Theories of Justice - Syllabus - S T ZILIAK SPRING 08

Theories of Justice in Economics and Philosophy Econ 426-10 Roosevelt University Department of Economics Spring 2008 Professor: Stephen T.. After the genius Nietzsche woke us up in a var

Theories of Justice in Economics and Philosophy

(Econ 426-10)

Roosevelt University Department of Economics

Spring 2008

Professor: Stephen T Ziliak (aka “Prof Z”)

Day & Time: Weds., 6:00-8:30 PM

Place: AUD 718

Office Hours: AUD 760, 4:45-5:45 PM, Weds & Thurs and by

appointment

Phone: 312.341.3763

Email: sziliak@roosevelt.edu (Email is by far the best way to reach me.) Website: http://faculty.roosevelt.edu/Ziliak

You attend a university that is committed to “social justice.” But

what is social justice? How do economists themselves think about

social justice – as indeed they do? In Adam Smith’s other big book,

The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), “justice” is defined as a virtue,

as are love and prudence, not as a giant, redistributive social contract,

as are the New Deal and Dutch welfare state Social justice after Smith

and the welfare state is what, then, a social virtue? - an aggregation of

millions or billions of individuals’ best habits or intentions?

After the genius Nietzsche woke us up in a variety of disciplines from that dry hot and long Immanuel-Kantian summer, and especially after the Austrian-born economist and philosopher Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992, Nobel laureate in Economic Sciences, 1974) chilled us with

a book on – of all things - The Mirage of Social Justice (University of Chicago Press), one has to ask whether social justice-as-a-concept has

any meaning at all It could be that social justice is conceptually

empty, as Hayek believed it to be, a “mirage” designed by elites to make a majority feel justified when robbing Peter to pay Paul

Could be But in fact most economic philosophers do not take social justice to be so radically subjective, ambiguous, plural, or stone-cold wrong and sick and horrifying as did Hayek back in 1976 Yet more than a few philosophers have discovered a real philosophical dilemma when defining and justifying the concept of social justice itself What are its principles? What are its rationalities? Exactly what

kinds of justice are we talking about in this or that rational framework?

What about the impoverished and physically disabled children?

A number of postmodern Marxists believe that the concept of

social justice is over-determined—that it has a surplus of meaning – a

view which at first glance seems radically opposed to concept empty-outers like Hayek When the cause of a concept is over-determined it

is like a matrix of algebraic equations that cannot be solved The

reason is not because the equations are empty – as Hayek argues – rather too full – as Hayek sometimes argues It’s as if the number of variables to solve for in social justice exceeds the number of equations for making meaning out of them Like RU’s President Chuck Middleton says, everywhere you go a local college president claims to be doing social justice But what they do about social justice and what they say don’t always add up (In econometric terms, such surplus meaning and

“noise” give rise to the problem of “identification.”)

Or it may be a third thing Social justice is a baggy concept – full but not overflowing - because as needs change the concept changes with it In the 1950s most civil rights leaders did not have the rights and plights of women and gays in their purview (Quite the contrary.)

Moral urgencies change targets With Soren Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling maybe we have to have the courage and humility to accept this mysterious term – we just have to have faith that fighting

oppression in all its forms and expanding equal liberty around every bend and corner and holding the concept of race central to the

American story about higher education is its own justification Faith in justice restored requires a big heart and a lot of breathing room So keep the concept baggy, some say Keep it as big and welcoming as you keep faith Whatever new principle of social justice you give to the world, it is going to be received in alien form That is because any principle of social justice gets judged in spiritual and political and

economic and other currencies that are constituted by outcomes or procedures and previous principles different from what the new theory

itself entails There’s a learning curve and you have to have faith in that, too A lot of us are happy living with such faith, and why not?

Like Dr King said, “everyone can be great, because everyone can

serve.”

Regardless, we’ve got some thinking to do Hayek raised a

question in 1976 that a wide range of thinkers, from the

market-friendly libertarian to the postmodern Marxist-feminist, agree to take

seriously: What on earth are we doing when we claim to be doing

social justice?

We will answer the-what are we doing-question with a neglected

follow-up question: “What do economic philosophers talk about (or claim to be talking about) when they talk about social justice?”

