What is Social Justice?
We receive many emails here at the Social Justice Committee but one sent in October by a 14 year old from Australia really caught our attention.
"My name is Louisa Reynolds and I am a 14 year old Year 9 student in Australia. I am writing about your website.
Yes, indeed it is very helpful but I am currently doing a religion assignment on social justice. All I wanted was to define the term Social Justice, get a few ideas of Social Justice and I thought I would be able to find it all on your website.
However, your website failed to help me with my project like every other website has too.
I am asking that if you are a Social Justice website that you at least define the term.
I am sorry to argue this but if feel that if you are a social justice committee that you do something to change it and add the little things in.
Yours sincerely, Louisa Reynolds"
Her challenge for us to define what we mean is welcome. We need to occasionally re-assess what we're about. We decided to see if we could kick off an examination of the concept of "social justice" by asking one of our bright young volunteers to come up with an informed definition. She brought us much more...
"Social Justice"?
By Laura Butler
Economic growth Vs Human Development: Social Justice can only really be defined in context.
The market capitalist system governing the world is unstable, and the very dynamic upon which capitalism rests - competition - is the source of this instability. By definition competition breeds winners and losers but, as competitive capitalism globalizes, the gulf between the winners and the losers is widening. Within states and between states inequality is rising and the impact of our global economy is becoming obvious. Pollution of the natural environment, financial crisis and massive social unrest are predictable results of the current system.
Market capitalism has bought untold wealth to many and this has provided the means to realize improvements in the quality of life. Life expectancy and levels of literacy have increased, fertility rates and infant mortality have fallen - in other words, human development has taken place. Those who have benefited from Capitalism have a greater range of choices and freedoms than ever before.
The concern is whether these benefits extend more widely so that the quality of life improves for all, not just a few. Capitalism's answer to human development is more economic growth, after all capitalism did provide the means to increase choices and freedoms in the past. So why all the anti-capitalism? Why the protests? Don't Southerners deserve the same opportunities we in the North had?
The answer is an unequivocal yes. But we must not confuse 'means' with 'ends,' nor 'economic growth' with 'Human Development.' Most importantly we must not let others try to confuse us either.
The idea of Human Development is a slippery one because people have subjective ideas about what constitutes development or improvement. I have always found Sen's definition of Human Development as 'increased freedoms and choices,' to be both robust and flexible. Extrapolating from this definition, Social Justice means that all members of a society have equal opportunity to access these freedoms and choices in deciding how to live ones life.
Unfortunately today's Market Capitalism is actually curtailing many freedoms and choices. The confiscation of traditional lands in Mexico to make way for superhighways and maquillas is a simple example, but one that neatly captures the rather abstract notion of the 'unstable internal dynamic' that I referred to earlier. Bear with me and I will show how the above example is actually the inevitable outcome of today's Capitalist system.
The Commoditization of Labor and Money
Firstly we must be clear about the role of labor and capital [that is people and money to you and I] in Capitalism.
Free trade is the latest manifestation of the globalization of capitalism, and governments around the world are working to facilitate this competition. Barriers to trade are being removed to allow the magic of the competitive market to work. Some of these barriers such as tariffs are obvious, others are less obvious but arguably more important. In order to compete in this global capitalism, today's governments are transforming labor markets and liberalizing capital [Money] markets.
The theory of Neo-liberal economics calls for the unfettered functioning of the market, labor must be as 'flexible' as possible to competitively respond to market signals, and capital [money] must be freed to lubricate these market transactions.
Yet the State is required to reconcile the requirements of the economy with the reality of society, for example the State must manage the supply of money in an economy in order to evade the twin evils of inflation and deflation. Under a pure capitalist market however, money itself must be transformed into a commodity that can be bought and sold freely. Recent pressure for the liberalization of international capital accounts is today's attempt to commoditize money.
The Enclosures Acts of 18th century Europe succeeded in separating people from their land [their 'means of production,'] and thus transformed them into wage laborers. These wage laborers then sell their labor in the labor market. Bingo! Labor starts to become a commodity. A similar genre of enclosures is currently happening across the South as governments seek to privatize traditional or collective lands and encourage a competitive and modern labor force.
Labor is simply the activity of humans, land is just the natural environment with title deeds, and the money supply is necessarily controlled by the government. Yet the economic theorizing upon which real policies with real impacts are based assumes that land, labor and money behave as typical commodities. Land, labor and money are not typical commodities and they certainly do not behave as such.
Polanyi and 'The Great Transformation' As I noted at the outset these are not new observations, the commoditization of land, labor and money were first noted by Polanyi and named 'The Great Transformation.' Polanyi argues that the emergence of market capitalism necessitated a fundamental change in the relationship between society and the economy. Before the 19th century the economy was not 'autonomous' [as it must be in economic theory] but was subordinated to society and governed by politics, religion and social relations.
