Human rights education

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_education 

Human rights education is defined as the learning process that builds up the required knowledge, values, and proficiency of human rights of which the objective is to develop an acceptable human rights culture. This type of learning teaches students to examine their experiences from the human rights point of view enabling them to integrate these concepts into their values and decision-making. According to Amnesty International, human rights education is a way to empower people so that they can create skills and behavior that would promote dignity and equality within the community, society, and all over the world.

Non-discrimination

The "National Economics and Social Rights Initiative" stated the importance of Non-Discrimination in Human Rights Education. Governments must see to it that it must be exercised without bias to race, gender, color, religion, language, national or social origin, political or personal opinion, birth, or any status. All students, parents, and communities possess the right to take part in decisions affecting their respective schools and the right to education.

Human rights education and training

The OHCHR promotes Human Rights Education by supporting national and local initiatives for HRE within the context of its Technical Cooperation Programs and through the ACT Project which subsidizes the grassroots projects. The ACT or Assisting Communities Together Project is the collaboration between the OHCHR and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to make grants available for civil society organizations in implementing human rights activities in local communities.

The OHCHR also develops preferred Human Rights Education training materials and resource tools such as the Database on Human Rights Education and Training, Resource Collection on Human Rights Education and Training, and web section on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Finally, it takes care of coordinating the World Program for Human Rights Education.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" is acknowledged as a landmark document in human rights history. It was drafted by representatives from various countries and regions with varying legal and cultural experiences. The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed this declaration in Paris, France, on 10 December 1948. This Declaration states that basic human rights require protection. It was translated into more than 500 languages worldwide.

Demand for human rights education

The demand for human rights education continues to grow globally. Academic institutions are in the position to train students as future business leaders capable of managing human rights impact on their respective corporate organizations. The United Nations Global Compact in cooperation with the Principles for Responsible Management Education invites different corporations to incorporate business along with human rights topics to their curricula.

The Asia-Pacific Center for Education for International Understanding and the United Nations Academic Impact mutually organized the 2018 United Nations Global Citizenship Education Seminar at the UN Headquarters in New York City. These seminars are useful in the formulation of new ideas and concepts related to HRE. Human Rights Education is crucial because it is one of the keys to making governments and political leaders accountable. It also imparts and spreads out the human rights vocabulary and provides a critical approach towards human rights.

Human rights education and the United Nations

The United Nations High Commissioner for the Promotion and Protection of all Human Rights functions as coordinator of the UN Education and Public Information Programs in the area of human rights.

The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed it as central to the achievement of the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR):

Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms...

— Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948

Article 26.2 of the UDHR states the role of educators in achieving the social order called for by the declaration:

Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

— Article 26.2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Article 29 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child requires states to ensure that children are enabled to develop a respect for their own cultural identity, language and values and for the culture, language and values of others.

The importance of human rights was reaffirmed by the United Nations in the 1993 Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action:

The World Conference on Human Rights reaffirms that States are duty-bound, as stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and in other international human rights instruments, to ensure that education is aimed at strengthening the respect of human rights and fundamental freedoms.

— Paragraph 33, section 1 of the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action

States should strive to eradicate illiteracy and should direct education toward the full development of the human personality and to the strengtheng of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. The World Conference on Human Rights calls on all States and institutions to include human rights, humanitarian law, democracy and rule of law as subjects in curricula of all learning institutions in formal and non- formal settings. Human rights education should include peace, democracy, development and social justice, as set forth in international and regional human rights instruments, in order to achieve common understanding and awareness with a view to strengthening universal commitment to human rights.

— Paragraph 79 and 80, section 2 of the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action

As a result of the Vienna Declaration the decade from 1995 to 2004 was declared the UN Decade of Human Rights Education.

UNESCO has a responsibility to promote human rights education, and was a key organiser of the UN's Decade for Human Rights Education. UNESCO attempts to promote human rights education through:

• Development of national and local capacities for human rights education, through its co-operation in development projects and programmes at national and sub-regional levels.
• Elaboration of learning materials and publications and their translation and adaptation in national and local languages.
• Advocacy and Networking Activities.

Following the Decade of Human Rights Education, on 10 December 2004, the General Assembly proclaimed the World Programme for Human Rights Education, and ongoing project to advance the implementation of human rights education programmes in all sectors:

Building on the achievements of the United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education (1995-2004), the World Programme seeks to promote a common understanding of the basic principles and methodologies of human rights education, to provide a concrete framework for action and to strengthen partnerships and cooperation from the international level down to the grass roots.

— United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights website

Human rights education history

The emphasis on Human Rights Education began in 1995 with the beginning of the UN Decade for Human Rights Education, though previously addressed in 1953 with the UNESCO Associated Schools Program, which served as an "initial attempt to teach human rights in formal school settings". The first formal request for the need to educate students about human rights came about in UNESCO’s 1974 article Recommendation concerning Education for International Understanding, Cooperation and Peace, and Education Relating to Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The participants of the International Congress on the Teaching of Humans Rights eventually met in 1978 to form a specific definition of what would be required application of the education in formal curricula. The aims at which the Congress agreed upon including the encouragement of tolerant attitudes with focus on respect, providing knowledge of human rights in the context of national and international dimensions as well as their implementations, and finally developing awareness of human rights translating into reality whether social or political on national and international levels.

