Rutger Claassen

There has been a remarkable shift in the relation between market and state responsibilities for public services like health care and education. While these services continue to be financed publicly, they are now often provided through the market. The main argument for this new institutional division of labor is economic: while (public) ends stay the same, (private) means are more efficient. Markets function as ‘mere means’ under the continued responsibility of the state. This paper investigates and rejects currently existing egalitarian liberal theories about this division of labor and it presents and defends a new theory of marketization, in which social rights and democratic decision-making occupy center-stage.

Business corporations are important, often powerful actors within the economy. They are able to exercise power over other actors, such as employees, consumers and nation-states. This contribution discusses how corporate power is constituted (ontological question), for what purpose it should be exercised, (normative question) and how it should be controlled (governance question). It focuses on the competing anwers to these questions that have been proposed by three political theories of the corporation. Concession theories emphasize the state's role in chartering corporations, and hence require corporations to act in the public interest. Contractualist theories present corporations as tools for contract partners (most often shareholders), with corporate purpose focused on the benefits to these partners. Real entity theories focus on the corporation as an autonomous, separate entity with a purpose to be determined by the group seeking incorporation.

This paper discusses the question of whether a capability theory of justice (such as that of Martha Nussbaum) should accept a basic “capability to hold property.” Answering this question is vital for bridging the gap between abstract capability theories of justice and their institutional implications in real economies. Moreover, it is vital for understanding the difference between egalitarian and libertarian versions of the capability approach. In the paper, three main arguments about private property are discussed: those relating property to a private sphere of control, to the market system of allocating goods, and to the ability to keep the fruits of one's labor. On the basis of this discussion it is argued that the capability theory of justice should accept a basic capability to hold private property, albeit one that is restricted in scope and has an egalitarian character. Special attention is paid to libertarian arguments about property acquisition, and it is argued that capability theories of justice must reject them because they presuppose a method of justifying capabilities that the capability approach cannot accept.

Corporations wield power in today’s economies, and political theories of the corporation argue about the legitimacy conditions of corporate power. This paper argues in favour of a double-fiduciary theory for corporations. Based on a concession theory of markets, it sees all markets as authorized by states (in the name of society), for the purpose of creating economic value, or wealth. Hence corporations, as much as non-incorporated firms, have a fiduciary duty to the state/society to create wealth, in the competitive structure of the market. However, their pursuit of wealth often creates unbalanced relations of power between corporations and their stakeholders, which can at some point be classified as instances of domination. Therefore, corporations need to be subjected to a second fiduciary duty, i.e. not to dominate others in the economy. This duty is also, in the final instance, owed to the state/society. In an era when everyone can incorporate their business, states/societies can be interpreted as having, through corporate law, mandated shareholders as ‘proximate beneficiaries’, to incentivize corporations to create wealth. Now states/societies need to think about how to prevent corporations from dominating others. New mechanisms of accountability towards stakeholders and/or citizens as proximate beneficiaries are needed. Only in this way can corporations be effectively held to account for both of the fiduciary duties which characterize their normative status.

Public professionals do not only serve their clients but also – by doing so – the public at large. The state often has a direct grip on their work, through financing, regulation or otherwise. This leads to a deeply felt conflict in contexts where authoritarian, illiberal leadership is widespread. Public professionals then face a moral dilemma: should they resist illiberal pressures by the state, or continue to obey their states? The paper's main question is how this practical dilemma for public professionals should be interpreted. First, it presents a framework to interpret the professional situation, characterising it as a fiduciary relation, which we can understand through the lens of Thomas Hobbes's theory of authorisation/representation. On this theoretical basis, the paper discusses three competing models for understanding the public professional's predicament. The teleological model revolves around loyalty to one's clients. The conscientious professional model which is about loyalty to one's own moral convictions. The constitutional model is about loyalty to constitutional principles. The paper argues in favour of the constitutional model. Standing up against illiberal pressures is best interpreted as a matter of loyalty to the principles of constitutionality that underly the fiduciary relation between citizens and their states.