We will find out And the rewards from doing so will be great Put it this way: if you can answer the-what do we talk about-when-we talk about social justice-question satisfactorily, it’s your advantage next time the topic of social justice arises If you can answer the

question exceedingly well, it’s your name they’re calling someday for a Nobel Prize in Economics or, who knows, even the Nobel Peace Prize

I know Everyone and his slacker uncle is a leader in social

justice But economists have written a book or two about social justice and which other intellectuals and policy pundits tend to score off of unwittingly Oscar Wilde was wrong: price is not the only value on the table of the dismal scientists Justice has been a central concern of economic inquiry ever since the days of wooden shoes and dirty

drinking water for the rich From Aristotle’s (384-322 BCE) notion of

“justice in exchange,” speaking of shoemakers in ancient Greece, down

to Amartya Sen’s (1933 - ) reinterpretation of “justice as fairness,” speaking of young-girl peasants in Bangladesh in our own time,

economists have been central participants in the theoretical, empirical, historical, and policy conversations about social justice in our world That is an understatement: economists have been, for better or for worse, major agents of change in the name of social justice Reflect for

a moment on the names of Karl Marx, Milton Friedman, Rosa

Luxemburg (c 1870-1919), and Alan Greenspan and you might agree with me when I say that economists are the bomb - sometimes

practically literally the bomb - when it comes to the philosophy of social justice

Roosevelt University itself is shaped by economic philosophies of social justice and more directly sociologically speaking than one might imagine One of the university’s first non-random advisors was the great Swedish economist and sociologist, Gunnar Myrdal (1898-1987) Myrdal shared the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974 (coincidentally, with that same “mirage”-discoverer Friedrich Hayek) Unlike Hayek, Myrdal got the Nobel for focusing on “distributive” as against

“procedural” or rule-based principles of justice He got the prize

largely on the basis of his ethnographic, historical, and quantitative

sociological research on race and social and economic injustice in the Deep South of the United States (An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy [1944]) To the Swedish-born

economist, the Jim Crow South was no mirage And Old South/New South was definitely a matter of social justice, he said Otherwise, come to think of it, the cultured young man would not have slept so many nights in those “better” whites-only motels that were being offered up by Best Western, Howard Johnson’s, and Company He would not turn away from a career as a pioneering theoretical

economist (as he was and did) to write a “sociological” book about a

“dilemma” that just possibly is a stinkin’ “mirage.”

Economists, then, have produced the world’s most influential ideas about social justice (Professional philosophers noticed in the 1960s and they began to imitate the rhetoric of economics in their own writings about social justice, a fact that is reflected in two books we’ll read by the philosophers John Rawls and Robert Nozick.) Economic research at the frontier is often stimulated by a moral or political

urgency, by a need to solve a real or perceived problem of social or

economic injustice in one’s own lifetime So here is a chance to take

that next intellectual step forward in your lifetime

A well-chosen set of readings will help us to gain insight into fundamental questions about economic and social justice that have already been asked by some of the great economic philosophers The readings and our discussions of them will push each of us to ask our own, new sets of questions Over time we may change our beliefs and then change back-again We will probably act somewhat differently, or want to, as a result of this course Scary, I know It’s called “getting

an education!” (Relax if you feel scared by that last sentence for real: from Aristotle on down we are all – Dr King in Montgomery included - a little bit scared of changing our beliefs But this as Lucy said to Charlie Brown is the good kind of change.)

Our approach is a nouveau- “great books”- approach, tried and

true We will drink deeply from some of the classics on justice written

in liberal, anarchist, and socialist traditions Classic books we'll read in whole or in large part are John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (1971,

Harvard University Press); Friedrich Hayek’s already mentioned The Mirage of Social Justice (1976) [it is volume two of his three-volume Law, Legislation, and Liberty, University of Chicago Press]; Robert

Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974, Basic Books) These three

are the best of the best and we’ll soak ‘em up We’ll also read a

provocative new book by a contemporary economist, Theodore

Burczak’s Socialism after Hayek (2006, University of Michigan Press) Burczak’s Socialism after Hayek gives a nuanced yet positive view

toward social justice and its enabling institutions, such as for example worker-owned firms and cooperatives

The reading pace is appropriate for the weather and subject-matter: to understand this stuff, you need to set aside some serious thinking time, and the bad weather enables you to do that

Regardless, each week you will have to digest about 80 pages of

serious political philosophy (or as much of those 80 pages as you can possibly stomach) In level of difficulty the thinking we’ll do resembles

a course in advanced microeconomic theory because in fact it is Open

a page of Rawls or Hayek and boom there it is

Here’s a little summary about what and why:

Our Learning Goals Are

• To gain a working knowledge of the vocabulary, models, and other positive and normative criteria typically employed by the leading economic philosophers of social justice;

• To critically appraise alternative theories of justice by doing

careful economic and philosophical comparative analyses of classic yet opposing works on the theory of justice;

• To better understand the role of liberty and the price system in a total economic philosophy of justice – distributive justice,

procedural justice, commutative justice, and more;

• To identify and multiply the arsenal of plausible rhetorical

stances one can take toward claims of social justice-in-dialogue:

in view of the historical facts of the economy, in view of our own careers, in view of property and free speech laws, and in science policy, in tax rebate plans, in the prison and justice system itself,

in civic actions against senseless violence, and in economic and philosophical methodology (which has its own rules and

expectations about stances), to give just a few examples Justice

as need is a stance So is justice as merit How do you reconcile the two?

