Spheres of Justice #4

Chapter 2 is about membership.

“The primary good that we distribute to one another is membership in some human community. And what we do with regard to membership structures all our other distributive choices: it determines with who we make those choices, from whom we require obedience and collect taxes, to whom we allocate goods and services” (31).

“Membership as a social good is constituted by our understanding; its value is fixed by our work and conversation, and then we are in charge … of its distribution. [T]he choice is also governed by our relationships with strangers – not only by our understanding of those relationships but also by the actual contacts, connections, alliances we have established and the effects we have had beyond our borders” (32).

Few of us have any direct experience of what a country is or what it is to be a member. We often have strong feelings about our country, but only dim perceptions of it via symbols, offices, and representatives. It’s helpful to compare it to smaller associations more easily grasped – neighborhoods, clubs, and families.

A neighborhood is enormously complex. It is an association without an organized or legally enforceable admissions policy. Strangers may be welcomed or not welcomed, admitted or excluded. Neighborhoods might maintain cohesive culture for a generation or two on a voluntary basis, but people moving in and out may diminish the cohesion.

A feature of clubs is that they can regulate admission. Only when clubs split into factions and fighting may the state intervene. When states split, however, no legal appeal is possible; there is no superior body. Imagine states as perfect clubs, with sovereign power over their own selection process. In some states are like families rather than clubs, for in families are morally connected to members they have not chosen. A state differs from clubs and families in that it is territorial. A person with full membership in a state is a citizen.

Also in this chapter Walzer comments about immigration and emigration, aliens and naturalization, refugees, guest workers, and legal rules about these, but I will skip the details.

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