Kaufmann – The Rhetorical Challenge of Social Justice

Larry Kaufmann, Liberty 21
“The Rhetorical Challenge of Social Justice”
The Philadelphia Society National Meeting
Indianapolis, April 7, 2013

The theme of this panel is the rhetorical challenge of social justice,
and I think most people here would agree that meeting this challenge is
difficult but necessary. Even if your highest political ideal is
liberty, everyone would like to live in a society that is both free and
good. Moral arguments are also extremely persuasive.
But when it comes to helping the disadvantaged, libertarians and
conservatives often cede the moral high ground to progressives without
a fight. Part of the reason is that people on the Right are
temperamentally allergic to the concept of “social justice.” We
would rather talk about almost anything else, and when we do address
the subject it is either to excoriate it or say things like
“conservatives don’t do welfare.” This leaves the Right open to
the critique that it is greedy and cold-hearted, an unfair and
inaccurate charge that nevertheless resonates with a large share of the
public.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that libertarians and conservatives should
stop pointing out the failures of our welfare state. It deserves
withering criticism, since it’s been an almost complete failure and
will soon literally be bankrupt. This looming bankruptcy creates
a tremendous opportunity for the Right, but we’re more likely to seize
this opportunity if we present a credible and compelling alternative to
the welfare state, not just attack it. This alternative should
communicate a positive vision of a just society and show how policies
and reforms that are oriented around liberty are necessary for this
vision to be realized.

This is obviously a very large task, and yesterday we heard many
interesting ideas on how this might be done. This morning I would
like to offer one more idea which, while very simple, may nevertheless
be helpful as an organizing principle for this vision and concrete
policy reforms. This idea is “participation,” and it is relevant
in both personal efforts to help the disadvantaged and in government
policy. Participation is also a small but necessary first step
towards “self command,” which I’m sure many people here know is one of
the central ideas in Adam Smith’s “other” book, The Theory of
Moral Sentiments. Self-command is in turn critical for moderating
one’s own needs, learning to respect and work with others, and to make
prudent decisions that consider the long-term consequences of one’s own
actions.

So what is participation? Well, the idea begins by recognizing
that the chief problem of the underclass in America is not a lack of
money, it is a lack of connection to the broader society.
Increasingly, the poor are disconnected – and absent – from the
institutions in a free society that would enable them to flourish and
succeed on their own. These institutions include the marketplace,
the family, the community, and other civic and religious
organizations.

Charles Murray has illustrated this lack of
connection vividly in his most recent book “Coming Apart.” He
depicts two very different classes that have emerged over the last 50
or so years in white America, which he focuses on to show that these
changes have nothing to do with race. He refers to these distinct
Americas as Belmont and Fishtown. These communities are not just
separated by differences in income; more importantly, they differ in
terms of values, culture, and behavior. Murray also shows
that it didn’t used to be this way. In 1960, Fishtown and Belmont
did not have fundamentally opposed cultures, and both largely embraced
bourgeois values of hard work, stable families, and community
engagement. Since then, the public sector has lavished
attention and resources on the disadvantaged and in the process it has
helped transform Fishtown into an enclave that barely intersects with
mainstream society. Fishtown is now characterized by
dysfunctional behavior and attitudes that will keep it outside the
mainstream regardless of how many new government dollars are “invested”
in an effort to help it.

I think it’s self-evident that the problems with Fishtown will never
disappear until its inhabitants become more active participants in the
institutions of mainstream society. But how can we make this
happen?

The first step is re-invigorating civic society. Voluntary,
civic organizations should always be the first resort for advancing the
welfare of the disadvantaged. This applies not only to charitable
groups but also to fraternal or mutual aid organizations. In
fact, this has been the main vehicle of social uplift for the poor
throughout American history, and the US has a rich history of such
voluntary, public-spirited organizations. David Green
discusses this mostly forgotten history in After the Welfare State,
edited by Tom Palmer, and I recommend both his article and the book
highly.

Mutual aid societies are run by members for members, and traditionally
they have provided pensions, some health insurance, and help during
times of economic duress. They were especially important in
providing services to African Americans and recent immigrants.
There were at least 120,000 societies in the mid-1920s, but their
numbers declined dramatically after the New Deal reforms of the
1930s.

