Theories of Justice in Economics and Philosophy
(Econ 426-10)
Roosevelt University
Department of Economics
Spring 2008
Professor: Stephen T. Ziliak (aka “Prof Z”)
Day & Time: Weds., 6:00-8:30 PM
Place: AUD 718
Office Hours: AUD 760, 4:45-5:45 PM, Weds. & Thurs. and by appointment
Phone: 312.341.3763
Email: sziliak@roosevelt.edu (Email is by far the best way to reach me.)
Website: http://faculty.roosevelt.edu/Ziliak
You attend a university that is committed to “social justice.” But what is social
justice? How do economists themselves think about social justice – as indeed they do? In Adam
Smith’s other big book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), “justice” is defined as a virtue,
as are love and prudence, not as a giant, redistributive social contract, as are the New Deal
and Dutch welfare state. Social justice after Smith and the welfare state is what, then, a
social virtue? - an aggregation of millions or billions of individuals’ best habits or intentions?
After the genius Nietzsche woke us up in a variety of disciplines from that dry hot
and long Immanuel-Kantian summer, and especially after the Austrian-born economist and
philosopher Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992, Nobel laureate in Economic Sciences, 1974)
chilled us with a book on – of all things - The Mirage of Social Justice (University of Chicago
Press), one has to ask whether social justice-as-a-concept has any meaning at all. It could be
that social justice is conceptually empty, as Hayek believed it to be, a “mirage” designed by
elites to make a majority feel justified when robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Could be. But in fact most economic philosophers do not take social justice to be so
radically subjective, ambiguous, plural, or stone-cold wrong and sick and horrifying as did
Hayek back in 1976. Yet more than a few philosophers have discovered a real philosophical
dilemma when defining and justifying the concept of social justice itself. What are its
principles? What are its rationalities? Exactly what kinds of justice are we talking about in
this or that rational framework? What about the impoverished and physically disabled
children?
A number of postmodern Marxists believe that the concept of social justice is overdetermined—that it has a surplus of meaning – a view which at first glance seems radically
opposed to concept empty-outers like Hayek. When the cause of a concept is overdetermined it is like a matrix of algebraic equations that cannot be solved. The reason is not
because the equations are empty – as Hayek argues – rather too full – as Hayek sometimes
argues. It’s as if the number of variables to solve for in social justice exceeds the number of
equations for making meaning out of them. Like RU’s President Chuck Middleton says,
everywhere you go a local college president claims to be doing social justice. But what they
do about social justice and what they say don’t always add up. (In econometric terms, such
surplus meaning and “noise” give rise to the problem of “identification.”)
Or it may be a third thing. Social justice is a baggy concept – full but not
overflowing - because as needs change the concept changes with it. In the 1950s most civil
rights leaders did not have the rights and plights of women and gays in their purview. (Quite
the contrary.) Moral urgencies change targets. With Soren Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling
maybe we have to have the courage and humility to accept this mysterious term – we just have
to have faith that fighting oppression in all its forms and expanding equal liberty around every
bend and corner and holding the concept of race central to the American story about higher
education is its own justification. Faith in justice restored requires a big heart and a lot of
breathing room. So keep the concept baggy, some say. Keep it as big and welcoming as you
keep faith. Whatever new principle of social justice you give to the world, it is going to be
received in alien form. That is because any principle of social justice gets judged in spiritual
and political and economic and other currencies that are constituted by outcomes or
procedures and previous principles different from what the new theory itself entails. There’s
a learning curve and you have to have faith in that, too. A lot of us are happy living with
such faith, and why not? Like Dr. King said, “everyone can be great, because everyone can
serve.”
Regardless, we’ve got some thinking to do. Hayek raised a question in 1976 that a
wide range of thinkers, from the market-friendly libertarian to the postmodern Marxistfeminist, agree to take seriously: What on earth are we doing when we claim to be doing social justice?
We will answer the-what are we doing-question with a neglected follow-up question:
“What do economic philosophers talk about (or claim to be talking about) when they talk
about social justice?”
We will find out. And the rewards from doing so will be great. Put it this way: if you
can answer the-what do we talk about-when-we talk about social justice-question
satisfactorily, it’s your advantage next time the topic of social justice arises. If you can
answer the question exceedingly well, it’s your name they’re calling someday for a Nobel
Prize in Economics or, who knows, even the Nobel Peace Prize.
I know. Everyone and his slacker uncle is a leader in social justice. But economists
have written a book or two about social justice and which other intellectuals and policy
pundits tend to score off of unwittingly. Oscar Wilde was wrong: price is not the only value
on the table of the dismal scientists. Justice has been a central concern of economic inquiry
ever since the days of wooden shoes and dirty drinking water for the rich. From Aristotle’s
(384-322 BCE) notion of “justice in exchange,” speaking of shoemakers in ancient Greece,
down to Amartya Sen’s (1933 - ) reinterpretation of “justice as fairness,” speaking of younggirl peasants in Bangladesh in our own time, economists have been central participants in the
theoretical, empirical, historical, and policy conversations about social justice in our world.
