Now that summer vacation is over, many college and university students will return to their studies of social justice. These students will have plenty of time to prepare for the next United Nations World Day of Social Justice on February 20, 2013.
Michael Novak claims, "The scholar Friedrich Hayek finds that the first writer to use the term (social justice) was an Italian priest, Taparelli D'Azeglio, in his book
Natural Rights from a Historical Standpoint (1883)." Since DiAzeglio's time, what started life as a Cyclops has morphed into a many-headed hydra.
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Jayme Sellards writes in
The American Thinker, "Social justice is the complete economic equality of all members of society. While this may sound like a lofty objective, what it really means is that wealth should be collected by the government and evenly distributed to everyone. In short, social justice is communism."
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Barry Loberfeld, writing in
FrontPageMagazine.com repeats the idea that social justice is a code for communism. Beyond that, Loberfeld claims, "Here the lesson of socialism teaches what should have been learned from the lesson of pre-liberal despotism--that state coercion is a means to no end but its own. Far from expanding equality from the political to the economic realm, the pursuit of "social justice" serves only to contract it within both."
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Add to this warning, the words of Cardinal Francis George, the Catholic Archbishop of Chicago, and it is little wonder that social justice raises many red flags.
Cardinal George writes, "The temptation can be to work for justice apart from love, but then justice becomes itself a formula for oppression. Justice without love is destructive, as Marxist societies, founded on equality and social justice alone, teach the world."
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If "social justice" has become a code word for communism, what role should it play at the university, when it is better to speak forthrightly than to speak in a code? Peter Wood and Ashley Thorne, writing for the National Association of Scholars, answer this question.
Thorne and Wood say, "The National Association of Scholars believes that programs in social justice education do not belong in the university..…That's because the term has become too firmly associated with agitprop."
They continue, "Whatever 'social justice' meant in the era of
Rerum Novarum, Ernst Troeltsch, or H. Richard Niebuhr, it has now become in common use just a slogan tossed around in the pep rallies of the campus left."
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Those who hold a belief in social justice often talk about expanding the equality of income and outcome, yet it's unclear what they mean by these goals. If they agree with Erich Fromm, then they must see how their argument for equality is one of the most ironic aspects of a belief in social justice.
Erich Fromm was an ardent critic of capitalism. In his book
The Art of Loving, he writes, "In contemporary capitalistic society the meaning of equality has been transformed. By equality one refers to the equality of automatons; of men who have lost their individuality. Equality today means 'sameness' rather than 'oneness.'"
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If today's proponents of social justice want to make everyone the same by equality of income and outcome, then according to Fromm, they are advancing a goal that capitalism does as well as Marxism. You know something's wrong with the social justice argument, when the god of socialism damns us to the same hell as the god of capitalism.
Social justice and sociology
At American universities, ideas of social justice permeate many academic disciplines, but they are probably most prominent in the discipline of sociology. By adopting the pseudo science of Marxism and social justice, sociology has given up all pretence at being a real science. The objectivity required to do scientific research is surrendered when the researcher becomes an advocate.
With social justice in the curriculum, it's as if Max Weber and Talcott Parsons had never lived or wrote. As far as you can tell from some college course offerings, Parsons' functionalism or Weber's "value free sociology," have all but disappeared from the syllabus.
For all practical purposes, sociology at some universities has collapsed into Marxism, if not hard core Marxism, than Marxism-Lite. Weber's emphasis on religion as a component of economic development is ignored and the alternative cultural dialectic of Pitrim Sorokin is hardly mentioned in these sociology departments.
In the same vein, the sociology of Peter Berger has been neglected in our colleges and universities. His book,
Introduction to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective, reminds us that one of the jobs of a sociologist is to debunk the accepted ideologies of the discipline.
Outside of Bridge Berger, few today in the discipline of sociology are caring on the tradition of debunking, especially the debunking ideas of social justice or Critical Race Theory.
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Sociologist ought to be interested in what happens to all those students who graduate with a major or minor in social justice. Bridget Berger tells us that many of them will no doubt get made up jobs working in government.