Human Rights Education became an official central concern internationally after the World Conference on Human Rights in 1993. This conference brought the issue of educating formally to the top of many countries' priority lists and was brought to the attention of the United Nations. It was two years later that the United Nations approved the Decade for Human Rights Education, which reformed the aims of application once again. Since the development of the UN Decade, the incorporation of human rights education into formal school curricula has been developed and diversified with the assistance of nongovernmental organizations, intergovernmental organizations, and individuals dedicated to spreading the topic through formal education.

Today the most influential document used to determine what qualifies as human rights and how to implement these ideas and rights into everyday life is the Universal Declaration. The declaration was adopted by the General Assembly in 1948, making 10 December annual Human Rights Day ever since. To this day the 30 article compilation is seen as "a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations".

Human rights education organizations

The Arab Organization for Human Rights is an independent Arab non-governmental organization based in Tunisia. It was founded in 1989 at the initiative of the Arab Organization for Human Rights, the Arab Lawyers Union, and the Tunisian League for Human Rights and with the support of the United Nations Centre for Human Rights. The Institute received the UNESCO International Award for Human Rights Education for the year 1992. Goals : The Arab Institute for Human Rights aims to promote a culture of civil, political, economic, social and cultural human rights, as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international conventions, and to strengthen the values of democracy and citizenship.

Organizations such as Indian Institute of Human Rights, Amnesty International and Human Rights Education Associates (HREA) promote human rights education with their programmes, believing "that learning about human rights is the first step toward respecting, promoting and defending those rights".

Amnesty International defines Human Rights Education as a "deliberate, participatory practice aimed at empowering individuals, groups and communities through fostering knowledge, skills and attitudes consistent with internationally recognized human rights principles" and explains the goal of Human Rights Education is to "empower yourself and others to develop the skills and attitudes that promote equality, dignity and respect in your community, society and worldwide."

Human Rights organizations aim to protect human rights on different levels some being more specific to geographical areas, others are based on governmental influences, others are nonprofit and education based, while others specifically aim to protect a certain group of individuals. The following are organizations with brief descriptions of their aims, targeted audiences, and affiliations.

According to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), each submission whether private or public, governmental or NGO is evaluated with regards to the following context: appropriateness, effectiveness, originality, ease of use, adaptability, sustainability, approach, and inclusiveness. Each characteristic of which is detailed in the article Human Rights Education in the School Systems of Europe, Central Asia, and North America: A Compendium of Good Practice.

African Centre on Democracy and Human Rights Studies

African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights This commission is in charge of monitoring the protection of humans' rights and ensuring the protection and promotion of these rights. It also is charged with the responsibility of interpreting the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights. This commission is limited to the continent of Africa and the countries within it.

Amnesty International One of the largest human rights organizations, Amnesty International includes 2.2 million members from over 150 countries. The organization concerns research as well as action in order to prevent and end human rights abuses. They are also focused on seeking justice for the violations which have already been committed.

Art and Resistance Through Education (ARTE) engages young people to amplify their voices and organize for human rights change through the visual arts.

The Asian Human Rights Commission The goals of the AHRC are "to protect and promote human rights by monitoring, investigation, and advocating and taking solidarity actions". This commission is limited to the continent of Asia and the countries within it.

The Australian Council for Human Rights Education (formerly National Committee on Human Rights Education) was established in 1999 actively pursue human rights education in Australia in response to the UN Decade on Human Rights Education. ACHRE is registered in Victoria under the Associations Incorporations Act 1981 and Dr Sev Ozdowski is its current President. The key achievements of the committee include establishment of State and Territory networks to promote nationwide the goals and program of activities of the Citizen for Humanity project; provision of online human rights educational materials for primary and secondary schools community organizations as well as for government representatives and officials; establishment in 1983 of Centre for human rights education at Curtin University and in 2007 of the National Centre for Human Rights Education at RMIT University in Melbourne; organization of in international human rights education initiatives such as conferences, for example International Conferences on Human Rights Education - see:, and provision of HR training.

The Chapel Hill and Carrboro Human Rights Center The Human Rights Center (HRC) in Carrboro is home to advocacy and service organizations, run as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization by UNC professor Judith Blau and by volunteers, many through the University as well. Many volunteers come through the Social and Economic Justice SOCI 273 APPLES course, and they mainly focus on immigrant rights.

The Children's Defense Fund attempts to create policies and programs to ensure equality to all children. They work towards decreasing the child poverty rate as well as protecting children from abuse and neglect. The members of the CDF act as advocates for children to help ensure they are treated equally and have the right to care and education in the future.

Coalition For Human Rights Education (COHRE) The Coalition For Human Rights Education formed as a result of experiences of human rights abuse. It is operating in Uganda based in Wakiso District. The organisation will have links through the country and wants to expand knowledge about human rights throughout the country. COHRE works with government bodies, private organisations, schools, minority groups and women and children in communities through training in order to bring about learning the basic human Rights. It provides training to the rural communities and organised groups which equips an individual to better living concerning human rights in areas like health, protection, love, and hope.

