Political Scientists on Social Justice
Ronald J. Prestitto: “Modern, big-government liberalism has come home. The Progressives were the first generation of Americans to criticize the United States Constitution, especially for its limits on government’s scope and ambition. They rejected the American Founders’ classical or natural rights liberalism, offering instead a vision of the modern state as a kind of god with almost limitless power to achieve ‘social justice.’ When modern liberals like Senator Clinton call themselves progressives, therefore, they are telling the truth, even if their audiences don’t fully understand the implications” (“A Nicer Form of Tyranny: Review of Liberal Fascism,” Claremont Review of Books, Spring 2008, http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1529/article_detail.asp, accessed Dec. 15, 2011).
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“The Clinton administration has needed from the outset to define away the permanency and universality of the Declaration's language because that language devotes government to securing the rights inherent in the ‘laws of nature.’ Such a permanent understanding of rights — and limited government which exists to secure our rights — interferes with the preferred policies of modern liberalism, which require government to do away with natural rights under the guise of social justice. Thus, more recently, Bill Clinton remarked that we must ‘redefine the immutable ideals that have guided us from the beginning’” (“The President of Wonderland,” Claremont Publications Oct 1, 1998, http://www.claremont.org/publications/pubid.506/pub_detail.asp, accessed Dec. 15, 2011).
Andrew Busch: “This outcome may help to explain why large portions of the political class, as well as many on the intellectual Left whose primary goal was to reallocate the fruits of the economy in conformity with their conception of social justice, were disturbed by the economic policies of the Reagan administration” (Ronald Reagan and the Politics of Freedom, 2001, p. 94).
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“Many Americans had lauded the growth of the federal government as an instrument of what they considered to be social justice; Reagan’s budget policies, however, tapped into the perception of many others that American democracy since the New Deal had undergone a troubling transformation from a limited government of enumerated powers to an increasingly unlimited one in which the needs of government, or of the organized interests patronizing government, seemed to take precedence over the needs and the freedom of the unorganized many” (Ronald Reagan and the Politics of Freedom, 2001, p. 120).
Tom G. Palmer: “It was the great accomplishment of classical rights theory to connect ‘subject right” (it’s her right to X) and ‘objective right’ (it is right to Y), meaning that the way in which justice is achieved is mutual respect for rights. That achievement is in peril from theorists who sever the relationship, such that rights must be systematically overridden in order to achieve ‘social justice,’ a process that – to the extent that it is realized – weakens or even eliminates the rule of law, rights, justice, and freedom” (Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice, 2009, p. 3).
Donald Downs: “Just what is social justice art? In terms of definition and purpose, it is art in the service of such socially ‘progressive’ causes as identity politics (‘recognition’); greater equality through redistribution of resources; the environment; and critiques of the present social, economic, and political arrangements in the United States” (“Social Justice Art and Liberal Democracy,” Nov. 9, 2010. MindingtheCampus.org, http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2010/11/social_justice_art_and_liberal.html).
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“The fact that the concept of social justice is notoriously vague and subjective has not deterred the practitioners of dispositions theory from defining it according to a narrow liberal-progressive agenda as sympathy for affirmative action, aggressive notions of diversity, economic redistribution, and the ‘correct’ attitudes about marriage and sex” (“Dupont Circle Diversiphily,” Academic Questions, 2009 vol. 22, p. 213).
R.N. Carew Hunt: “The central error of present-day Marxists, apart from their fundamental lack of charity toward their fellow creatures, is their contempt to set up by any and every means a planned Absolute of social justice. We do well to strive after justice. Yet in the imperfect world we can never hope to reach more than an approximation to it; and if our presumption carries us further, all we are likely to achieve is a greater injustice” (“The Ethics of Marxism,” in Michael Curtis, Ed. Marxism: The Inner Dialogues (2nd Ed) 1997, Google ebook p.90).
Grover Cleveland: “There is however, simply no way of knowing how much better or worse off today the inhabitants of say Britain and the United States might be than the residents of India or Brazil if all had started off with an equal allocation of ‘ecological space’, because it is impossible to know which choices and tradeoffs would have been made. In short, the pursuit of ‘climate justice’ is equivalent to chasing a ‘mirage’ in much the same way as is the pursuit of ‘social justice’ more widely” (“The Mirage of Climate Justice,” http://pileusblog.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/the-mirage-of-climate-justice/).
