The Thought Of Economic Justice On Rawls "Theory Of Justice"

In the 1950 s, the rapid expansion of economic strength and the development of productivity led to constant conflicts between American societies. Inflation and the gap between rich and poor lead to frequent social democracy movements. With the development of capitalist economy, Bentham’s and mill’s utilitarianism has reached its peak and has dominated in the western society, which led to increasing social conflicts. Considering this, Rawls published the paper named as "justice as fairness" in 1958 hoping to clarify the concept of justice to solve the social problems at that time, and published "a theory of justice" in 1971 to replace the idea of justice of utilitarianism with the idea of justice as fairness.Rawls thought the justice of utilitarianism had significant disadvantages, so he criticized the various kinds of unfair social phenomenon indirectly in his book "a theory of justice" from political, economic and legal aspects. Especially the economic, because of the unfair distribution leading to the rich more and more richer and the poor more and more poorer, which led to increasing social conflicts. Rawls has interpreted the society as a kind of mutually beneficial cooperation in the hope of re-examining the distribution of the social value to achieve real economic fairness and justice. Rawls thought that the basic theme of justice is the basic structure of the society, or more precisely, is the way of distribution of basic rights and obligations of the main system and the division of the interests brought by the social cooperation. The division of the interests brought by the social cooperation has showed the emphasis on the importance of economic justice. He thought that the political and economic were closely linked and interacting each other. Economy is the foundation of social development, so the establishment of the concept of justice on the premise of economic justice would guarantee to people’s interests and the stable development of society.The emergence of Rawls’ theory of justice is closely linked with the background of that time and Rawls’ speculation on the problem of justice. Although we can find that there is certain extreme about the assumption of Rawls’ theory of justice, or distant from reality. These are some points that we should pay attention to when interpreting Rawls’ thought.As we all know the production is the foundation of all social activities and the development of productivity is the foundation of social development. Even in modern times, economic justice is still the problem that people must ponder. This gives us a lot of enlightenment that we cannot blindly pursue and enjoy the material life brought by the high-speed economic development, and at the same time, we must pursue the improvement of idea. To pay attention to the cultivation of moral is the basic of the sustainable development of human society.