John Rawls’s theory of justice has finally been updated for the twenty-first century. Egalitarian liberals anxious to move on from justifying the welfare state—Rawls’s project in 1971—to justifying the transformation of society for the sake of full inclusion now have a spokesperson in another Harvard University professor, Danielle Allen. The premise of her book, Justice by Means of Democracy, is that justice is not fully achieved through the redistribution of wealth. It requires the redistribution of power.

According to Allen, contemporary interpreters of Rawls have placed too much emphasis on economics. By failing to treat the deficit of democracy in political life, the Rawlsian approach has “lost traction with our realities.” As a corrective, Allen proposes a new theory of justice that responds to alleged “intellectual mistakes” made “earlier in the tradition of political philosophy.”

Allen highlights the nineteenth-century French political theorist Benjamin Constant’s distinction between the liberty of the ancients and the liberty of the moderns. The former consists in the right to participate in political decision-making. The latter consists in the right to own property and chart one’s own course in life. The liberty of the ancients (positive liberty) prizes political freedom. The liberty of the moderns (negative liberty) militates against governmental intrusion into private life. It jealously guards both economic freedom and private autonomy.

Allen tries to unite what Constant divided. Borrowing from Du Bois’s argument in The Souls of Black Folk, she argues that positive liberty makes negative liberty possible. As Du Bois remarked, to be truly free we must become “cocreators of the kingdom of culture.” Only when we have free and equal say in the creation of our cultural, economic, and political environments can we exercise free choice in the direction of our own lives. This refrain reappears throughout the book and is the inspiration behind her revision of Rawls’ famous difference principle.

A New Difference Principle

According to Rawls’s second principle of justice, social and economic inequalities are justified only if they permit fair equality of opportunity and benefit the least advantaged members of society. Allen faults Rawls’s epigones for limiting the scope of the difference principle. Contemporary Rawlsians tend to suggest that the least-advantaged segment of the population needs only the right level of wealth redistribution for enhanced well-being. Rawls himself, however, intended for the difference principle to apply to the distribution of both wealth and the social bases of self-respect. Wealth was not the only thing that concerned him.

Rawls was a committed liberal who subordinated his defense of equal opportunity and the egalitarian distribution of social goods to the first principle of justice, namely, that individuals enjoy an equal body of rights protections, including freedom of speech, conscience, and association. But these traditional liberties, in Allen’s mind, are not sufficient to promote egalitarian empowerment. Egalitarian empowerment requires a new difference principle, which Allen calls, “difference without domination.”

“Difference without domination” prioritizes democratic principles over traditionally liberal ones, like the freedom of association. According to Allen, “Freedom to associate with those with whom we wish to associate simply is freedom to discriminate.” “Difference without domination” cannot coexist with discrimination. If putting an end to discrimination requires the abridgment of freedom of association—or the freedom of speech, for that matter—then so be it. The ideal of “difference without domination” guides Allen’s proposals for equitable policies in transportation, housing, education, and healthcare.

The influence of Rawlsian theory is fading in Anglo-American universities. And Allen admits that her theory of “power-sharing liberalism” departs regularly from Rawlsian orthodoxy. Nevertheless, Allen claims that her theory of “power-sharing liberalism” falls squarely within the American political tradition.

 A New Narrative of American Constitutionalism

Allen praises the framers of the US Constitution for creating depersonalized political institutions capable of balancing the various economic and sectional interests of the “people.” Applauding the framers’ attempt to strike an appropriate balance of power, she proposes principles of constitutional redesign that will rebalance our institutions. She recommends, for example, increasing the size of the House of Representatives (a proposal Allen has described at length in the Washington Post and similarly endorsed, in other venues, by Christopher DeMuth and Patrick Deneen) and changing the method of choosing electors in each state, from a winner-take-all method to a proportional method based on the percentage of the vote a candidate receives.

In The Federalist Papers, Publius defended the US Constitution’s combination of energy and republican safety. The Constitution, that is, granted government the power to act for the public interest while also safeguarding the rights of minorities against overbearing majorities, or factions. Allen, too, praises the balance, energy, and republican safety of the US Constitution. But, Allen says, the framers did not act on the most important principle, the principle of “full inclusion.”

