Reviews Justice as Fairness: A Restatement John Rawls edited by Erin Kelly The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, London 2001 234 pages ISBN 0-674-00510-4 (hbk) 0-674-00511-2 (pbk) One might wish that in the long history of A Theory of Justice, John Rawls had given more consideration than he did to social processes and in particular to how conceptions of the right might filter through society so that his basic principles come to influence (as he claims) ‘local’ institutions (commerce, finance, the churches, professionalism). There is a little elucidation in this Restatement but not much. Why do institutions act badly and why is it that we can reasonably believe that they would continue to do so even if Rawls’ two principles of justice were successfully embedded in them? He says that these institutions will provide the moral framework to be adopted by business, finance, and so on, but how this transfer will happen remains unelucidated. Why is it that we know there are hundreds of (perhaps lesser) Enrons and WorldComs out there whose behaviour will not be changed one iota when President Bush tells them to behave better? Rawls tells us what behaving better might consist in but not much, even in this restatement, about how social institutions might recognise the value of doing so. Rawls published A Theory of Justice in 1972 as a (very long) statement of how contract theory could yield some fundamental principles of social justice that would both underpin basic social structures and to which everyone could subscribe even when motivated by self-interest. It became the most famous book in moral and political philosophy in the 20th century and made Rawls the pre-eminent moral philosopher in the west. A generation of new philosophers in America and Britain cut their teeth on the book and an entire ‘Rawls industry’ developed. Rawls himself did little to develop or modify his theory (other than for a minor revisitation on Political Liberalism (1993)) for nearly thirty years but then, shortly before his death, he produced Justice as Fairness: A Restatement with the editorial assistance of Erin Kelly. Other than for those with a ready grasp of the structure of Theory of Justice, this restatement will not be a stand-alone book; reference back to the original will be needed if some of the changes are to be appreciated. That having been said, Rawls has not found it necessary to make any radical alterations to the original theory even though his discussions and references in ‘restatement’ give ample evidence of how wide his trawl of critiques has been and how seriously he has taken them. If nothing else, this book is an example of what philosophical debate in print should be. It was inevitable that apart from anything else, Rawls would have to recognise that his theory, being, like any other, a child of its times, would have to answer to the growing ranks of multiculturalists and pluralists. Anything and everything had to be subjected to critique by the new dogma. Bad timing. Not surprisingly therefore, A Theory of Justice came under fire for being ethnocentric. It could not be a theory that was widely applicable. Rawls appeared to be ambiguous about the generality of his theory and though he did revisit the matter in Political Liberalism, it is only in Restatement that he acknowledges the matter head-on. The ‘Theory of Justice’ and ‘Justice as Fairness’ are not, he acknowledges, as they might earlier have been construed, part of a comprehensive theory that could subsequently include a theory of rights and other moral domains. Rather they are ‘political’ concepts that will apply only to the basic structures of democratic societies. His claim therefore for the applicability of justice as fairness is now more constrained. Furthermore, justice as fairness is now seen as being confined to the political domain and not to impact directly on either local or global justice. Our political, civil and legal institutions (the basic structure), we may now assume, will acknowledge justice as fairness but Rawls fails to convince how, in the revised scheme, the values and virtues constitutive of justice as fairness will make behaviour in local institutions better - or at least consistent with these values. Why should (for example) the financial services sector behave morally, consistent with justice as fairness, and in a manner that is in everyone’s interest, if more immediate and compelling self-interest and private gain present themselves? In Rawls’ defence it may be said that these are not questions that he seeks to respond to in Restatement which, after all, is a restatement of the theory of

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Review: Against Management justice as fairness and not a development from it. How the theory might work is a matter that must now be left to others (and maybe those who combine expertise in philosophy with a knowledge of organisations and organisational behaviour as well as social structure and processes). Aficionados of course will want to know whether Restatement changes anything at the heart of Rawlsian justice. Have we now to re-learn what it is about? Well, there are changes to the core two principles of justice, some, stylistic, others, in Rawls’ own words, ‘significant’. The second (Difference) principle survives with only a little tidying up. The first (Liberty) principle has been subjected to more fundamental change as a direct result of some of the critiques of it. Most significantly, Rawls argues, the priority of liberty over the difference principle no longer means that any and every liberty must be satisfied before the second principle can come into play. The revision takes on a constitutional framework such that the liberties that have priority over distributions and fair equality of opportunity must be of the kind that would be acceptable in a bill of rights or a constitution. If liberties must be fulfilled before distributive principles come into play, they must be ‘constitutional’ liberties. By this, we must assume ‘not frivolous’ but ‘significant’. There is much in Restatement for present and future Rawlsian scholars to chew on and it will without doubt provide the substance for countless PhD theses. And this only serves to emphasise that A Theory of Justice with its updated ‘manual’ remains the most consistent, carefully thought out and influential piece of sustained philosophical writing of the past century. John Edwards

