Freedom in One Lesson

25.

Justice versus Social Justice

There was a time when people had a far better understanding of justice than we do today. What is the traditional American view of justice? The Declaration of Independence asserts the individual’s inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Justice, in that case, is almost entirely a matter of defending negative rights—that is, freedom from encroachment on our inalienable rights. The government is supposed to protect citizens from encroachments on their rights (e.g., by defending property rights against force and fraud), including from those committed by government itself. Such negative rights, which can be upheld for everyone at the same time, are described by the Bill of Rights.

Over time, this understanding of rights as freedoms from abuse has given way to a notion of positive rights—that is, rights to receive things (e.g., housing, food, education, and income). But to implement a right to receive something from government requires the violation of the negative rights of others. This is because the government has no resources except what it takes from others, usually without their consent. Further, such positive rights cannot be upheld for everyone at the same time. Giving someone something not acquired through voluntary arrangements means reducing another’s ability to acquire the same thing.

The erosion of negative rights to give positive rights to some—violating the traditional understanding of justice—has recently been rationalized by the language of social justice, which hides its violation of universal justice (i.e., a government of equal laws rather than favoritism for some over others) by keeping the word justice but adding a modifier.

Leonard Read, one of history’s most prolific defenders of liberty, recognizes this battle between negative and positive rights, and the huge but hidden transformation it involved, for what it was. In “Justice versus Social Justice,” from his 1973 book Who’s Listening? (Read 1973), he analyzes the conflict, starting with Aristotle’s definition of justice, in powerful terms. Since the battle is still playing out, and real justice and negative rights are losing, Read’s understanding can help us turn the tide.

What is justice? “Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society.” This conclusion by James Madison (Federalist No. 51) also suits me. . . . Justice and so-called social justice are opposites and to promote the latter is to retard the former.

. . . Only individuals experience justice or injustice. . . . Justice cannot be rendered to everyone in general, only to each one in particular.

. . . Justice prevails in personal relations, that is, in the absence of injustice. Understood in this manner, justice is indeed the end of civil society.

Government in its ideal concept can have no other end than a common justice, for this is the end of civil society of which government is the arm or agent. The Goddess of Justice is blindfolded; if she peeks, she cheats. . . . This is the meaning of “A government of laws, not of men.” . . .

. . . I have a moral right to my life, livelihood, liberty. Is this just? Yes, if one can concede a similar right to every other individual. I can! Try it in reverse: I have a moral right to take the life, livelihood, liberty of another. Just? Only if I can rationally concede the right of murder, theft, enslavement to everyone else. I cannot concede this right to anyone; thus, it is neither good nor just.

The institution of freedom, if properly defined, suffices to render justice to each individual. John Stuart Mill said: “The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.” . . .

We now come to what is euphemistically referred to as social justice, though it is in theory and practice the very opposite of justice . . . It is . . . a device that politicians and social planners find convenient to gain votes and power. Social justice has no case except the lust for position; it has no rational content and simply manifests the little-god syndrome.

In the practice of so-called social justice, the individual is ignored. . . .

Social justice is the game of “robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul.” This form of political behavior seeks the gain of some at the expense of others. . . . It is the thwarting of justice that begs our censure. Test social justice . . . to perceive the difference.

. . . If you would not condone others coercively taking from you to feather their nests, you could not, perforce, take from them to feather your own. . . .

. . . Social justice involves . . . depriving others to gain one’s ends.

. . . Social justice promises to reward the idle by punishing and restraining those who have exercised creative energy.

So-called social justice is man’s greatest injustice to man, antisocial in every respect; not the cement of society, but the lust for power and privilege and the seed of man’s corruption and downfall.

Finally, social justice in no way fits the claim of its advocates: an expression of mercy and pity. These virtues are strictly personal attributes and are expressed only in the voluntary giving of one’s own, never in the seizure and redistribution of someone else’s possessions.

Morally and ethically motivated citizens can condone a philosophy of so-called social justice only if they fail to see its terrible injustice.

If people thought as carefully as Read does about the massive misrepresentation of justice that claims of social justice entail, we would not be so far down the path of eviscerating justice in the name of a “new and improved” justice. Having moved down that path, the only route to improvement is to recognize the rhetorical cheat and reverse course. Read’s contrast between justice and social justice is a good start in undoing the “progressive” redefinition (or, better, misdefinition) of justice.