What is Social Justice? Posing the Question

By Rick Barry

Throughout the world, change is the order of the day…In most Nations social justice, no longer a distant ideal, has become a definite goal, and ancient Governments are beginning to heed the call. –Franklin D. Roosevelt, Second State of the Union Address

Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other's welfare, social justice can never be attained.Helen Keller

…just as we have won the Cold War abroad, we are losing the battles for economic opportunity and social justice here at home. Bill Clinton, Democratic National Convention, 1992

FDR calls it a definite goal.  Helen Keller says it can only be attained if we take responsibility for each other.  Bill Clinton says we are losing the battle for it at home.  These public figures are seeking something; they are inspired by a vision—a vision of social justice.  And yet, it is not immediately clear what social justice is.  In fact, social justice appears to be one of those ambiguous terms often used, without scrutiny, in political debate.  Frequently cited by liberals, the term “social justice” is applied to a wide array of problems.  For many, expanding the welfare state is a “social justice issue.”  Universal health care is a “social justice issue.”  Access to abortion is a “social justice issue.”  The list of “social justice issues” runs long.  Again and again “progressives” couple their policy proposals with a demand for “social justice.” 

In political debate we have become accustomed to using catch phrases that seem to justify our policies but are difficult to pin down.  A prime example of this tendency is the use of the phrase “social justice”.  Many times when liberals are asked what they mean by the term, they start naming certain outcomes that they would like to see.  A world without hunger.  A nation without racism.  A state without sexual abuse.  A city without poverty.  It’s certainly a beautiful vision, but hardly a precise definition.  Generally, the closest one gets to a definition is something like this: “People are suffering, which is inexcusable.  We need social justice!” 

The primary problem we encounter when thinking about social justice is that the conventional understanding is results-oriented.  It is, for example, socially just when there is no hunger; a society that is justly ordered is a society where everybody has access to sufficient food.  The desired result is in focus.  The best way to achieve that result, however, is less clear.  How does society actualize the desired end goal?  Are any means acceptable in reaching it? 

Maybe a short thought experiment will help: imagine a town of three people: a mayor, a farmer, and a barfly.  Everyday the farmer works hard to produce enough food to survive, and the barfly drinks until he can hardly stand.  The mayor decides the town needs to be more sensitive to social justice: it is not fair that the farmer is so well fed, and the drunkard eats so little.  So every night the mayor goes to the farmer and forcefully takes food for the town drunk.  Some people will declare that social justice has been achieved; the barfly is fed, all is well.  Still, somehow we perceive that this town is not yet perfectly just. 

The idea of “social justice” can be confounding because it does not seem to make demands on anybody in particular.  It does not say to us, “This is what you ought to do in a given situation to be socially just.”  When we say our prayers we rarely say, “God, please forgive me for my social injustice today.”  Instead social justice seems to be little more than a permanent complaint that life is imperfect and that someone ought to do something. 

For social justice crusaders, the someone is typically “government” and the something is “expand.”  These well intentioned do-gooders view social injustice as an impersonal, oppressive force that is holding people down, and they conclude that it is beyond our power as individuals to do anything—anything except demand that government fix society.  After all, we as individuals are not society.  Society is something far bigger, far more complex, than any one person.  Only someone who has the power to control all of society would have the ability to really “do” social justice.  Some people believe that only the federal government has the power to rearrange society in a just way, and therefore social justice is the government’s responsibility. 

Social justice advocates, therefore, often believe that government needs to be more involved, reconfiguring and reconstructing society from on high so that the goal—whatever it is—can be achieved.  Taken to their logical conclusion, these impulses incline toward bigger and bigger government since it is impossible for the government to perfectly implement “social justice” unless the government is sufficiently powerful to produce the outcomes required by the vision. 

If social justice is an entirely impersonal habit, it is fair to ask whether social justice exists at all.  If it is a virtue of government and society, and not persons, then who is it that is being just or unjust?  If no individual, as an individual, can actually confess, “I was socially unjust today,” then who can actually be declared guilty of social injustice?  Who can be praised for being socially just?  Does society have a will, conscience, or moral responsibility of its own?    

After wrestling with these questions, Friedrich Hayek, the famous libertarian economist, became convinced that social justice was an illusion.  He said, “To discover the meaning of what  is called ‘social justice’ has been one of my chief preoccupations for more than 10 years. I have failed in this endeavor — or rather, have reached the conclusion that, with reference to society of free men, the phrase has no meaning whatever.”  In fact, Hayek went so far as to say, “I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.”

Yet this answer—that social justice is a dangerous delusion—is also unsatisfying. Liberals have been able to use the term freely without being asked to define it because the rest of us have a sense that it does mean something.  We understand that society can be ordered in different ways, and that some arrangements are more just, more fair, than others.  Though we may not have a very clear understanding of exactly what it means, we do perceive some truth underneath the rhetoric.  What is the deeper truth about social justice? 

Our objective is to better understand a term that has been usurped by those who think the best answer to any problem includes a heavy dose of government.  Our goal is to zoom out to see the whole landscape of “Christian social thought.”  With a bird’s eye view, we will better understand how different facets of Christian social thought work together to form a coherent political theory and a satisfying answer to the question, “what is social justice?”  In the end we will be equipped with a set of “first principles” which will inform our thinking about our duties in a just society. 

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