The Idea of Justice in Political Economy [15]
average justly. In short the mechanism of positive law limits every execution of material justice. We have our formal right only at the expense of a partial material injustice. A demand of justice in rewarding great inventors can to-day only become positive law in patent legislation, or in the public arrangement of a system of premiums, in which the method of execution is just as important as the principle. A demand of justice in regard to a progressive income tax can count upon sympathy only when the demand is based on definite figures which correspond to the average feeling of right of to-day. The demand of justice that the employer should provide better for his laborers becomes practicable, when we demand in detail and definitely that the employer carry this or that responsibility for accidents, that he put such and such a contribution into the benefit fund, that he accept the verdict of umpires with regard to wages. That the laborers should share in the profits of the enterprise can be discussed as a legal measure only when definite experience shows the possibility of a just execution. Otherwise such a law, like many other well-meant propositions for the improvement of the condition of the lower classes, would, in consequence of the violation of formal justice, lead to arbitrariness, to favoritism, to the discontent of the classes concerned. This is confirmed by all deeper knowledge of the results of the administration of our poor laws. The poor law is the most important piece of socialism which the German social organization contains. It is a piece of socialism which we could not spare for the time being, because we do not know a better substitute, nor yet how to meet otherwise by more perfect institution is the inevitable demand of justice, that every fellow-being be protected from starvation. The drawback of this poor law is the absolute impossibility of enforcing it in a formally and materially just way. Arbitrariness, chance, red tape govern it, and therefore the assistance given has in many cases such unfavorable psychological effects, leading to laziness and indifference. As long as the organs of the administration do not reach a far higher perfection, as long as the formal possibilities of execution are not quite different, most socialistic experiments would only extend the consequences of our poor laws to large areas of our social and economic organization. But we must never forget the distinction between means and ends. The form of the law is the means, justice, however, the end. We may perceive that laws cannot do away with every immorality, cannot effect a strictly just distribution of incomes; that the ingenious tricks of astute and selfish business men flout all decency, and find ways to slip through the meshes of the best laws. But this must not restrain us from working for justice, and from faith in its victory. Although thousands of injustices are bound to occur in our life, our best possession rests on the idea of justice. All social progress depends on further victories of justice. By demanding a just distribution of incomes, socialism has introduced nothing new, but has in contrast to the errors which were created by materialistic epigones in a short period of so-called philosophy of enlightenment, only returned to the great traditions of all idealistic social philosophy. The error of socialism was simply that it overlooked the difference between material and formal justice, as well as the significance of other equally justified social ideal conceptions; that it imagined the individual conceptions of certain idealists of what is just, would suffice to overthrow suddenly and immediately primeval institutions. With its crude excrescences it returned to standards of justice which perhaps correspond to the first stages of civilization, certainly to rough views, but not to refined conceptions of higher morality. Socialism can teach us not to demand a false justice; it should never hinder us from fighting for a true justice. History tells us that progress has usually been tedious; it shows us