Democratic Distributive Justice

by Ross Zucker

• ISBN13: 9780521533553
• ISBN10: 0521533554
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-07-14
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

By exploring the integral relationship between democracy and economic justice, Democratic Distributive Justice seeks to explain how democratic countries with market systems should deal with the problem of high levels of income-inequality. The book acts as a guide for dealing with this issue by providing an interdisciplinary approach that combines political, economic, and legal theory. It also analyzes the nature of economic society and puts forth a new understanding of the agents and considerations bearing upon the ethics of relative pay, such as the nature of individual contributions and the extent of community in capital based market systems. Economic justice is then integrated with democratic theory, yielding what Ross Zucker calls 'democratic distributive justice'. While prevailing theory defines democracy in terms of the electoral mechanism, the author holds that the principles of distribution form part of the very definition of democracy, which makes just distribution a requirement of democratic government.

Table of Contents

1. Democracy and economic justice

Part I. Unequal Property and Individualism in Liberal Theory: 2. The underlying logic of liberal property theory

3. Unequal property and its premise in Locke's theory

4. Unequal property and individualism, Kant to Rawls

Part II. Egalitarian Property and Justice as Dueness: 5. Whose property is it, anyway?

6. The social nature of economic actors and forms of equal dueness

7. Policy reflections: the effect of an egalitarian regime on economic growth

Part III. Egalitarian Property and the Ethics of Economic Community: 8. Deriving equality from community

9. The dimension of community in capital-based market systems: between consumers and producers

10. The dimension of community in capital-based market systems: between capital and labor

12. The right to an equal share of part of national income

Part IV. Democracy and Economic Justice

13. Democratic distributive justice

14. Democracy and economic rights.