John Edwards is Professor of Social Policy and Head of the Department of Social and Political Science at Royal Holloway, University of London. In 1997 he was a Visiting Professor at Lingnan University, Hong Kong, and was Visiting Professor of Human Rights at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights at Utrecht in 1998-99. His book When Race Counts. The Morality of Racial Preference in Britain and America (1995) was awarded the Gustavus Myers Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the field of Human Rights in North America and his other books include Positive Discrimination, Social Justice and Social Policy. Moral Scrutiny of a Policy Practice (1987) and The Enterprise Culture and the Inner City (1993 with Nicholas Deakin).

Against Management: Organization in the Age of Managerialism Martin Parker Polity Press, Cambridge 2002 vi + 250 pages ISBN 0-7456-2925-3 (hbk) 0745629261 (pbk) This is the most enjoyable management text I have read. Martin Parker is blessed with a turn of phrase that must delight his editors. Two favourites: ‘An attitude of detached fatalism is possibly the most dignified response to the golden age of the golden arch that will end, not with a bang, but with a Wimpy’ (p 39); and on critical management studies (CMS): ‘when the B[usiness]-Schools become empty, when their corridors contain dead leaves and the roofs leak, then they will be converted into sociology departments or housing for the elderly, and CMS will have done its job’ (p 132). Side by side with the eloquence however sits a touch of grandiloquence, captured by the book’s lofty ambition to be not merely ‘a different understanding of the world, but an attempt to try and change it’ (p 16). This may be a deliberately ironic invocation of Marx and Engels but I suspect not. Somewhere in the booming radicalism of his critiques is the faint whisper of the type of Tory voice for whom a dignified response to present calamity is the best response of all. Enough of style. Parker’s substance is, well, substantial. This is a grand tour of literatures, films and activities which may be seen as being ‘Against Management’ with each chapter focusing on a particular source or sources. Parker takes us from MacDonaldisation to Anti-Corporate Protest, from the inadequacies of text books in business ethics to the paranoia of The Truman Show, from organisational communitarianism to citizenship, from the cocoon of critical management studies to the wide open plains of utopianism.

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Review: Against Management All of this is bound together by the attempt to mark common themes in a shift in the perception of management, from a view which emphasises rationality and finds justification in effectiveness to one which sees managerialism (if not managers as a group or management as an activity) as an ideology that ought to be resisted. A secondary purpose is served by comments on the relative merits of efforts towards reform or resistance. Business ethics is flawed by an emphasis on agency that neglects questions of structure, the idea of corporate citizenship and community correctly diagnose problems but reflect a naïve idealism and critical management studies is simple navel-gazing. This is to over-characterise the argument but I hope captures the essence. Indeed Parker’s introductions and summaries to each chapter render the essence so well that this book will make an excellent crib-source for temporally challenged students. There are problems however and, to be fair, Parker is aware of them (esp pp 23-24, 42, 101, 111-112, 126). The classic, central dilemma of authors influenced by both Marxism and post-modernity is to find a philosophical foundation for their enterprise upon which to base both knowledge claims and value orientations. Thus Parker condemns dehumanisation but never tells us why humanism is preferable, writes of meaningful democratic alternatives to managerialism but never tells us why democracy is such a good idea. Parker promises a future book on alternative forms of organization (p 200), looks towards a reconciliation between practical and intellectual labour (p 209) and claims that organisation theorists have a potential role in building non-managerialist futures (p 213) but as much as his critiques are sharp, such proposals are platitudinous. Sadly, old bromides about making people matter (p 64) don’t provide much to work with and we can only hope that Parker does more to establish his own premises for action before his next publication. A second and again somewhat inevitable problem is that in attempting to address both academic and general audiences there are inconsistencies in the assumptions made about readers’ prior knowledge. We have to be told that ‘the most influential author for our contemporary understanding of bureaucracy was undoubtedly Max Weber’ (p 18) but are assumed to know the meaning of ‘a simplistic Marxist ideology and false consciousness argument’ (p 23) and the ‘situationist street theatre of the WOMBLES’ (p 166). I find it hard to imagine a reader who is aware of situationism and false consciousness but needs an introduction to Weber. Finally we can all nit-pick about what is missing from any text. This is fun however and so I will. The work of John Gray is so strikingly similar to Parker’s in its critiques of globalisation and the ahistoricism of market ideology (esp p 187) that the absence of references to it is staggering. The chapter on culture industries is dominated by selective references to Hollywood movies and says little about television or music. And the work on business ethics misses much critical material in the journals (including feminist business ethics) and ignores Jackall’s classic Moral Mazes (again a supportive text for Parker’s position). Finally Parker says little about the critique of management from neo-liberalism. This deserves a chapter rather than a page (pp 172-173) even if only as counterpoint. For all its faults however this is an excellent and provocative read which fills a gap for anyone wanting to challenge the easy assumptions of business and management and it provides a good primer for people aware of some but not all of the critiques covered.

