Are Only Contributors Entitled to Social Rights? Cooperation, Reciprocity, and the Boundaries of Social Justice

One idea that plays an important role in several attempts to reject a strong unconditional component in welfare state arrangements, and to back the present trend toward workfare and activation, is the view that social justice must be grounded in the idea of society as a productive system of cooperation for mutual benefit. In his critique of the basic income proposal, William Galston appeals to the Rawlsian point of departure that a theory of social justice is about “the fair organization of … a cooperative venture and a fair allocation of its joint products” (Galston 2001, 33). On this view, it seems, nonparticipants have no relevant claims on the fruits of this venture (at least not on grounds of social justice).