John Roemer’s Economic Philosophy and the Perils of Formalism

Abstract

John Roemer’s recent work uses the mathematics of Social Choice Theory to examine the structure of socialist ideals. One striking conclusion is that the social ownership of the means of production entails the strict equalization of ‘utility.’1 The conclusion is surprising. While of course opposing many existing inequalities, socialists (as opposed to their critics) have not traditionally understood socialism to require strict equalization. Marx, for example, is scathing in his criticism of levelling, which he sees as a form of ‘crude’ communism.2This paper is both exposition and critique. By way of exposition, I show with less than full mathematical rigor what several of Roemer’s axioms of social ownership mean and why they entail the equality of utility.