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The Mirage Of Social Justice, Part 3: Primitive Thinking By Immature Minds: “Social Justice” Is Based On Envy, The Most Anti-Social Of All Passions.

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“Social” justice will not permit individual freedom. Social justice warriors observe that the results of the spontaneous order of the market are not distributed equally. “Someone” must be to blame. Therefore, they must be punished. Their property must be involuntarily transferred to others.

To Hayek, this is primitive thinking by immature minds. Why? Because they can not comprehend the impersonal process of the market – one which brings about a greater satisfaction of human desires than any deliberate human organization could achieve. Instead, they “anthropomorphize” or “personalize” the market – they think of it as the deliberate acts of some individuals who are “in charge”, and must be brought to heel.

Social Justice Will Lead Straight To Socialism.

This conception of “social justice” says Hayek, leads straight to full-fledged socialism. It requires a social organization to assign particular shares of the product of the economic system to particular individuals or groups. It assumes the moral duty to create a power that can achieve an approved pattern of distribution.

Social justice is the most widely used and most effective argument in politics. Every claim for government action on behalf of particular groups is advanced in its name. Opposition is weakened when social justice is invoked. This is so much the case that socialists have abandoned the government ownership of the means of production as their preferred redistribution vehicle, and substituted heavy taxation based on the promise of social justice.

This represents a complete revolution in social order: from a society based on principles of just individual conduct to a society based on government satisfying the demand for social justice, and placing the duty on authorities with the power to command people what to do. Worse, government authority is supplemented and reinforced by other social groups such as the church. Social justice has become a quasi-religious superstition. But, like the superstitious belief in witches and ghosts in earlier historical times, near universal acceptance does not prove validity.

Social Justice Overturns American Values.

Society will become fundamentally different if we succumb to the superstitions of the social justice warriors. We will be forced to abandon individual responsibility, self-reliance, and traditional moral values, and replace these principles with dependence, collectivism and the high time preference of instant gratification.

We will not be able to preserve the benefits of free markets if we impose the requirements of social justice. There will be self-accelerating decline. A dependent group insists on more government action to achieve distributive justice; the government discovers that to achieve the desired outcome, groups must be subject to more and more government control, and the system progressively approaches totalitarianism.

Social Justice Requires Central Control.

If we maintain a system in which everyone is free to choose their occupation, there can be no control over whether or not the results will correspond to the wishes of the social justice warriors. Social justice can only be realized in a centrally controlled system that limits free choices and free action of individuals. Justice can only refer to the way free competition is carried on, not to its results. And we could never decide on the remuneration “deserved” by different activities. When we ask what ought to be the relative remunerations of a nurse or a butcher or a coal miner or a judge, or a deep sea diver or a cleaner of sewers, or the creator of a new industry or computer programmer or a jockey or the jet pilot or the professor, the appeal to social justice does not give us the slightest help in deciding. It must be left to the market.

The word “social” implies that “society” ought to hold itself responsible for the particular material position of all its members and for assuring that each receives what is “due” to them. This implies that “society” has a conscious mind that can be guided by these principles. Ultimately, social justice implies some kind of equality in earnings, and the use of government power to move in the direction of material equality. This is fatal because, to achieve equal outcomes, government can not treat everyone equally. It must tell people what to do, and must take on the arbitrary power to do so. A claim for equality of material position can be granted only by a government with totalitarian powers.

Anyone who is assured remuneration according to some principle that is accepted as constituting “social justice” can not be allowed to decide what he or she is to do. They can’t be allowed to find another occupation or profession; they must stick to the occupation they are assigned for the remuneration assured to them. This is not a system of individual freedom. The rules of social justice are those of the conduct of superiors to their subordinates. The citizens must be subordinate to authority.

We Have No Moral Entitlement To Stable Results From The Market.