Paul Kengor: “I’ll begin candidly, with a statement that might sound uncharitable: The modern Religious Left has perverted ‘social justice,’ if not hijacked the term altogether. It has so misappropriated and mangled the term that many Americans—including commentators like Glenn Beck—now reflexively think ‘socialism’ when they hear ‘social justice.’
Indeed, the most enthusiastic practitioners of social justice tend to advocate Big Government collectivism, pursued via a single, seemingly ever-expanding federal government. And although ‘social justice,’ in its origins, does not mean socialism, many liberal Christians have veered to that extreme” (“Social Justice, the Needy, and the Wealthy,” http://www.visionandvalues.org/2010/05/social-justice-the-needy-and-the-wealthy/#sthash.VBlV8lQj.2btEpufG.dpuf, accessed Oct 19, 2013).
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“In fact, the long experience of economies shows that those disproportionately tilted toward collectivism become so unproductive and lacking in prosperity that they can’t produce the very wealth the Religious Left wants to redistribute. That’s the self-defeating danger that social-justice engineers face as they shift private voluntarism to federal fiat” (“Social Justice, the Needy, and the Wealthy,” http://www.visionandvalues.org/2010/05/social-justice-the-needy-and-the-wealthy/#sthash.VBlV8lQj.2btEpufG.dpuf, accessed Oct 19, 2013).
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“Maybe it’s a measure of progressives’ refusal to look back, to always move ‘forward.’ Otherwise, they should be celebrating right now. In fact, President Obama and fellow modern progressives/liberals should be ecstatic all this year, rejoicing over the centenary of something so fundamental to their ideology, to their core goals of government, to their sense of economic and social justice—to what Obama once called ‘redistributive change.’ And what is this celebratory thing to the progressive mind?
It is the progressive income tax. This year it turns 100. Its permanent establishment was set forth in two historic moments: 1) an amendment to the Constitution (the 16th Amendment), ratified February 3, 1913; and 2) its signing into law by the progressive’s progressive, President Woodrow Wilson, October 3, 1913. It was a major political victory for Wilson and fellow progressives then and still today. By my math, that ought to mean a long, sustained party by today’s progressives, a period of extended thanksgiving” (“The Progressive Income Tax Turns 100,” April 15, 2013, http://www.visionandvalues.org/2013/04/the-progressive-income-tax-turns-100/#sthash.V1PGX2Bx.dpuf, accessed Oct. 6, 2013).
Kenneth Minogue: “Social justice is the belief that it is the duty of government to redistribute the wealth of society so that each person enjoys at least the rights to a basic minimum and so that, poverty having been abolished, certain equalities prevail” (“Social Justice in Theory in Practice” in D. Bucher and P. Kelly Eds. Social Justice From Hume to Walzer, 1998, p. 254).
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“Social justice is an idea without a precise referent. It is one way of pointing to a family of ideas, and our first business must be a bit of genealogy. Socialism is perhaps the ancestor: the aspiration to turn the modern European state into an equal partnership of workers all living largely the same mode of life. (No rich, for example.)” (“Social Justice in Theory in Practice” in D. Bucher and P. Kelly Eds. Social Justice From Hume to Walzer, 1998, p. 255).
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“It is necessary to make these points strongly, in order to convey the remarkable unreality in which the whole idea of social justice is imbedded. There is on the one hand, the logical pretension of an abstract theory claiming mankind for its domain, and on the other hand, the concentration on the operation of justice purely in terms of the distribution of wealth, without any concern, in all the talk of rights and utility, for the costs and conditions of its production. . . . It would be no surprise to a sociologist of knowledge that the social location of belief in social justice was in academic and civil bureaucracies: basically, that is, among a set of people who (until recently) hardly knew how difficult it is how to create wealth, and who understood an economy as a static structure in which entrepreneurs make unfair profits out of the sweat of the worker” (“Social Theory in Practice” in D. Bucher and P. Kelly Eds. Social Justice From Hume to Walzer,1998, p. 255).
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“Social justice is an idea which, because it proselytizes, has come to be noticed beyond the Western world. The Chinese, in particular, are derisive of it, and regard it as an attempt by a decadent West to involve everybody else in the same decadence, for they believe that social justice can only lead to a fatal decline in Western power—of its population, of its ability to compete economically, of its harmony and cohesion” (“Social Theory in Practice” in D. Bucher and P. Kelly Eds. Social Justice From Hume to Walzer,1998, p. 255).
