ABSTRACT
Introduction There is a long-standing debate between institutionalists and individualists about distributive justice.1 Institutionalists argue that the principles of justice apply to the basic structure of society and that individuals only have duties to support just institutions and follow their rules. Individuals are not required to bring about greater distributive equality in their day-to-day participation in the market or within the family. Individualists, or monists, take the opposite tack. They argue that individuals-when engaging in the market or making decisions within the intimacy of the family-should be guided directly by the principles of justice. The difference between the two views is perhaps clearest when we look at the labor market. An institutionalist would suggest that individuals may justly use their labor power to drive hard bargains in their own self-interest as it is the job of the basic structure to properly incentivize the relevant choices and distribute the relevant benefits of the position. Yet, if the basic structure cannot fully compensate for these hard bargains, then the resulting inequality could-on the institutionalist view-nonetheless be just if it resulted from morally legitimate exercises of individual discretion within a just system. Individualists, by contrast, would argue that those with increased labor power should be willing to accept contracts with lower salaries or longer hours so that the difference can be then distributed to the least well-off. In other words, institutionalists argue that the natural duty of justice consists in following the rules of the system and supporting the institutions while individualists argue that it consists in directly instantiating the principles of justice in their day to day interactions.