Allen faults the framers of the US Constitution for leaving women, slaves, and white men without property disempowered in the early republic. Allen writes that, in 1776, when Abigail Adams asked John Adams about the status of women in the revolution, “Abigail put her finger on exactly the mistake made by the founding generation. … They believed that it was possible to recognize and secure rights for all even while putting power in the hands only of some. Abigail knew the truth: Unchecked power over others leads to abuse. Positive liberty is necessary for justice.”

Allen’s treatment of American founding documents makes her theory seem more moderate than it is. Positively referencing Publius on several occasions, she seems to work within the confines of American constitutionalism, advocating for the achievement of a liberal end—namely, prevention of the abuse of power—through neo-republican means—namely, participation in public decision-making.

Allen’s take on America’s political tradition, though, is oriented by a progressive anthropology, in which autonomy is the ultimate good, and a progressive narrative of history that she reads into the development of American constitutionalism. Reckoning with the fact of reasonable pluralism in Political Liberalism, Rawls downplayed the notion of private autonomy, focusing instead on public autonomy, that is, a politically constructed theory of justice capable of garnering consensus among citizens holding different conceptions of the good life. Allen, however, insists that justice requires that we permit “individualized explorations by each person of their own happiness.”

Unfortunately, she does not adequately consider the tensions between public and private autonomy. If, for example, in our post-Dobbs environment, states enact stricter limits on abortion, is that an example of public autonomy that violates private autonomy? Or must public autonomy always promote private autonomy?

For Allen’s theory of justice to work, it seems as if we must preach the gospel of private autonomy. Central to Allen’s system of democratic virtues, in fact, is prophecy. Allen regards prophecy as a means by which to reorient our conception of purpose in public life. She associates prophecy with the abolitionism of Harriet Beecher Stowe, the civil rights activism of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the progressive activism of Occupy Wall Street and the Movement of Black Lives. Prophecy, in Allen’s words, “looks to replace reigning values, interpretive systems, or public narratives.” It works to change “the game being played,” so that, for example, the purpose of our public political decision-making is no longer liberty or equality, but equity, defined as full inclusion.

Allen herself engages in a bit of prophecy through her sleight of hand by which she presents equity, or full inclusion, as the fruition of the American story. “The historical story of American constitutionalism,” Allen writes, “is not about an evolution from liberty to equality but of a transition from an exclusive to an inclusive conception of who should have access to liberty and equality.”

Allen reads both Rawls’s theory of justice and America’s founding documents in accord with an equity paradigm articulated by feminist and critical race theorists. She accepts “critical race, settler-colonial, feminist, agonistic, and Marxist theories” that fault liberal theory for producing “racial and patriarchal forms of domination.” For this reason, “power-sharing liberalism” fully reflects the spirit of the age. And the theory itself goes far beyond politics. This, of course, is necessary if her theory is to produce results. To dismantle hierarchies and achieve “difference without domination,” one cannot confine oneself to political reform. And Allen does not. She posits ideals and design principles for reshaping not only politics, but also social and economic life.

Allen proposes that we place more emphasis on identity, insisting that we eschew natural, hierarchical forms of community, namely, family and religion, in favor of new inclusive organizations that meet the demands of egalitarian empowerment.

Redesigning Culture

Allen proposes a “cultural design principle” to maximize difference and minimize domination in society. The idea of “a cultural design principle,” though, fits uncomfortably with the fact that cultures are not designed but instead arise organically over time within communities with shared beliefs and practices. But Allen’s goal, culturally, is not reform, but revolution. And if you tear down existing cultural institutions to satisfy the demands of “difference without domination,” then of course you need “a cultural design principle” to rebuild whatever it is you have torn down.

An “egalitarian participatory constitutional democracy,” Allen’s political ideal, requires a “connected society,” Allen’s social ideal. The “connected society” is the product of “cultural transformation” that reduces reliance on the traditional family. The “connected” society “replace[s] the patriarchal and hierarchical bonding relations of a traditionalist picture of social cohesion.”

