Social visions and the just society: ss neoclassical theory an adequate basis for Rawlsian justice?

Rawls relies on the version of economic theory represented by Koopmans (1957) when constructing his theory of justice. In this paper it is argued that as economic theory à la Koopmans is representative of that theoretical tradition in which exchange forms the basis of value, it lacks a notion of cooperation that is sufficiently strong to support Rawls’s conception of society as a “cooperative venture for mutual advantage”. The social vision underlying Rawls’s argument is that of a modern economy subject to widespread specialisation and division of labour, yet neoclassical theory with its exchange focus is shown to be incapable of dealing adequately with such a case. The incompatibility of social visions between Rawls’s argument and the economic theory used in part in its construction is a source of structural weakness and illustrates graphically the pitfalls associated with uncritical reliance, in one discipline, on theoretical frameworks imported from another.