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“Moral agency is undermined as governments take over the tasks individuals used to do for themselves. Removing problems from the lives of people certainly enhances their convenience, but such helpfulness is generally presented in grander terms as expressing social justice, or compassion. We should never, however, confuse justice with convenience. In the long run, convenience has costs, even if only in the form of a steady decline of our own resourcefulness” (The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes The Moral Life, 2010, p. 129).
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“When social justice meets political correctness, the old liberal idea that relations between individuals are a purely personal matter is overridden. There is a right thing to do, and the state will make sure it is done. Democracy today is becoming rather intolerant of moral and political disagreement” (The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes The Moral Life, 2010, p. 129).
Eldon J. Eisenach: “Here one might draw what seem to be unproblematic conclusions about Progressivism and rights. Thanks to German historicism/romanticism, liberal Christian theology, and theories of Progressive social and moral evolution encoded in the new social sciences, the era of big government dawned while the space of individual liberty fell into the shadows. The rule of law and the supremacy of legislatures were increasingly replaced by bureaucratic administrators writing the actual rules that govern us under cover of legislative delegation. The engine of big government was executive power and rule by experts responsive to an elite ‘consensus’ embodied in themselves and in those who dominate large and powerful national institutions which, in turn, were recipients of governmental resources and prestige. Enlightenment ideals of natural rights and individual liberty were replaced by theories of social progress and social justice defined as the redistribution of material resources and security against joblessness, disease, and hunger. In the meantime, the ‘living’ Constitution, rewritten by the victory of progressive ideals, became a flexible source of legitimacy for every act of an ever-expanding government” (“Some Second Thoughts on Progressivism and Rights,” Journal Social Philosophy & Policy, suppl. Natural Rights Individualism and Progressivism in America, Jul 2012, pp. 196-219, p. 203).
Matthew Ladner: “After the social justice movement, all students were considered to be ‘college prep.’ But there is no possible way of equalizing educational outcomes. Humans are not bees or ants. What was required was to dumb down instruction and textbooks, sanction social promotions, and award honor role certificates at random. A goal of 100 percent proficiency anywhere near college prep level is impossible to achieve and expensive to fund.
I agree that not everyone needs to go to college to enjoy a successful professional life. I would however like to have all of our students learning how to read proficiently and do at least basic math as a return on investment for $8,000 per year" (“Live Chat with Dr. Matthew Ladner,” The Goldwater Institute April 2, 2008, http://goldwaterinstitute.org/article/live-chat-dr-matthew-ladner, accessed Dec. 8, 2011).
John Agresto: “Beyond this, the broadest and most public reason for turning away from the liberal arts had to do with how all the finest aspects of liberal studies were strangled by the professoriate in the name of destroying the legacy of dead white males. The whole story is too long, too painful, and too familiar to recount here. But when the academy itself said that the core subjects of the liberal arts were not good, that they were the homes of oppressors rather than enlighteners, who would wish to pursue them? We knew they hardly helped one form a good career or land a good job; now we were told by our universities that the liberal arts were worse than useless they were bad.
Finally, when our students and their parents were shown that in the place of these old white, racist, and elitist studies would be substituted courses designed to teach Jake and Suzie to see the world as their professors envision it—with teachings that instruct them in the views of the new social justice, with courses that show them the evils of a country most of them admired, and with literature designed to proselytize for the various isms that made up the social ideology of the academic class—well, then, the bubble finally burst” (“The Liberal Arts Bubble,” Academic Questions DOI 10.1007/s12129-011-9250-y,also available here: http://www.nas.org/articles/the_liberal_arts_bubble).
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“The myth persists that the left—while it might often be naive and unrealistic—still has its heart in the right place. Those who want to redistribute income are the gallant Robin Hoods of contemporary life. ‘Occupiers’ and socialists clearly have real concern for the downtrodden and poor. Those who demand social justice are more sincere, more compassionate, more spiritual, and surely more Christian than the rest of us.
Fairness and decency are the heart of the left; materialism and selfishness the hallmarks of the bourgeoisie, Wall Street, the tea party crowd, and, well, ordinary Americans in general. So we are told.
