What is "Social Justice"?
A chapter from a new book: Human Variation, in preparation
Chapter 2: What is Social Justice?
Social justice belongs in this book because it is used to justify the allocation of resources to groups. A popular SJ theory argues for extreme equalitarianism, the idea that in a perfect world, all would be equal, have equal status and equal resources. Is the existing order unjust? What is justice and is it the supreme value? What other factors might be taken into account in designing an ideal society? Answers to these questions will affect our judgement about current group disparities.
Justice is about righting a wrong, but not just any wrong. If a woman is robbed and the thief caught, restitution and punishment are due. Justice can be served. But if a man is struck by lightning, justice is not involved. No one is to blame, except, perhaps, the man himself for going outside in the middle of a storm. These cases involve individuals, which is usual in law, even if the “individual” is sometimes a corporation, legally, albeit questionably, treated as a person. Social justice is not like that, as we will see.
Another example; imagine that you have a vacation house built next to a stream. Imagine further that one day there is a prolonged rainstorm and the stream that runs by the house overflows and the house is swept away. Who, what, is at fault? Well, it depends on answers to a few questions:
What was the cause of the river overflow? Was it just accumulated rainfall, or did the dam upstream of your house break? Who is responsible for the dam?
Was the storm unprecedented? Did you know the area was a flood plain when you bought the house? Should you have known the site was risky?
How flood-resistant was the house? Did your house float away because the foundation was weak, or because the flooding was irresistible?
The answers to these questions reveal what or who can be blamed for the event and whether the outcome was unjust or just unfortunate. In some cases, the blame can be attached to a person or an institution. For example, suppose the problem comes from a dam break. Who built the dam? Some blame attaches to them. What about the house itself: was it well or shoddily built? If the latter, then some blame attaches to the builder. If the area was a known flood plain, the owner must accept some blame. But if the house was solid, the land considered safe, no dam broke and the storm was unprecedented, the tragic outcome was unlucky, not unjust.
These questions can also tell us if the harm suffered was caused by an identifiable agent or was simply bad luck. A harm has occurred: was it unjust, or just unfortunate? Or is bad luck itself unjust?
What is a group?
Very often the idea of injustice is attached to almost any bad situation. This is easier to do when the issue involves not an individual but groups. That’s where the “social” bit of “social justice” comes in. Social justice doesn’t deal with individuals but with collectives, with categories, usually defined in rather arbitrary ways. But unless a group acts in a self-consciously unitary way, by voting or through elected representatives, it cannot meaningfully be treated as a whole.
For example, a widely cited example of social injustice is the fact that women are paid less than men for the same job. But this is obviously not true for all women and without knowing the causal role of other disparities — differential work hours, work flexibility, ability and interest differences, type of work, etc. — it is impossible say whether existing average pay differences are just or not. In short, and this is a message that cannot be repeated enough, group-average differences are generally uninterpretable ipso facto. Group disparities can pose questions. They never provide answers. This fact is widely ignored.
The definition of social justice
So how is social justice actually defined? Here is an encyclopedia definition[1] just to show how fluid the concept is:
Social justice, in contemporary politics, social science, and political philosophy, the fair treatment and equitable status of all individuals and social groups within a state or society. The term also is used to refer to social, political, and economic institutions, laws, or policies that collectively afford such fairness and equity and is commonly applied to movements that seek fairness, equity, inclusion, self-determination, or other goals for currently or historically oppressed, exploited, or marginalized populations….In theoretical terms, social justice is often understood to be equivalent to justice itself, however that concept is defined. Many somewhat narrower interpretations conceive of social justice as being equivalent to or partly constitutive of distributive justice — that is, the fair and equitable distribution of social, political, and economic benefits and burdens. According to some interpretations, social justice also encompasses, among other conditions, the equal opportunity to contribute to and to benefit from the common good, including by holding public office…Other interpretations promote the stronger goal of equal participation by all individuals and groups in all major social, political, and economic institutions.
