Social Justice Isn't What You Think It Is. Paul Adams
(if any) examples of equality among peoples on earth. So whence comes that ideal?
Among secular thinkers, Bertrand Russell, Richard Rorty, and Jürgen Habermas have had the intellectual honesty to note that the idea of equality (as well as the idea of compassion for the poor) entered the world through the teachings of Jesus Christ and his Jewish predecessors, not through Aristotle, Plato, or any earlier moral teacher. These secular thinkers, and others like them, took their moral leads where they found them, and if in Socrates or Goethe, why not in any other master poet or teacher? It is striking to note that contemporary secular thinkers simply employ the criteria for social justice, without grounding them philosophically or theologically. Herewith, in any case, the meanings attached to “social justice” among such thinkers.
Distribution. Most people’s sense of social justice is generic, amounting to little more than what we find in an internet search of the term “social justice”: “The fair distribution of advantages and disadvantages in society.” Now, notice that this standard definition introduces a new key term, not “virtue,” but “distribution.” This newly added term also suggests that some extra-human force, some very visible hand, that is, some powerful agency—the state—should do the distribution. And do it fairly. But I, for one, do not trust politicians to neglect their own self-interest (“Where will I pick up the most votes?”) in their considerations of distribution.
Equality. Furthermore, the expression “advantages and disadvantages” supposes a norm of “equality” by which to measure. Consider this professorial definition:
Although it is difficult to agree on the precise meaning of ‘social justice’ I take it that to most of us it implies, among other things, equality of the burdens, the advantages, and the opportunities of citizenship. Indeed, I take [it] that social justice is intimately related to the concept of equality, and that the violation of it is intimately related to the concept of inequality.1
This sense of the term expresses a whole ideology: “Equality” is good and ought to be enforced. But also note what has happened here to the word “equality.” In English, equality can be taken to suggest fairness, equity, or what is equitable. But what is equitable often requires that each receive not exactly the same portions but rather what is proportionate to each, given different efforts and different needs. In many recent writings on social justice, however, equality is taken to mean something more like equality-as-uniformity. That conception of equality calls for some great power to sweep in and enforce on a society its strict measure of equality, and to restrict freedom accordingly. To maintain strict equality, such a great power must measure out by its own judgment the freedom and initiative allowed all individuals, families, associations, and communities.
God did not make individuals equal in talents or in the will to succeed. Nor did he force all families into the same mold of family traditions, disciplines, and inner character. Given the way any free world works, it is highly unlikely that all individuals and families would attain the same levels in human skills, ambition, and daily habits. Egalitarians scarcely attend to this reality, which is immediately observable in daily life (among students, for example, and even among one’s own siblings and children). The radical and undeniable human inequality, as we shall see, was very important to Pope Leo XIII. Not grasping its reality was a major pitfall for what he called “liberalism.”
Common Good. Social justice is typically associated with some notion of the “common good,” a wonderful term that goes back to Aristotle. The Catholic tradition is very fond of this term, but does not mean by it exactly what the American founders meant by the “public good” or the “public interest.” The precise meaning given to the “common good” by the Second Vatican Council was this: “the sum of those conditions of social life which allow social groups and their individual members relatively thorough and ready access to their own fulfillment.”2 As one can see, this definition avoids speaking of “equality of condition” or “collective equality,” in favor of emphasizing the opportunity for each unique individual to develop his or her talents to their full potential. In any case, the common good is an important master concept among Catholic social principles, one that tries to do justice to both the communitarian nature of humans and their unique personal endowments. We shall see in chapters five and seven that the common good and social justice are intimately related concepts of Catholic social teaching.
Here it must be pointed out first that, in practice, the use of the term “common good” often hinges on a prior question: “In this particular situation, who decides what the common good is?” In ancient societies, often the wisest and strongest person was the ruler, and it was he who made the important decisions, such as where to camp at night or near which source of water to build the village. The person with the greatest strategic and tactical sense of what was safe, and the greatest ecological sense for which site would make for better community life, would make these decisions.
But in more recent times, that responsibility gradually shifted (under the influence of democracy) to all citizens. Over time, though, as government slipped from the ideal of “limited government,” democracy got tied down like Gulliver in the wire cords of the bureaucratic state. Decisions have been made more and more by extensive staffs and committees, and sometimes by committees of committees. Very seldom today is one person (like the leader of old) held accountable for these decisions. And the beautiful notion of the common good is tied down like Gulliver, too.
For example, a fundamental misuse of the term “common good” came clear to me for the first time when, at the Helsinki Commission in Bern in 1985, I was prodding the Soviet delegation to recognize the right of spouses from different nations to share residence in whichever spouse’s nation they chose. The Soviets stoutly resisted. The Soviet Union, they insisted, had invested much effort and great sums of money in giving an education to each Soviet citizen. The common good, they said, demands that these citizens now make commensurate pay-back. Therefore, the Soviet partner could not emigrate. Individual aspirations must bow to the common good of all. This is the opposite of the Vatican II definition.
The common good was the excuse on which communist totalitarianism was built. Also, in the United States these days, the “common good” is often used as a battle cry for more state spending. “Do not cut spending for the poor! Current disparities of income are unjust. More state money for the poor!” A clear translation of this slogan is: “Let Uncle Sam pay for it! And with other people’s money, not mine.” In this rhetorical field, the “common good” is often yoked to “social justice,” essentially to furnish an excuse for more government power, spending, and domination—at the expense of anyone but the activists shouting the slogans.
It is the natural tendency of political power to expand and grow, and of progressives in power to become ever more skillful at making decisions for formerly free citizens. They do this under the delusion that those citizens do not know what is good for them, but that government officials, who are not only more knowledgeable but more moral, do know, and should intervene for the good of the people. In God in the Dock (1948), C. S. Lewis described this delusion quite deliciously:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven, yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be cured against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.3
Many steps announced as necessary for the common good are on a downward slope to serfdom.
Old timers in America have often warned new immigrants from their own ethnic background: “Stay away from the welfare honey trap.”