Another belief of the social justice warriors is the supposed “social injustice” of losing an economic position that they have been accustomed to. Coal mines and steel mills close, employers downsize or go out of business or move production to another place. There is a “strong and almost universal belief that it is unjust to disappoint legitimate expectations of wealth.” We all prefer that no very great changes will be made to our condition. These changes may look like undeserved strokes of misfortune but they are an indispensable part of the steering mechanism of the market. Negative feedback is the most important data keeping the market dynamic. Constant adaptation to changing circumstances is critical in directing effort to the highest and best use. We have no moral entitlement to stable results from the market. If we were to protect individuals from these market changes, then there would be stasis, and no-one could ever be upwardly mobile or successful.

In the end, the gospel of “social justice” preaches the sordid sentiment of dislike of people who are better off than oneself, or simply envy, the “most anti-social of all passions”. It has nothing to do with justice.

The Mirage Of Social Justice, Part 2: What Is Justice Anyway? It’s Not What SJW’s Want You To Think It Is.

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So what is justice? It’s not what we are led to believe it is by social justice warriors.

We must be able to define justice before we can determine how to pursue it. F.A. Hayek defined the emptiness of the concept of “social Justice” in Part 1 of The Mirage Of Social Justice. In Part 2, he proceeds to provide the meaning that is lacking in the typical use of the term.

What Justice Is Not.

First, he tells us what justice is not. Justice can not refer to outcomes. We can not refer to a state of affairs or a circumstance such as the distribution of income between people in a country, as either just or unjust. It is neither. It is a circumstance, a condition. It is an emergent property of the system by which we all live, one that has evolved over time based on individual human behavior.

When we apply the terms just or unjust to a state of affairs, we immediately start to look for someone to blame for bringing it about or allowing it to happen. That, says Hayek, is a very dangerous categorical mistake. It divides society. It makes us all enemies.

A bare fact, or a state of affairs which nobody can change, may be good or bad, but not just or unjust.

Justice Can Not Refer To Outcomes, Only To Human Behavior.

Justice is an attribute of human behavior. The term “just” can refer only to human actions and not to results. In spontaneous order, there are no rules that determine what anyone’s position will be. The particulars of the spontaneous order – the positions individuals actually occupy – cannot be called just or unjust

Justice lies not in the outcome of the system but in its norms of interpersonal behavior, what Hayek calls “rules of just conduct”. These are different from laws, which are enacted by legislatures and are manufactured rather than evolved collaboratively over time. The politicized decisions of the legislature do not determine what is just. Only human conduct – how each individual deals with each other individual – can be called just or unjust. Rules of just conduct refer to the actions of individuals that affect others.

The Rules Of Justice Tell Us What Not To Do.

Rules of just conduct are generally negative rules. They prohibit unjust conduct. Eight of the ten commandments are negative (thou shalt not). Nine of the first ten amendments to the US Constitution in the Bill Of Rights are negative (Congress shall make no law…..and so on). Rules of just conduct enjoin particular kinds of actions in order to help individuals be free to act as they choose. The test of the validity of these rules is universality – do they apply to everyone equally, as opposed to favoring one group over another.

These rules impose no positive duties on anyone, unless they themselves choose to incur such duties. They do not confer rights on any individual. They do not eliminate uncertainty. They do not assure success. They do not aim at a result. They are not the product of someone’s will; they emerge from acceptable human behaviors over time.

Professing To Use Concepts Of Justice To Determine Outcomes Is Socialist And Totalitarian.

Essentially, there are no positive criteria of justice. There is a strain of thinking among the intelligentsia that goes by the name of legal positivism. This means that laws can be written by the legislature and applied by the state bureaucracy to achieve particular results. This, to Hayek, is what is fundamentally unjust. Worse, this concept of law holds that it is legitimate for the state to use coercion in the service of pursuing these particular results, thus totally abandoning the rules of just conduct.

This is simply the ideology of socialism: to achieve total control over the social order because the governing elites believe it is in their power to design and determine future outcomes.

Social justice warriors have seized upon this apparent approval of unjust means to pursue their ends by adopting violent and intimidating methods, from strikes to marches to wild accusations, and even the use of weapons. In the struggle between individual sovereignty and the sovereignty of the omnipotent state, the social justice warriors take the side of the state, in order to intervene to compel individuals into approved behaviors.