Commissioner for Human Rights, Council of Europe The commission is an independent institution which promotes awareness of human rights in the forty-seven Council of Europe Member States. Since it has such a broad area of concern its purpose is more to encourage reform and it takes "wider initiates on the basis of reliable information regarding human rights violations" rather than acting on individual complaints.

EIP Slovenia – School for Peace This Slovenian organization practices My Rights: Children’s Rights Education Project for children in elementary and middle schools. The organization promotes this project with the intent to endorse principles of the "UN Convention on the Rights of the Child". They produce materials which allow for comprehensive learning methods in order to train their teachers and pass information to their students. To encourage teachers to participate, each month of the academic calendar focuses on one children’s right and corresponding activities and materials are used as guidelines.

Equitas- International Centre for Human Rights Education (Centre international d’education aux droits humains) Canada has instituted this non-formal program in which primary school aged children are introduced to human rights education through after school programs and summer camps known as Play it Fair! Its purpose is to educate the public on how important human rights are by starting the education at such a young age. It is "intended to raise human rights awareness in children and educate them against discriminatory attitudes and behaviours, thus equipping them with skills to confront them".

European Union Ombudsman This organization exists to investigate grievances about the maladministration that occurs within the institutions and bodies of the European Union.

Facing History and Ourselves This US developed online module organization aims to provide information investigating "how societies attempt to rebuild, repair, and bring a sense of justice and security to their citizenry in the aftermath of conflict and genocide". As the topics about which this particular organization are concerned with are more mature and sensitive than others, this program is designed for students in middle, high school, and at the university level. The module has specifically designed its program based on four case studies: Germany, Rwanda, Northern Ireland, and South Africa. This resource has proven helpful in order to study how individuals, organizations, and governments have fostered "stability, security, reconciliation, coexistence and/or justice", all of which are explained in further detail on the organization’s website, www.facinghistory.org.

History Teachers Association of Macedonia The most upper level of secondary educated Macedonian students are given the option of participating in a human rights based lecture called Retelling of History. This class is one in which they study from a different textbook than traditional history classes specifically focusing on the history of the country’s transitional period from 1990 to 2000. The alternative textbook not only focuses on the political and military aspects of history, as most do, but also includes social and cultural topics and themes of the historical time period. The course focuses on four main topics throughout the year including interethnic relationships, the new political scene, the transition itself, and how everyday life has been altered.

Human Rights Action Center This nonprofit organization is based in Washington, DC and headed by human rights activist Jack Healy. This center is supportive of other growing organizations across the world. Their focus is on the issues documented in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

United Nations Human Rights Council This council includes forty-seven states and is charged with the responsibility of promoting and protecting human rights on the international level. The council has a specific Advisory committee which assesses each situation as well as an outlined Complaint Procedure which must be followed in order for an individual or organization to bring a violation to the attention of the council.

Human Rights Watch Functioning as another global organization, the Human Rights Watch protects human rights by investigating claims, holding abusers accountable of their actions, and monitoring and challenging governments to make sure that they are using their power to end abusive practices efficiently and to the fullest.

Istituto Comprensivo "Socrate" This Italian-based organization takes part in the practice they have named Preserving Human Rights: A Year-Long human Rights Education Course. This education course is a two semester class available to students ages 11 to 18. The class aims to familiarize students with the framework of human rights and educate them in regards to more contemporary issues. By educating the students with regards to these matters it is intended by the organization that they will then be able to take the knowledge they have gained and be able to develop a platform to initiate action and raise awareness of the issue at hand.

'John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights The John Humphrey Centre exists to promote the principles of the Universal Declaration of Peace and Human Rights through human rights education and learning. The organization develops curriculum, conducts training, works with children and youth, and fosters public discourse on matters of human rights.

National Association for the Advancement of Color People (NAACP) "The mission of the NAACP is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic quality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination”.

Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children

Namibian Legal Assistance Centre

People in Need People in Need developed a project called One World in Schools: Human Rights Documentary Films in which they provide teachers with films, over 260 of which are available, and other multimedia tools to assist in their education of human rights around the world. The purpose of the videos is to teach the students, specifically primary and secondary school aged students in the Czech Republic, the values of tolerance and respect by way of audio-visual stimulation.

Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE) The OSCE comprises fifty-six states from participating countries in Europe, Central Asia, and North America. The main focuses of the OSCE include the freedom of movement and religion. They specifically monitor torture prevention and human trafficking.

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Unlike many other organizations this office is not limited to a specific geographic area, but instead works to protection all human rights for all peoples. This organization also states within its mission statement it aims to "help empower people to realize their rights" versus many organizations which state that they wish to promote knowledge etc.

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees This organization has a specific target audience of refugees which it hopes to protect from violations of their rights. They aim to ensure that any person can seek a safe refuge in some place while remaining to have the option to return home, integrate at a new locale or resettle in a third location.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is a human rights organization which focuses on the international Jewish community. The Center addresses anti-Semitism including the hate and terrorism associated with it. By teaming up with Israel and cooperating closely with the Jewish religious community, the Center defends the safety of Jews worldwide and serves to educate others about Jewish history including but limited to the Holocaust.

