Real Justice (summarized for a “5 min read”)

Heretofore in human history justice has been a matter of beliefs, whether religious (theological) or secular (ideological) — including any ‘a priori’ or ‘transcendental’ anything. Yet, who would assert that justice can be achieved by some people imposing their beliefs on others? John Locke correctly identified arbitrariness with injustice, and all beliefs are arbitrary from the point of view of any other person.

Justice can only be achieved via an ethic that is undeniably universal with respect to human beings. To be undeniably universal an ethic must be strictly rational. That is not ‘privileging’ rationality, but recognizing our rational capacity’s given place in human existence.

To be strictly rational all determiners and referents of the ethic of justice must be contained within material existence. That legitimately de-legitimates going outside material existence, i.e. invoking beliefs, to justify violating the ethic of justice. Real justice accomplishes that.

Warren J. Samuels effectively defined “social power” as the ability to effect choices (choose among perceived alternatives and take action towards bringing that choice to fruition). We humans have no choice but to effect choices. At the same time, we can only impact other people when we do effect choices. It is only by impacting other people — affecting their lives — that the issue of justice can arise.

So, the referents of real justice are actions involving other people when any choice is being effected. Within that very large but finite domain everyone must be governed by this ethic of justice.

With the referents of justice thus identified, justice becomes a matter of respecting the given capacity of all human beings to choose for themselves whenever any choice is being effected — beginning with choosing whether to be involved in the process in any way whatsoever. So mutual respect for people’s capacity to choose for themselves whenever any choice is being effected is the determiner of real justice, its definitive, sufficient, prescriptive condition of justice. [I address unavoidable hierarchies such as family and work in my book, A Just Solution.]

That is the positive pole of justice, telling us how we must act to act justly. The more we take others into account in effecting any choice, the more justly we are acting. To violate that ethic is to assert by one’s actions some status regarding ‘thee and them’ that cannot be proven to exist within material existence.

The minimum, necessary, proscriptive condition of justice draws the line between just and unjust acts, telling us what we must refrain from doing to keep from acting unjustly. It is this: no one may co-opt any other person in the process of effecting any choice; anyone’s participation in that process must be voluntary and sufficiently informed. That brings to mind the aforementioned Locke’s famous definition of injustice: being “subject to the arbitrary will” of another person. As a minimum, then, in our actions involving other people in the process of effecting any choice we are prohibited from killing, harming, coercing, manipulating (lying, misleading, cheating, etc.) or stealing. (There is no ‘moral relativity’ here.)

With mutual respect in effecting choices as the ethic of justice we can still assign ourselves communal rights, including a right to private property. On the other hand, the idea of a priori Rights, including “Natural Rights,” such as a Natural Right to property or liberty, is voided.

The ethic of real justice would, however, provide the maximum liberty that coexisting people can enjoy simultaneously. That tells us that, properly understood, liberty is the product of justice, not its predicate (as Locke would have it), or source, or foundation, etc.

The political process can be defined as the process of effecting choices for the community as a whole. The political system, then, is the set of institutions within which choices are effected for the community as a whole — with government as its functional core. Every member of the community must be allowed to participate in the political process because everyone is affected by the choices effected for it.

Political speech is the part of the political process that is beyond the political system. That means that political speech is something more than a right. Freedom of political speech is its own condition of justice within the political process. (Rights regarding other forms of expression must be decided in the political process.) Hence, universal freedom of political speech becomes the first condition of justice for the political process.

The second condition of justice for the political process is a democratic distribution of political rights. That means that those rights are available to all members of the community but for non-arbitrary restrictions. Only a restriction which can be universally applicable can be non-arbitrary. Thus, age is a legitimate restriction on political rights, but gender, race, ethnicity, and color are not. As for creed, though any creed is potentially universal, creed cannot be used to restrict political rights because that would unavoidably bring arbitrariness into it.

With liberty of political speech and a democratic distribution of political rights, a just political process becomes a vehicle of procedural justice: the process, being just, produces inherently legitimate results. The conditions of justice for that process stand as valid constraints on outcomes: the process may not result in outcomes which violate universal freedom of political speech or the democratic distribution of political rights. The ethic of real justice governs the actions of individuals engaged in the political process; to violate it is to void the legitimacy of any outcome thus attained.

The political process is organic to the very existence of a community of human beings. Every human community that has ever existed has necessarily had one. Likewise, every community of human beings has necessarily had an economy, a process of producing and (otherwise) acquiring goods and services.

It follows from all that has been said that the economy cannot be outside the domain of justice. The economy is nothing but effecting choices. We can use the political process as a template.

As in the political process, freedom must come first. People must be free to decide how — and to what extent — they will seek to participate in the economy.

Similarly, we can borrow the second condition of justice in the political process. We can say that money is to the economic system as political rights are to the political system; it is the source of social power necessary to participate in it. In a monetary economy with legal tender justice therefore requires a democratic distribution of money.

One way to achieve that would be to institute a democratically distributed income that in total would form the supply of money for the economy. I have found that implementing such an income would (among other good things) provide the means to eliminate unemployment, poverty, taxes, and public debt while increasing sustainability. [See “By Request: How to Transform the Society of Any Nation (in a ‘5 min read’)” here in Medium; I do have an M.A. in economics.]

The democratically distributed income could be more far-reaching. In addition to the benefits already noted — and all but assuring environmental sustainability — it could eliminate economic exploitation. Such a model is in my aforementioned book.

further reading: “People for Tolerance, Unite!” here in Medium