Of course, every now and then this narrative unravels. An Occupy crowd goes on a rampage smashing the windows of small shopkeepers, stealing, destroying private and public property, throwing bricks at the police, and threatening the lives of ordinary citizens. In social-democratic Europe, gangs of idealistic youths take over universities, riot, and firebomb their way to achieve what they characterize as justice” (“Robin Hoods Don't Smash Shop Windows: Shouldn't Supposedly Selfish Conservatives—Not Idealistic Liberals—Be Producing Nasty Mobs?” The Wall Street Journal, Jan 1, 2012, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304070304577397852312185514, accessed Oct. 18, 2013).
Richard Lowenthal: “In fact, all those Communist movements which have conquered power wholly or chiefly by their own efforts - those of Russia, Yugoslavia, China, and Vietnam – have done so in societies which were faced with unresolved development problems in various stages. All of them have conceived Communism not merely as a means to achieve an earthly paradise of social justice, but to catch up with the advanced industrial countries and overtake them; and it is now generally recognized that their methods have proved remarkably successful in approaching the latter though not the former objective” (“The Points of the Compass” in Michael Curtis (Ed.) Marxism: The Inner Dialogues (2nd Ed) 1997, google ebook p.64, http://books.google.com/books?id=hRdyY2f8UcUC&pg=PA15&dq=The+Points+of+the+Compass%E2%80%9D+in+Michael+Curtis,+Ed.+Marxism:+The+Inner+Dialogues&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Zt1oUsufCY_LkAfm5YCAAQ&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAA#v=snippet&q=%22social%20justice%22%20&f=false, accessed Oct 23).
Peter Augustine Lawler: “As a professor of political science, I can't help but be concerned with all the enthusiasm about ‘civic engagement’ as some radically transformative, disruptive, ‘Copernican’ revolution in higher education. All the literature that makes such bogus claims is rife with management-speak barely masking progressive ideology. It makes the agenda-driven proclamation that the point of higher education is to make students into citizen-activists all about transforming communities, nations, and even the world in the name of removing inequities, fighting for inclusive diversity, achieving social justice, and fending off the impending catastrophe of global warming. All those activist engagement might be praiseworthy, but it is highly partisan--reflecting the opinions of professors and administrators and dissing the allegedly false consciousness of so many ordinary Americans” ‘(Civic Engagement: Teaching Students to Be Partisan Activists,” http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2013/06/civic_engagement_teaching_stud.html#sthash.RPgSe0sA.dpuf, accessed Sept 16, 2013).
Shep Melnick: “If you like Wal-Mart, you might just love Steven Malanga's The New New Left. If political principle or social snobbery leads you to shun that cornucopia of consumer bargains, then you will probably put down this short, well-written book rather quickly. Its premise is that competitive markets, low taxes, and entrepreneurial spirit are far better at lifting people out of poverty than are government programs, however well intentioned. For Malanga, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, Wal-Mart exemplifies the wonders of capitalism; and the Left's attack on it illustrates the cynicism of those who speak of social justice but deny the poor an opportunity to save money, find entry-level jobs, and revitalize their neighborhoods” (A review of The New New Left: How American Politics Works Today by Steven Malanga, The Claremont Review of Books, Winter 2006, http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1248/article_detail.asp, accessed Oct 18, 2011).
T.E. Flanagan: “More profoundly, social justice cannot pass the test of universalization. If we generalized the practice of taking from those who have to give to those who have not, we would destroy the institution of private property. Yet social justice, as usually understood today in the Western world, is meant to be a corrective supplement to private property, not its destruction. Of course, if there were only a ‘little bit’ of social justice, it would not completely destroy private property. But the whole point of the test of universalization is to detect such spurious rules which cannot be consistently implemented without destroying their basis. In contrast, there is no such problem with justice. Private holdings acquired under just rules can be universally protected without any logical contradiction” (“F. A. Hayek on Property and Justice,” in Privatization: Critical Perspectives on the World Economy, 1996 Eds G. K. Yarrow and P. Jasinski, p. 210, viewed in Google Books, http://books.google.com/books?id=hasIpn_pNR8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Privatization:+Critical+Perspectives+on+the+World+Economy&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Im1mUuTXGITy2gXq54DYCA&ved=0CEAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=social%20justice%20&f=false, accessed Oct 21, 2013).
