"In the advanced capitalist countries of today, the claims of absolute need are rarer than those of relative deprivation. How satisfactory is Rawls's formula for meeting these? The 'difference principle' – warranting only those inequalities which are to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged – is the most memorable single thesis of A Theory of Justice. But what is its actual import? The massive ambiguity of the Rawlsian theory of justice lies at precisely this point. Is the difference principle a powerful call for an all but socialist redistribution of income – since, on one reading, so little of the glaring disparities of wealth that surround us contributes to the well-being of the poor? Or is it, on another reading, simply a sensible defence of the normal operation of capitalism – whose constant increase of productivity, raising general living standards, requires precisely the incentive structures, tried and tested by experience, we have today? To grasp the full depth of the indeterminacy at the crux of Rawls's construction, it is enough to note that it can be applauded imperturbably at one extreme by John Roemer on the Left, and at another by Friedrich Hayek on the Right, each contending that its message coincides with their own. Clearly, both cannot be right. But Rawls's Theory, in which the legitimacy of socialism can be mooted on one page and American society held nearly just on the next, leaves space for either view. It might be said that, within its framework, the difference principle is politically indifferent."