Style of Class: Socratic Conversational In regression terms my style

is explained by congenial tough love plus a small random error term For further explanation of my general attitudes toward pedagogy, learning communities and the like, please see the link on my website,

On the Need to Teach Emersonian Economics:

http://faculty.roosevelt.edu/Ziliak

Attendance: Regular attendance is crucial unless your name is

Benedict Spinoza In that case, “Attendance is optional, Liefe, but

highly encouraged.”

Required Texts: As listed above Additional articles and book chapters will sometimes be assigned and provided by Prof Z All of the required books are available for purchase at the RU bookstore (Chicago) and on-line

Grades, Exams, and Homework Assignments: Eighty percent (80%) of your course grade will be based on your performance on three in-class

essay exams First midterm: Weds, March 5; Second midterm:

Weds., April 9; Final exam: Weds., May 14 Exams must be taken in class at the appointed time No exceptions.

Twenty percent (20%) of your course grade will be based on your performance on weekly one-page (1 p.) long “response pieces” to be collected by the professor at the beginning of each class The style and purpose of these response pieces and criteria to be used in

grading them will be announced on a week-ahead or two-week ahead schedule Take the response pieces as seriously as you would take an exam – or more so – given that the real overlap between exam content and response pieces will be high, tending toward a correlation of 85 or

above (p < 05) No “piece,” one could quip, “no justice.”

Personal Responsibility Clause: “I [say your name] am responsible for knowing all information pertinent to the operation of this course By enrolling in this course I acknowledge that I alone bear the

responsibility for keeping up with changes in important dates, and with homework assignments, exam protocol, and so forth I promise to refrain from asking the Prof to tell me what happened while I was

away And if I do go away I promise to return to class refreshed and invigorated and ready to contribute to our course on theories of

justice.”

Plagiarism and Other Forms of Cheating will be penalized to the full extent of Roosevelt University policy If you are tempted to cheat, you might want to read the scope of penalties posted on the RU website so

that you know the incentives Trust me, you don’t want to tempt fate

Please be advised that at any time during the course of the term your work may be subjected to systematic examination using

anti-plagiarism software Plagiarism might as well be called plaguer-ism because it is evil and gross and spreads like the plague Do you want

to see those kinds of words on your college transcript - which follows you forever? How about 5 years from now, when you are going up for that big promotion?

Accommodation of Persons with Disabilities Students with disabilities or other conditions that require special accommodations are encouraged

to identify themselves to the instructor and/or to the Academic Success Center/Office of Disability Services at 312-341-3810 as early as

possible

Book Suggestions: Scores of economists have been turned on to

economics by reading Robert Heilbroner’s The Worldly Philosophers

See if it works for you As the term goes by I will recommend dozens of books They will reveal the vast impact that economics is or could be having upon the material and scientific worlds: economics and

technology, economics and history, economics and philosophy,

economics of poverty and discrimination, economics of labor markets, economics and literature, and much, much more

Tentative Sketch of Your Reading/Classroom Discussion Schedule

Note: Pagination will vary according to the vintage of your book Use these descriptive titles as your guiding light.

Week 1 Introductions

Week 2 Rawls, pp 3-94 (stop at “Relevant Social Positions”)

Week 3 Rawls, pp 95-194 (“Relevant Social Positions” to stop at

“Equal Liberty”)

Week 4 Rawls, pp 195-297 (“Equal Liberty” to stop at “Further Cases

of Priority”)

Week 5 Nozick, pp 3-87 (stop at “The State”)

Week 6 Further discussion and Midterm Exam 1 (March 5 th , 6:00 PM)

Week 7 Nozick, pp 88-182 (“The State” to stop at “Rawls’ Theory”) Week 8 Spring Break

Week 9 Nozick, pp 183-231 (“Rawls’ Theory” to stop at “Equality,

Envy, Exploitation”); and Rawls, pp 298-332 (“Further Cases of Priority” to stop at “Duty and Obligation”)

Week 10 Hayek, pp 1-61 (stop at “Social or Distributive Justice”)

Week 11 Further discussion and Midterm Exam 2 (April 9 th , 6:00 PM)

Week 12 Hayek, pp 62-132 (“Social or Distributive Justice” to stop at

“The Discipline of Abstract Rules and the Emotions of Tribal

Society”)

Week 13 Hayek, pp 133-152 (stop at end of book); and Nozick, pp

297-334 (“A Framework for Utopia” to stop at end of book)

Week 14 Burczak, pp 1-57 (stop at “Recasting Hayek’s Good Society”) Week 15 Burczak, pp 58-146 (“Recasting Hayek’s Good Society” to stop at end of book)

Week 16 No new reading assignment

Week 17 Final Exam (May 14 th , 6:00 PM)