Abstract

This paper considers an argument that justice as fairness requires liberal socialism as opposed to a property-owning democracy. It analyses the arguments for departing from Rawls’s principled agnosticism over the choice between liberal market socialism and property owning democracy. It questions the extension of Rawls’s fair value guarantee for the political liberties to all liberty and suggests an alternative interpretation of the kind of predistributive egalitarianism represented by a property-owning democracy.