From Principle to Context: Marx versus Nozick and Rawls on Distributive Justice.

The problem of distributive justice has been widely discussed by Western and Chinese scholarship of Marxism. This interest results from the historical transformation of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s, and also from the crucial transition in China beginning in the late 1970s. By conceptualizing the basic principle of distributive justice as “reward according to effort and ability,” this paper discusses the differences between liberal thought, as exemplified by John Rawls and Robert Nozick, and the ideas of Karl Marx, from basic principles to context. It deals with the concept of “private property” or even “private ownership.” In Marx's view, the principle of distributive justice is necessarily betrayed under the condition of private ownership—the capitalist exploits workers—and the solution is the replacement of private by public ownership. Ultimately, the principle of justice is replaced by the principle of beyond justice. Nozick sees private ownership as the natural result of the principle, a condition he regards as self-ownership. Rawls shares this position with Nozick, but seeks to improve its operation with “justice as fairness,” which combines the principle of justice with the principle of beyond justice. Neither Nozick nor Rawls intuits that the principle itself would be betrayed under the condition of private ownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]