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Why Social Justice Matters
This book is dedicated to the memory of
Fred Hesketh, 1919-2002
| Why Social
Justice Matters
Brian Barry
Polity
Copyright © Brian Barry 2005
The right of Brian Barry to be identified as Author of this Work has been
asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2005 by Polity Press
Reprinted 2005 (twice), 2006, 2007 (twice), 2008 (twice), 2012, 2013, 2015 (twice)
Polity Press
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ISBN: 978-0-7456-2992-6
ISBN: 978-0-7456-2993-3 (paperback)
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Contents
Preface Vii
PART I Social Justice: The Basics
1. Why We Need a Theory 5
2. The Machinery of Social Injustice 14
3. The Scope of Social Justice 2)
PART II Equality of Opportunity
4. Why Equal Opportunity? a]
46
5. Education
70
6. Health
7. The Making of the Black Gulag 95
PART III What’s Wrong with Meritocracy?
109
8. The Idea of Meritocracy
ptee r
9. The Abuse of Science
PARTIV. The Cult of Personal Responsibility
10. Responsibility versus Equality? 131
142
11. Rights and Responsibilities
154
12. Irresponsible Societies
vi Contents
PART V The Demands of Social Justice
13. Pathologies of Inequality
14. Wealth
15. Jobs and Incomes
16. Can We Afford Social Justice?
PART VI The Future of Social Justice
17. The Power of Ideas
18. How Change Happens
19. Meltdown?
20. Justice or Bust
Notes
Index
Preface
My last book was called Culture and Equality. Its (more informative)
subtitle was An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism.‘ As several
reviewers noted, while the book delivered the promised critique, the
egalitarian premises from which my criticisms were derived — equal
opportunity, equal treatment and so on — were never systematically
set out or explained. This was not an oversight on my part. Because
‘multiculturalism’ is an umbrella under which a number of different
notions dwell — sometimes making messy bedfellows — I had to write
a long book to separate out the ideas and to show how they worked
in a variety of contexts such as religion and education. The underly-
ing principles from which I criticized the implications of multi-
culturalism were expounded throughout the book on a ‘need to
know’ basis, though I may add that I laboured mightily over the index
so as to make it possible to assemble the theoretical framework by
following through the entries under the main headings.
In fact, I originally envisaged a book in two parts, the first
(‘Culture’) being critical and the second (‘Equality’) containing my
own positive views. It soon became apparent, however, that this
project, while in principle admirable, would not allow space for a
discussion of multiculturalism that could hope to be convincingly
thorough. This, then, is the second part of that projected book. It stands
by itself, consisting of the ideas about social justice that I have devel-
oped over the years and their implications under contemporary condi-
tions — for individual countries and also for the world asa whole. There
will be nothing startling about the principles of social justice that I put
forward: they are widely accepted by politicians, media pundits and the
general public, at least nominally. Most of the book will be devoted to
viii Preface
arguing that these ideas are being abused systematically to justify the
massive inequalities that we can see all around us.
Thus, lip service is paid to the virtues of equal opportunity, but the
usual incantation is ‘equal opportunity to become unequal’. I shall
show that this is incoherent, and that equal opportunity can be
achieved only in a society that keeps the range of inequality within
narrow bounds. Similarly, appeals to ‘personal responsibility’ are all
the rage among political leaders, and inequalities are attributed to the
different choices made by different people: those who do well have
made choices that reflect their personal merits, while those who do
badly have made choices that reflect their personal defects. I shall
show that only a very small part of actually existing inequality can be
explained in this way, and that choices are socially constrained in
ways that are simply overlooked by those who play up the role of
personal responsibility.
All this still leaves two questions that are bound to occur to
anybody. The first is: if the diagnosis of what ails our societies is
correct, what should actually be done to redress these injustices? I
shall do my best to rise to this challenge by proposing some reforms
that would, if adopted, bring the attainment of social justice much
closer. The second question is: what reason is there for supposing that
history is on the side of social justice? Inequality has got worse in
the last twenty-five years, and the ideology justifying it has become
more pervasive. Why should we expect the future to be any more
favourable for social justice? I do not claim the gift of prophecy.
However, one thing can be asserted with certainty: the continuation
of the status quo is an ecological impossibility. The uncertainty lies in
the consequences of this fact. It is quite on the cards that the response
will be the further entrenchment of plutocracy within countries and
an ever more naked attempt by the United States, aided and abetted
by a ‘coalition of the willing’, to displace the costs onto poorer coun-
tries. Whether it succeeds or fails, any such attempt will be cata-
strophic. But I shall argue that there are some grounds for hope,
which include growing discontent in rich countries with politics as
usual. If discontent exhausts itself in protests, though, it will be inef-
fective. A theory of social justice can provide a systematic critique
and a programme that follows from it. That is why social justice
matters.
Before drawing these introductory remarks to a close, I feel that
it is incumbent on me to say a little for the benefit of those who have
followed my earlier work. I have not, either in Culture und Equality
or in this book, called upon the apparatus for deriving principles of
justice that I developed in Justice as Impartiality.” The reason for this
