Rawls' theory of justice should be of special interest to orthodox Marxists, and this for at least three reasons: (a) Rawls strives to integrate his philosophy with the empirical social sciences and economics, something which for Marx too had been a chief aim. (b) Despite the intimate collaboration between philosophy and the empirical sciences which Rawls proposes, he claims to develop a genuine ethical theory, and ethics is something which is lacking in Marxian philosophy. (c) The Rawlsian ideal of a just society has at least in some respects a strongly socialist flavor: Rawls' Difference Principle states that in a just society somebody's being better off than others can be justified only as far as his being better off simultaneously improves the lot of the worst off.