Tostan Tostan is an international non-profit organization headquartered in Dakar, Senegal, operating in six countries across West Africa. Tostan's mission is to empower African communities to bring about sustainable development and positive social transformation based on respect for human rights. At the core of Tostan’s work is its 30-month Community Empowerment Program (CEP), which provides participatory human rights education in local languages to adults and adolescents who have not attended formal schools, primarily in remote regions.

United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization(UNESCO) "UNESCO’s goal is to build peace in the minds of men". The organization hopes to act as a catalyst for "regional, national, and international action in human rights".

US State Department Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Confined to the United States, the Department strives to take action against abuse of human rights. Although they are not particularly involved with the investigations, they are the enforcers and have partnered with many other organizations committed to protecting human rights.

Human rights education at schools

Several schools offer human rights education as part of their curriculum, for example linked subjects like History, Politics and Citizenship, but there are also specialised courses, such as Human Rights offered as part of the International Baccalaureate Diploma programme for high school students.

IB Human Rights is an academic subject containing units on:

• The theory of human rights
• The practise of human rights
• Contemporary human rights issues

In order to pass the course students are required to study for two years, take a final examination and produce a coursework.

As part of their diploma programme, students may also choose to write their Extended Essay on Human Rights. This is a 4000 word research paper focusing on human rights.

The IB Human Rights course was originally authored by Joni Mäkivirta, the developer of Cognitive Emotional Pedagogy. Part of the 2002 version of the IB Human Rights syllabus is at the Global Human Rights Education (HREA) website. Only part of the syllabus is available at the HREA website for copyright reasons.

The complete IB Human Rights syllabus that contains more details, including the assessment criteria, as well as the guide for the Human Rights Extended Essay can be acquired from the International Baccalaureate Organisation.

Some cities in the world have adopted a municipal law to stimulate successfully the HRE in the public schools, as the example of the Municipal Plan of HRE of the city of São Paulo (Decreto Nº 57.503, DE 6 DE Dezembro de 2016), in Brazil.

Human rights education uses in the 21st century

• As a strategy for development (Clarence Dias)
• As empowerment (Garth Meintjes)
• As a way of change for women’s rights (Dorota Gierycz)
• As a legal prospective and for law enforcement (Edy Kaufman)

Human rights education models

1. Values and awareness The Values and Awareness Model focuses on transmitting "basic knowledge of human rights issues and to foster its integration into public values" based on its philosophical-historical approach. This model is what people commonly think of when human rights are concerned with the target audience being the general public with topics including global human rights and more cultural based matters.

2. Accountability The Accountability Model is associated with the legal and political approach to human rights in which the learners which the model targets are already involved via professional roles. The model is incorporated by means of training and networking, covering topics such as court cases, codes of ethics, and how to deal with the media.

3. Transformational This model of education focuses on the psychological and sociological aspects of human rights. The topics towards which this model is effective are those including vulnerable populations and people with personal experiences effected by the topic, such as women and minorities. The model aims to empower the individual, such as those victims of abuse and trauma. The model is geared towards recognizing the abuse of human rights but is also committed to preventing these abuses.

4. Munir’s socioecoethical model of human rights education is an integrative approach to the applicability of HRE for teachers, educators and learners. It applies to formal, informal and non-formal educational settings in developed, developing and third world countries. This model emerged by applying grounded theory from learners and practitioners’ viewpoints, gathered from across 39 developing Asian countries. It is the result of 10 years of author’s local human rights practices, documentation and observation of HR practices across a range of teaching and learning settings particularly in the developing and the third world countries. Existing human rights education models proposed by Tibbitts (2017) is instrumental to promote human rights education across the developed countries. In Dr. Munir’s viewpoint, human right education practices should be categorized into formal, informal and non-formal education. Informal education is the source of learning human rights for children and female belonging to the marginalized communities, who do not have access to formal or non-formal education, whereas formal and non-formal education is the medium of learning human rights for everyone who have access to education informal educational settings . HRE is of utmost importance for all of them. Unless we accommodate HRE into informal education settings, parallel with formal and non-formal education, it is likely that these young minds will get inclined towards violence and radicalization. In the view of Sadruddin (2020), HRE is situated in context, thus requires educators to look at the sensitivities and sociocultural and political contexts of the under-developed and developing nations. According to Sadruddin (2020), human rights education should begin with assessing the sociocultural context and political will. What are the ideological practices of a particular country? Is there any social acceptance towards all HR values? Which HR values are sensitive to discuss? What are the cultural intakes on HR values? According to Sadruddin, the ideological clashes between conservatives and the liberal thoughts have always drawn line between acceptable and non-acceptable HR norms. Further, the educational constraints imposed by the fundamentalists in many parts of the world have perhaps discouraged policymakers from disseminating HR values. In addition, many developing and third world states strong oppose western human rights laws and values and consider it as a political weapon to harm the cultural value system. Therefore it is pertinent to highlight the sociocultural context, the acceptable values and the values that are in clash. The next stage is understanding and assessing the dynamism of ecological environment, i.e., convergence and divergence of human rights. It assesses the risks and opportunities of HRE at multiple levels, i.e., individual’s wellbeing, community and at policy making level. The third stage is ethrical stage. Moral reasoning and ethical ownership is at its disposition. Forth stage is assessing general knowledge and attitude towards HR. As an alternate, ethnography may work. After passing the initial phases, decisions about HRE content should be made. According to Sadruddin, human rights educators often extract/adapt the best practices/models of human rights curricula and course work from other countries, despite knowing that it is not reflective to the need of that particular country and could not sustain for long. They sometimes set lofty goals and create the momentum within bureaucracy and not actually reorganizing the issues in context. The foremost important thing is to add local content knowledge on HRE and filter the global HR knowledge that best fits the sociocultural context of that particular country. Adaption may work but all the resources should be socio-culturally fit. It should begin with local and shift towards the global. Next, self-empowerment skills such as critical thinking, rational based decision making, situation analysis, social and voluntary skills, digital literacy, peace building, negotiation, etc. Next comes values, that should be negotiated with the cultural context. Finally, teaching HRE alone does not ensure that there will be peace and unity in the world. The actual litmus test occurs in the society through the reflection of attitudes and action in a sustainable way that is often ignored.

