poli-sci@ucbvax.ARPA (09/25/84)
From: JoSH <JoSH@RUTGERS.ARPA>
Poli-Sci Digest Tue 25 Sep 84 Volume 4 Number 90
"The only existing things are atoms and empty space;
all else is mere opinion." -- Democritus
Contents: Freedom & Social Justice
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 84 14:49:40 PDT
From: David Alpern <ALPERN%ibm-sj.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa>
Subject: Re: Freedom, etc.
As a resident of Morton Grove, Illinois, living about 2 blocks from
our border with Skokie, I know why I didn't want the Nazis around --
all the JDL people who had "quietly" settled into nearby hotel rooms
threatening to cause real trouble. As I understand it, this was also
the "explanation" offered by the various Police Departments that were
involved in channeling the Nazis right back onto the highway as they
tried to exit into Skokie. My feeling from the time was that the
various anti-Nazi groups managed to convince the authorities that there
would be enough trouble if the march occurred that the police were
explicitely willing to violate the rights of the marchers in order
to prevent violence in town. It was this decision, publicly stated this
way, that seemed to get the ACLU involved.
This isn't to say that I would have liked what the Nazis wanted to
say; there wasn't much chance of that. But as many people in the
area put it, they can say anything they want -- but down in Chicago,
where the neighbors are used to them.
------------------------------
Date: 21 Sep 84 16:24:33 EDT
From: JoSH <JoSH@RUTGERS.ARPA>
Subject: Individual vs collective justice
From: James A. Cox <APPLE @ MIT-MC>
Subject: freedom
Terry C. Savage's recent message is an illustration of an interesting
problem of definition: is justice result-oriented or process-oriented?
Those who believe that it is result-oriented want to arrange the rules
of society so that particular results (e.g. an "equitable"
distribution of wealth) follow. Those who believe that it is
process-oriented want to set rules which they believe are inherently
just (e.g. freedom of contract), and are willing to accept whatever
outcome issues from those rules.
If you're interested in problems of moral epistemology, I have a better
one for you: Is justice an individual or a collective commodity?
Your categorization implicitly assumes a collective point of view,
and rejects the notion that individual rights are more important
than "social justice", *without even considering it*.
Given that you take as your goal a collective "justice", it is no wonder
that you find individual rights impeding your way to it. That has been
the experience of socialists in every experiment--including, ironically,
the Nazis.
There is more to the concept of rights than the pragmatic theory that
the free market is the best way to achieve affluence. I urge you to
consider it. I believe that an ethics built on individual rights is
sounder than one built on "equitable distribution of income".
I am in agreement with you on another unstated assumption, namely that
there is an objective truth and that most people spouting their nutty
theories are wrong in an absolute sense. However, I do not agree that
the government, or any political process, is a good way to arrive at that
truth. Indeed, whenever you start having to back your ideas up with
guns, it's a pretty good sign that they're wrong.
--JoSH
------------------------------
Date: 22 September 1984 03:28-EDT
From: James A. Cox <APPLE @ MIT-MC>
Subject: Stomping extremists
Aspnes at MIT-MULTICS:
... much of modern history has been carried through by extreme and
sometimes violent organizations. In many cases this does not
produce a positive effect (e.g., Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia).
But by suppressing fringe elements because they threaten the
current theories of rights or justice, one commits a greater crime
than hypocrisy; one dooms oneself to a possible undesirable status
quo which continues because only extremists are capable of seeing
its faults.
I don't agree that only extremists are capable of seeing the faults of
the status quo. And the important attribute of a theory of rights or
justice is whether it's correct, not whether it's "current."
- James Cox
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 24 Sep 84 14:46 EDT
From: Aspnes@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA
Subject: Justice, Correct and Current
Apple at MIT-MC:
"I don't agree that only extremists are capable of seeing the faults of
the status quo. And the important attribute of a theory of rights or
justice is whether it's correct, not whether it's
'current'."
There are two good points raised here, which are both related to some degree.
The entire purpose of my examples in my previous mailing was to attempt to
show that organizations promoting what we would now consider to be "correct"
theories of rights and justice were often forced into extreme positions
because these theories conflicted with the prevaling ideas of the time.
