To demand, as Rawls does, that no just claim rest on an undeserved base simply means that we must cease speaking about justice, for on the basis of that demand there can never be any just claims - not even for equality. Rawls' analysis of justice rests on a notion of desert which violates the concept of desert and therefore does not provide a more precise notion of the bases of desert, but rather dissolves entirely the concept of desert and with it justice. The many debates over justice in political life and in philosophy concern the actual substantive question of what are the proper bases of desert. That is, underlying every conception of justice must be a claim of right, a positive claim of desert. The great failing of Rawls' argument is that he provides no substantive basis for a claim right or desert; but this failing is, paradoxically, also the source of the great appeal or excitement about Rawls' theory. His approach seems to avoid the difficulties of the traditional debates and the value questions they necessarily raise and yet seems to enable him to discuss normative questions such as justice.