Weasel words hide in the national conversation under the cover of cliche. If a phrase can be used automatically, its bad faith can never be questioned. So it is with "social justice", which now everybody wants, even David Cameron. But everyone used to believe in Justice, a simple, noble and civilised idea. It's not complicated, Justice. One rule of law for all, the presumption of innocence, due process in trial and punishment for those found guilty. The image of Justice -- a blindfolded goddess holding a sword and a scales -- encapsulates the whole thing. So what is this shifty qualifier in front of it? If Justice is blind, since Justice by its nature is the same for all, king or commoner, how can "social justice" add anything to Justice?
The truth seems to be that "social justice" doesn't mean Justice at all. It is, in fact, a rejection of Justice. What it means is radical egalitarianism, in which those who may justly have come to possess disproportionately greater wealth than the average citizen must give some, via government, to those who justly have disproportionately less. That may or may not be a valid action, I'm not getting into that argument now. All I want to point out is that it isn't Justice. It means the setting aside of Justice in favour of another principle: Equality. In fact, it isn't even as simple as that. You might think that adding a qualifier would define a principle more precisely, yet 'social justice' is an incorrigibly muddy term. I take redistributive taxation as a prime example of what it calls for, but what it supports is any action that the government chooses that will tend to make the national herd more uniform. "Social justice" is open-ended, driven by a subjective 'feel' for what is virtuous and as such dangerous. It is open to the misguided actions and oppressive consequences that Justice pure and simple avoids.
Worse yet, "social justice" is not just nothing to do with Justice, is not just a claim of Equality as precedent to Justice, is not just an imprecisely worded invitation to abuse, but it is at root a rejection of Justice. To believe in Justice is to believe that a system can be erected for a society in which all citizens are subject to the same laws, equally open to prosecution and punishment if they break them and equally able to aquit themselves in open court if wrongly accused. "Social justice" thinks that this is impossible and is not therefore an amendment of Justice, reseating it as second fiddle to Equality but an attempt to offer an alternative. That is why it is called "social justice" and not Equality. It is a bastard crossbreed of the two principles and it wants to kill its parents and take their place.
"Social justice" believes that it has right on its side in this fight against Justice and Equality because it holds an implausible view of human society. Proponents of "social justice" think if Justice were really working, all citizens in a society would be equal -- not in dignity, or fundamental rights, but in the material conditions of life. This springs from communist or socialistic thought, but such first principles are not argued from openly, or perhaps even believed. It is, as it were, a folk memory of the noble sense people had in the twentieth century when they argued for systems that seemed so much kinder and have subsequently, in their failure, been revealed as brutal, bullying and murderous. The same error creeps on, under a new name, because people do not wish to give up on pleasant delusions in favour of hard thought. Once given the patently fallacious premise that people ought to exist harmoniously in a flat landscape of achievement, it is a logical consequence, since we do not, that Justice does not work and, indeed, cannot. The Biblical admonition that says 'do not favour a poor man in his petition' must be scrapped because the rich and powerful will always have the whip hand. They must be hampered and weighted with legal and financial handicaps while the presumption of right must run the other way, to the poor, the minority, the 'victim' groups.
Personally, I like Justice, not "social justice". People think that the qualifier shows an ancient principle being extended in new and more generous ways, just as they think animal rights are a widening of the circle of moral concern and environmentalism is a deeper form of gardening. They are wrong. As with all the other examples of subjective virtue, that judge by how something feels and not by thinking it through, it is a revolutionary doctrine, that wants to tear up Justice and put something else in its place. Fairminded people should tremble to hear it.
All that viciousness hiding in one little phrase, but we do not see it, because it has burrowed into our language as a cliche and now will eat us from the inside out, like the larva of some parasitic wasp.
Monday, January 23, 2006
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
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