This contribution offers an introduction to the Special Issue 'Rethinking the European Social Market Economy'. It places the Special Issue against the background of the debate on free markets versus social protection in the European Union and the inclusion of the notion of 'social market economy' in the Treaty on European Union. It sketches the meaning and development of the social market economy concept, and introduces the key questions underlying this Special Issue and the contributions included in it.

Corporations are increasingly asked to specify a ‘purpose.’ Instead of focusing on profits, a company should adopt a substantive purpose for the good of society. This chapter analyses, historicises, and radicalises this call for purpose. It schematises the history of the corporation into two main purpose/power regimes, each combining a way of thinking about corporate purpose with specific institutions to hold corporate power to account. Under the special charter regime of the seventeenth to mid-nineteenth centuries, governments chartered companies to pursue specific public purposes. Under criticism for corruption and lack of competition, the special charter regime gave way to the contemporary general incorporation regime, under which no particular purposes are demanded of corporations, and profit-seeking has become the norm. This regime has now come under criticism, with calls for a new social purpose regime. The analysis of these three regimes focuses on politicisation. The chapter argues that orienting companies to substantive social purposes requires politicising the business corporation, creating meaningful accountability mechanisms to align companies with the goals of the public. The purpose paradigm must overcome its political timorousness and be more institutionally radical. The difficulty is doing this without unacceptable corruption and inefficiency. A form of ‘proper politicisation’ is needed. At the end of the chapter, some directions for reform are discussed, which may deliver on that desideratum.

What sort of entitlements should citizens have in a just society? In this book, Rutger Claassen sets out a theory of what he terms 'navigational agency', whereby citizens should be able to navigate freely between social practices. This shows how individuals can be at the same time free and autonomous in striving for their own goals in life, but also embedded in social practices in which they have to cooperate with others. He argues that for navigational agency, people need three sets of core capabilities: those which allow human empowerment in civil society, a decent level of socio-economic subsistence, and political participation in democratic decision-making procedures. The idea of navigational agency, the book argues, provides an alternative to currently dominant versions of the capability approach to social justice, and strengthens its liberal foundations.

Political theory today has expanded its scope to debate business corporations, conceiving of them as political actors, not (just) private actors in the market place. This article shows the continuing relevance of Thomas Hobbes’s work for this debate. Hobbes is commonly treated as a defender of the so-called concession theory, which traces the legitimacy of corporations to their being chartered by sovereign state authorities for public purposes. This theory is widely judged to be anachronistic for contemporary business corporations, because these can now be freely formed, on the basis of private initiative. However, a close reading of the crucial passages in Hobbes’s work reveals a more subtle view, which rejects this private/public dualism. Hobbes’s reflections on the companies of merchants of his day provide room for business corporations’ pursuit of private purposes, while keeping them embedded in a public framework of authority. Moreover, by criticizing the monopoly status of these companies, he opens up a way to integrate market failure arguments from modern economics into concession theory. The “neo-Hobbesian concession theory” emerging from this analysis shows how concession theory can accommodate private initiative and economic analysis, and thus be a relevant position in the debate about the modern business corporation

Heath’s paper on privatization defends a broadly welfarist-economic approach in thinking about the legitimacy of privatizations. This approach is ‘instrumentalist’ (in contrast to deontological approaches). In this response, I accept the value of an instrumentalist approach to privatization, but argue against Heath’s welfarist version of it, and argue in favor an alternative. First, the ends we seek when thinking about socially vital goods (our theory of public interests) should go beyond Pareto-efficiency. Second, as to the means we employ to realize these ends, we need a view of markets which takes into account not just their competitiveness, but also the distribution of power. This means we need to differentiate market types. Third, we need to differentiate ownership types beyond the standard shareholder-owned company. Alternative ownership structures may be able to realize public interests more easily and hence make privatization less problematic. On these three issues, the picture Heath sketches leaves out too many of the variables that, in the end, may be decisive in whether or not a privatization is acceptable.

