Abstract
In Democratic Justice and the Social Contract Albert Weale endorses the principle that producers should receive the full fruits of their labour (net of some deductions). This article argues that the fact that producers in some pre-capitalist societies would endorse the principle gives us little reason to do so and that operationalising such a principle for a complex modern society is impractical and undesirable.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Boehm
C.
(1999 ) Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior . Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press .
2.
Boehm
C.
(2012 ) Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism and Shame . New York : Basic Books .
3.
Freeman
S.
(2007 ) Justice and the Social Contract . Oxford : Oxford University Press .
4.
Gellner
E.
(1988 ) Plough, Sword and Book: The Structure of Human History . London : Collins Harvill .
5.
Mankiw
G.
(2013 ) ‘Defending the One Percent’ , Journal of Economic Perspectives , 23 (3 ), 21 –34 .
6.
Marx
K.
(1973 ) Surveys from Exile . Harmondsworth : Penguin .
7.
Ostrom
E.
(1990 ) Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press .
8.
Piketty
T.
(2014 ) Capital in the 21st Century . Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press .
9.
Rawls
J.
(1999 ) A Theory of Justice , second Edition . Cambridge, MA : Belknap Press .
10.
Scott
J. C.
(2013 ) ‘Crops, Towns, Government’ , London Review of Books , 35 (22 ), 13 –5 .
11.
Sen
A.
(1982 ) ‘Just Deserts’ , New York Review of Book , 4 March.
12.
Tomasello
M.
(2008 ) Origins of Human Communication: The Jean Nicod Lectures, 2008 . Cambridge, MA : MIT Press .
13.
Tomasello
M.
(2009 ) Why We Cooperate . Cambridge, MA : MIT Press .
14.
Weale
A.
(2013 ) Democratic Justice and the Social Contract . Oxford : Oxford University Press .