ABSTRACT
How does contractarian political philosophy stand as to the justice of private property and the market economy? In the work of John Rawls, the contractarian method avowedly tells us nothing about the justice of these institutions. Rawls says:
It is necessary … to recognise that market institutions are common to both private-property and socialist regimes, and to distinguish between the allocative and distributive function of prices. Since under socialism the means of production and natural resources are publicly owned, the distributive function is greatly restricted, whereas a private-property system uses prices in varying degrees for both purposes. Which of these systems and the many intermediate forms most fully answers to the requirements of justice cannot, I think, be determined in advance. There is presumably no general answer to this question, since it depends in large part upon the traditions, institutions and social forces of each country, and its particular historical circumstances. The theory of justice does include these matters. 1