Mutual aid societies differ in important respects from charities.
Most importantly, they are organized around a spirit of reciprocity
among members, where reciprocity includes mutual obligations as well as
the potential for mutual benefits. This contrasts with both
charities and government welfare programs, which are organized around a
benefactor – recipient model. That is, with government welfare
and charity, one side gives and the other side receives.

Conservatives and libertarians should not be reticent in arguing that
reciprocity is a better means for helping the disadvantaged than
relying on the coercive powers of government. Reciprocity is
really enlightened self-interest, and it promotes win-win or
positive-sum outcomes for all the members of the organization.
This differs from government-based solutions, which are by their nature
zero-sum outcomes where one party’s gains (the recipient) come only at
the expense of another party (the taxpayer). Mutual aid societies
also naturally make people decision-makers and active participants in
decisions that impact not only their own welfare, but that of the
broader community.

But while a re-invigorated civic society is critical, the political
reality is that the government will remain involved in a variety of
welfare programs for the foreseeable future. There is
almost no appetite in the Republican party for wholesale elimination of
federal programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and none
whatsoever in the Democratic party. Government programs will
therefore remain part of our institutional environment, but they can be
transformed so that they create incentives for productive behavior, and
by creating marketplaces for publicly-financed services that will lead
to more active participation by recipients.

Some of these reforms are currently underway. Perhaps the best
example is the welfare reform law passed in 1996. This law put
limits on the amount of time that people could collect federal
welfare. This was done because it was increasingly recognized
that the system of unlimited, lifetime welfare support was making poor
people dependent on the government. This dependence directly
undermined their incentive to work and indirectly enabled illegitimacy
and family breakdown. Welfare reform is now overwhelmingly
regarded as a huge success, not because it cut spending and reduced the
size of government – although it did – but because it actually moved
people from dependence on the government and into participation in the
workplace. Welfare reform is also a perfect case study for
demonstrating the superiority of conservative/libertarian efforts to
help the poor compared with those of progressives. Yes, Bill
Clinton did sign the bill into law, but we should not forget that he
did over the overwhelmingly opposition of his party, who predicted it
would have catastrophic consequences.

Another promising and critical area is school choice. Few
decisions impact someone’s prospects in life as much as those regarding
education. There is also no area where the disadvantaged more
desperately need to be allowed to exercise choice. Over the last
50 years, funding per pupil for K – 12 education has more than doubled
in inflation-adjusted terms, but academic performance has actually
fallen. The decline in education has been particularly severe in
inner city neighborhoods, where poor kids are stuck in failing
schools. School choice is very popular among the disadvantaged
because they recognize its long-term value, but of course it’s
violently opposed by progressives and teachers’ unions.
Conservatives and libertarians can use this wedge to reach out to
non-traditional political allies. Their pitch is likely to be
even more effective if is tied in with a broader platform of helping
the disadvantaged become more active participants in some of the most
important decisions in their lives.

Another potential area of participation is consumer driven health
care. Paul Ryan has advanced an innovative reform of Medicare
that would transform the program into a hybrid of defined-contribution
and defined-benefit insurance. It would also use consumer choice
to control costs. There are many other consumer-driven health
care reform ideas out there, and conservatives and libertarians can
meld these into a broader participation agenda which enables
individuals to take more control over their personal choices.

All of these reforms are united by the simple but powerful idea of
making people more active participants in their lives. It is also
particularly important for these reforms to come to the enclave that
Charles Murray calls Fishtown. A just society is not one that
allows a significant segment of its population to exist outside the
mainstream, subsisting on government handouts and sinking ever deeper
into dysfunction that keeps them separated and prevents them from
reaching their full potential. A just and wise society recognizes
that simply throwing more money at this problem will not help, and in
fact will make it worse. A just society will also have vibrant
civic organizations and structure government programs so that they
empower recipients and not bureaucrats. Among other things, this
means encouraging more participation in choices regarding education,
health care, and employment. It also means more active
participation in a civic society that emphasizes reciprocal, mutually
beneficial relationships rather than charity, to the greatest possible
extent.

The Right can begin to meet the rhetorical challenge of social justice
by driving this message home. At the same time, it can reach out
to others who recognize the problem, especially those who have not been
traditional allies. It can then begin the hard work of helping
the underclass re-connect to the mainstream society. This
approach may not have the easy and superficial appeal of the left’s
agenda of -supposedly – taking care of people’s needs
through an ever-expanding array of government programs. But it
does have two important advantages, which conservatives and
libertarians can proudly proclaim: first, it is more humane; and
second, it is far more likely to work.