A Note On Social Justice

Image credit. related to Amartya Sen on Justice (6) - Institutions and Persons - Social Justice

Hayek's Tenet of Human (Anthropocentric) Justice

Hayek makes a distinction between just human conduct and just states of affairs. The latter he claims to be a mere mirage, while only the former are capable of assuming proper meaning and attaining genuine, rather than spuriously imagined, correspondence with the facts of life.

In nuce: impersonal outcomes cannot be just. Only human conduct can be just.

I am afraid, as I shall argue further on below, Hayek is rather confused on this issue, which is central, not only to his thinking, but to social ontology ( = conception of what is real in the social sphere) in general. But first let us try to understand Hayek's position.

Human Culpability

What distinguishes states of affairs from human beings with respect to justice is that only the latter are culpable ( = morally or legally liable) in the sense of being capable of illicit divergence from a moral standard. Only humans experience guilt, and it is only to humans that we can meaningfully ascribe a condition of guilt, deviance, or misdemeanour. Only humans may be deserving of reproach and punishment owing to their delinquency, i.e. their deviation from a moral standard that they are expected and able to honour.

So far, I can follow Hayek. What he gets wrong, in my opinion, is this.

Justice Is Social

The standards (justice) against which culpability is 

• measured (for the purpose of judgement), and 

• asserted (for the purpose of enforcement) 

are a collective product that is in some regards independent of the individual. 

Justice is the result of socialisation and collective regimentation effected by the interaction of human beings. As I explain here, the purpose of justice is to coordinate the individual and her community. Inevitably, this involves demands that may not meet with the voluntary concurrence of the individual. Fundamentally, justice is a matter of human interaction. Justice is social.

States of Affairs Too, Not Only Human Conduct, Are Capable of Being Just or Unjust

The central point: the rules of justice tend to imply certain desirable and certain undesirable states of affairs, outcomes, events. For instance, we do not want certain forms of fraud to be resorted to when you and I make a deal (it is fine, though, if you use make up to look far more attractive than you really are).

In order to facilitate the occurrence of the desired state of affairs (an honest deal) and to hinder the occurrence of the undesired state of affairs (a fraudulent deal), we select certain enforceable rules.

He who breaks these rules is said to have acted unjustly. She who observes these rules is said to be acting in just manner.

Thus, clearly, the question whether the acts of a person (relating to the above issue) are to be considered just or unjust must be answered with recourse to the states of affairs he or she are expected to bring about (honest dealing) and those they are expected not to bring about (dishonest dealing). 

The "justness" of their conduct is therefore derived from the "justness" of certain states of affairs. These just states of affairs are subject to collective determination. They are being generated in the process whereby humans determine their relationships with one another. They are a socially engendered outcome.

Social Justice Incessantly at Work

In general, it is precisely social justice (regulating the social validity or prohibition of certain states of affairs) that precedes any other considerations of justice.

There is just as much social justice at work when we enforce rules that we think will ensure the advantages of free markets (such as the requirement of honest dealings) as when we decide that the richest 10% of the population will be required to transfer x amount of their wealth to the poorest 10% of the population.

It is another question whether the social goals of justice are well chosen. Or whether the rules of justice are likely to attain its social goals.

However, justice, I hope to have shown, is a social product, the result of social gestation, as it were, the reacting to one another of human beings as parties to social relations, and in this sense it is perfectly proper to speak of "social justice".

Furthermore, justice is embodied in certain states of affairs only relative to whose requirements we determine whether a person is conducting herself in accordance with justice or not. A person's behaviour is just or unjust depending on the manner in which her actions preserve or stymie the states of affairs that define justice. So first a Zustand (state of affairs) must be (specified so as to tell us what is) gerecht (just), before we can know whether a person is behaving herself gerecht.

Hayek is wrong in claiming that ein Zustand - a state of affairs - cannot meaningfully be said to be just or unjust. Hayek is also wrong in denying the collective nature of the way in which justice is being established.