For capitalism's self regulating market to function properly, society must be subordinated to the logic of the market - i.e. labor, land and money must behave as commodities.
"Ultimately that is why the control of the economic system by the market is of overwhelming consequence to the whole organization of society: it means no less than the running of society as an adjunct to the market. Instead of the economy being embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded in the economic system"
- Karl Polanyi.
The protagonists of the global economic system promote the State as the facilitator of the market, and today's States are actively pushing society and natural resources towards the point of commoditization. Social upheaval, environmental pollution and financial crisis are considered unfortunate-but-necessary adjustments for the long-term benefit of all. For this economic nirvana to be reached however, people, land and money would have to behave as narrowly and unrealistically as the academic theory that underpins the current approach. It is because of this incongruence between reality and the demands of economic theory that Capitalism is not delivering increased freedoms and choices to the majority in the South; people are more than just labor and land is more than just a resource.
Do the 'ends justify the means?'
In fact, so destructive are these 'necessary transitions' that many of those affected are protesting that their freedoms and choices are actually being reduced. When speaking to a Mexican who is being evicted from traditional collective lands to make way for a superhighway and is offered only the possibility of a sweat-shop job in a future maquilla, it is hard to disagree. The Neo-liberal economic model is actually damaging the 'ends' of human development upon which the model was originally justified.
Yet people are not passively watching their freedoms and choices be subordinated to the rapacious demands of global capitalism. As the consequences of the unrestrained market become apparent, people are rejecting the model that would lead to their own destruction and retreating from global capitalism. Governments today, as before, face domestic pressure and criticism of their economic policy.
"The evil suffered patiently as inevitable [becomes] unendurable as soon as one concieves the idea of escaping from it."
- De Tocqueville.
The results of the increased pressure on States to protect their citizens from the machinations of the unfettered market resolves itself in one of two ways; either the state listens and intervenes to rein in the economy [reverting to a more embedded position in Polanyi's words,] or there will be social disintegration.
"The entire history of social improvement has been a series of transitions, by which one custom or institution after another, from being a supposed primary necessity of social existence , has passed into the rank of a universally stigmatized injustice and tyranny."
- John Stuart Mill.
Let's take a quick breather and review the position thus far:
Neo-Liberal Economic theory states that land, labor and capital [money] must behave as commodities in order for competition to work. Competition will lead to economic growth, which in turn will lead to human development. There may be some difficult adjustments, but in the long run this is for the greater good of all.
Polanyi argues that these 'difficult adjustments' occur because it is against the nature of land, labor and capital [money] to behave as typical commodities. As the difficult adjustments become too painful and people protest, the State will rein in the economy-until next time. A cyclical pattern then develops of the economy dominating society and vice versa.
But the cycle has been disturbed and the goal posts have shifted; as the economy goes global, the rules have changed.
The economy and society in globalization
Polanyi, De Tocqueville and Mill were writing before the time of globalization when the nation state had a great deal of autonomy to respond to citizens. Today economic policy is determined at the international rather than the national level. Northern governments manipulate the powerful debt leverages incumbent on much of the South in order to advance conditions favorable to globalization of capitalism. This is clearly demonstrated by the extensive use of IMF, WB and WTO conditions to ensure the removal of trade barriers which frustrate the globalization of capitalism to the South.
Today popular protest against 'painful-but-necessary adjustments' are not felt by those making the big decisions about the direction and pace of the economy because these decision makers are in Washington, not Mexico City. As Nation States have less scope to protect their citizens from the effects of the market, the only other outlet - social upheaval - is becoming more and more common. Concerned nation states are told to wait it out and bear the adjustments. In return they are promised future prosperity and the economic growth which will deliver human development to their people.
Yet this will not happen. The Northern governments are also experiencing pressure from their own citizens concerned over the impact of global capitalism, and these citizens are being responded to. Whilst Southern nations are coerced into reducing trade barriers, the rich northern counterparts are retaining or even increasing their protection. Tariffs such as the Multi-fiber agreement, the US steel tariffs, the EU Common Agricultural Policy, serve to protect Northern societies from the painful machinations of market capitalism and to secure the greater portion of the benefits of economic globalization for the North.
This is an example of Polanyi's State intervening to protect its citizens. In the North, the state is able to make alterations, to 'embed' the economy in society's needs. In the South, powerful debt conditionality ensures that this is not an option, Southern societies will be subjugated to the market. Painful adjustments are exported to the South in the name of 'development.' Neo-liberal models promise Human Development through economic growth, yet the impact of this prescription is curtailing the already limited freedoms and choices.
The ultimate purpose of economic growth is to improve the choices and freedoms of its constituency, this must not become obscured by the relentless pursuit of growth for growth' sake. Gindin succinctly defines Social Justice as "the pursuit of a society that fosters and encourages the full and mutual development of all the capacities of all members." In a globalizing society this means that the goal of increased freedoms and choices for one group must not come at the expense of another.