The difference principle holds that social and economic inequalities are just only insofar as they benefit the least advantaged members of society. It is a maximin criterion for distributive justice: society should be arranged to maximize the welfare of those who are worst off. It permits unequal outcomes — high CEO salaries, for instance — only if the incentive effects of such inequality genuinely improve the position of the least advantaged. G.A. Cohen challenges this by arguing that the incentive argument requires talented workers to be motivated by self-interest rather than reciprocity, which is itself a failure of the spirit of justice.
Work through the trickle-down logic: when does inequality benefit the worst off, and when is it mere rationalization? Engage Cohen's critique: could talented people be motivated to work hard under a more equal distribution? Compare the difference principle with sufficientarianism (Frankfurt) and luck egalitarianism (Cohen, Dworkin).
From your study of Rawlsian justice, you know the veil of ignorance thought experiment: behind it, rational parties don't know their place in society, their class, natural abilities, or life circumstances. You also know from distributive justice the basic question: what principles should govern the distribution of benefits and burdens in a society? The difference principle is Rawls's specific answer to the inequality question — and it's more permissive than it might first appear.
The difference principle operates as a maximin rule: when you don't know which position you'll occupy, you maximize the minimum outcome. Applied to social institutions, this means arranging the basic structure so that the social and economic position of the *least advantaged class* is as high as possible. Crucially, the principle does *not* demand equality. It demands that any departure from equality must work in favor of those at the bottom. If making top executives much richer also raises the wages and social services available to unskilled workers (because higher executive pay attracts investment and growth), the inequality is permitted — indeed, required, because a more equal alternative would leave the worst-off worse off.
The internal logic is that talented people in a market economy can choose to work harder and more productively if they receive higher rewards. Rawls accepts that incentive effects are real: a society that suppresses all income differentials might end up with a smaller total pie, and the worst-off might receive a smaller absolute share despite greater equality. So the difference principle asks: what degree of inequality actually produces the best-feasible outcome for those at the bottom? The answer is probably *some* inequality — but much less than contemporary markets typically generate, since most existing inequality cannot be fully justified by its benefits to the least advantaged.
G.A. Cohen's powerful challenge cuts at the justification: the difference principle only permits high executive salaries if talented workers *require* those incentives to perform. But in a genuinely just society, Cohen argues, people with high talents and good fortune would be motivated by reciprocity — a sense that they owe their social position to the cooperative scheme that produced their advantages — not by self-interest. If talented people insisted on large differentials, they would be acting on principles inconsistent with the justice they are supposed to accept. Cohen's point is that the difference principle, applied to the *basic structure*, allows a kind of hypocrisy: the institutions demand contribution, but individuals opt out of the spirit of those institutions when it costs them. Whether this critique defeats Rawls or merely calls for a more demanding personal ethics alongside just institutions remains a central debate in contemporary egalitarianism.
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