Political Justice

Yes, that is the title of William Godwin’s best-known book, which I must admit I have not read. With that unscholarly admission, I want to say a bit about political justice, as I understand it. In an ideal regime of political justice, every individual would be able to have about equal influence on government activities and decisions. Now, (1) this is, of course, a high standard that can only be approximated in practice; (2) it cannot be the whole story – political justice will also require something about liberty; and (3) in particular people would be free to abstain from politics and leave it to others if they choose to.

But my point in bringing up political justice is to speak to the supposed distinction between “economic justice” and “social justice,” and the implication that somehow one must choose between them – and the point is that without a great degree of political justice, we are not likely to have either economic or social justice for very long, however we understand them.

Of course, “one person, one vote” is a minimum condition for political justice – small-d democracy. But influence is more than a vote. Whenever some people’s voices are ignored because of their skin color, that is an attack on political justice. Whenever some people’s voices are ignored because they have lived in a mobile home and suffer from a chronic sunburn, that is an attack on political justice. When billionaires can subsidize candidates who pander to their special interests, buy elections and congressmen, that is an attack on political justice.

Political justice is the enemy of every kind of privilege, be it white privilege or the privilege of wealth, and it is no accident that the political agents of well-to-do white people are doing their best to restrict voting, the most direct and transparent attack on political justice in our time.

The case for democratic socialism rests more on political than “economic justice.” After all, if working people are going to be exploited, why would they prefer to be exploited by bureaucrats rather than bourgeois? That is the reason that the Soviet Union failed as socialism: political justice was profoundly contradicted by the one-party totalitarian state. Nevertheless, large concentrations of wealth are also concentrations of political power, as we see in our own political order, and are destructive of political wealth. And these large concentrations of political-economic power are unavoidable in a system based on the accumulation of private wealth, that is, in capitalism.

A good deal more could be said about political justice, and perhaps it will. We know where the Republicans stand on political justice – they are against it. Where do our candidates stand on political justice?