Then she adds this caveat, "The dangers are obvious: If there is an overriding lesson to be learned from the history of the last hundred years, it is that the modern state is the most dangerous institution around."
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According to Malcome A. Kline, students should know that, "When you hear the term 'social justice,' be prepared to empty your wallet." He documents this by claiming, "An academic program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the minor in Social and Economic Justice, illustrates the difference between education and indoctrination."
Kline continues, "If her own section of Sociology 273 is any indication, Dr. Blau clearly intended this program to be indoctrination...The intellectual content of Blau's course is based primarily on her book
Human Rights: Beyond the Liberal Vision (co-written with Spanish sociologist Alberto Moncada)."
"The book has two main themes. The first is a full-frontal assault on the United States and its foundations: capitalism, individualism, and the Protestant religion. The second is painting collectivism, and international organizations based on collective thought, on a moral plane, high above American traditions."
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What is so ironic about this course is that when taught in the university, such an ideology undermines the definition of education offered by one of the founders of modern sociology, Emile Durkheim. Durkheim defined education this way: "For each society, education is the means by which it secures, in the children, the essential conditions of its own existence.
Seen in this light, an education in social justice is an education that undermines a society's existence, not a means by which it secures its further existence.
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Such teaching is not unexpected, because arguments against Marxism have disappeared from the discipline of sociology. Instead, sociology students are offered Marxist ideas without alternatives.
Consider this from Sociology Guide: "The concept of social justice may hold some or all of the following beliefs: Historical inequities insofar as they affect current injustices should be corrected until the actual inequities no longer exist or have been perceptively 'negated.'"
The guide encourages, "The redistribution of wealth, power and status for the individual, community and societal good. It is government's (or those who hold significant power) responsibility to ensure a basic quality of life for all its citizens."
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All this Marxism in the classroom makes an observer want to ask if anyone reads Herbert Spence anymore in a sociology class? Spencer's book,
The Man Versus the State should be required reading for those who believe in social justice, especially his chapter, The Coming Slavery.
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The Man Versus the State Spencer offers a critique of socialism. Besides that, there is the irony that Spencer is buried in High Gate Cemetery, not to far from the tomb of Karl Marx.
Reading Spencer reminds us of the flaw in the social Justice argument. What happens after the government confiscates and redistributes wealth?
Sooner or later people will realize that there is no good reason to work, because the government will give them what they need. But if no one works, who will make the wealth that the government gives away once there is no more wealth for the government to redistribute?
It is at this point that the government must force everyone work. In short, the government must make everyone a slave so more wealth is produced. The very slavery the social justice advocates want to abolish has now come back with a vengeance. Can you say, "China?"
Believers in a Marxist inspired social justice also must be at war with religion, especially Christianity. One cannot be a Marxist and a Christian at the same time, no matter what the liberation theologian Camilo Torres has written.
Marxism denies the existence of a God. It also denies the existence of the immortal soul, and assumes a salvation history that neither redeems the past nor assures a transfigured future.
Social justice and ideology mongering
Why would a university commit itself to social justice, when it is so obviously an ideology and a threat to academic freedom? You'd expect professors to oppose the straightjacket of social justice because it stifles research and teaching.
Unfortunately, professors who ought to defend academic freedom are the first to retreat when attacks are made upon it. Who remembers the courage of the great German philosopher Martin Heidegger? He did not resist, but capitulated to Nazi control of German universities. He kept his job, and then moved on to another one.
Other professors wear social justice like a badge of honor. You may go to their web pages and read how they intend to build thoughtful action for social justice. They want their class to teach students equality and democracy. Do you suppose such equality means every student get an "A" for a final grade?
Should students who read these web pages ask if their professor is a Marxist before taking their class? What kind of social justice is a professor talking about and promoting in his classroom? Maybe it's just Marxism-Lite.
Likewise, should parents demand from a university professor who teaches social justice that he be open about what exactly he believes? Or even better, shouldn't a professor just keep his ideology out of the classroom?
What about the professor who promotes himself as an activist scholar? It seems objectivity is almost impossible in such a social justice context.
