Democratic Distributive Justice
Ross Zucker
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001

ISBN 0-521-7903-36.

Contemporary Political Theory (2002) 1, 245–246. DOI: 10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300033

A curious feature of Anglo-American political theory in recent decades has
been the divide between democratic theory and liberal political philosophy.
Comparing and contrasting classics of each, notably Dahl’s Democracy and its
Critics on one side and Rawls’s A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism on
the other, reveals the democratic theorist’s suspicion of regarding substantive
social and economic rights as primary democratic rights, and the theorist of
justice’s suspicion of the capacity of merely procedural democracy of the
broadly polyarchal (or perhaps ‘aggregative’) kind to produce just outcomes.
In Democratic Distributive Justice, Ross Zucker argues in impressive and often
meticulous detail for the view that ‘a political system does not qualify as a
democracy unless it brings about a just economic order as well’ (p. 277). In this
way, he argues that procedural conceptions of democracy F which he sees as
dominant in democratic theory, as exemplified by Dahl’s major work F are
inadequate, since they fail to recognize and therefore to embrace the
importance of a certain form of income equality between citizens.

Zucker deduces this substantive economic democratic right by a complex
process of reasoning. The essence of the argument is that, in a capitalist
economy, wealth is a product of orientations and preferences of consumers as
well as producers. All members of the economic system make a contribution to
the creation of economic value, since ‘Produced commodities will not have
value F will not form particles of wealth F unless they are wanted or needed’
(p. 85). This contribution needs to be recognized, as commonly it is not. The
form that such recognition should take, according to Zucker, is a collective
commitment to the equalization of a portion of income: ‘since individuals
make some equal indirect contributions to value, they are due proportionate
benefits’ (p. 280). Much of the book buttresses the varied elements of
this deductive argument. Key sections and chapters address liberal theories
of property, the ethics of community as they should be applied to the
economy, the nature and implications of the endogenous formation of
market preferences, and the current state of democratic theory with
regard to economic justice. Many parts of the argument are compelling,
such as the critique of the liberal ‘hidden premise of subjective personality’ and

Contemporary Political Theory, 2002, 1, (245–246)
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the dependence of capitalist economies on a sub-structure of economic
community.

The book is erudite, closely reasoned and tightly written, and its tone
engaged and serious. Importantly, Zucker gets to the nub of key issues
involved in the democratic theory debates he wishes to influence. He sets out
with commendable clarity, for example, his view that ‘current ‘‘democracies’’
that lack the redistributory property right do not qualify as true democracies
along this dimension’ (p. 6). There are many arguable points, starting with the
promotion of unambiguous end-state reasoning at a time when even Rawlsian
theorizing has adopted a brand of deliberative proceduralism (whether
hypothetical or actual), in the face of criticism of the idea that the reasoned
deduction of democratic rights may be a sufficient basis for their acceptance.
However, Zucker’s thesis deserves widespread attention both for its tight and
comprehensive character and for its substantive importance at a time of
widening inequalities in market economies.

Michael Saward
Faculty of Social Sciences,

The Open University.

Book Reviews

246

Contemporary Political Theory 2002 1


	Democratic Distributive Justice