Criticism

Sudbury model of democratic education schools maintain that values, human rights included, must be learned through experience as Aristotle said: "For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them." They adduce that for this purpose schools must encourage ethical behavior and personal responsibility. In order to achieve these goals schools must respect human rights in school by allowing students the three great freedoms—freedom of choice, freedom of action and freedom to bear the results of action—that constitute personal responsibility.

See also

• Children's rights education
• Democratic education
• Humanitarian education
• Peace education
• Educational technology
• Education for justice
• Education for sustainable development
• Outline of education
• List of education articles by country
• Progressive education

Social justice

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice

Social justice is justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society. In Western as well as in older Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals fulfill their societal roles and receive what was their due from society. In the current movements for social justice, the emphasis has been on the breaking of barriers for social mobility, the creation of safety nets and economic justice. Social justice assigns rights and duties in the institutions of society, which enables people to receive the basic benefits and burdens of cooperation. The relevant institutions often include taxation, social insurance, public health, public school, public services, labor law and regulation of markets, to ensure fair distribution of wealth, and equal opportunity.

Interpretations that relate justice to a reciprocal relationship to society are mediated by differences in cultural traditions, some of which emphasize the individual responsibility toward society and others the equilibrium between access to power and its responsible use. Hence, social justice is invoked today while reinterpreting historical figures such as Bartolomé de las Casas, in philosophical debates about differences among human beings, in efforts for gender, ethnic, and social equality, for advocating justice for migrants, prisoners, the environment, and the physically and developmentally disabled.

While concepts of social justice can be found in classical and Christian philosophical sources, from Plato and Aristotle to Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, the term “social justice” finds its earliest uses in the late 18^th century—albeit with unclear theoretical or practical meanings.  Thus the use of the term was early on subject to accusations of redundancy—are not all claims of justice “social”? – and of rhetorical flourish, perhaps, but not necessarily, related to amplifying one view of distributive justice. In the coining and definition of the term in the natural law social scientific treatise of Luigi Taparelli, SJ, in the early 1840s, Taparelli established the natural law principle that corresponded to the evangelical principle of brotherly love—i.e. social justice reflects the duty one has to one’s other self in the interdependent abstract unity of the human person in society. After the Revolutions of 1848 the term was popularized generically through the writings of Antonio Rosmini-Serbati. 

In the late industrial revolution, progressive American legal scholars began to use the term more, particularly Louis Brandeis and Roscoe Pound. From the early 20th century it was also embedded in international law and institutions; the preamble to establish the International Labour Organization recalled that "universal and lasting peace can be established only if it is based upon social justice." In the later 20th century, social justice was made central to the philosophy of the social contract, primarily by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice (1971). In 1993, the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action treats social justice as a purpose of human rights education.

History

Main articles: Social contract, Justice, Corrective justice, and Distributive justice

 

An artist's rendering of what Plato might have looked like. From Raphael's early 16th century painting Scuola di Atene.

The different concepts of justice, as discussed in ancient Western philosophy, were typically centered upon the community.

Roman copy in marble of a Greek bronze bust of Aristotle by Lysippos, c. 330 BC. The alabaster mantle is modern.

• Plato wrote in The Republic that it would be an ideal state that "every member of the community must be assigned to the class for which he finds himself best fitted." In an article for J.N.V University, author D.R. Bhandari says, "Justice is, for Plato, at once a part of human virtue and the bond, which joins man together in society. It is the identical quality that makes good and social. Justice is an order and duty of the parts of the soul, it is to the soul as health is to the body. Plato says that justice is not mere strength, but it is a harmonious strength. Justice is not the right of the stronger but the effective harmony of the whole. All moral conceptions revolve about the good of the whole-individual as well as social".
• Plato believed rights existed only between free people, and the law should take "account in the first instance of relations of inequality in which individuals are treated in proportion to their worth and only secondarily of relations of equality." Reflecting this time when slavery and subjugation of women was typical, ancient views of justice tended to reflect the rigid class systems that still prevailed. On the other hand, for the privileged groups, strong concepts of fairness and the community existed. Distributive justice was said by Aristotle to require that people were distributed goods and assets according to their merit.