So-called research with a focus on multicultural discourse, issues of community and gender, invisibility and silence, marginality, inequities, and cultural competencies, all have less than objectivity in mind. Through the alchemy of jargon activist scholars take light and turn it into mud.
Ironically, some of the most vocal proponents of social justice are members of a universities adjunct faculty. At some universities these adjuncts teach most of the classes and at best make $5,000.00 a semester.
This is in contrast to the high salaries of university administrators. According to Bloomberg Business Week, "the average salary for public university presidents in the 2007-2008 academic year was $427,400."
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From the point of view of salaries, many universities look like sweatshops in China, with adjuncts working for less than a living wage. Nevertheless, adjuncts seldom take their demands for social justice to the office of human resources.
It's not just the faculty that promotes social justice, however. The number of university administrators has been burgeoning over the years. This growth also promotes social justice, but not for the reasons one might think.
Robert Weissberg writes in his article, "Fall of the Faculty," that "Ginsberg's great insight here is the self-serving character of this ideology mongering."
"Few administrators probably believe the trendy leftish rubbish, but it is the perfect (and ideologically kosher) tactic to expand administrative power at the expense of the faculty...The PC agenda gives administrators almost unfettered access to policies--especially hiring and curriculum--once the absolute domain of the faculty."
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Some suppose there is nothing inherently wrong with a university having a mission of social justice. After all, there are other universities and colleges that promote their Christian mission or even a military one. Be that as it may, the problem with the mission for social justice is that it is a deception.
If a university wishes to have a diversity of ideas taught to students, then some professors ought to offer an alternative to the ideology of social justice. These professors ought to be identified, as well. Who is and who is not a Marxist is a question to be asked not only by students, but asked by parents who pay tuition to the university.
Likewise, if social justice is to be the mission of a university, then we ought to know the first principles of those who profess that mission. Are professors of social justice materialists the way Marx was?
Furthermore, are these professors internationalists? Do they see the nation state as a force for injustice, and not a guarantee of freedom and prosperity? Are they working to undermine the sovereignty of the United States?
Students should be asked if they want to be trained as Marxist, too, or if they want to attend a university that promotes Marxism. If they want to study Marxism, why not take their tuition money and use it to attend college in China? If social justice is nothing more than the gruel of Marxism warmed over, then go to where the gruel served up fresh and warm.
Social justice and the cost of higher education
Is the ideology of social justice the last chance for administrators and faculty to make a liberal arts education seem relevant? Even as the poison ivy of social justice spreads across the nation's universities, others are questioning the sense of bowering money for four years or more of indoctrination.
Does it make sense to graduate with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, when the prospects of getting a job are uncertain? A degree in social justice may qualify a college graduate to become a state welfare recipient more than to become gainful employment.
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Mac Slavo, writing in SHTFplan.com, gives a good summary of the current argument against graduating from college. He writes, "College education is big business, and with easy Federal loans, prices for everything from tuition to text books is going through the roof. Once degreed, the majority of college grads are ill-equipped to handle the current marketplace."
Slavo adds, "Many of those who entered college just five years ago simply can't find work in a 21st century economy...What college grads are left with are massive loans that can't be repaid..."
Where is the gain from a college education when these grads are left with, "a room in mom and dad's basement" because the bought into the social justice myth.
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Not everyone in academia is a Marxist. Nevertheless, it's becoming harder to swim against the Marxist current. A few professors like Father John Araujo, S.J. have courageously fought against the current.
Father Araujo has come out and said, "I have seen definitions of 'social justice' that would include practices or beliefs which are antithetical to the Church's teachings."
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Others may speak up and oppose the Marxist ideology of social justice that has turned the university from an Ivory Tower into a La Brea Tar Pit. In this pit, all disinterested thinking is sucked below the goo.
What effect their opposition will have, remains to be seen. Eventually the spread of the social justice ideology may wear itself out. Perhaps social justice will simply develop into something like yoga in the West, an exotic technique that has left its theology behind.
The contemporary university is also experiencing economic changes that may transform it out of existence before the proponents of social justice complete their Marxist transformation. In the meantime, the ideology of social justice that infects our colleges and universities will bring in its wake suffering and disappointment, as all lies do.
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