Competition for positional goods is an important feature of contemporary consumer societies. This paper discusses three strategies for a normative evaluation of positional competition. First, it criticizes an evaluation in terms of people's motives to engage in such competition. A reconstruction of an American debate over the status-motivation of consumer behavior shows how such an analysis founders on the difficulties of distinguishing between status and non-status motives for consumption. Second, the article criticizes an approach based on assessing the (positive and negative) externalities of positional competition. This approach is plagued by the methodological difficulty of determining the relevant externalities and their weight. The article then puts forward a third kind of evaluation, in terms of recognition relations. Starting from Axel Honneth's theory of recognition, I will propose to think of positional competition as a struggle for one kind of recognition that is necessary to personal autonomy, i.e. recognition according to the principle of achievement. Finally, the paper discusses the question of how we can assess the legitimacy of interferences with positional competition. I argue that the recognition-based approach has a better response to this question than the externalities-based approach, especially with regard to the liberal objection that such interference is a violation of personal freedom.

In the history of political thought, the relationship between property and power has been a central preoccupation. The very nature of private property, on many accounts, is to put owners in a position of self-serving power to make decisions about matters of concern to others. In many legal systems, the vast power of owners is pervasive, as an ever greater range of resources is brought within the property regime and subjected to private power backed by the coercive power of the state. Political and legal philosophers have long puzzled over how to reconcile the nature of private property with the limits and social responsibilities upon which, at least for some accounts, property’s legitimacy depends. The perennial question, then, is how best to understand the nature of property such that property’s limits can also be accounted for coherently within our legal and constitutional arrangements. Robé’s book Property, Power and Politics provides us with a wide-ranging analysis of property. There is much that we agree with and applaud here. In this contribution we seek to situate a key aspect of his work within this larger context, and to offer a criticism of one element of his view: his rejection of an understanding of ownership as an office. In Robé’s analysis, offices belong in the public sphere, where officeholders are held to account by their constituencies. We argue that Robé’s rejection of the idea of ownership-as-office rests on a misunderstanding of the legal concept of “office.” Moreover, this idea, properly understood, provides sound conceptual support for the normative aims of Robé’s account: to bind property and social responsibility tightly together. Robé’s project to criticize the virtually unlimited power of private owners in the contemporary world is served, not undermined, by understanding property as an office. First, we provide a brief summary of the key elements of Robé’s view of property (Part II). We then introduce a theoretical perspective on property as office as it has been developed in legal theory (Part III). Finally, we argue that this perspective fits better with Robé’s stated purposes than his own rejection of it suggests and raises some questions for future discussion (Part IV).

Een kleine politieke filosofie Moeten rokers vrij gelaten worden te roken in de horeca, of mag de staat hun dat verbieden? Is Laura Dekker vrij op zeilreis te gaan, of had de staat haar thuis moeten houden? Zijn allochtonen vrij hun eigen cultuur te behouden of moeten zij juist integreren? En zijn wij vrij om onze welvaart te vergroten ook als dat het klimaat grote schade toebrengt? Nadat onze vrijheid in de jaren zestig en zeventig enorm is toegenomen, beleven we nu een periode waarin die vrijheid wordt herijkt. Het streven dat burgers vrij moeten zijn hun leven naar eigen goeddunken in te richten botst nu met de roep om 'grenzen aan de vrijheid'. Deze strijd om de vrijheid vormt het hart van vele controversiële politieke kwesties die het afgelopen decennium het publieke debat beheersten. In Het huis van de vrijheid bespreekt Rutger Claassen deze kwesties met een filosofische blik. Hij neemt stelling tegen eenzijdige opvattingen van vrijheid en verdedigt haar als het ideaal van de autonome burger. Dat ideaal vraagt er echter wel om vrijheid in samenhang te zien met andere politieke idealen, zoals welzijn, veiligheid, gelijkheid, democratie en gemeenschap. Claassen laat zien dat het vrijheidsideaal - ondanks alle kritiek - onmisbaar is, maar hij schetst ook hoe het komt dat het zo gemakkelijk voor totaal verschillende politieke programma's kan worden misbruikt.