Property, Contract And Tort.

We know there is a better alternative to this never-ending struggle. The lesson of history is that a system based on private property and contract tends to bring about the spontaneous order which favors individual human freedom with the appropriate rules of just conduct. Hayek notes that David Hume referred to:

the three fundamental laws of nature, that of stability of possession, of its transference by consent, and of the performance of promises, or, as a modern author sums up the essential content of all contemporary systems of private law, ‘freedom of contract, the inviolability of property, and the duty to compensate another for damage due to his fault.’

Private property and the freedom to transfer it within the rule of law are fundamental for a free and open society. Social justice warriors want private property to be eliminated or transferred without consent. Whatever that is, it is not justice.

The Mirage Of Social Justice, Part 1: Social Justice Warriors Claim Fine Sentiments, But They Are Entirely Dishonest.

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Empty. Meaningless. Thoughtless. Vacuous. Naïve. Hollow. Shameful. Fraudulent. Primitive thinking. Demagogy. Cheap journalism. Irresponsible. A grave threat. Destructive of the values of civilization.

These are some of the words and phrases F. A. Hayek use to describe the term – and the idea of – “social justice” and the people who employ it. These are not the words of a detached academic, but of someone who feels deeply and emotionally about the collapse of a great civilization threatened by those determined to destroy it, who will twist and invert both language and principle to achieve their goal. Hayek is driven by the spirit of resistance to these forces.

I believe indeed that the greatest service I can still render to my fellow men would be if it were in my power to make them ashamed of ever again using that hollow incantation. I felt it my duty to at least try and free them of that incubus which today makes fine sentiments the instruments for the destruction of all values of a free civilization.

Even Social Justice Warriors Can’t Define “Social Justice”.

The Mirage Of Social Justice is the title F.A. Hayek gave to Volume 2 of Law, Legislation and Liberty. It’ a book about the beneficence of the spontaneous order of the free enterprise society, and includes a withering take down of the claims of “social justice”. It was written over 40 years ago, well before the internet, and yet resonates perfectly in today’s world of political correctness and what Jordan Peterson calls “the elevation of moral posturing … over truth”.

Hayek starts by setting out his position: the term “social justice” is entirely empty and people who habitually employ the phrase can’t themselves define what they mean by it. They just use it as an assertion that a claim is justified without giving a reason for it.

“Social Justice” Is Moral Posturing.

Social justice, Hayek tells us, is

a dishonest insinuation that one ought to agree to a demand of some special interest which can give no real reason for it.  (The term is) the mark of demagogy or cheap journalism which responsible thinkers ought to be ashamed to use.
‘Social justice’ is little more than a pretext for making the interest of particular groups prevail over the general interest of all.

This is moral posturing of social justice that goes beyond politically correct speech codes to the economic demands of the self-identified oppressed sections of society upon the rest of us.

Politicians Jump On The Social Justice Bandwagon For Their Own Purposes.

The first problem with the concept is that it is indefinable. Consequently, it can be given almost any content by the social justice warriors. When that content is seen as marketable by the ruling political groups, they will favor it and claim to be supporting the “general welfare”. But the collective that is pressing for their “just desserts” is never the whole of society, but is always a special interest. As soon as government is expected to satisfy some particular collective, some of whose interests may be contrary to the general interests of society, then a friends-enemies political framework is established and a divisive fight ensues.

Democracy Worsens The Problem.

Worse, in a democracy, there is a tendency to define as a general interest anything that a majority will vote for or will lobby for, and it is a perversion of our ideals to define the general interest as whatever the majority desires. For example, union members, in a majority in many industrial settings, can vote for a strike or a restriction of production that is a collective good for all members but certainly not in the general interest. Climate activists can claim they are supporting not only the general welfare but the survival of the planet.