Ron Beadle

Ron Beadle is Principal Lecturer in Human Resource Management at Northumbria University, England. He teaches management, organisation theory, reward management and business ethics. His research interests include the development of the idea of the good employer, reward management and the application of the work of major philosophers to management. He is the author of a series of publications for the London based Social Market Foundation think tank in addition to publishing in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, British Journal of Industrial Relations and the New Psychologist. His Misappropriations of MacIntyre appeared in Reason in Practice Volume 2 Number 2. Before turning to academia Ron undertook undergraduate and postgraduate work at the London School of Economics and worked in the gas industry. Philosophy of Management Volume 3 Number 1 2003

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Review: Ethics, Management and Mythology

Ethics, Management and Mythology Michael Loughlin Radcliffe Medical Press, Abingdon 2002 xxv + 279 pages ISBN 1-85775-574-X This is an angry book; and rightly so. Management-speak, whether in the British National Health Service (NHS), education or elsewhere, is being pressed into service by the neo-liberal ideologues known as ‘New Labour’ to continue the Thatcherite ‘cultural revolution that is as broad in scope as the Maoist experiment in China’ (p 109). The idiocies of ‘mission-statements’, whether prefacing NHS Trusts’ or universities’ bathetic attempts at self-advertisement or appearing as imbecilic straplines on railway ‘timetables’ or supermarkets’ lorries, and mirroring as they do the worst of the ‘Newspeak’ of central and eastern Europe under Brezhnev that liberals used to criticise as indicative of ‘communist’ brainwashing, now dominate what passes for much of public discourse. It is indeed the case that the fundamentalists of the neo-liberal order, whether ‘New Labour’ politicians, NHS gauleiters or university commandants, and whose ‘doctrine takes on a quasi-religious status’ (p 98), are committed to the view that ‘by redescribing reality we can change it’ (p 75). And it is clearly no less the case that it is ‘the pseudo-science of management’ (ch 4) which has been ascribed a leading role by these free-market buccaneers in their determination to refashion the world after their own conviction that private is good and public bad; that we should be customers, not patients, passengers or students; that greed is to be venerated as the engine-room of human motivation; that ‘consultation’ logically entails the agreement of those ‘consulted’; and that only what can be literally measured is of any value. The idea of capitalism with a human face is either irredeemably naive or culpably disingenuous. Above all, as Loughlin rightly argues (pp 167 ff ), it is ‘ethics’ which is being used to conceal the profoundly unethical character of our society: consider NHS ethics committees which, while of course working entirely within the agreed rules and norms, routinely approve research the sole purpose of which is to increase a pharmaceutical company’s profits or to obtain a paper PhD; or the ludicrous commitment of more and more businesses to ‘ethical’ policies and practices; or the British government’s risible commitment to an ‘ethical’ foreign policy. Nor should we be surprised. For ideology (in this, negative, sense, if not in others) routinely proceeds by lying, by describing things as what they are not. So ‘quality’ becomes, per impossibile, a substantive reification rather than a normative qualification (p 95); rationing becomes ‘priority setting’ (p 157); and job-training becomes a ‘university education’ (see the recent White Paper on Higher Education). So healthcare ethics - just like business ethics, management ethics and, for all I know, call-centre ethics - is fundamentally a political matter. What cannot be overstressed is that many people see that, given scarce resources, there are real and perplexing moral questions concerning how to ration them, particularly when they are life-saving medical resources [but that n]ot so many people feel that the structure of society which determines the conditions of scarcity (and so the need for rationing), the social conditions under which so many people become so ill that they need to have their lives ‘saved’ and other ‘deep’ political concerns represent the really practical problems (pp 144-5). Loughlin is also surely right, as he argues in the last two chapters, that it is education in the widest sense which is the only defence against this closing down of what counts as the problem; and that it is philosophy, again broadly and democratically conceived, which has to be fundamental. For what is doing philosophy but distinguishing sense from nonsense? So far, so good. Loughlin’s ambitious book is at once an analysis of the intellectual, moral and political depredations outlined above and a course, aimed largely at health service and other public sector workers, in the ‘methods of reasoning and methods of coping which will equip us to deal effectively with the problems we face in real contexts’ (p xii), having found ‘ways to educate ourselves’, (ibid) rather than relying on ‘professional’ ethics and the rest of the apparatus of the ruling ideology. It is an impressive achievement of both these ambitions. Unsurprisingly, of course, I do have philosophical differences with Loughlin. These centre around his advocacy of ‘a more defensible form of intuitionism...construed not as knowledge of basic moral propositions but the possession of fundamental rational dispositions’ (p 196) and his view that (the contemporary revival of Kantian approaches both notwithstanding and unmentioned) ‘irrationalism...still...appeal[s] to many who study philosophy’ and that, furthermore, ‘[T]here is much that needs to be preserved in its critique of certain views which may be labelled ‘rationalist’’ (p 128). There are, too, a number of places where he does not do his protagonists’ arguments justice: neutrality need not be understood as ‘spurious objectivity’ (pp 202 ff ); Williams’ advocacy of QALYs (quality-adjusted life years) need not, it seems to me, fall foul of his subjectivism (pp 171 ff ); and the issue of turning to outsiders for advice needs to take account of the difference between one’s 66

