What principle of difference for a truly egalitarian social democracy? Rereading Rawls after social democracy’s failures

Social democracy based on welfare and the redistribution of social contributions is failing. The accumulation of wealth and the increase in inequalities are the two faces of Janus that social democracy has not been able to contain over the recent decades. In this context, it matters to discuss John Rawls’s influential difference principle. According to the maximin criterion put forth by Rawls, it does not suffice that no one becomes worse off; those who are worse off must also become better off than they are. Here, we note that the existence and growth of inequality find no opposition in the maximin rule. Despite appearances, strictly speaking it merely introduces a factor of social compensation, a sort of “assistencialism” to the victims of the greatest inequality. Even the most robust formulation of the principle of difference, according to which the greatest advantage to the less advantaged is indispensable, does not per se preclude an aggregate growth of inequalities. It seems clear that it was an egalitarian goal what Rawls had in mind in A Theory of Justice. Rawls’s critical comments on welfare capitalism must indeed not be forgotten—especially in his further explanations about the application of the principles of justice in a property-owning democracy. Here, as in liberal socialism, the dispersion of property, capital and resources prevents economic and political powers from being concentrated into the hands of a minority. However, the egalitarian aim does not strictly follow from the difference principle as stated, whether taken literally as an application of the maximin rule or inferring from its strongest formulation. A reformulation that does justice to the egalitarian aim of the principle of difference is, however, possible: namely, a degrowthist reformulation, truly requiring a degrowth in accumulation and inequalities, making explicit a brake clause that hinders the aggregate growth of inequalities. Such a degrowthist conception of the difference principle may justify some concrete rules that are able to enforce the egalitarian commitments of social democracy.