#3: Problem One for "Social Justice."

The first problem for "Social Justice" is that unless it is marketed as a moral theory, a theory that has authority over everyone, it cannot be used in its campaign to re-distribute private property. Consequently, it argues that certain distributions of goods are morally superior to others. In many cases, it even argues that these distributions are so much better, that those who are unwilling to accomodate them ought to be forced by whatever means necessary to cooperate. Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and Mao all subscribed to this view. But sticking to the bottom line again, there really is no theoretical defense of ANY theory of distributive justice. Rawls is just as much bullshit as the Kantian themes he borrows.

Kantian deontological theory attempts to ground moral rightness in pure rationality. That is, the moral thing to do in any case is identical to the perfectly rational thing to do, morality and reason converge. For Kant, the purely rational thing to do is only that thing that can be based on a purely general rule; it's rationality (and hence its morality) is essentially tied to the generality of the rule that entails it. The implication of this is that the individuality of the agent involved in the act is not only irrelevant, it is in fact obstructive to morality. It is a further implication of this theory that given any two agents in an identical situation, there is one and only one moral action and they would both do precisly that. But why should we believe any of this? Why should we accept the totally counter-intuitive claim that morality is necessarily and essentially impersonally rational? Why should we accept the claim that "reason" has anything at all to do with "morality"?

It is further notoriously well known that utilitarian theory is incapable of defending any theory of distribution. The reason, of course, is that Utilitarianism is a doctrine in which the Right is determined by appeal to a quantitative measure, namely the greatest net amount of pleasure produced. But this means that Utilitarian doctrine might actually defend a distribution that the advocates of "Social Justice" would find manifestly unfair, namely in which one or a few had almost everything.

Neither deontological nor utilitarian theory can provide a defense of ANY theory of distributive justice.