The article discusses a fundamental problem that has to be faced if the general capability approach is to be developed in the direction of a theory of justice: the selection and justification of a list of capabilities. The democratic solution to this problem (defended by Amartya Sen) is to leave the selection of capabilities to a process of democratic deliberation, while the philosophical solution (defended by Martha Nussbaum) is to establish this list of capabilities as a matter of philosophical theory. The article investigates the debate between these two different positions and argues in favour of the philosophical solution. First, it distinguishes political from epistemological reasons for (not) making capability lists. Second, it shows that the democratic position must incorporate at least some philosophical theorising in general and a theory of democracy in particular. Third, the article argues that the democratic position presupposes that the philosophical position will bypass the democratic process while actually it does not. The philosophical position is actually more respectful of democracy than the democratic position. Fourth, while philosophers may exercise caution and connect their capability lists to actual democratic debates and other empirical sources, this kind of epistemological virtue ironically may heighten the chance of receiving reproaches on the political level.

Our present crises are growing more urgent, pervading many domains of public life—economic, political, environmental, and social. This motivates scholars to find more adequate, combinatory perspectives from which to explain them. One such effort, under the broad heading of Law and Political Economy (LPE), challenges an established view of legality that insulates the market and its dominant actors from critique and accountability. The established view is based on two misconceptions. First, it sees the real function of a capitalist legal device, whether in contracts, antitrust, property, or corporate law, in terms of efficient wealth creation; this function is its underlying rationale and normative aim. Second, it tends to remove equality, coercion, and legitimacy—the core problems of power—from the scope of economic appraisal. When laws and policies are fashioned out of these ideas, democratic institutions will be unable to counter the dominance of capital. New analytical approaches are therefore necessary (Purdy et al. 2020). Along with researchers in associated fields, LPE scholars are attempting to better understand the legal constructions in which financial and political power are anchored and to develop new ways of integrating the economy into democratic life. Robé is a leading voice in these debates. His new book, Property, Power, and Politics, encloses in one volume his ideas on the role of incorporated firms—and of markets, property, and finance—in the larger dynamics of global politics. In this symposium, interlocutors with backgrounds in law, political science, and philosophy engage with this rich analysis. This introduction provides an overview of the book’s arguments (sections 2 and 3) and then introduces the contributions (section 4).

This contribution asks how to approach the question of whether the European Union should – replacing or supplementing member states – also be a locus of social justice‐based duties to provide welfare state services. The contribution scrutinizes two important theories of global justice (cosmopolitan and relational theories) and finds that their normative assumptions hinder them from adequately addressing this question. A new theory is proposed, inspired by Immanuel Kant's political philosophy. The core idea is that social justice requires public authorities to protect citizens against private forms of coercion; and that the level (national, European, global) at which such authority needs to be exercised depends on which arrangement best protects citizens' rights to independence. The paper outlines several duties of global justice to give specificity to this general principle, and then applies them to the case of integrating European welfare states.

Veelbelovend debuut van een talentvolle jonge filosoof - in de traditie van Hans Achterhuis Waarom leven wij in een wereld die voor eeuwig gevuld lijkt te zijn met tekorten? Welke mechanismen creëren dat voortdurende gevoel niet genoeg te hebben? Waar komt ons oneindig verlangen naar méér vandaan - ondanks alle welvaart en overvloed? Deze vragen vormen de basis van een filosofische zoektocht naar de oorsprong van schaarste. Rutger Claassen bespreekt de belangrijkste denkers uit filosofie en economie die zich met dit probleem hebben beziggehouden. Hij laat zien hoe schaarste een rol speelt in actuele debatten over globalisering, de consumptiemaatschappij, natuur en milieu, de waarde van arbeid en het debat over normen en waarden. In Het eeuwig tekort stelt Claassen de vraag hoe wij 'voorbij de schaarste' kunnen komen en ons kunnen losmaken van onze drang tot ongebreidelde bevrediging van behoeften. Volgens hem moeten we de uitweg zoeken in een filosofie die ervan uitgaat dat de bevrediging van menselijke behoeften slechts één vorm is van menselijke activiteit temidden van een veelheid aan waardevolle levensvervullingen.