Socrates

• Socrates (through Plato's dialogue Crito) is credited with developing the idea of a social contract, whereby people ought to follow the rules of a society, and accept its burdens because they have accepted its benefits. During the Middle Ages, religious scholars particularly, such as Thomas Aquinas continued discussion of justice in various ways, but ultimately connected being a good citizen to the purpose of serving God.

After the Renaissance and Reformation, the modern concept of social justice, as developing human potential, began to emerge through the work of a series of authors. Baruch Spinoza in On the Improvement of the Understanding (1677) contended that the one true aim of life should be to acquire "a human character much more stable than [one's] own", and to achieve this "pitch of perfection... The chief good is that he should arrive, together with other individuals if possible, at the possession of the aforesaid character." During the enlightenment and responding to the French and American Revolutions, Thomas Paine similarly wrote in The Rights of Man (1792) society should give "genius a fair and universal chance" and so "the construction of government ought to be such as to bring forward... all that extent of capacity which never fails to appear in revolutions."

Social justice has been traditionally credited to be coined by Jesuit priest Luigi Taparelli in the 1840s, but the expression is older

Although there is no certainty about the first use of the term "social justice", early sources can be found in Europe in the 18th century. Some references to the use of the expression are in articles of journals aligned with the spirit of the Enlightenment, in which social justice is described as an obligation of the monarch; also the term is present in books written by Catholic Italian theologians, notably members of the Society of Jesus. Thus, according to this sources and the context, social justice was another term for "the justice of society", the justice that rules the relations among individuals in society, without any mention to socio-economic equity or human dignity.

The usage of the term started to become more frequent by Catholic thinkers from the 1840s, beginning with the Jesuit Luigi Taparelli in Civiltà Cattolica, and based on the work of St. Thomas Aquinas. Taparelli argued that rival capitalist and socialist theories, based on subjective Cartesian thinking, undermined the unity of society present in Thomistic metaphysics as neither were sufficiently concerned with ethics. Writing in 1861, the influential British philosopher and economist, John Stuart Mill stated in Utilitarianism his view that "Society should treat all equally well who have deserved equally well of it, that is, who have deserved equally well absolutely. This is the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice; towards which all institutions, and the efforts of all virtuous citizens, should be made in the utmost degree to converge."

In the later 19th and early 20th century, social justice became an important theme in American political and legal philosophy, particularly in the work of John Dewey, Roscoe Pound and Louis Brandeis. One of the prime concerns was the Lochner era decisions of the US Supreme Court to strike down legislation passed by state governments and the Federal government for social and economic improvement, such as the eight-hour day or the right to join a trade union. After the First World War, the founding document of the International Labour Organization took up the same terminology in its preamble, stating that "peace can be established only if it is based on social justice". From this point, the discussion of social justice entered into mainstream legal and academic discourse.

In 1931, the Pope Pius XI explicitly referred to the expression, along with the concept of subsidiarity, for the first time in Catholic social teaching in the encyclical Quadragesimo anno. Then again in Divini Redemptoris, the church pointed out that the realization of social justice relied on the promotion of the dignity of human person. The same year, and because of the documented influence of Divini Redemptoris in its drafters, the Constitution of Ireland was the first one to establish the term as a principle of the economy in the State, and then other countries around the world did the same throughout the 20th century, even in socialist regimes such as the Cuban Constitution in 1976.

In the late 20th century, several liberal and conservative thinkers, notably Friedrich Hayek, rejected the concept by stating that it did not mean anything, or meant too many things. However the concept remained highly influential, particularly with its promotion by philosophers such as John Rawls. Even though the meaning of social justice varies, at least three common elements can be identified in the contemporary theories about it: a duty of the State to distribute certain vital means (such as economic, social, and cultural rights), the protection of human dignity, and affirmative actions to promote equal opportunities for everybody.

Contemporary theory

Philosophical perspectives

Cosmic values

Hunter Lewis' work promoting natural healthcare and sustainable economies advocates for conservation as a key premise in social justice. His manifesto on sustainability ties the continued thriving of human life to real conditions, the environment supporting that life, and associates injustice with the detrimental effects of unintended consequences of human actions. Quoting classical Greek thinkers like Epicurus on the good of pursuing happiness, Hunter also cites ornithologist, naturalist, and philosopher Alexander Skutch in his book Moral Foundations:

The common feature which unites the activities most consistently forbidden by the moral codes of civilized peoples is that by their very nature they cannot be both habitual and enduring, because they tend to destroy the conditions which make them possible.

Pope Benedict XVI cites Teilhard de Chardin in a vision of the cosmos as a 'living host' embracing an understanding of ecology that includes humanity's relationship to others, that pollution affects not just the natural world but interpersonal relations as well. Cosmic harmony, justice and peace are closely interrelated:

If you want to cultivate peace, protect creation.