That is an understatement: economists have been, for better or for worse, major agents of
change in the name of social justice. Reflect for a moment on the names of Karl Marx,
Milton Friedman, Rosa Luxemburg (c. 1870-1919), and Alan Greenspan and you might
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agree with me when I say that economists are the bomb - sometimes practically literally the
bomb - when it comes to the philosophy of social justice.
Roosevelt University itself is shaped by economic philosophies of social justice and
more directly sociologically speaking than one might imagine. One of the university’s first
non-random advisors was the great Swedish economist and sociologist, Gunnar Myrdal
(1898-1987). Myrdal shared the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974 (coincidentally, with that
same “mirage”-discoverer Friedrich Hayek). Unlike Hayek, Myrdal got the Nobel for
focusing on “distributive” as against “procedural” or rule-based principles of justice. He got
the prize largely on the basis of his ethnographic, historical, and quantitative sociological
research on race and social and economic injustice in the Deep South of the United States
(An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy [1944]). To the Swedish-born
economist, the Jim Crow South was no mirage. And Old South/New South was definitely a
matter of social justice, he said. Otherwise, come to think of it, the cultured young man
would not have slept so many nights in those “better” whites-only motels that were being
offered up by Best Western, Howard Johnson’s, and Company. He would not turn away
from a career as a pioneering theoretical economist (as he was and did) to write a
“sociological” book about a “dilemma” that just possibly is a stinkin’ “mirage.”
Economists, then, have produced the world’s most influential ideas about social
justice. (Professional philosophers noticed in the 1960s and they began to imitate the
rhetoric of economics in their own writings about social justice, a fact that is reflected in two
books we’ll read by the philosophers John Rawls and Robert Nozick.) Economic research at
the frontier is often stimulated by a moral or political urgency, by a need to solve a real or
perceived problem of social or economic injustice in one’s own lifetime. So here is a chance
to take that next intellectual step forward in your lifetime.
A well-chosen set of readings will help us to gain insight into fundamental questions
about economic and social justice that have already been asked by some of the great
economic philosophers. The readings and our discussions of them will push each of us to
ask our own, new sets of questions. Over time we may change our beliefs and then change
back-again. We will probably act somewhat differently, or want to, as a result of this course.
Scary, I know. It’s called “getting an education!” (Relax if you feel scared by that last
sentence for real: from Aristotle on down we are all – Dr. King in Montgomery included - a
little bit scared of changing our beliefs. But this as Lucy said to Charlie Brown is the good
kind of change.)
Our approach is a nouveau- “great books”- approach, tried and true. We will drink
deeply from some of the classics on justice written in liberal, anarchist, and socialist
traditions. Classic books we'll read in whole or in large part are John Rawls’s A Theory of
Justice (1971, Harvard University Press); Friedrich Hayek’s already mentioned The Mirage of
Social Justice (1976) [it is volume two of his three-volume Law, Legislation, and Liberty,
University of Chicago Press]; Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974, Basic Books).
These three are the best of the best and we’ll soak ‘em up. We’ll also read a provocative new
book by a contemporary economist, Theodore Burczak’s Socialism after Hayek (2006,
University of Michigan Press). Burczak’s Socialism after Hayek gives a nuanced yet positive
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view toward social justice and its enabling institutions, such as for example worker-owned
firms and cooperatives.
The reading pace is appropriate for the weather and subject-matter: to understand
this stuff, you need to set aside some serious thinking time, and the bad weather enables you
to do that. Regardless, each week you will have to digest about 80 pages of serious political
philosophy (or as much of those 80 pages as you can possibly stomach). In level of difficulty
the thinking we’ll do resembles a course in advanced microeconomic theory because in fact
it is. Open a page of Rawls or Hayek and boom there it is.
Here’s a little summary about what and why:
Our Learning Goals Are
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To gain a working knowledge of the vocabulary, models, and other positive and
normative criteria typically employed by the leading economic philosophers of social
justice;
To critically appraise alternative theories of justice by doing careful economic and
philosophical comparative analyses of classic yet opposing works on the theory of
justice;
To better understand the role of liberty and the price system in a total economic
philosophy of justice – distributive justice, procedural justice, commutative justice,
and more;
To identify and multiply the arsenal of plausible rhetorical stances one can take toward
claims of social justice-in-dialogue: in view of the historical facts of the economy, in
view of our own careers, in view of property and free speech laws, and in science
policy, in tax rebate plans, in the prison and justice system itself, in civic actions
against senseless violence, and in economic and philosophical methodology (which
has its own rules and expectations about stances), to give just a few examples.
Justice as need is a stance. So is justice as merit. How do you reconcile the two?
