The Idea of Justice in Political Economy [1]
idea which to-day governs the popular mind in regard to the just distribution of wealth. A leading speaker of the free-traders, in the Reichstag, said that to-day the naive advocacy of low wages dare no longer venture into the light. To-day we consider conditions economically sound only when they guarantee to each participant in the work a just participation in the earnings. And he adds: "The economic ideal is reached when the greatest production and the most uniform distribution among the participants of the profits earned coincide." Whether a just distribution of goods exists in reality or not, a question which for the present I will leave unanswered, still it is always spoken of, there is a general belief in it; this belief is speculated upon, and it has its practical consequences. This brings us to the correct formulation of the question with which we must begin. We would not from any principle whatsoever logically deduce a formula whose strict application would at all times produce justice; we would simply and modestly put the question, How does it happen that economic transactions and social phenomena so often bring forth a favorable or adverse criticism which asserts that this is just, that unjust? When we have a correct answer to this, then it will be easy to draw further conclusions and to decide what force, weight and influence this approving or disapproving judgment will exercise retroactively on the social and economic phenomena.
I
Even he who reduces all human impulses and actions to the feelings of pleasure and pain must admit that, as far as we know human nature, there are, besides lower impulses, higher intellectual, aesthetic and moral ones. They give to life those ideal aims, from them grow those conceptions which accompany and influence all human life, all actions, all institutions, as ideal visions of what ought to be. Should we call the essence of what ought to be, the abstract Good, the abstract Just would be part of it. Justice is a human virtue. It has been called the virtue of virtues. It is the permanent habit of mankind to adapt its actions to the ideas which we call the abstract Just. The Just per se, anything absolutely just, is found in reality as little and as seldom as anything absolutely good. The Just is always an ideal conception, to which reality may approach, but which it will never attain; the ethical judgment that an action or the deeds of a man are just always affirms only that his deeds correspond to an ideal conception, and one single action may perhaps completely do this; but a man's whole life, society as a whole and its actions can only approach it. What kind of an action do we call just? The word is used in different senses. We often use it merely to indicate that the individual is conforming to the laws of the whole, that his actions are in accord with positive law. We use it also in the much broader sense to describe his actions, not so much as corresponding to positive law as to its ideals. We oppose a right that ought to be - as the just - to the positive law, judge the latter by the former, and call actual law unjust in so far as it does not correspond to this ideal. The conceptions which guide us herein, and from which we derive our idea of the just, are by no means simple; on the one hand the peculiar nature of legal prescriptions, being certain formal rules of social intercourse, and on the other the ideal aims of social life which determine the material contents of law, combine to create this ideal. Conceptions of the perfect commonwealth and of the perfect individual are associated in it. When we speak of what is just in a narrower sense, when we use the word not as it is used in schools, but in the daily usage of common speech, we consider only one of these conceptions, or better, only one of these co-operating spheres of conception. When we speak of a just judge, a just punishment, or just institutions, we usually conceive of a society, a number of people, a comparison of them, and a fair distribution of good and of bad, of
I
Even he who reduces all human impulses and actions to the feelings of pleasure and pain must admit that, as far as we know human nature, there are, besides lower impulses, higher intellectual, aesthetic and moral ones. They give to life those ideal aims, from them grow those conceptions which accompany and influence all human life, all actions, all institutions, as ideal visions of what ought to be. Should we call the essence of what ought to be, the abstract Good, the abstract Just would be part of it. Justice is a human virtue. It has been called the virtue of virtues. It is the permanent habit of mankind to adapt its actions to the ideas which we call the abstract Just. The Just per se, anything absolutely just, is found in reality as little and as seldom as anything absolutely good. The Just is always an ideal conception, to which reality may approach, but which it will never attain; the ethical judgment that an action or the deeds of a man are just always affirms only that his deeds correspond to an ideal conception, and one single action may perhaps completely do this; but a man's whole life, society as a whole and its actions can only approach it. What kind of an action do we call just? The word is used in different senses. We often use it merely to indicate that the individual is conforming to the laws of the whole, that his actions are in accord with positive law. We use it also in the much broader sense to describe his actions, not so much as corresponding to positive law as to its ideals. We oppose a right that ought to be - as the just - to the positive law, judge the latter by the former, and call actual law unjust in so far as it does not correspond to this ideal. The conceptions which guide us herein, and from which we derive our idea of the just, are by no means simple; on the one hand the peculiar nature of legal prescriptions, being certain formal rules of social intercourse, and on the other the ideal aims of social life which determine the material contents of law, combine to create this ideal. Conceptions of the perfect commonwealth and of the perfect individual are associated in it. When we speak of what is just in a narrower sense, when we use the word not as it is used in schools, but in the daily usage of common speech, we consider only one of these conceptions, or better, only one of these co-operating spheres of conception. When we speak of a just judge, a just punishment, or just institutions, we usually conceive of a society, a number of people, a comparison of them, and a fair distribution of good and of bad, of