It is important to determine exactly what is meant by the phrase “Social Justice”. If the word “justice” is considered by itself, the customary usage is applied to an individual, as in a criminal being “brought to justice”. When several people join together to commit a crime, each person is charged separately. So in the case of criminal justice, there’s no meaning to the phrase “social justice”: it’s always individual.
Therefore, this special form of justice with the modifier “social” implies a “group” rather than “individual” meaning. And if one considers the most common usage of the phrase, it seems certain that “social justice” is an aspect of identity politics: justice for the oppressed groups, as defined by Postmodernism/neo-Marxism (i.e., the hard Left).
Here’s a description of how “Social Justice” works by Conservative spokesperson Ben Shapiro:
“If a guilty man is acquitted because he’s the right race, that is anti-justice. If an innocent man is convicted because he’s the wrong race, that’s anti-justice. Social justice however suggests that your group identity, your identity as a person relieves you of individual responsibility to be a decent human being. So, you get to interrupt lectures if you’re the right race, or you’re the right gender, or the right sexual orientation, you get to do these things without punishment because after all that’s in the nature of social justice, group justice, we don’t hold you responsible for your individual actions.”
Shapiro asks about groups that are disproportionally poor or incarcerated. It seems that individual justice gets in the way of group justice. According to the Left, it must be because the system is rigged. There is no responsibility asked for by the Left within that group.
Psychologist Jordan Peterson notes that many who support “social justice” are people of compassion, but without wisdom. They act as the mother in a mother-infant relationship: the infant is ALWAYS right, and always needs immediate attention. In a mother-child relationship on the other hand, the goal is to foster increased responsibility in the child, to be able to ultimately achieve independence. Social justice emphasizes rights; individual justice emphasizes responsibility.
Another aspect of social justice is that of “equity”. Here’s Shapiro again:
The Left doesn’t believe in individuals; instead they believe that individual rights get in the way of creating a collectivist utopia. They think fairness can only be achieved for everyone if all groups end up in the same place. They want fairness. Not fairness of opportunity or of rights, but fairness of outcome: cosmic justice.
Of course to achieve equal outcomes, governmental or other external intervention is required. The Marxist assumption of oppressor/oppressed is applied, and the oppressors are duly penalized – at the group level! So, Whites, Males, Christians, and increasingly Asians must be intentionally discriminated against – i.e., treaded UNJUSTLY – because according to Marxism, everyone in the oppressor group must be punished, regardless of whether or not there has been individual culpability.
Another description of equity is provided by non-Marxist sociologist Jonathan Haidt:
Equality of outcome leads to an abomination of justice … Correlation does not imply causation …Disparate outcomes do not imply disparate treatment.
When “social justice” focuses on disparate treatment of individuals, based on category membership, it is a subset of justice. When “social justice” demands equal outcomes for all groups, without concern for inputs or 3rd variables, it becomes unjust.
Haidt provides an example of the response of the US government in 2014 to disparate rates of Minneapolis school district suspensions. The order from Washington was to decrease the number of suspensions among minority students, and increase the number for non-minority students; a Leftist government ordering “social justice” at the expense of “individual injustice”. Of course, ALL groups suffered from this implementation of this order in an ultimate sense.
Note that Shapiro, Peterson and Haidt all use logic in their assessments, but the Postmodernism of the Left opposes logic, blaming it as a tool used by the Patriarchy to achieve and maintain power.
Another perspective to view “social justice” is as a government-controlled wealth redistribution scheme. It is also based on Postmodern neo-Marxism ideology. “Liberal Fascism” author Jonah Goldberg suggests that Leftists consider social justice as:
“Good Things” no one needs to argue for, and no one DARES to be against.
Goldberg asks, “What are “good things”? His answer:
Whatever the champions of social justice decide this week. But first last and always it is the cause of economic redistribution.
Consider Goldberg’s quote from 1974 Nobel Economist Friedrich Hayek:
I have come to feel strongly that the greatest service I can still render to my fellow men would be that I could make speakers and writers among them thoroughly ashamed ever again to employ the term “social justice”.
And consider the following quotes from Postmodern-influenced United Nations:
“Social justice may be broadly understood as the fair and compassionate distribution of the fruits of economic growth.”
“Social justice is not possible without strong and coherent redistributive policies conceived and implemented by public agencies.”
“Present-day believers in an absolute truth identified with virtue and justice [i.e., Judeo-Christianity!] are neither willing nor desirable companions for the defenders of social justice.”
Goldberg concludes:
The Social Justice assumption is that the right people, the anointed few, can impose fairness, propriety, and any other good thing you can think of, and the only institution capable of Social Justice is the state.”
What Goldberg does not say, but which is part of the equation is the beneficiaries of the redistribution of wealth are the identity politics-defined oppressed groups, and the corresponding oppressor groups constitute the source of that wealth.
One more arena of social justice malfeasance is in the arena of speech and thought control. Great examples of that are the Social Justice Tribunals (SJTs) operating in the various provinces of Canada. In this situation, a member of an oppressed group – as defined by law (dictated by Postmodernism/neo-Marxism ideology) — may accuse someone – often a member of an oppressor group – of some kind of discrimination or insult. The SJTs provide detailed instructions on how to go about making accusations.
The accused person is ultimately brought to “trial”, where the “judges” are almost always dedicated Social Justice Warriors. The stance is essentially that the accused is assumed to be guilty, unless proven innocent. The burden of proof is preponderance of evidence, i.e. 51% possibility, and not “beyond reasonable doubt”.
The result of the guilty verdict is generally a hefty fine paid to the accuser, with no appeals possible. Further, if the accused person is acquitted, there is no possibility of a law suit against the accuser for defamation of character, or to recover legal fees.
With this kind of scheme, a person who wishes to make an accusation can “try their luck”, and if it looks like things are not going well, they can simply drop the charge, with no penalty, except of course the legal fees for that the accused person accrued defending themselves up to that point.
So the SJTs are essentially another example of wealth redistribution under the guise of “social justice”.
Of course if logic is added to this scenario, these SJTs would hardly seem like the kind of governmental device that would lead to societal peace and camaraderie. It in fact serves to divide the culture, with people retreating to “safe” behavior in their mode of speech and action, while internally living in fear and resentment.
There are more manifestations of Social Justice than what has been outlined above, but the pattern will be similar: the ideology is Postmodernism with neo-Marxism, identity politics is always a factor, the narratives are intellectually shallow and deceptive, but extraordinarily effective from a propaganda (keeping the “oppressed” on board) and coercion (keeping the oppressors in a defensive mode) point of view.
Critique: The underlying point of Social Justice amounts to a sweeping indictment of a free society, suggesting that any perceived unfairness or sorrow or economic want must be addressed by yet another government effort to remedy that unfairness, sorrow or economic want. This results in greater and greater often punitive coercion by the government, with the accompanying further loss of freedom. The pity of all this is that the so-called government “help” almost never seems to actually solve the problems it purports to address.
There is also the issue of Capitalism, frequently identified as an enemy of Marxism. If the goal of Social Justice is to raise the standard of living for as many people world-wide as possible, the success of Capitalism over any version of Marxism (such as Social Justice) or any other method of organizing societies is demonstrable and immense. The West has to choose between these two options; one that has raised billions of people out of poverty in the past 100 years, or the ideology (i.e., Marxism) that has resulted in the death of more than 100 million people in that same time span.
A final note. In some situations, people sometimes talk about striving for “justice”, without using the adjective “social”. In those cases, the characteristics of that striving need to be carefully examined, as to the underlying assumptions and ideology. If Postmodernism/neo-Marxism is at the root, then nothing good can result, only evil and destruction.