Another set of definitions of social justice emphasizes the institutional conditions that encourage individual self-development and self-determination — the former being understood as the opposite of oppression and the latter as the opposite of domination. A related concept of justice…is that a just society fosters the capabilities of individuals to engage in activities that are essential to a truly “human” life … Still other accounts define social justice, or justice itself, in terms of broad categories of human rights, including the entire range of civil and political rights (such as the rights to personal liberty and to participation in government), economic and social rights (such as the rights to employment and to education), and solidarity or group rights (such as the rights to political independence and to economic development). [emphases added]
Social justice is not a well-defined concept. Definitions range from legal — equal opportunity — and the practically contradictory equal participation — to psychotherapeutic: self-development, self-determination — to frankly political: distributive justice.
Some definitions are self-contradictory. For example, people vary. Some are smart some are not, some are conscientious, others not so much. Consequently, equality of opportunity will not generally lead to equality of outcome (equity). The reality of human difference also means that inclusion is a silly goal. Yes, qualified people should not be excluded from any skilled occupation. By the same token, unqualified people should not be included. A Parkinson’s sufferer should not be a brain surgeon. As for distributive justice, that is not so much a matter of justice as, to quote a familiar political slogan, “to each according to his need,” a famous Marxist credo[2]. In other words, distributive justice is about politics, not justice.
So no, social justice is not “equivalent to justice itself.”
Why is it such a popular phrase? Because it combines the prestige of the law with the emotional appeal of a social cause. It is a rhetorical device. But perhaps crypto-Marxists are not the best people to consult for a rational defense of the idea. Let us look, therefore, at the work of some distinguished scholars who specialize in the topic.
Rawlsian Ethics: Inequality is Unjust
In his bestseller Justice: What’s the right thing to do? (2009) Harvard’s Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government, Michael J. Sandel (named “most influential foreign figure of the year” in China[3]), mentions the word justice more than 300 times but never really defines it. Instead he provides readable example-laden accounts of the views of notable philosophers such as Aristotle, Kant and fellow Harvard professor John Rawls. Sandel defines reason very differently from Hume (Chapter 1) calling Hume’s motive-free version instrumental reason. Sandel’s reason is much broader than Hume’s and does not separate logic and value, which makes it harder to see just what values he holds. But Justice, together with his provocatively entitled book The Tyranny of Merit, allows us to discern a kind of consensus[4] relevant to the theme of the present book.
At the heart of this “Harvard position” is a conflation of luck and justice: bad luck and good luck are both unjust. Rawls’ “justice as fairness” in fact amounts to an unprovable, and deeply impractical, axiom, that equality of outcome is the ideal, the telos of justice. I begin with a summary of Sandel’s version of Rawls, then go on to discuss Rawls’ influential difference principle.
Social justice is about is the distribution of wealth in society and across groups. Sandel discusses many approaches but clearly inclines to the a Rawlsian view. They agree on some extraordinary starting points. For example, that an individual’s abilities and interests should not determine his station in life. Sandel repeatedly points out that meritocracy
[S]till permits the distribution of wealth and income to be determined by the natural distribution of abilities and talents…Distributive shares are decided by the outcome of the natural lottery; and this outcome is arbitrary from a moral perspective. There is no more reason to permit the distribution of income and wealth to be settled by the distribution of natural assets than by historical and social fortune.[5]
The last sentence is fundamental: apparently it is no more just for the clever and industrious to get ahead than for the children of the rich to start at the top. Sandel assumes that since an individual is not responsible for his talents, which are the product of a “birthright lottery,” he does not deserve any special rewards that they yield:
As Rawls reminds us, “no one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society[6].” Nor is it our doing that we live in a society that happens to prize our particular strengths. That is a measure of our good fortune, not our virtue…. Rawls argues, the distribution of income and wealth that results from a free market with formal equality of opportunity cannot be considered just. …. No one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society….Whether or not our work ethic is our own doing, our contribution depends, at least in part, on natural talents for which we can claim no credit…. We do not deserve our place in the distribution of native endowments, any more than we deserve our initial starting point in society [emphases added].
