Nicole Kidman and Social Justice
Nov 9th, 2007 by Micah Tillman | 6 Comments |
Intro: Nicole Kidman
As my wife and I were riding home from Borders on the Metro, we saw a USA Today lying on the floor. A headline read, “Kidman breathes her roles deeply.” “What would it mean for her to breathe them shallowly?” I complained. A statement can’t make sense if it’s opposite doesn’t.
So I asked my wife what “social justice” means. What other kind is there?
Digression: Justice, Aristotle Style
Earlier today I was wondering about what makes trade “fair.” Aristotle said that “fairness” was one kind of justice. (Let’s not worry about the other kind for now.) “Fair,” Aristotle said, involves “equality.”
But there are two kinds of equality: there is “strict equality” between a number and itself (2 = 2), and “proportionate equality” between four numbers (2/4 = 1/2).
So bringing fairness, or justice into a situation depends on establishing the kind of equality appropriate to that situation.
In cases of distribution (which I was wondering about a few posts back), justice is established through proportionate equality. Those who deserve more (honor, love, funding, food, space, etc.) should get more (honor, love, funding, food, space, etc.).
In cases of violation (where someone has “taken” something from someone else), justice is established through strict equality. You stole $5? You gotta return $5 (and make up for any other harm caused in the process).
Back to the Main Point: Social Justice and Fair Trade
The only other kind of justice my wife and I could come up with was “criminal justice.” And that’s the kind where being “fair” means establishing a strict equality.
So social justice must be the proportionate kind. And since “fair trade” is part of social justice, it too must have to do with proportions.
But do social justice proponents believe that some people deserve more than others? Or do they prefer to apply the criminal justice (strict equality) model to distribution?
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Here is an article I highly recommend, Robert Nozick’s “Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?” It is, to a certain extent, libertarian propaganda, but I think it is extremely thought-provoking. Nozick here distinguished between “wordsmith” intellectuals (who are disproportionately inclined to oppose capitalism) and “numbersmith” intellectuals (who are not), a distinction I find very useful. I do not endorse everything in the piece, but I do endorse a great deal of it. I think he has indeed figured out why wordsmith intellectuals by and large oppose capitalism.
Social justice actually has a coherent meaning already. The focus is more on internal economics than international trade. Put simply, social justice is the extent to which actions and policies influence a society’s distribution of wealth and opportunity. Generally it is a term used by progressives in calls to moderate extreme inequalities in an economy.
Yet it can mean different things to different people. An orthodox libertarian might think of social justice entirely in terms of lowering taxes. A communist might think of social justice in terms of strict limits on property inheritance along with aggressive anti-nepotism policies in institutions that bestow privilege.
American political progressives usually think of it as a call to compensate for the lottery of birth in less intrusive ways. This can include measures like health insurance for children (based on the idea that being born poor should not also be a sentence to fall short of potential for lack of pediatric care) or affirmative action (based on the idea that being born as a minority is no reason to enjoy less economic opportunity than being born a white male.)
Yet it can go beyond that. Many socialists see social justice as a call to establish some sort of minimum standard of living that no citizen should be put below regardless of how hated he or she might become. Generous unconditional welfare policies follow from this sort of thinking. Even in America, there is a little thinking about wealth redistribution as a means to correct for the fact that for decades virtually all of the nation’s real economic growth has been concentrated exclusively in the hands of already fortunate citizens. Yet because our nation was so traumatized by Red Scare hysteria and is now substantially misled by modern red-baiters, this sort of discussion is largely shut out of mainstream political discourse.
Social justice is an important idea, but it is also a neglected idea linked to economic paradigms that have been relentlessly demonized by national leaders and media personalities. As it applies to free trade, social justice is largely about using the desirability of access to American markets as a lever to promote better economic conditions abroad. From improving workplace safety standards in China to raising wages in Latin America, it seems that everyone (save a few unethical tycoons) stands to benefit from making free trade contingent on an understanding of fair trade that would improve conditions for working people in the places that export to us. Not only is this good for foreign laborers, but it also better levels the field so that American industry does not lose its competitive edge quite so dramatically as it has in recent history. The role of social justice in framing fair trade policy is almost uniformly positive, but the link to “the evils of socialism” takes it off the table, at least in the present political climate.
Andrew–
Thanks! I look forward to reading the article.
DW–
A very articulate response. I don’t think it answered my question, but the world doesn’t revolve around me. Thanks for the information!
I heart libertarian propoganda.
;-)
I guess if I was to sum it all up, as globalism protesters do in their most coherent moments, what defines genuine fair trade is that free trade is made contingent on political progress by trading partners that are not already peers in areas like social justice and environmental protection. If a Swiss toymaker is assured a living wage while American toymakers are only guaranteed an austere minimum wage, then American producers can undercut Swiss toys in Swiss markets. If one believes that all workers deserve a living wage, then free trade in terms of Swiss-American toy commerce would be at odds with fair trade.
Substitute “American” for “Swiss,” “Chinese” for “American” and then make the issue about workplace safety and a valid criticism of that trade relationship emerges. This is why authentic hippies and Wal-Mart are not on good terms. Yet it need not be a purely economic concern either. Many parts of Latin America are just beginning to implement controls on toxic waste and industrial emissions in line with America’s reformed from the 70s. Free trade lets manufacturers relocate south of the border for the purpose of avoiding costs related to responsible handling of industrial waste. Fair trade would involve using trade sanctions, perhaps including tariffs, in order to remove that opportunity for irresponsible waste disposal.
Still, almost all of these concerns are relative. The problem with the past decade or two of foreign policy is that the economic advantages of free trade have driven American negotiators to be “all carrot and no stick.” Unreasonable argue that absolute equalization of all contexts is required before free trade becomes fair trade. Yet it is also unreasonable to argue that free trade is truly fair trade when it is never exploited as an incentive to motivate progress in areas of international inequality. I suppose what I’m really saying is that fair trade is unattainable as an absolute ideal, but it should be a guiding star that can move the world toward fairer trade than exists under the present paradigm of unconditional economic globalization.
[...] and “fairness” that Aristotle points out in Book V of the Nicomachean Ethics (and which I discussed earlier). It portrays monkeys as being able to apply strict equality (the kind appropriate to criminal [...]