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“Social justice is at bottom a rejection of the Great Society [note this is British publication] in favor of a ‘made order.’ If implemented consistently, it would transform society into a great taxis in which a central authority distributes all property proportionally to its own criteria of merit. Social justice is a ‘Trojan Horse’ for totalitarianism. Which is not to say that advocates of social justice perceive this totalitarian future or would favor it if they did”(“F. A. Hayek on Property and Justice,” in Privatization: Critical Perspectives on the World Economy, 1996 Eds G. K. Yarrow and P. Jasinski, p. 210, viewed in Google Books, http://books.google.com/books?id=hasIpn_pNR8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Privatization:+Critical+Perspectives+on+the+World+Economy&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Im1mUuTXGITy2gXq54DYCA&ved=0CEAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=social%20justice%20&f=false, accessed Oct 21, 2013).
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“The ethics of the Great Society are a powerful engine of progress, but they are emotionally unsatisfying. Men still desire the unity, loyalty, and common purpose of the closed society. Both socialism and nationalism, like other constructivist ideologies, are expressions of nostalgia for the closed society. They propose a ‘tribal’ ethics of preferential treatment toward the group to which one belongs, whereas the Great Society demands conduct according to universal norms of fair dealing. The demand for social justice is part of the same emotional reaction. The state is called upon to guarantee the position of particular groups – farmers, fisherman, labor, racial minorities, or whatever – who are felt to be especially deserving. It is still an open question whether the Great Society will be able to resist this tide of emotionalism and reestablish integrity of the intellectual ethics on which its survival ultimately must depend”(“F. A. Hayek on Property and Justice,” in Privatization: Critical Perspectives on the World Economy, 1996 Eds G. K. Yarrow and P. Jasinski, p. 212, viewed in Google Books, http://books.google.com/books?id=hasIpn_pNR8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Privatization:+Critical+Perspectives+on+the+World+Economy&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Im1mUuTXGITy2gXq54DYCA&ved=0CEAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=social%20justice%20&f=false).
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“Anthropomorphism runs throughout the vocabulary of social justice. For example, ‘redistribution’ suggests that one is only correcting an earlier ‘distribution’ of property. But in fact impersonal market processes give rise to a distribution only in the statistical sense of a set of date. There is no original distribution according to an act of human will; hence redistribution is a euphemism for imposing a distribution upon an impersonal allocation. What Hayek has written of socialism would also apply to social justice, that it ‘is not based merely on a different system of ultimate values from that of liberalism, which one would have to respect even if one disagreed; it is based on an intellectual error which makes its adherents blind to its consequences.’ The error is the constructivist fallacy that society acts like an organization under the direction of someone’s will” (“F. A. Hayek on Property and Justice,” in Privatization: Critical Perspectives on the World Economy, 1996 Eds. G. K. Yarrow and P. Jasinski, pp. 209 - 210, viewed in Google Books, http://books.google.com/books?id=hasIpn_pNR8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Privatization:+Critical+Perspectives+on+the+World+Economy&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Im1mUuTXGITy2gXq54DYCA&ved=0CEAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=social%20justice%20&f=false, accessed Oct 21, 2013).
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“Social Justice by definition has to mean the evaluation of the results of impersonal processes as if they were the results of intentional actions. This is not a subcategory of justice but the opposite of justice. Social justice would make sense only if society were an organization with a directing will. But since society is the milieu or spontaneous order in which such organizations interact, to speak of social justice or a just society is an anthropomorphic fallacy” (“F. A. Hayek on Property and Justice,” in Privatization: Critical Perspectives on the World Economy, 1996 Eds G. K. Yarrow and P. Jasinski, p. 209, viewed in Google Books, http://books.google.com/books?id=hasIpn_pNR8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Privatization:+Critical+Perspectives+on+the+World+Economy&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Im1mUuTXGITy2gXq54DYCA&ved=0CEAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=social%20justice%20&f=false, accessed Oct 21, 2013).
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“Social justice is an empty term. It is self-contradictory to speak of correcting the results of a spontaneous order. We can accept such an order and work within it, or we can reject it and attempt to destroy it; but we cannot accept it while simultaneously altering its results” (“F. A. Hayek on Property and Justice,” in Privatization: Critical Perspectives on the World Economy, 1996 Eds G. K. Yarrow and P. Jasinski, p. 209, viewed in Google Books, http://books.google.com/books?id=hasIpn_pNR8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Privatization:+Critical+Perspectives+on+the+World+Economy&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Im1mUuTXGITy2gXq54DYCA&ved=0CEAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=social%20justice%20&f=false, accessed Oct 21, 2013).