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Review: Ethics, Management and Mythology being outside a particular organisation and one’s being outside any such organisation (p 79). Be that as it may. Neither philosophical differences nor a few points of detail should stand in the way of appreciating Loughlin’s onslaught. That said, there are two different sorts of difficulty that remain, and which I think do detract from his otherwise considerable achievement. The first concerns what might be termed the paradox of education. If (proper, philosophical) education is the (only) way of at least beginning to turn the tide of nonsense and worse which Loughlin excoriates, and if it is also the case that - as Loughlin himself points out when quoting Nietzsche ‘in one of his more obscene moments’ (p 19) - ‘[I]f one wants slaves, one is a fool if one educates them to be masters’1 then what chance is there that the required education would be permitted, let alone encouraged, by any government committed to an ‘education system [which] effectively assume[s] that what the masses ‘need’ is training in a narrow range of skills appropriate to their station in life’ (ibid.)? It is a central aspect of Loughlin’s overall argument that [T]he idea that ‘the masses’ might receive the sort of good general education which those politicians defending the ‘reforms’ themselves received is treated as too absurd to be worth considering: if education is to become mass education, then it must at the same time become bad education. (ibid) And of course he is right. But then his project would surely appear doomed, precisely because it is subversive of the views, attitudes and platitudes of those in power. Now, I rather think that Loughlin might reply that we can work in the spaces inevitably left even in the most totalitarian structures; that we can, and should, exploit the contradictions of ‘New Labour’s’ policies on higher education - just as, presumably, those ‘doctors, nurses and managers ...[who do manage to become]...reflective people able to analyse problems, aware of their limitations and able to distinguish sense from nonsense’ (p 186) work within similar spaces and contradictions. Well, perhaps so: let us at any rate hope so. But the problem is one which I think Loughlin would have done well explicitly to address, and it is an example of a wider problem with his argument, namely that it does not directly address the question of ideology. So, for example, while it is doubtless the case that ‘[A]n acceptable management organisation would not represent the interests and thinking of the dominant economic order to the health service...[but rather]...would represent the interests of that service to the wider social order’ (p 112) it remains unclear whether or not Loughlin thinks that this might be possible within something like the existing economic order, suitably modified. Or again, if people are dishonest in eschewing the term ‘rationing’ in respect of NHS resources (p 161), is that because the term can in principle be employed ‘neutrally’ (unlike, for example, the notion of QALYs): certainly ‘[T]here is very little in this world that is absolutely necessary’ (ibid); but is that to be taken as suggesting that in ideal economic and political conditions all medical needs would be adequately met? And however salutary Loughlin’s account is of ‘the true function of ethics committees’, as serving ‘to foster the illusion that decisions of the state are the result of impartial, objective reasoning ‘informed’ by ‘experts’’ (p 182), does it suggest that philosophers should never sit on them, as his tone seems to imply? If so, then what about philosophers in schools or universities? Or philosophers publishing books? Consider, too, Loughlin’s unimpeachable discussion of how so much of the ‘mainstream’ consists in the deliberate manipulation of citizens through ‘persuasive definition’ (pp 73 et seq): but the question then arises whether or not any ‘neutral’ use of language is possible, or whether it is simply a matter of who has the greater power to persuade, of who, in short, is in command? What we need here is an explicit analysis of ideology (in its negative sense); of the necessary contradictions inherent in any such ideology and how they might be exploited; and of the merits or otherwise in this context in particular of the sort of rationalistic approach to ethics and politics which Loughlin, as I suggested earlier, rather summarily dismisses. That brings me to the second difficulty I have with the book: its tendency to move rapidly between attacking managerialism and berating a (mis)conception of (applied) philosophy, the latter carried on at the same time as trying philosophically to educate its readers. Loughlin’s problems with ‘applied philosophy’, and with much current philosophical practice, make interesting reading for professional philosophers; but I doubt they add much to the understanding of the more general reader with whose practice he is centrally concerned. Nor do I happen to recognise much of what he describes as the misdemeanours of philosophers - often offered as anecdote and in the first person, in a tone unfortunately suggestive of shoulders heaped high with chips. Of course, it may be that my own experience just happens to be far more positive than his. Nonetheless, remarks about ‘unfashionable 1

