3). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
[9] Ibid. (p.10)
[10] Ibid. (p.11)
[11] Ibid. (p.53)
[12] Ibid (p.67-68)
[13] Roemer, J.E. “Egalitarianism Against the Veil of Ignorance.” The Journal of Philosophy. Vol. 99, No. 4, 2002, 183.
[14] Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1971, 53.
[15] Marx, K. & Engels, F. (1848). Manifesto of the Communist Party. Retrieved September 24th, 2008 from the World Wide Web: http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Spivak, G.C. (1988). “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Ashcroft, B. & Griffiths, G. & Tiffin, H. (Eds), The Post-Colonial Studies Reader (p. 24). New York: Routledge.
[19] Morrison, T. (1992). Playing in the Dark. New York: Vintage (p. 64).
[20] Rowan, C.T. (1965). No Whitewash For U.S. Abroad. In Nipson, H. (Ed.), The White Problem in America (p.31). New York: Johnson Publishing.
[21] Ibid. (p.33)
[22] Lomax, L. (1965). The White Liberal. In Nipson, H. (Ed.), The White Problem in America (p.39). New York: Johnson Publishing.
[23] Morrison, T. (1992). Playing in the Dark. New York: Vintage (p. 65).
[24] Morrison, T. (1992). Playing in the Dark. New York: Vintage (p. 90).
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