Over the last century, many philosophers have argued in favour of a liberal-egalitarian accommodation of capitalism, in which the liberty of the market is to be combined with an egalitarian distribution of property. Theorists of positive freedom, amongst others, have been prominent in arguing for the liberal-egalitarian accommodation. They have argued that an egalitarian distribution of private property is necessary to give every citizen equal positive freedom. To lead an autonomous life, every citizen needs control over some private property. The liberal-egalitarian accommodation to capitalism has come under threat in the last decades, as documented by a renewed widening of inequalities in wealth and income. In this essay, I will argue that this predicament requires us to look at one important precondition of the positive freedom argument. This precondition I call the de-politization of private property. Private property is conceived of as a purely private phenomenon, which has no effects on the exercise of political power. However, whether this precondition is met is a contingent matter; and so defenders of the positive freedom argument therefore need to turn their attention to the problem posed by the relation between private property and political power.

Internationale markten zijn de afgelopen decennia sterk mondiaal ontwikkeld en veel bedrijven zijn in deze geglobaliseerde context uitgegroeid tot belangrijke, quasi-politieke spelers. Deze stormachtige economische ontwikkelingen bieden kansen en welvaart aan velen, maar kennen echter ook schaduwzijden, van milieubelasting tot belastingontwijking. In deze bundel verkennen de auteurs het idee van de ‘open samenleving’ om vat te krijgen op deze nieuwe realiteit. De open samenleving naar het ideaal van Popper, waarin mensen de vrijheid hebben om hun mening uit te drukken, initiatief te nemen, en elkaar tegen te spreken, wordt gezien als de grondslag voor vrijheid, welvaart, en vooruitgang. Deze bundel onderzoekt of de toegenomen openheid van markten de open samenleving als politiek ideaal dichterbij heeft gebracht. De auteurs werpen vanuit verschillende perspectieven een kritisch licht op de bedreigingen die voortvloeien uit mondiale markten en de toegenomen macht van ondernemingen. Ze stellen óók de vraag of het gedachtegoed van de open samenleving inspiratie kan bieden bij het tegengaan van die bedreigingen. Kunnen nieuwe vormen en interpretaties van ‘openheid’ worden gevonden, die tegenwicht bieden tegen de excessen van de vrijemarkteconomie?

Van oudsher proberen liberaal-democratische samenlevingen private en publieke sferen gescheiden te houden. Individuen en bedrijven kunnen privaat handelen op de markt, winst maken en daar de vruchten van plukken. De publieke macht moet daar onafhankelijk van uitgeoefend worden, op democratische basis. Maar die strikte scheiding tussen privaat en publiek staat onder druk. Oligarchen beïnvloeden in veel landen de politiek, door partijdonaties en lobbyactiviteiten. Bedrijven reguleren hun eigen activiteiten, en overheden slagen er in een geglobaliseerde economie lang niet altijd in om daar effectieve controle over te hebben. In dit boek presenteert Rutger Claassen een filosofische analyse van de relatie tussen privaat en publiek. In het feodalisme waren beide met elkaar verweven, op een ongezonde manier. De moderne, open samenleving ontstond in de 18e eeuw als een reactie daarop. Maar vandaag de dag lijken we een terugval te beleven. Opnieuw vermengen economische en politieke belangen zich, ten koste van burgers. Zijn we aangeland in een ‘neo-feodaal’ tijdperk? En hoe daarop te reageren? Voor iedereen die wil begrijpen hoe politiek en economie elkaar beïnvloeden, en hoe een filosofische blik ons daarbij kan helpen.