And so on, over and over again proclaiming that natural talents and inherited wealth alike do not justify an elevated position in society. Apparently it is wrong that society “[S]till permits the distribution of wealth and income to be determined by the natural distribution of abilities and talents.” In other words, according to Sandel and Rawls it is simply unjust for a smart chap to exploit his gifts and become successful, which reminds me of George Orwell’s comment "There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”
These are extraordinary pronouncements. What on earth can justify a claim like: “We do not deserve our place in the distribution of native endowments, any more than we deserve our initial starting point in society.” In one sense, Sandel is obviously correct. We do not deserve our talents, any more than the lilies of the field deserve their beauty or a diamond its hardness. What is wrong is the word deserve. Talent, beauty and hardness just are. To assign them moral value is simply a category error[7]. Deserve doesn’t belong to attributes like natural talents, or the possession of ten fingers or the hardness of a diamond. Justice applies to issues that might be settled in a court of law. It is a concept that applies to the behavior of an agent, either human or divine. An accident, like losing your wallet, is unlucky; it would be unjust only if it was stolen.
Rawls himself is less direct than Sandel. But although he writes: “We do not deserve our place in the distribution of native endowments, any more than we deserve our initial starting place in society” he also qualifies it by saying:
The natural distribution is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born into society at some particular position. These are simply natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts[8].
So, “natural distribution” is, quite properly, in Humean fashion, “neither just nor unjust”. Rawls nevertheless deplores the fact that society treats the natural distribution unjustly, favoring the pretty over the ugly and the smart over the stupid — a distinction without a difference one might say. Either way, Rawls and Sandel give “natural distribution” no credit as a legitimate basis for social standing.
If talents were assigned by some agent then we might accuse him of injustice, giving too much beauty to one person or too little intelligence to another. Of course, beauty and talent are not assigned by anybody, except, possibly, the almighty, but I don’t suppose that Sandel and Rawls mean to accuse Him of injustice. (On other hand, Sandel is Jewish and John Rawls once thought of becoming a Christian priest, so perhaps both retain sufficient remnants of a Judeo-Christian faith that it intrudes where it does not belong?) Otherwise, this error seems to be a consequence of Sandel’s departure from Hume’s more precise definition of reason, a departure he shares with Rawls who writes:
Just as each person must decide by rational reflection what constitutes his good, that is, the system of ends which it is rational for him to pursue, so a group of persons must decide once and for all what is to count among them as just and unjust.
Hume would surely argue, and I would agree, that “the good” is a matter not for “rational reflection” — reason — but faith[9]. It was Rawls’ genius that by many pages of ingenious argument he was able to sideline Hume and convince a receptive scholarly community that value is after all amenable to reason.
Inherited wealth is different from inborn talent because it is the result of human agency. You got the wealth from your father (say), was that a moral choice? Was the wealth fairly earned? Does the child deserve to live in idleness? And so on. Inherited wealth may be just, unjust or neither depending on how it was acquired: just if honestly earned, unjust if a product of fraud or theft, neither if the winnings of a lottery. Likewise for inheritance: unjust if bestowed for bad behavior, just if given for good, neither if awarded by virtue of a blood relationship. But inherited talent just is,
The word “luck” occurs only six times in Rawls’ 561-page opus and just the same number in Sandel’s Justice. Both fail to distinguish between situations that involve luck and situations where a judgment about justice is appropriate. As in the example I gave at the outset, the difference is in the causality. A man inherits his abilities; he can choose to exploit them or not, but in the first instance they just are. A talented person is just lucky. Which is neither just nor unjust. Judging their status by a moral standard is simply inappropriate. On the other hand, if two men are equally diligent, both doing the same job, yet one is paid much more than the other then unless there are mitigating circumstances (one is repaying a debt, for example), there is an injustice. But it is exactly this kind of “just desert” that Rawls and Sandel dismiss from their account.
The Difference Principle
Rawls and Sandel don’t believe in rewarding merit. It is not right, they say, for someone who is smarter or more conscientious than another to get more of the collective pie. The idea of just deserts is no part of Rawlsian philosophy. But the practice persists, despite their best efforts. To mitigate its ‘unjust’ effects. Sandel writes:
Rawls rejects moral desert as the basis for distributive justice on two grounds. First… my having the talents that enable me to compete more successfully than others is not entirely my own doing. But a second contingency is equally decisive: the qualities that a society happens to value at any given time also morally arbitrary.
As we will see shortly, behavioral geneticist Kathryn Harden takes this to the next level by claiming that not just talent, but voluntary behavior such as energy and tenacity are also to some extent (Harden is a bit vague about this) “genetically determined” hence “accidental” and worth no moral points.