ibid, from Nietzsche tr R J Hollingdale The Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-Christ Harmondsworth: Penguin 1968 p 95

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Review: Ethics, Management and Mythology academics like myself ’ (p 105), ‘[T]ypical reactions rang[ing] from incredulity to open hostility’ (p 139) when presenting a view of philosophy as necessarily practical and the frequent adoption of a rather ‘hurt’ tone in respect of his own dealings with philosophers and philosophy (especially in the footnotes) seem to me out of place. And they anyway sit uncomfortably with his entirely justified criticism of others as ‘gurus’, with their ‘constant talk of ‘conversions’, ‘missions’ and ‘enlightenment’ (p 98). Finally, do not be put off by David Seedhouse’s somewhat overwrought introduction. Loughlin’s book is a rarity, a philosophical argument explicitly and genuinely aimed at improving health service practitioners’ and others’ thinking, and thus a moral as well as an intellectual undertaking. Anyone and that should be everyone who has not already and irrevocably sold the pass - uncomfortable with what they are being required to do, and requiring others to do, in the name of ‘efficiency’, ‘modernisation’, ‘quality enhancement’, ‘customer satisfaction’, ‘priority setting’ and other such freemarket fundamentalisms - at once subornation of intellectual honesty and moral integrity and an attempt not to argue that there is no alternative but to ensure that there is none - will find it worth reading.

Bob Brecher

Bob Brecher is Reader in Philosophy in the School of Historical & Critical Studies at the University of Brighton and Founding Editor of Res Publica, a journal of legal and social philosophy. He is the author of Anselm’s Argument: The Logic of Divine Existence (Gower 1984) and Getting What You Want? A Critique of Liberal Morality (Routledge 1998). He co-edited Liberalism and the New Europe (Avebury 1993), The University in a Liberal State (Avebury 1996) and Nationalism and Racism in the Liberal Order (Ashgate 1998). His many journal articles and book chapters address questions of liberalism, ‘the liberal individual’ and related conceptions of ethics, issues in healthcare ethics and material related to Holocaust Studies. He is a former President of the UK Association for Legal and Social Philosophy and has been a Visiting Research Fellow in the Centre for Philosophy and Public Affairs at the University of St Andrews and a Visiting Research and Teaching Fellow at the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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