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“The modern concept of social or distributive justice is different in that it calls upon the state not to distribute its own resources within a particular organization but to ‘correct’ the outcome of spontaneous social order whose results do not meet some a priori ideal of equality, by appropriating the property of some citizens to give to others. This notion has gained such wide support that objections to it are usually made only on grounds of economic efficiency. It is claimed that since incentives are necessary in an economy, too much redistribution will interfere with efficiency, and might even make poorer those whom it is intended to help. In other words, do not kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Practically all the philosophers who have written on social justice acknowledge this point” (“F. A. Hayek on Property and Justice,” in Privatization: Critical Perspectives on the World Economy, 1996 Eds G. K. Yarrow and P. Jasinski, p. 208, viewed in Google Books, http://books.google.com/books?id=hasIpn_pNR8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Privatization:+Critical+Perspectives+on+the+World+Economy&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Im1mUuTXGITy2gXq54DYCA&ved=0CEAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=social%20justice%20&f=false, accessed Oct 21, 2013).
John N. Gray: “Again, the rhetoric of social justice in which egalitarian demands are framed often serves merely to give a moral rationale to entrenched interests. In real political life, it is not the submerged and defenceless elements of the population – the disabled, the chronically sick, or the long-term unemployed, for example – who are the focus of attention of those who speak of social justice. It is instead the professional and middle classes, who already do best from the welfare state. The egalitarian rhetoric of social justice thereby has, in actual political practice, the perverse functions of curbing healthy alterations in relative incomes in society and of distracting attention from the lot of the truly unfortunate. Worst, egalitarianism suppresses the vital truth that, if the really unfortunate amongst us are to be assisted by redistribution, it will have to be by a redistribution from the affluent majority, and not from the rich minority (whose wealth would be insufficient to the task, even if it could be transferred without loss). The real effect of egalitarianism in political life in Western democracies, accordingly, is to generate pernicious illusions about the potential benefits of redistribution from the rich, while doing nothing to enhance the opportunities of the disadvantaged, or to alleviate the lot of the needy” (Beyond the New Right: Markets, Government and the Common Environment, 2013, Kindle Locations 2469-2478).
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“Thirdly, there is the thesis that the slogan of social justice, being in itself vacuous, has in practice functioned, largely conservatively, as a legitimating formula for the protection of entrenched interest groups from the side-effects of economic change. The implicit moral of Hayek’s analysis is that the concern by government with distributional issues is foolish and destructive and ought to be abandoned. On this view, government ought to confine itself to defining the rules of property and enforcing them, which together exhaust its responsibilities” (Beyond the New Right: Markets, Government and the Common Environment, 2013, Kindle Locations 1113-1117).
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“Hayek’s argument against current popular and political uses of ‘social justice’ is devastating, recalling in its demystifying potency the critique of language of a contemporary of Hayek’s Viennese youth, Karl Kraus. It contains several powerful criticisms of current distributivist notions. There is, first, the epistemic insight that the actual dispersion of income in the market process cannot be predicted, or even known retrospectively in its entirety, by anyone. An impossible demand is made on the knowledge possessed by, or available to, government by patterned principles of justice in distribution, even John Rawls’s elegant and, to many, intuitively appealing Difference Principle which requires that economic inequalities be only such as are needed to improve by the most the absolute position of the worst-off. Further, though this is a separate claim of Hayek’s, the attempt to control incomes, in order to match some preferred pattern of merit, need or desert, is incompatible with the effective functioning of the market, which requires that prices be undistorted so as to act as signaling devices for individuals and enterprises. There is the second point, which I have myself elsewhere stressed, that there is in present society little in the way of a consensus on basic needs which would enable us to rank them in weight when they come into practical competition with each other. And there is not much doubt that the rhetoric of social justice has further enfeebled government by providing a rationale for concessions to vociferous interest groups, and thereby deepening the new Hobbesian dilemma to which I have earlier alluded.” (Beyond the New Right: Markets, Government and the Common Environment, 2013, Kindle Locations 1117-1130).
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