y to produce the greatest average happiness." Indeed, this was very much the argument that planters in the antebellum American South used to justify the preservation of its King Cotton prosperity. Rawls says that in the extreme case, in a society where slavery was perceived to produce this greatest average happiness, the slaveholder might justify his holding of slaves even if he might be enslaved himself. Now this is a repugnant idea on its face, but if the utilitarian theory is correct, that idea makes sense if individuals have agreed to be bound by the practical application of its principles. Rawls does not argue that the arguments for slavery fall because no slave ever agreed to a social principle of enslavement but rather that no one would agree to risk being enslaved by a society of which he was a full member. In this regard, Rawls refers to what he terms the "original position," wherein individuals who assembled to construct a society would have an equal voice in how the society would be organized. But where the voices are unequal (and in the real world
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