One can make a fairly good case that theories of a just society are by
nature subjective, as they require certain unsupported assumptions about
the nature of man and his relationship to his society. Some political
philosophers have managed to cloud this issue by invoking self-evidence,
Divine Will, or the reflexive property of equality as a basis for their
doctrine, but few have been able or willing to demonstrate that their
beliefs were necessarily correct under all circumstances. Of those who
have, there is considerable disagreement. Consider, for example, Hobbes'
assertion that "in Oriental despotism, one is free; in a democracy, some
are free; in a monarchy, all are free." The statement is well-justified:
Hobbes was well aware of the problem of the tyranny of the majority, and
of the temptations of self-interest that inevitably destroyed the
impartiality of democratic governments. We would not find this a valid
basis for a system of government today, having accepted the principle
that no citizen should be subjected to rule that he has not had some part,
however small, in deciding. In the eighteenth century, an individual or
group who questioned the doctrine of the monarchy was forced into an
extreme or radical position, if only because the political system of the
time was not designed to consider its own abolition.
These basic assumptions are the flaws in the status quo which only
extremists can question, as by questioning the most deep-rooted
underlying philosophy of the organization of one's government, one
becomes extreme merely through intellectual honesty and a will to put
one's own idea of a just society into practice. Who are we to announce
that we have achieved "correctness" in our principles of justice?
History is full of governments, both fair and tyrannical, that have
fallen through a failure to consider views that would require the
alteration of much of their present structure or policies. If we
squelch Nazis or Communists because we don't like them, we also run the
danger of squelching more beneficent groups, be they Libertarian or
Socialist, who might contain the seeds of the next advance in the
evolution of our society.
--Jim Aspnes (Aspnes@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA)
------------------------------
Date: Mon 24 Sep 84 15:15:52-PDT
From: Terry C. Savage <TCS@USC-ECL.ARPA>
"Results-oriented" vs "process-oriented" views of justice. It is only
a question of semantics, of course, but I maintain it all boils down
to results oriented anyway--If someone/some group is "process-
oriented", all that really says is that some particular process is the
result they want!
TCS
------------------------------
Date: 25 September 1984 02:23-EDT
From: James A. Cox <APPLE @ MIT-MC>
Subject: Justice, Correct and Current
Aspnes at MIT-MULTICS claims that "[i]f we squelch Nazis or Communists
because we don't like them, we also run the danger of squelching more
beneficent groups, be they Libertarian or Socialist, who might contain
the seeds of the next advance in the evolution or our society."
Earlier he asked, rhetorically, "Who are we to announce that we have
achieved 'correctness' in our principles of justice?"
I see evidence here of a double standard. "We" (presumably "liberal
society") may not claim that our principles of justice are correct.
But extremist groups, who are trying to supplant the "status quo,"
apparently may. Further, we may not attempt to suppress such groups
because they might "contain the seeds of the next advance in the
evolution of our society"--no matter that, once in power, they would
not be so respectful of /our/ beliefs.
If our society is truly so unsure of its principles that it no longer
excludes even Nazism and Communism from the list of permissible
outcomes of the political process, if indeed we have reached the point
where we will allow that process to /determine/ our principles rather
than to serve them, then this society is not worthy of survival. And
I am confident that, if that is the case, we will in fact not survive,
but will be replaced by some society which is less certain of its own
unworthiness.
- James Cox
------------------------------
Date: 25 September 1984 02:53-EDT
From: James A. Cox <APPLE @ MIT-MC>
Subject: Individual vs collective justice
It seems to me that my dichotomy between result-oriented and
procedure-oriented justice, while made from a collective point of
view, is not exclusive of individual rights. It's just a different
way of looking at things. Choose certain individual rights (e.g.
traditional libertarian rights) and you get a system which conforms to
procedural justice; choose others (e.g. the right to equality) and you
get a system which conforms to result-oriented justice. Now it may be
that you prefer to argue from the individual-rights point of view
because you think you can convince people that the right to liberty is
a "real" right, but the right to equality isn't. That's fine, but it
doesn't mean that that is the only way of looking at justice.
- James Cox
[This was sent to me personally (in-reply-to the letter above).
There wasn't time to ask Apple if it was intended for the digest
if it were to make the same issue that the original msg was in.
I apologize if it was not intended for the digest. --JoSH]
------------------------------
End of POLI-SCI Digest
- 30 -
-------