Rawls’ came up with an alternative to the idea of just deserts, the idea of “justice as fairness,” by which he means his famous difference principle:
Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged[10]…
which Sandel also favors. In other words, if a rich man adds to his income a poor man, or men, must somehow gain more.
This axiom raises an obvious question: why should those at the bottom (however defined) be favored over everyone else? Rawls justifies his position mainly by arguing that it is superior to a utilitarian position such as The “Greatest Good For The Greatest Number.” But by implication he seems to favor a naïve version of utility theory, as follows. Assume first that for everyone subjective marginal utility declines with amount of a good. The more you have of something, the less value you place on each added increment, the more pizza you have the less urgent your desire for more. Second assume that this function is the same for everyone. It follows that an increment in wealth will add more utility to a poor person, low down on a steep part of the curve, than to a rich one, at the flatter high end. Consequently, a society devoted to maximizing utility should be arranged so that any increment in general wealth should benefit the poor more than the rich — the difference principle.
But “Interpersonal comparisons of utility… are known to be scientifically impossible in economics” according to a recent survey article[11]. Behavioristic psychology is in agreement[12]. The difference principle cannot be defended in this way. It is in fact a matter of faith, faith in equalitarianism.
Rawls does justify the difference principle by a hypothetical vote[13],
...by the idea that, in a hypothetical situation where individuals choose societal structures without knowing their own social position ("the original position"), they would select a system where any inequalities benefit the least advantaged members of society, as this would maximize their own potential well-being in a scenario where they could end up being among the least fortunate; essentially, it's a principle of maximizing the welfare of the worst-off in order to achieve a just society. [emphasis added]
There are at least two problems with Rawls’ claim. First, it is not obvious that everyone would select his option. Different groups, different societies, might well vote differently. Some might prefer a society in which he would have the chance to excel, even if that also means a chance to fail. Second, why should a moral principle be settled by a vote, especially a hypothetical one? This custom is rarely endorsed either by ethical scholars or any existing society.
Rawls is vague on the practical means by which his aim should be achieved. The difference principle provides no mechanism, no process, just a final cause: “It basically requires that a society is to institute the economic system that would make the least advantaged class better off than they would be in any other feasible economic system...”[14]
Despite these problems, when A theory of Justice was published the difference principle was generally admired and Rawlsian views soon prevailed among the scholarly elite
The difference principle, applied across time, will tend to equalize wealth. If every increment to the rich is divided among the poor in some way, inequality will be reduced. How quickly and by how much depends on the means of redistribution. Is equality Sandel’s goal? He doesn’t say so, but there are definitely hints of Kurt Vonnegut’s science-fiction short story Harrison Bergeron about a world in which equalitarianism is forcibly imposed, by elevating the incompetent but equally by suppressing the able. Sandel contrasts the enforced equality of Bergeron’s world with Rawls’ difference principle, even though the latter implies a process that if conscientiously applied converges on total equality:
Although the difference principle does not require an equal distribution of income and wealth, its underlying idea expresses a powerful, even inspiring vision of equality.
Why is it inspiring? Many will not want to live in a world of complete equality, if only because its level is likely to be low: better some chance of success than a guaranteed mediocrity. Who will patronize rare geniuses like René Descartes or Leonardo da Vinci if all are equal? As I point out later, both economic data and biological argument suggest that some hierarchy is necessary to ensure reasonable prosperity at the bottom without sacrificing excellence at the top. The difference principle doesn’t just elevate poverty, it devalues genius.
At one point Sandel quotes egregious income disparities, supporting his case for equality:
Consider these wage differentials: The average schoolteacher in the United States makes about $43,000 per year. David Letterman, the late-night talk show host, earns $31 million a year.
John Roberts, chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, is paid $217,400 a year. Judge Judy, who has a reality television show, makes $25 million a year. Are these pay differentials fair?
None of these four is desperately poor. Is it unreasonable to wonder if Sandel is not so much compassionate for the poor as envious of the rich?
The Genetic Lottery
Rawls’ ideas have been taken to their logical conclusion by behavioral geneticist Kathryn Paige Harden in her widely reviewed[15] book: The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality[16]. Unlike many on her side of the political aisle, Harden acknowledges the reality of human difference:
The eugenicist ideology is to claim that genetic differences are insurmountable barriers to equality; too often, the response to eugenicist ideology is to pretend that genetic differences do not exist at all.