Coalitions of special interests organize to make their case, and politicians and civil servants can aim at securing the support of these interests by promising to implement their demands. In this, Hayek finds the key to the divisiveness of politics:

For the elected representative, a specific gift in his hands is much more interesting and a more effective key to power than any benefits he can procure indiscriminately for all.

The Alternative Is The Free Enterprise Society, Defined By General Rules Applicable To All.

What’s the alternative to “social justice”? In a free society, the general good consists principally in the freedom of the individual to pursue his or her own ends. The spontaneous order that emerges will result in individuals providing for each other’s needs in a way that authority could never devise or manage. It is both futile and counter-productive to aim for specific results for special groups. Justice consists in every individual having an equal chance, not in whether or not their group benefits from the outcome.

Hayek’s ideal to bring this about is to define general rules – he calls them abstract rules – of individual conduct which are required for the formation of spontaneous order. In the Hayekian world, this is a state in which individuals are allowed to use their own knowledge and their own private property for their own purposes, deciding on their actions on the basis of whatever knowledge they possess. The starting point is the information that’s available, including the market price of whatever service the individual feels qualified to offer to others. The market provides the opportunity to utilize dispersed, unique knowledge. The idea that government can determine the opportunities for individuals is in conflict with the whole rationale of a free society.

There are accidents and externalities we can’t control. The parents we are born to and the country and culture we are born in are accidental. No point in complaining. Government can not control the external circumstances from which these accidents of the market emerge.

Even traditions and national character are emergent features of the actions and preferences of the people. Even in concrete symbols like flags and monuments, they stand for abstract rules of behavior – what is acceptable to be done and what’s not acceptable in that society.

Serve Unknown Individuals, Not Collective Special Interests.

Whom do these general, abstract rules serve? Unknown individuals not specific groups. The best we can do for general welfare is to increase the opportunities for any unknown person picked at random. We do not know what outcome these opportunities will produce. They become merely the basis for the planning of individuals.

Long Term Thinking Is Morally Superior To Short Term Thinking.

Another consequence of these general rules, therefore, is that they always aim at the long run. Yet, politicians always aim for the short run in trying to bring about specific results for their constituents and supporters. Politicians aiming for specific results in the short run kill freedom in the long run. (See Chapter 7 of The Foundations Of Morality by Henry Hazlitt for a full exposition of this principle.)

Freedom means that, in some measure, we entrust our fate to forces which we do not control. As a result, changes can occur which are unpredictable and may be viewed as damaging to some interests – for example, when industries decline as a result of new knowledge that is not available to all, or not actionable by one group. This recognition that man can not control his own fate is intolerable to positivists and constructivists, who believe in the infinite power of their own reason. Only they, in their own minds, have the reasoning power to determine the outcome for the rest of us, and that’s what they call “social justice”.

Hayek Anticipated That Millennials Would Be Skeptical Of Free Markets.

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The Millennial generation has been described as hating competition, or at minimum misunderstanding it. According to this theory, they were raised on participation trophies which engendered a “no-one loses” culture.

In an alternative theory, they are so meritocratic that they become hyper-stressed at the sorting, sifting, and ranking by schools, universities, the workplace, and social media that they feel institutionally compelled to strive, perform, and achieve even though they are not comfortable with doing so.

It’s probably futile to attempt to capture the feelings and motivations of an entire generation, which perhaps accounts for the wide disparity in theories. But there is consistent data from surveys and behavioral analysis (such as in voting for Bernie Sanders) that the Millennial generation is warm to the idea of socialism and skeptical about capitalism.

Disparate Information Results In Disparate Outcomes.

F. A. Hayek, in Law, Legislation and Liberty, anticipated Millennials’ discomfort with free markets. The “no-one loses” culture is, he declares, contrary in principle to free markets. The moral energy of the market applies at the individual level. Each of us is free to use the information available to us in order to design our service to others in the pursuit of rewards. Often, this information is not known to others. The individual uses education, and knowledge of time and place and existing circumstances, as well as the history of his or her predecessors in their position, in the process of choosing how to contribute in the marketplace. There are billions of other individuals who have different knowledge, and they are making equally unique choices on the basis of their unique information. The outcome of these simultaneous and interacting choices based on disparate information can not be known.

