Reflections on Government

Comparing Rawls, Marx, and Nozick to other philosophers we've read this year, I feel that all three of their philosophies are more relevant to government and general social structure than the others. On the surface this is obvious; Marx uses the word communism and Nozick uses the word anarchy in the titles of some of their respective works, immediately displaying their ideas of ideal governments systems. However, these structures are only byproducts of their logic. Since all three focus on justice in their outlines, it seems that government structures are a result of the societies understanding of what justice is.

To summarize the differences in the three author's views in respect to social structures: Marx challenges the assumptions about economy of his time by attacking the foundations of capitalism itself when he suggests that private property ownership isn't necessary to society. Without this assumption, it makes sense to Marx to give to each according to his needs in distribution of goods, and along these lines a system like communism makes sense, with other humanitarian assumptions in place. The other two authors, however, disagree on the point that property does not need to be privately owned in a society. Rawls says that behind a veil of ignorance people would agree that one shared basic liberty should be the freedom to hold property, among others. Rawls' approach is to imagine what people who were ignorant of their social positions would decide for society and to proceed from there. His philosophy in some ways resembles utilitarianism in the he asserts within his Difference Principle that ideally the greatest benefits should go to the least advantaged but at the same time uses Kantian ethics in his basic assumptions about morality. Nozick takes a position entirely opposite to that of Marx when he suggests as a basic tenant that people are entitled to things; the rest of his logic builds from there. Nozick assumes that ideally everyone has as much liberty as possible, with only minimal restrictions from a governing source. 

All three take basic assumptions about humankind and liberty, use them to construct a definition of justice, and then provide an example in the context of what a governing body would look like based on their outline. My assumption as to why they used this format is that each philosopher wanted to find a way to best improve society, so they either imagined an ideal society and worked back from there or outlined basic principles and built upon them until a social structure emerged. It dawns upon me that they weren't the first authors we've read to use such a strategy; Plato describes in depth what his Republic would be like if the ideals of his philosophy were implemented, and Kant references a Kingdom of Ends which seems to exemplify the use of his ethics. In all these cases a government system emerges after each author has defined justice and its tenants. The implication is that our real, which is to say, not hypothetical, systems of government reflect on the way our societies view justice.