Which goods should we be able to buy and sell on the market and, alternatively, which goods should remain sheltered from the market? For many goods in modern societies, this has proven to be a thorny question. Moreover, it is a question that cannot be answered by way of a theoretical shortcut, that is, by attributing certain general values (or disvalues) to the market and inferring from these general attributes that the market is (or isn’t) the best institution to govern the provision of a specific good. Therefore, in the first part of this work, three theoretical building blocks are proposed to frame the way we should handle the market question. First, a social theory is formulated which treats the market as one out of five main socio-economic modes of provision, the others being public provision, professional provision, informal provision and self-provision. Second, in choosing the best institutional framework for a specific good, it is argued that we should not restrict ourselves to the option of implementing one of these modes of provision only. Special attention should be paid to the option of ‘institutional pluralism’, i.e. instituting a market and a non-market alternative simultaneously for the same good. Both the attractions and the limits of such an institutional pluralism are discussed. Third, in making institutional choices about these modes of provision, we need a normative theory providing the moral criteria to guide our choices. Here a capability theory is proposed, which consists of three central principles, parallel to a distinction between three types of capabilities: those that are ‘immoral’, those that are ‘morally required’ and those that are merely ‘morally permissible’. The principles prescribe avoiding the realization of the immoral capabilities and promoting the realization of morally required and permissible capabilities. In the second part, this threefold framework is applied to three specific goods. These are security (protection against criminal threats), media (mass communication by media such as television, radio and the press) and care (caring activities provided on a structural basis to dependents such as care for children, chronically ill and elderly people). For each of these goods a capability analysis shows that the most appropriate institutional framework is institutional pluralism. In the case of security this is a pluralism of market and public provision, in the case of media a pluralism of market and professional provision and in the case of care a pluralism of market and informal provision. In the final chapter I investigate the conditions that have to be fulfilled for these institutionally pluralist arrangements to be stable, that is, to have a robust chance of survival. The main challenge to stability comes from the dynamic toward capital accumulation that is inherent in contemporary capitalism, and if left unchecked requires an ongoing conversion of non-market practices into markets. Two solutions are proposed to counter this threat: a general working time reduction which reduces capital accumulation and a strategy of publicly funded investment of accumulated capital in non-market parts of institutionally pluralist practices.

In his most recent voluminous work Das Recht der Freiheit (2011) Axel Honneth brings his version of the recognition paradigm to full fruition. Criticizing Kantian theories of justice, he develops a Hegelian alternative which has at its core a different conception of freedom. In this paper, I will scrutinize Honneths latest work to see whether he offers a promising alternative to mainstream liberal theories of justice. I will focus on two key differences with Kantian theories of justice. Substantively, Honneth criticizes the Kantian concept of ‘reflexive freedom’ and proposes instead as the core of his own theory the concept of ‘social freedom’. Methodologically, he proposes a method of ‘normative reconstruction’, and explicitly develops this in contrast to Kantian constructivism. I investigate the robustness of these shifts by seeing how they are actually used in Honneth’s reconstruction of the market sphere. I conclude that his method of normative reconstruction does not provide the kind of guidance Honneth thinks it does. His conception of social freedom fares slightly better but can either be reduced to the mainstream’s idea of reflexive freedom, or else faces some serious challenges.

Dit artikel bespreekt de grondslagen van de organisatie van veiligheidszorg tussen markt en staat: wat is hun rol en onderlinge verhouding? Het antwoord op die vragen hangt mede af van de normatieve benadering die we kiezen. Dit laat het artikel zien aan de hand van twee concurrerende normatieve benaderingen met betrekking tot veiligheid: een individualistische benadering en een gemeenschapsgerichte benadering. Beide benaderingen blijken verschillende visies te genereren op twee belangrijke kwesties in de veiligheidszorg: de ongelijkheden in veiligheidsvoorziening en het belang dat wordt toegekend aan onveiligheidsgevoelens.