Choice or circumstance?

John Rawls revived political philosophy in 1971 with his book A Theory of Justice. What was then the reason for this revival? Well, I don't know for sure but my guess is that we are talking about the appearance of a new scientific breakthrough that had a bearing on how people organized themselves. Science leads the philosophical development in most cases in the history of science since Copernicus 1543.

In Sweden it was Olof Palme that would have introduced this phenomenon. Liberal Equalitarianism followed and was thought to lead us into the welfare state according to Will Kymlicka's Contemporary Political Philosophy from 2002. People don't believe this today apparently. But Kymlicka's book is explaining the theory and its add on by Dworkin in a nice fashion.

I wish I had found this book before the election now in Sweden because it perhaps explains the philosophical difference between the two coalitions. We make choices that we are responsible for and we end up in circumstances that we are not responsible for and liberal equality theory states how this should be accounted for while maintaining the intuition that people matter and that they are equal. Rawls difference principle states that differences in equality are acceptable if the least well off gets some benefit from the inequality in question. Apparently the so called New Right is arguing that they don't like liberal equality because you will get free riders that will live off the toils of the earners.

Well, am I in my present situation because of a free choice that I should be responsible for or am I where I am because of circumstances beyond my control? And even more importantly, how many share my fate? I guess the answer to this is that if I got a fair trial with all cards on the table I could prove that my situation is due to circumstances beyond my control.

Is the Alliance and the Red-Green coalition split on this important issue or are they on the same page? In other words, was the election clandestinely about this dichotomy or not? It could have to do with the job-line versus the handout-line given by the two alternatives but it seem like, from my own perspective, that even if you have your own money people are trying to force you to work for them with the help of clandestine coercion and charades--what are they doing to people that don't have their own money? The answer to this question is that they are even worse. This I know from my own experience. Is Sweden turning into the ordinary working people and hell?