Style of Class: Socratic. Conversational. In regression terms my style is explained by
congenial tough love plus a small random error term. For further explanation of my general
attitudes toward pedagogy, learning communities and the like, please see the link on my
website, On the Need to Teach Emersonian Economics: http://faculty.roosevelt.edu/Ziliak
Attendance: Regular attendance is crucial unless your name is Benedict Spinoza. In that
case, “Attendance is optional, Liefe, but highly encouraged.”
Required Texts: As listed above. Additional articles and book chapters will sometimes be
assigned and provided by Prof Z. All of the required books are available for purchase at the
RU bookstore (Chicago) and on-line.
Grades, Exams, and Homework Assignments: Eighty percent (80%) of your course grade
will be based on your performance on three in-class essay exams. First midterm: Weds,
March 5; Second midterm: Weds., April 9; Final exam: Weds., May 14. Exams must
be taken in class at the appointed time. No exceptions.
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Twenty percent (20%) of your course grade will be based on your performance on
weekly one-page (1 p.) long “response pieces” to be collected by the professor at the
beginning of each class. The style and purpose of these response pieces and criteria to be
used in grading them will be announced on a week-ahead or two-week ahead schedule. Take
the response pieces as seriously as you would take an exam – or more so – given that the real
overlap between exam content and response pieces will be high, tending toward a correlation
of .85 or above (p < .05). No “piece,” one could quip, “no justice.”
Personal Responsibility Clause: “I [say your name] am responsible for knowing all
information pertinent to the operation of this course. By enrolling in this course I
acknowledge that I alone bear the responsibility for keeping up with changes in important
dates, and with homework assignments, exam protocol, and so forth. I promise to refrain
from asking the Prof to tell me what happened while I was away. And if I do go away I
promise to return to class refreshed and invigorated and ready to contribute to our course on
theories of justice.”
Plagiarism and Other Forms of Cheating will be penalized to the full extent of Roosevelt
University policy. If you are tempted to cheat, you might want to read the scope of penalties
posted on the RU website so that you know the incentives. Trust me, you don’t want to tempt
fate. Please be advised that at any time during the course of the term your work may be
subjected to systematic examination using anti-plagiarism software. Plagiarism might as well
be called plaguer-ism because it is evil and gross and spreads like the plague. Do you want
to see those kinds of words on your college transcript - which follows you forever? How
about 5 years from now, when you are going up for that big promotion?
Accommodation of Persons with Disabilities Students with disabilities or other conditions
that require special accommodations are encouraged to identify themselves to the instructor
and/or to the Academic Success Center/Office of Disability Services at 312-341-3810 as
early as possible.
Book Suggestions: Scores of economists have been turned on to economics by reading
Robert Heilbroner’s The Worldly Philosophers. See if it works for you. As the term goes by I
will recommend dozens of books. They will reveal the vast impact that economics is or
could be having upon the material and scientific worlds: economics and technology,
economics and history, economics and philosophy, economics of poverty and
discrimination, economics of labor markets, economics and literature, and much, much
more.
Tentative Sketch of Your Reading/Classroom Discussion Schedule
Note: Pagination will vary according to the vintage of your book. Use these descriptive titles as your guiding
light.
Week 1 Introductions
Week 2 Rawls, pp. 3-94 (stop at “Relevant Social Positions”)
Week 3 Rawls, pp. 95-194 (“Relevant Social Positions” to stop at “Equal Liberty”)
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Week 4 Rawls, pp. 195-297 (“Equal Liberty” to stop at “Further Cases of Priority”)
Week 5 Nozick, pp. 3-87 (stop at “The State”)
Week 6 Further discussion and Midterm Exam 1 (March 5th, 6:00 PM)
Week 7 Nozick, pp. 88-182 (“The State” to stop at “Rawls’ Theory”)
Week 8 Spring Break
Week 9 Nozick, pp. 183-231 (“Rawls’ Theory” to stop at “Equality, Envy, Exploitation”);
and Rawls, pp. 298-332 (“Further Cases of Priority” to stop at “Duty and
Obligation”)
Week 10 Hayek, pp. 1-61 (stop at “Social or Distributive Justice”)
Week 11 Further discussion and Midterm Exam 2 (April 9th, 6:00 PM)
Week 12 Hayek, pp. 62-132 (“Social or Distributive Justice” to stop at “The Discipline of
Abstract Rules and the Emotions of Tribal Society”)
Week 13 Hayek, pp. 133-152 (stop at end of book); and Nozick, pp. 297-334 (“A
Framework for Utopia” to stop at end of book)
Week 14 Burczak, pp. 1-57 (stop at “Recasting Hayek’s Good Society”)
Week 15 Burczak, pp. 58-146 (“Recasting Hayek’s Good Society” to stop at end of book)
Week 16 No new reading assignment
Week 17 Final Exam (May 14th, 6:00 PM)
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