Not sure she is fair to eugenicists, if indeed any such remain. Many people accept the reality of human differences without having a eugenic agenda. If there is a “barrier to equality” it is the phenotype not the genotype. The genetic backdrop is essentially irrelevant, since Harden has no plans to manipulate genes. But it is clear that she wants equality for everybody, no matter how limited their abilities. In other words, a utopia in which the idea of “just deserts” is abolished. No longer is an exceptional contribution to get an exceptional reward or, presumably, exceptional harm to get exceptional punishment.
What matters is what I have been calling endogenous variables, the talents and motivations that every adult brings to the table. It is this human constitution that responds to incentives, a word that does not appear in Harden’s book (and only six times in Rawls’). Yet incentives drive much of human behavior. A book that ignores them cannot reach any kind of valid conclusion. It simply is not possible to take seriously even a 500-page opus whose only value seems to be a hatred of inequality, however caused. There is much more to be said on this complex issue than I can cover here. A free-market society seems to allow numerous obvious if not injustices at least unfairnesses. But then, so does every society that has ever existed. All we can conclude from this brief discussion is that these ills are not be solved by a simple rule that ignores everything but an conceptually flawed equalitarian view of justice.
* * *
So, what is social justice? It is social in the sense that it deals with ill-defined and non-homogeneous groups. It is about averages not individuals. It is just in the Marxist/Rawlsian sense that those who have more must provide for these who have less. It provides a justification for redistributionist policies, racial and otherwise, so it gives a boost to the equalitarian imperative even though it recognizes the reality of human difference. The difference principle assumes human difference, hence unequal outcomes which must be compensated for. In contrast, the traditional idea of just desert implies that individual should be rewarded or punished in proportion to his positive or negative contributions to society. Not so, say Rawlsians, because society is “arbitrary” so its rewards and punishments cannot be trusted. Either way, the rich must pay and the poor receive. Sandel assumes that people are unequal in their talents and some kind of handicap is necessary to eliminate the inequality that might otherwise result. Other progressives assume all are really equal and existing inequality is due to racism. Either way, compensation is in order.
Given their contradictory premises, it is fair to speculate that in both cases, all-are-equal egalitarianism and Rawlsian’s all are-not-equal-so-fairness-demands-that-we-make-them-so equalitarianism, their convergent, “inspiring vision of equality,” may have preceded the search for premises to support it.
[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/social-justice
[2] See, for example, eminent black scholar Cornell West: "West's analysis of the exploitative aspects of capitalism has been shaped the Marxian philosophical outlook which he employs to advance the cause of social justice.” Floyd W. Hayes (2004) Essay Review: Cornel West on Social Justice. Journal of African American History. Winter, 2004, Vol. 89, No. 1 (Winter, 2004), pp. 75-79.
[3] https://scholar.harvard.edu/sandel/home
[4] https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-harvard-supremacy
[5] Sandel, Michael J. Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? (p. 154). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.
[6] A Theory of Justice Revised Edition John Rawls (1971/99). https://giuseppecapograssi.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/rawls99.pdf. Rawls’ Harvard colleague Robert Nozick publish a thoughtful libertarian-leaning critique of A theory of justice a few years later: Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Basic Books, 1974). Nozick’s book was well received, but Rawls’ view soon became dominant. Liberty lost to equality.
[7] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/category-mistakes/#BrieHistTopi
[8] John Rawls A theory of justice. (revised edition, Belknap Press, 1999)
[9] Except of course if we are debating the actions necessary to achieve a moral goal. But the desired goal is not itself the result of reflection, although the instrumental means to reach it may, indeed usually will, be rational.
[10] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/original-position/difference-principle.html
[11] https://www.econlib.org/interpersonal-comparisons-of-utility/
[12] E.g., Staddon, J. The New Behaviorism 3rd edition. (2021, Routledge).
[13] Google AI.
[14]Plato.Stanford op. cit.
[15] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9804450/; https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9313868/
[16]Princeton University Press, 2021. Lottery, luck, or legacy. A review of “The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA matters for social equality” https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9313868/#evo14449-bib-0040