Property-Owning Democracy: Rawls and Beyond features a collection of original essays that represent the first extended treatment of political philosopher John Rawls' idea of a property-owning democracy. Offers new and essential insights into Rawls's idea of "property-owning democracy" Addresses the proposed political and economic institutions and policies which Rawls's theory would require Considers radical alternatives to existing forms of capitalism Provides a major contribution to debates among progressive policymakers and activists about the programmatic direction progressive politics should take in the near future

Property-Owning Democracy: Rawls and Beyond features a collection of original essays that represent the first extended treatment of political philosopher John Rawls' idea of a property-owning democracy. Offers new and essential insights into Rawls's idea of "property-owning democracy" Addresses the proposed political and economic institutions and policies which Rawls's theory would require Considers radical alternatives to existing forms of capitalism Provides a major contribution to debates among progressive policymakers and activists about the programmatic direction progressive politics should take in the near future

Property-Owning Democracy: Rawls and Beyond features a collection of original essays that represent the first extended treatment of political philosopher John Rawls' idea of a property-owning democracy. Offers new and essential insights into Rawls's idea of "property-owning democracy" Addresses the proposed political and economic institutions and policies which Rawls's theory would require Considers radical alternatives to existing forms of capitalism Provides a major contribution to debates among progressive policymakers and activists about the programmatic direction progressive politics should take in the near future

This study of property-owning democracy argues that a society in which capital is universally accessible to all citizens uniquely meets the demands of justice. It defends a renovated form of capitalism in which the free market is no longer a threat to social democratic values, but is potentially convergent with them.

The ideas of ‘predistribution’ and the property-owning democracy have recently emerged as the central features of the progressive social liberal response to the problems of poverty, unemployment, economic insecurity, burgeoning socio-economic inequality, and economic instability, none of which the more familiar institutions of welfare state capitalism seem able effectively to solve. These social liberal proposals for institutional reform have, however, been rejected by ‘neo-classical’ liberals who have attempted to modernize and revitalize the traditional classical liberal case for a set of ‘market democratic’ laissez-faire institutions. This book makes a fresh attempt to demarcate an area of common ground between the positions occupied by classical and social liberals by identifying a set of institutional arrangements to which both can agree, while at the same time recognizing that there will be many important issues about which liberal (and non-liberal) political and social thinkers will continue strongly to disagree. Drawing on ideas and arguments identifiable within a particular branch of the left-libertarian tradition, the book develops market democratic interpretations of the ideas of predistribution and the property-owning democracy, and presents a powerful case for an institutional reform which constitutes a genuinely progressive alternative to more familiar social democratic institutions. By identifying progressive predistributive institutions as essential conditions both for the effective protection of 'market freedom' and for the maximization of the substantive opportunities of the least advantaged members of society, the book shows how these institutions may be justified on grounds which both classical and social liberals may reasonably be expected to endorse.

The first detailed reconstruction of the late work of John Rawls, further developing his ideas of 'justice-as-fairness'.

First published in 1964, this is a study of the extreme inequalities in the ownership of property, in economies across the globe. Professor Meade examines in depth the economic, demographic and social factors which lead to such inequalities. He considers a wide range of remedial policies – educational development, reformed death duties and capital taxes, demographic policies, trade union action, the socialization of property, the development of a property-owning democracy, the expansion of the welfare state. The argument is expressed in precise analytical terms, but the main exposition is free of mathematics and technical jargon and is designed for the interested layman as well as the economist.