Since it appeared in 1971, John Rawls's A Theory of Justice has become a classic. The author has now revised the original edition to clear up a number of difficulties he and others have found in the original book. Rawls aims to express an essential part of the common core of the democratic tradition--justice as fairness--and to provide an alternative to utilitarianism, which had dominated the Anglo-Saxon tradition of political thought since the nineteenth century. Rawls substitutes the ideal of the (...) social contract as a more satisfactory account of the basic rights and liberties of citizens as free and equal persons. "Each person," writes Rawls, "possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override." Advancing the ideas of Rousseau, Kant, Emerson, and Lincoln, Rawls's theory is as powerful today as it was when first published. (shrink)

First published in French, Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) was composed during his years in Brussels, when he was developing his economic views and, through confrontations with the chief leaders of the working-class movement, establishing his intellectual standing. In this classic work, which laid the foundation of ideas later developed in Capital, Marx polemicized against then premier French socialist, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Proudhon wanted to unite the best features of such contraries as competition and monopoly. He hoped to save the (...) good features of economic institutions while eliminating the bad. Marx, however, declared that no equilibrium was possible between the antagonisms in any given economic system. Social structures were transient historical forms determined by the productive forces: "The handmill gives you society with the feudal lord; the stream mill, society with the industrial capitalist.". (shrink)

Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition. This reissue makes the first edition once again available for scholars and serious students of Rawls's work.

When we read Karl M&IX,S descriptions of the capitalist mode of production in Capital amd other writings, all our instincts tell us that these are descriptions of an unjust social system. Marx describes a. society in which one small class of persons lives in comfort and idleness while another class, in ever-increasing numbers, lives in want and vvrctchedncss, laboring to produce thc Wealth enjoyed by the fixst. Marx speaks constantly of capitalist "exploitation" of the worker, and refers to the creation (...) of surplus value as the appropriation of his "unpaid 1abor" by capital. Not 0nly docs capitalist society, as Marx describes it, strike us as unjust, but his own descriptions of it themselves seem to connote injustice. When we look in the writings of Marx and Engels for a detailed account 0f the injustices of capitalism, however, We discover at once that not only is there no attempt at all in their writings to provide an argument that capitalism is unjust, but there is not even the explicit claim that capitalism is unjust 01* incquitablc, 01* that it violatcs anyonds rights. We find, in fact, explicit denunciations and sustained criticisms of social thinkers (such as Pierre P:roudhon and Ferdinand Lassalle) who did condemn capitalism for its injustices or advocated some form of socialism as a. means of securing justice, equality, or the rights of man. We even find, perhaps to our surprise, some faixly explicit statements to the effect that capitalism, with all its manifold defects, cannot be faultcd as far as justice is concerned. Whatever else capitalism may be for Marx, it docs not seem that it is unjust. (shrink)