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[CHAPTER 2] [ CHAPTER 2 ]

Six Secular Uses of “Social Justice” Six Secular Uses of “Social Justice”

SO NOW LET US EXAMINE THE TERM “SOCIAL JUSTICE” AS IT IS currently used in the contemporary secular academy and media. I count at least six different connotations or meanings, while recognizing that each spills over into the others in greater or lesser degree.

It is striking how little reference is made to the Catholic role in introducing “social justice” into contemporary economic debates. It is also striking that little attention is paid to the question of why a secular-atheistic world, born of chance and moral insignificance, should care about the poor and the vulnerable (at least some of the most vulnerable) in the first place. And why it should imagine that a moral scheme such as “equality” has some structural and ethical bearing on human affairs. The notion that humans are in some respects “equal in the eyes of God” cannot be a tenable secular argument. History surely does not afford many (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.” The honey trap gives you the sweet taste of cost-free benefits. But you must give up your own adult responsibility, your sound habits from the old country, the daily exercise of your own abilities. You will lose your self-respect. You will lose the happiness that flows from personal achievement. You will live more like a domestic animal than like a man.

As a result, there are many occasions today when one must argue sternly for individual rights and against the so-called common good. This is especially true when the eyes of many are blinded by the mere sound of the words. When people hear the “common good,” many think of something noble and shiny and good, something motherly. But they do not think carefully enough about who is determining what the common good is, whether they are speaking truly, empirically, and whether they have a good track record of success. We should ask ourselves: Who decides what the common good is, and who enforces this common good? And what does it do to those who receive it, to their skills and their sense of accomplishment and personal happiness?

The Progressive Agenda. In America, many of our elites describe themselves as progressives. But what do they mean? Watch what they do, what they advocate for, and you will most often see that these are activists on behalf of larger government and more spending for their favorite causes: the poor, Planned Parenthood, solar and wind power, restrictions on the use of fossil fuels, and two of their most passionately held causes, abortion and gay marriage. Such progressives are not necessarily anticapitalist. Many of those funding progressive causes are, in fact, very wealthy capitalists themselves, or their heirs and foundations. George Soros, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates are household names. But many other lesser known people with very deep pockets have much social and political influence, people like software entrepreneur Tim Gill, retired hedge-fund executive Tom Steyer, and green-technology investor David Gelbaum.⁴

Many progressives talk and act as though the trouble with the American people is that they do not know what is good for them. They have to be told, herded, regulated, fined, and forced into the right course of action. Nanny, nanny, everywhere the nanny state. Progressives now play the role that Puritans used to play in saying no. No smoking, no ozone, no gun-ownership, no this, that, and the other thing. Some of these may be admirable ideas; it is the relentless nagging in the progressive character that is new and troubling.

More than progressives recognize in themselves, they suffer from an inner passion for bossing other people around. They desire to do this for the good of the ones bossed. One of the more humble, but often annoying, of these impositions was the automatic safety belt that used to be in many cars, which closed around you whether you wanted it to or not. One of the more outrageous is the automatic cancellation of the health-insurance policy you have long experience with, chose for yourself, and like, in order to be fitted into a government plan you don’t like or want.

Almost always, the rationale offered for coercing you into something you don’t want is that it’s for your own good. It is surprising how often the terms “social justice” and “common good” are pounded into our heads to make us do something we wouldn’t otherwise choose to do. And that is probably why progressives turn to big government. Otherwise, they could not coerce us into seeing things their way.

New “Civil Rights”: Gender, Sex, Reproduction. When I first went to the United Nations Human Rights Commission meetings in Geneva in 1981, two different delegates from opposite sides of the world (Norway and India) told me that the most hopeful signs they had seen in their lifetimes was the much delayed shift in the United States in favor of institutional support for the rights of black Americans. To change habits of mind so inveterate and so entrenched gives hope to the rest of humanity, they said. The calling of the Second Vatican Council by the old Pope John XXIII and the election of the handsome young President John F. Kennedy and his “New Frontiersmen” gave hope that the old thick ice was breaking up.

It is no wonder that nearly every new impulse and new social movement in the United States (and elsewhere) since that time has styled itself in the image of that first great civil-rights movement of American blacks and their allies.

In recent decades, for instance, a brand new element of the progressive agenda has taken shape under the rubric of social justice: “reproductive rights.” As one writer puts it:

The privileged in this world, for the most part, have unfettered access to the reproductive health and education services to decide for themselves when and whether to bear or raise a child. The poor and disadvantaged do not. Thus, the struggle for reproductive justice is inextricably bound up with the effort to secure a more just society.

Accordingly, those who would labor to achieve economic and social justice are called upon to join in the effort to achieve reproductive justice and, thereby, help realize the sacred vision of a truly just society for all.⁵

This is how the thinking goes: The privileged of this world have a chance to control the number of children they have, but the poor don’t have this chance, and that’s not fair. So, in the name of the poor, progressives introduced a concept of reproductive rights, by which they primarily mean the right to abortion. It’s not so hard to get birth control anywhere in the world; that transformation has by and large already happened. What the issue really comes down to is abortion: How can you be for social justice and against reproductive rights?

The situation is the same in the case of gay rights, another element of the progressive agenda promoted as a matter of social justice. Consider the following statement from an administrator of the Anglican Church in New Zealand: “How can the Church be taken seriously or receive any respect for its views on the far more important issues of poverty, violence and social justice, when the public keep being reminded of this blot on its integrity, the continued discrimination against gays?”⁶

Compassion. All these newly invented demands increasingly fly under the flag of “social justice.” And there is one more new word (or honorable old word, used in a new way) by which to understand many today who talk about social justice. There used to be a Tammany Hall saying: “Th’ fella’ what said that patriotism is th’ last refuge of scoundrels, underestimated th’ possibilities of compassion.” In addition to equality and the common good, another term that came to be used in association with social justice is “compassion.”

That Tammany Hall saying wittily reminds us of the contemporary sins committed in the name of compassion. We must never again allow that beautiful term “compassion” to become a blinding light, in whose name totalitarians seize power for “the people,” and then practice the utmost cruelty. Abortion, for instance, the daily use of scissors to slice spinal cords and other medical tools to crush little skulls—this is compassion for women? It is a ruse to cover this with the name “choice.” The question is: What is the choice, and how much do you want to look at it with your own eyes, in order to take full responsibility for it?

Compassion comes in true forms and in false forms. The American War on Poverty unintentionally ushered in a period of rapidly rising numbers of births out of wedlock and the relative decline in the number of married couples among the poor. This dramatic change in family composition was accompanied by a sharp increase in poverty among never-married women with children. By 1986, the fastest growing segment of the poor was found in this cohort of never-married women with children.⁷

To be fair, the War on Poverty did work very well for the elderly in the United States, whose condition in 1985 was far better than it had been in 1965. It was still better in 2005.

But here too we are up against the law of unintended consequences. The original premise of Social Security arrangements was that there would be seven workers for every receiver of benefits. Today, however, we are no longer having the numbers of children required to support such a program. We’re getting to the point where by 2030 there will be only two workers for every retiree. It is therefore already clear that we are not going to be able to meet the obligations that we have assumed. That sword of Damocles hangs by an even more frayed thread over social-democratic Europe.