Although some folks argue that the phrase “social justice” is so tainted as to be beyond rescue, I think a better strategy is to ask, as does AEI scholar Michael Novak, what is social justice, rightly understood? In his article, “Hayek: Practitioner of Social Justice,” Novak summarizes F.A. Hayek’s famous argument against the term “social justice.” The problem is that it ought to refer to a virtue. In fact, when Popes Leo XIII (1891) and Pius XI (1931) introduced the term into Catholic Social Teaching, this is how they intended it.
But these days, when most people describe examples of social justice, they refer not to personal virtues but to impersonal states of affairs, like full employment or equality of incomes. And when they call for “social justice,” they don’t appeal to virtuous behavior, but to government coercion.
And herein lies the problem for Hayek, according to Novak: “Social justice is either a virtue or it is not. If it is, it can properly be ascribed only to the reflective and deliberate acts of individual persons.”
Still, Novak isn’t willing to give up on the term, and looks instead for a proper definition that doesn’t engage in bait-and-switch. He finds the hints of it in the writings of two Catholic ethicists, and, ironically, in Hayek’s own work. He then proposes a definition of social justice:
Social justice rightly understood . . . is a specific habit of justice that is “social” in two senses. First, the specific skills which it calls into exercise are those of inspiring, work with, and organizing others to accomplish a work of justice . . .
The second characteristic . . . is that it aims at the good of the City, not at the good of one agent only.
Notice that this exercise of justice is social in two ways. It involves “two or more persons acting (1) in association and (2) for the good of the city.” That means that many causes pursued in the name of social justice (for example, welfare policies that degrade rather than empower) result in social injustice, while the work of Hayek himself (and others), which gives sight to the blind, are true works of social justice.
Surely it’s better to correct improper uses of the term “social justice,” than to avoid it altogether.