Economic Justice in American Society.

• Author: McRae, Larry T.

In this volume Robert Kuenne shifts gears and attempts a primarily philosophical and literary examination of economic justice. The work is in three main parts: 1) a summary and critique of a half-dozen concepts of economic justice from Kant to Rawls; 2) an attempt to establish the economic "ethos" of American society and to state constitutional provisions that would give it concrete form; and 3) an empirical survey of current inequality in the United States and estimates of the cost and tax burden of achieving various measures of income equality today and in 2020 A.D. This is an ambitious agenda, and, not surprisingly, Kuenne is not entirely persuasive.

The central part of the work is the set of proposed constitutional amendments presented in a "Bill of Economic Rights and Obligations." Kuenne believes that the Constitution pays insufficient attention to economic matters, so that Congress is neither constrained against bad legislation nor supported in good; too often government is captured by interest groups with only selfish aims. Further, Kuenne feels that posing the concrete question of what a constitutional convention might do avoids some of the logical traps inherent in the voluntaristic and unanimity arguments of Robert Nozick and John Rawls. The ethos that supports these amendments, as adduced by Robert Kuenne, will not be shared by every single American, so that we are speculating on what might be approved by ". . . a group of the most gifted intellectual and professional persons, with ideological commitments but no personal or career interests at stake other than those of the involved citizen . . . [drawing] upon the best ethical theory available. . . ." The basis of Kuenne's argument is very different from previous thinkers: there is no hint here of natural law, nor of inescapable logic, nor of self-evident truth.

In Kuenne's view, most Americans share a belief in economic efficiency, in rational pragmatism, in materialism and in individualism. Individualism is "dualistic," consisting of egoistic and social components, which are always somewhat in tension against one another. The social ethic consists, in turn, of a corrective impulse and a compassionate impulse. Beyond noting an aversion to monopoly or other forms of price control, Kuenne has little to say about the corrective strain, and the focus of his suggestions is on the compassionate strain. Here, he clearly holds the value judgment that everyone is entitled to a dignified...