The Moral Division of Labour, Social Structure, and Rules

Abstract

In a justificatory community inequality-generating incentives can only be justified on the basis of an explicit compromise between agent-centred prerogatives and the demands of equality, a compromise that guides not only the design of formal institutions but also our choices within the rules set by institutions. That is not the strategy of justification Rawls applies to derive the difference principle. However, Van Parijs claims that any sensible concession to agent-centred prerogatives in daily choices reintroduces Rawls's difference principle: such a concession leads to legitimizing all incentive payments in a labour market, only to be constrained by redistributive income taxation and maxims against cheating and collusion. I scrutinized Van Parijs's account in Chapter V and concluded that it remains incomplete: to reach its stated conclusion it needs independent support by an argument akin to Rawls's basis structure argument, that is, by an argument that precludes an appeal to an ethos guiding choices within formal rules.