Social Justice... Does it really mean the lazy never have to work again?

[Franconicus]

Hi Don,

sorry for stepping in so late. Very interesting question. I'd like to add my point of view.

Sorry to say that, but I think you mix a few things:

On it's surface, it seems obvious. Yes, we should make certain nobody is homeless (that doesn't want to be). Yes, we should make certain that people aren't starving to death. I think it's a small minority that would argue we're not responsible for each member of society's basic needs. This is what makes the "Social Justice" argument so compelling.
Giving a home and food has nothing, absolutly nothing to do with social justice. It has something to do with the right to live, with human dignity and with social security.

Social justice means a couple of thinks. There has to be a just distribution of the wealth of the nation. Like every question about justice it is hard to find a common agreement on what is just. It is also about the added value of course. How should it be devided between the companies owners and the people who are doing the work?

Let me quote a German poet:
"Wer baute das siebentorige Theben? // In den Büchern stehen die Namen von Königen. // Haben die Könige die Felsbrocken herbeigeschleppt? // [...] // Der junge Alexander eroberte Indien. // Er allein? // Cäsar schlug die Gallier. // Hatte er nicht wenigstens einen Koch bei sich?"
"Who built the seven gates of Theben? // In the books there are written the names of kings.//Did the kings cart the boulders?//[...]// Young Alexaner conquered India.// He alone?//Cesar defeated the Gauls.// Didn't he have at least a cook with him?"

What about property? What about equal opportunities? As long as a child of the Bush or Kennedy clan has better opportunities than a child of a poor family then you do not have social justice.

By the way, I still remember my first lesson in economy. The teacher made it clear that the purpose of a capitalistic econmy is to creat as many goods as possible. Justice of the distribution is not an issue.

Should everybody be treated equal and get the same? That is more a question of communism than of sj. You can say - and some communists did it - that people are gifted to a different degree. Noone would doubt that. Some are strong others are smart, others are hard working. Those communists say that these are gifts by God. Being talented and strong means for a communist that you have a higher responsibility for the society, that the strong ones have to support the weak ones. For a free marketeer it means that the strong one can take money from the weak.

This is where I have a big problem with the whole concept of Social Justice. Do we really believe that Gahndi or Martin Luther King Jr. REALLY believed and fought for the right of everyone to smoke grass, play X-box all day and get a government check for it?
That is the central problem of communism. What to do if the people are not motivated to work (capitalism does not have this problem, for sure?)
You see that the answer is often that the society uses pressure to make the people work, for example working camps, gullags etc.. Therefore the answer is no, that is not the purpose of communism and has surely nothing to do with SJ.