Understanding Social Justice

Readings: 

• John Rawls, “Distributive Justice” in John Rawls: Collected Papers, ed. Samuel Freeman, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999, pp. 130–47 
• Robert Nozick, Ch. 7, Part 1, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, New York: Basic Books, 1974 
• F. A. Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Vol. 2: The Mirage of Social Justice, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976, pp. 62–77, 85–86, 93, 98–100 
• Martin Malia, “Socialism: The Highest Stage of Democracy,” in The Soviet Tragedy, New York: The Free Press, 1994, pp. 22–27 
• John Roemer, “Socialism Now?,” Janus Lecture Series, Brown University, 2017 (Watch from the beginning to minute 33:30) 
• Joseph M. Schwartz and Bhaskar Sunkara, “Social Democracy Is Good. But Not Good Enough,” Jacobin (August 2017)   
• William Voegeli, “A Kinder Gentler Gulag,” Claremont Review of Books (Spring 2019) 

Discussion Questions: 

1. Why is Rawls concerned with using utility as the guiding principle of “justice” in society?  
2. What are the two principles of justice, according to Rawls? Is it possible to arrange constitutional matters such that they can be realized in society?   
3. What is the lesson learned from the Wilt Chamberlain example? 
4. Is Nozick correct in claiming that taxed labor is akin to forced labor? 
5. What are Hayek’s arguments that there can be no such thing as social justice in a market economy? 
6. What is socialism? Does it mean something? Anything? What are its prospects?  

Readings: 

• Iris Marion Young, Ch. 5, Justice and the Politics of Difference, Princeton University Press, 1990 
• Francis Fukuyama, “Against Identity Politics,” Foreign Affairs (September/October 2018) 
• Stacey Abrams, “Identity Politics Strengthens Democracy,” Foreign Affairs (March/April 2019) 
• James W. Ceaser, “Multiculturalism and American Liberal Democracy,” in Multiculturalism and American Democracy, eds. Melzer, Weinberger, and Zinman, University of Kansas Press, 1998, pp. 139–56 

Discussion Questions: 

1. What are the different identities and how are they ordered? 
2. Does a focus on our differences rather than on the things that bind us led to the rise of populist and authoritarian leaders?  
3. Is there an argument that all politics is identity politics? 
4. Does dignity trump material interest as the driving force in human affairs?  
5. Does identity politics strengthen or weaken liberal democracy?  

Readings: 

• Orlando Patterson, “Black Americans,” in Understanding America, eds. James Q. Wilson and Peter Schuck, New York: Public Affairs Press, 2008 
• Derrick Bell, “The Space Traders,” 1992 
• Ibram X. Kendi, How To Be an Anti-Racist, One World, 2019, pp. 3–23 
• Ibram X. Kendi, “Pass an Anti-Racist Constitutional Amendment,” Politico (Interactive, please view online) 
• Peter Skerry, “Why ‘Black Lives Matter’ Matters,” National Affairs (Spring 2021) 
• Peter Myers, “The Mind of Black Lives Matter,” National Affairs (Summer 2017) 

Discussion Questions: 

1. What are the areas of progress (if any) made by blacks in American life? What are the difficult challenges that remain for blacks to take full advantage of opportunities for upward mobility?  
2. How, if at all, might the story the “Space Traders” inform today’s anti-racism?  
3. How does Kendi redefine racism? What political and perhaps constitutional changes are required, according to him, to make the United States an anti-racist country?  
4. To what extent, does the Black Lives Matter movement carry on the legacies of the civil rights movement? What are its relations with other important institutions in the black community? With other minority groups? 

Readings: 

• Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations,” The Atlantic (June 2014) 
• John McWhorter, “Against Reparations,” New Republic (July 2001) 
• Daniel DiSalvo and James W. Ceaser, “Affirmative Action and Positive Discrimination,” The Tocqueville Review (2004) 
• Louis Menand, “The Changing Meaning of Affirmative Action,” The New Yorker (January 2020) 
• Gail Heriot, “The Sad Irony of Affirmative Action,” National Affairs (Winter 2013) 
• Charles Krauthammer, “A Grand Compromise,” Washington Post (April 2001) 

Discussion Questions: 

1. Should the United States provide reparations to black Americans? If so, what form should the reparations take? If not, why not?  
2. What is affirmative action? What policies does the term encompass? How has the definition of the term changed over time? 
3. Has affirmative action been a success or a failure? In what ways might it be said to have succeeded? In what ways might it be said to have failed?  
4. Do you think the deal proposed by Krauthammer has merit? Would you support or oppose it? 

Readings: 

• Samuel P. Huntington, Ch. 1, Who Are We?, Simon & Schuster, 2004 
• Richard Rorty, Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America, Harvard University Press, 1999, pp. 1–39 
• Nikole Hannah-Jones, “Our democracy’s ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true,” New York Times (August 2019) 
• Sean Wilentz, “The 1619 Project and Living in Truth,” Opera Historica (2019) 

Discussion Questions: 

1. What are the challenges to America’s national identity? 
2. What resources exist on the left to affirm American national pride? 
3. What is the difference, if there is one, between a “narrative” and “history”? How might one or the other shape public life?