In The Quest for Cosmic Justice, Thomas Sowell writes that seeking utopia, while admirable, may have disastrous effects if done without strong consideration of the economic underpinnings that support contemporary society.

John Rawls

Main article: John Rawls

Political philosopher John Rawls draws on the utilitarian insights of Bentham and Mill, the social contract ideas of John Locke, and the categorical imperative ideas of Kant. His first statement of principle was made in A Theory of Justice where he proposed that, "Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others." A deontological proposition that echoes Kant in framing the moral good of justice in absolutist terms. His views are definitively restated in Political Liberalism where society is seen "as a fair system of co-operation over time, from one generation to the next".

All societies have a basic structure of social, economic, and political institutions, both formal and informal. In testing how well these elements fit and work together, Rawls based a key test of legitimacy on the theories of social contract. To determine whether any particular system of collectively enforced social arrangements is legitimate, he argued that one must look for agreement by the people who are subject to it, but not necessarily to an objective notion of justice based on coherent ideological grounding. Obviously, not every citizen can be asked to participate in a poll to determine his or her consent to every proposal in which some degree of coercion is involved, so one has to assume that all citizens are reasonable. Rawls constructed an argument for a two-stage process to determine a citizen's hypothetical agreement:

• The citizen agrees to be represented by X for certain purposes, and, to that extent, X holds these powers as a trustee for the citizen.
• X agrees that enforcement in a particular social context is legitimate. The citizen, therefore, is bound by this decision because it is the function of the trustee to represent the citizen in this way.

This applies to one person who represents a small group (e.g., the organiser of a social event setting a dress code) as equally as it does to national governments, which are ultimate trustees, holding representative powers for the benefit of all citizens within their territorial boundaries. Governments that fail to provide for welfare of their citizens according to the principles of justice are not legitimate. To emphasise the general principle that justice should rise from the people and not be dictated by the law-making powers of governments, Rawls asserted that, "There is ... a general presumption against imposing legal and other restrictions on conduct without sufficient reason. But this presumption creates no special priority for any particular liberty." This is support for an unranked set of liberties that reasonable citizens in all states should respect and uphold — to some extent, the list proposed by Rawls matches the normative human rights that have international recognition and direct enforcement in some nation states where the citizens need encouragement to act in a way that fixes a greater degree of equality of outcome. According to Rawls, the basic liberties that every good society should guarantee are:

• Freedom of thought;
• Liberty of conscience as it affects social relationships on the grounds of religion, philosophy, and morality;
• Political liberties (e.g., representative democratic institutions, freedom of speech and the press, and freedom of assembly);
• Freedom of association;
• Freedoms necessary for the liberty and integrity of the person (namely: freedom from slavery, freedom of movement and a reasonable degree of freedom to choose one's occupation); and
• Rights and liberties covered by the rule of law.

Thomas Pogge

Thomas Pogge

Thomas Pogge's arguments pertain to a standard of social justice that creates human rights deficits. He assigns responsibility to those who actively cooperate in designing or imposing the social institution, that the order is foreseeable as harming the global poor and is reasonably avoidable. Pogge argues that social institutions have a negative duty to not harm the poor.

Pogge speaks of "institutional cosmopolitanism" and assigns responsibility to institutional schemes for deficits of human rights. An example given is slavery and third parties. A third party should not recognize or enforce slavery. The institutional order should be held responsible only for deprivations of human rights that it establishes or authorizes. The current institutional design, he says, systematically harms developing economies by enabling corporate tax evasion, illicit financial flows, corruption, trafficking of people and weapons. Joshua Cohen disputes his claims based on the fact that some poor countries have done well with the current institutional design. Elizabeth Kahn argues that some of these responsibilities should apply globally.

United Nations

The United Nations calls social justice "an underlying principle for peaceful and prosperous coexistence within and among nations.

The United Nations' 2006 document Social Justice in an Open World: The Role of the United Nations, states that "Social justice may be broadly understood as the fair and compassionate distribution of the fruits of economic growth ..."

The term "social justice" was seen by the U.N. "as a substitute for the protection of human rights [and] first appeared in United Nations texts during the second half of the 1960s. At the initiative of the Soviet Union, and with the support of developing countries, the term was used in the Declaration on Social Progress and Development, adopted in 1969."

The same document reports, "From the comprehensive global perspective shaped by the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, neglect of the pursuit of social justice in all its dimensions translates into de facto acceptance of a future marred by violence, repression and chaos." The report concludes, "Social justice is not possible without strong and coherent redistributive policies conceived and implemented by public agencies."

The same UN document offers a concise history: "[T]he notion of social justice is relatively new. None of history’s great philosophers—not Plato or Aristotle, or Confucius or Averroes, or even Rousseau or Kant—saw the need to consider justice or the redress of injustices from a social perspective. The concept first surfaced in Western thought and political language in the wake of the industrial revolution and the parallel development of the socialist doctrine. It emerged as an expression of protest against what was perceived as the capitalist exploitation of labour and as a focal point for the development of measures to improve the human condition. It was born as a revolutionary slogan embodying the ideals of progress and fraternity. Following the revolutions that shook Europe in the mid-1800s, social justice became a rallying cry for progressive thinkers and political activists.... By the mid-twentieth century, the concept of social justice had become central to the ideologies and programmes of virtually all the leftist and centrist political parties around the world ..."