The Economic Game.

Hayek compares market activity to a game. In fact, he employs the Oxford English Dictionary definition of a game: “a contest played according to rules and decided by superior skill, strength or good fortune.” Like any game, winners and losers are not pre-determined. And outcomes can change as circumstances change, often unpredictably.

In the case of “the economic game”, the players participate because doing so improves the chances of all, and leads to “an increase of the stream of goods and the prospects of all participants to satisfy their needs”. But the outcome for any individual is not guaranteed. And Hayek emphasizes the role of luck: rewards may have no connection with merit, and might therefore be thought – erroneously – to be unjust.

Within this economic game, there is a particularly important role for “negative feedback”. (Hayek points out that economists have recognized the role of negative feedback for a long time, and cites Adam Smith as one of the first to see it clearly.) Negative feedback means that some players in the game will find out that their efforts have been misdirected. Negative feedback tells players what not to do. They are forced to change their tactics and look elsewhere for new means to achieve their goals.

At the same time, some players will find out that things have turned out better than they expected. The disappointed players may resent those whose rewards are higher. But that does not mean there is “injustice”.

The economic game proceeds, as do all games, according to rules and information that guide the actions of all players. The aims, skills and knowledge of those players are different. The consequence is that the outcome will be unpredictable and there will regularly be winners and losers. Some will have to change their mode of play – but they could not have foreseen this in advance. They must adapt. This is not a matter of merit. In spite of the best efforts of which they were capable, and for reasons they could not have known, their efforts were less successful than they had reason to expect. Doing the “right” thing cannot always be a matter of merit – it’s determined independently by the market in a way that the individual can not know in advance.

And for those that win, there is no “unearned” benefit. Each individual’s share of the total product of the market that, in Hayek’s words, “accident or skill assigns to him” will be as large as we, as a population all playing the game, know how to make it. The determination of the magnitude of one individual’s reward “does not depend on anyone’s will and desire, but on circumstances which nobody knows in their totality”.

It is easy to imagine that a generation brought up on “participation trophies”, not understanding the role of competition, might be uncomfortable in these circumstances. Because they are hyper-sensitive to sorting, grading and ranking, they might want to be protected against what Hayek calls “an unmerited descent from the material position to which they have become accustomed”. On the contrary, the obligation is to “abide by the results of the market when it turns against us”.

In The Economic Game, There Is No Such Thing As Social Justice.

Many Millennials are often identified as Social Justice Warriors. Hayek’s conclusion is that we must resist all thinking about so-called “social justice”. In fact, he calls the chapters of Law, Legislation and Liberty from which the foregoing quotes have been drawn The Mirage Of Social Justice. The word justice is inapplicable to a game where the knowledge, skill and luck of the players are different. He sounds very modern when he says:

It seems that among the younger generation the welfare institutions into which they have been born have engendered a feeling that they have a claim in justice on “society” for provision of particular things which it is the duty of that society to provide.

Such a claim is meaningless. First, there is no such thing as society. This personification suggests that society has a will, and can act to direct outcomes in a specific way, which is not the case. The market creates equal chances for individuals to play the game, not certainty as to which of them will benefit from the outcome. If it were otherwise, if government is used as a method to determine outcomes, it will result in “the destruction of all values of a free civilization”. Why? Because only a totalitarian government can attempt to exercise this kind of control. Freedom means that, in some measure, we entrust our fate to forces we do not control.

Hayek feels so intensely about this that he uses very strong language to make his point. The idea of social justice, he says, is the product of “primitive thinking”. It is “vacuous” and “naïve”, and the concept is “empty” and “meaningless”, and even “fraudulent”. And the possibility of its translation to coercive acts of government is “the greatest threat” to civilization.

The Millennial generation’s desire for participation trophies, and fear of sorting, sifting and ranking, is the source of that threat.

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