Spheres of Justice #13

Chapter 13, the final one, is titled Tyrannies and Just Societies.

Men and women claim justice, and resist tyranny, by insisting on the meaning of social good among themselves. Justice is rooted in their distinct understanding of places, honors, jobs, things of all sorts, that constitute a shared way of life. To override that understanding is to act unjustly.

No account of buying and selling, no description of free exchange, can possibly settle the question of justice in a capitalist system. What is decided to be just requires knowing a great deal about other distributive processes and about their relative autonomy from or integration into the market. The dominance of capital outside the market makes capitalism unjust.

Tyrants are endlessly busy. There is so much to do if they are to make their power dominant everywhere, in the bureaucracy and the courts, in the markets and factories, in parties and unions, in schools and churches, among friends and lovers, kinfolk and fellow citizens.

Complex equality is the opposite of totalitarianism: maximum differentiation as against maximum coordination.

Contemporary forms of egalitarianism have their origin in the struggle against capitalism and the particular tyranny of money. State officials will be tyrants, we are told, whenever their power is not balanced by money. Capitalists will be tyrants whenever wealth is not balanced by a strong government. Still, the tyranny of money is less frightening than the tyranny with origins on the other side of the money/politics divide.

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