Religious belief receives no meaningful mention in the book, perhaps because traditional religion, associated with patriarchal and hierarchical organization, is anti-egalitarian. Nor does religious belief—in the form of traditional Christianity, for example—promote private autonomy. Since a society is only “connected,” according to Allen’s understanding, if it is “autonomy-preserving,” a new belief system must reign, one that downgrades nature and exalts unfettered freedom of choice as the standard by which to judge moral, political, and legal decisions.

But this new belief system ignores reality. For example, Allen mentions that, in Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone, the epochal study of decline in social capital in the United States, religious and youth-based organizations that were gender exclusive, that is, non-democratic, saw membership decline from five to eighteen percent from 1970–97. Meanwhile, other organizations, such as the Rotary Club, that were legally required to desegregate based on gender during that time, saw far more drastic membership declines. Putnam drew the common-sense conclusion that demands for equality, diversity, and multiculturalism threaten the cultivation of community and the maintenance of social cohesion. As a result, Putnam proposed that for the sake of the common good, we, as a society, place less emphasis on identity in political life.

Allen, on the other hand, proposes that we place more emphasis on identity, insisting that we eschew natural, hierarchical forms of community, namely, family and religion, in favor of new inclusive organizations that meet the demands of egalitarian empowerment. This suggestion, though, not only ignores reality—the fact that hierarchy is natural—but also ignores what actual people think about how they should govern themselves and their communities.

Allen’s robust egalitarianism, for example, requires “bridging” ties, that is, new connections forged between deracinated, atomized, and mobile individuals of different faiths, ethnicities, and genders who share nothing in common except an unquestioning commitment to the dogma of diversity, equity, and inclusion. But who authored this dogma: the people or the elites who rule them?

If large corporations really were to recognize the value of voice, resulting in worker ownership or democratic management, as Allen suggests, would this lead to unanimous acceptance of purpose-driven rather than profit-driven behavior? Perhaps. Would it lead to the unanimous acceptance of progressive social standards by which to judge corporate behavior, of the kind promoted by ESG investing? Perhaps. Perhaps not. What is certain is that Allen would reject as illegitimate any collective decision-making, even on the “power-sharing” model that did not promote a progressive ethos.

In many ways, Allen is right to criticize plutocracy in politics and runaway capitalism in the economy. But Allen’s progressive ideology is itself elite driven. Justice by Means of Democracy pays lip service to popular rule, but only accepts popular rule if it pays obeisance to the values of the plutocratic elite.

Her proposals for economic empowerment, moreover, succumb to the same logic of the marketplace in our liquid age. The best way to find valuable work, she says, is to move to where the jobs are. The best hope for a just global distribution of wealth is more migration, more movement, and more openness. But what if place—thriving neighborhoods with opportunities for work and leisure—is necessary for happiness? What if faith, family, and nation are essential components of a happy, purposeful, and meaningful life?

It seems not to matter for Allen, who writes as an identitarian peddling the same progressive pieties responsible for the social and political crises in which we find ourselves. Allen blames political failures in Western democratic societies over the last two decades on errors in liberal theory. I agree that we need to contest intellectual mistakes destructive to social cohesion.

We should start by contesting Allen’s vision of American constitutionalism as a historical progression from exclusion to full inclusion for the purpose of expanding public and private autonomy. This narrative gives warrant to our elite guardians to try to reshape social and political life in accord with “enlightened” opinion, which would require us to surrender all—even our belief system—to the idol of egalitarianism.

The book, which reads at times like a textbook for democratic reform, lacks memorable concepts like those which Rawls provided, such as the original position and the veil of ignorance. These ideas stick in the mind. By contrast, Allen burdens the reader with “subsidiary ideals,” numerous “design principles,” and other lists of vague principles that, in the final chapter, are expressed in egalitarian mantras meant to make our thought processes more democratic. These include: “it’s about you, not me”; “nothing about us without us”; and “the work is to call in, not call out.” My favorite, however, is this: “The ideal citizen is first and foremost authentic.” I’m sure the Proud Boys think of themselves as authentic. Are they ideal citizens? These therapeutic bromides, more appropriate for bumper stickers than a serious work of political philosophy, usefully capture the vacuity of egalitarianism.