The quest for social justice, or a just and equitable society, is perhaps the foremost stated objective of the modern Left. To understand "social justice," we must contrast it with the earlier view of justice against which it was conceived - one that arose as a revolt against political absolutism. With a government (e.g., a monarchy) that is granted absolute power, it is impossible to speak of any injustice on its part. If a government is omnipotent, no dissent or criticism of its "injustices" is permitted. Justice as a political/legal term can begin only when limitations are placed upon the sovereign, i.e., when men define what is unjust for government to do. The historical realization traces from the Roman senate to the Magna Carta to the U.S. Constitution to the 19th century. It was now a matter of "justice" that government not arrest citizens arbitrarily, sanction their bondage by others, persecute them for their religion or speech, seize their property, or prevent their travel.
This culmination of centuries of ideas and struggles became known as liberalism. And it was precisely in opposition to this liberalism that Karl Marx formed and detailed the popular concept of "social justice," (which has become a kind of "new and improved" substitute for a variety of other terms - Marxism, socialism, collectivism - that, in the wake of Communism's history and collapse, are now unsellable).
"The history of all existing society," Marx and Engels declared, "is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf ... oppressor and oppressed, stood in sharp opposition to each other." They were correct to note the political castes and resulting clashes of the pre-liberal era. The expositors of liberalism saw their ethic, by establishing the political equality of all (e.g., the abolition of slavery, serfdom, and inequality of rights), as moving mankind from a "society of status" to a "society of contract." But Marx asserted that Western liberalism, which increasingly embraced equal rights, was nothing more than another stage of History's class struggle between the "proletariat" and the "bourgeoisie." The former were manual laborers, the latter professionals and business owners. Marx's "classes" were not political castes but occupations.
Today the terms have broadened to mean essentially income brackets. The unbroken line from The Communist Manifesto to its contemporary adherents is the notion that economic inequality is the monstrous injustice of the capitalist system, which must be replaced by an ideal of "social justice" - a "classless" society created by the elimination of all differences in wealth and "power." Thus "social justice" in its contemporary sense has come to mean a rejection of capitalism and of each man's economic freedom - be he a manufacturer or a consumer -- to do as he wishes with his own intellectual, physical, and material resources; this freedom is the origin of income disparity under capitalism.
This section of DiscoverTheNetworks further defines and examines the concept of social justice in its modern sense, and demonstrates how the term is often used as a veil to conceal a number of hidden, unstated agendas. In addition, this section profiles numerous organizations claiming to work on behalf of social justice.
