Defining property-owning democracy

Rawls rejects welfare-state capitalism as unjust but endorses a radical alternative regime, a property-owning democracy which has some features of a commercial society, as proposed by the economist James Meade. The challenge of comparing such an alternative regime is that a property-owning democracy has never been actualised according to its proponents. Within philosophy, property-owning democracy is defined more in terms of distributive outcomes than policies. In fact, Meade’s specific proposals include several policies that are often debated, and occasionally implemented, within existing welfare states. This makes it unclear whether property-owning democracy is, in fact, a true alternative to capitalism. Treating it as a truly distinct alternative requires a Marxist definition of capitalism that few defenders of capitalism would endorse. Rawls’ definitions of competing regimes can confuse rather than clarify points of disagreement within liberalism.