Another key area of human rights and social justice is the United Nations's defense of children rights worldwide. In 1989, the Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted and available for signature, ratification and accession by General Assembly resolution 44/25. According to OHCHR, this convention entered into force on 2 September 1990. This convention upholds that all states have the obligation to "protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse."

Religious perspectives

Abrahamic religions

Christianity

See also: Christian ethics and Christian democracy

Evangelicalism

Time magazine noted that younger Evangelicals also increasingly engage in social justice. John Stott traced the call for social justice back to the cross, "The cross is a revelation of God's justice as well as of his love. That is why the community of the cross should concern itself with social justice as well as with loving philanthropy."

Methodism

From its founding, Methodism was a Christian social justice movement. Under John Wesley's direction, Methodists became leaders in many social justice issues of the day, including the prison reform and abolition movements. Wesley himself was among the first to preach for slaves rights attracting significant opposition.

Today, social justice plays a major role in the United Methodist Church and the Free Methodist Church. The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church says, "We hold governments responsible for the protection of the rights of the people to free and fair elections and to the freedoms of speech, religion, assembly, communications media, and petition for redress of grievances without fear of reprisal; to the right to privacy; and to the guarantee of the rights to adequate food, clothing, shelter, education, and health care." The United Methodist Church also teaches population control as part of its doctrine.

Catholicism

Main article: Catholic social teaching

Catholic social teaching consists of those aspects of Roman Catholic doctrine which relate to matters dealing with the respect of the individual human life. A distinctive feature of Catholic social doctrine is its concern for the poorest and most vulnerable members of society. Two of the seven key areas of "Catholic social teaching" are pertinent to social justice:

• Life and dignity of the human person: The foundational principle of all Catholic social teaching is the sanctity of all human life and the inherent dignity of every human person, from conception to natural death. Human life must be valued above all material possessions.
• Preferential option for the poor and vulnerable: Catholics believe Jesus taught that on the Day of Judgement God will ask what each person did to help the poor and needy: "Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me." The Catholic Church believes that through words, prayers and deeds one must show solidarity with, and compassion for, the poor. The moral test of any society is "how it treats its most vulnerable members. The poor have the most urgent moral claim on the conscience of the nation. People are called to look at public policy decisions in terms of how they affect the poor."

Modern Catholic social teaching is often thought to have begun with the encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII.

• Pope Leo XIII, who studied under Taparelli, published in 1891 the encyclical Rerum novarum (On the Condition of the Working Classes; lit. "On new things"), rejecting both socialism and capitalism, while defending labor unions and private property. He stated that society should be based on cooperation and not class conflict and competition. In this document, Leo set out the Catholic Church's response to the social instability and labor conflict that had arisen in the wake of industrialization and had led to the rise of socialism. The Pope advocated that the role of the state was to promote social justice through the protection of rights, while the church must speak out on social issues to teach correct social principles and ensure class harmony.
• The encyclical Quadragesimo anno (On Reconstruction of the Social Order, literally "in the fortieth year") of 1931 by Pope Pius XI, encourages a living wage, subsidiarity, and advocates that social justice is a personal virtue as well as an attribute of the social order, saying that society can be just only if individuals and institutions are just.
• Pope John Paul II added much to the corpus of the Catholic social teaching, penning three encyclicals which focus on issues such as economics, politics, geo-political situations, ownership of the means of production, private property and the "social mortgage", and private property. The encyclicals Laborem exercens, Sollicitudo rei socialis, and Centesimus annus are just a small portion of his overall contribution to Catholic social justice. Pope John Paul II was a strong advocate of justice and human rights, and spoke forcefully for the poor. He addresses issues such as the problems that technology can present should it be misused, and admits a fear that the "progress" of the world is not true progress at all, if it should denigrate the value of the human person. He argued in Centesimus annus that private property, markets, and honest labor were the keys to alleviating the miseries of the poor and to enabling a life that can express the fullness of the human person.
• Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical Deus caritas est ("God is Love") of 2006 claims that justice is the defining concern of the state and the central concern of politics, and not of the church, which has charity as its central social concern. It said that the laity has the specific responsibility of pursuing social justice in civil society and that the church's active role in social justice should be to inform the debate, using reason and natural law, and also by providing moral and spiritual formation for those involved in politics.
• The official Catholic doctrine on social justice can be found in the book Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, published in 2004 and updated in 2006, by the Pontifical Council Iustitia et Pax.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§§ 1928–1948) contains more detail of the church's view of social justice.

Islam

In Muslim history, Islamic governance has often been associated with social justice. Establishment of social justice was one of the motivating factors of the Abbasid revolt against the Umayyads. The Shi'a believe that the return of the Mahdi will herald in "the messianic age of justice" and the Mahdi along with the Isa (Jesus) will end plunder, torture, oppression and discrimination.

For the Muslim Brotherhood the implementation of social justice would require the rejection of consumerism and communism. The Brotherhood strongly affirmed the right to private property as well as differences in personal wealth due to factors such as hard work. However, the Brotherhood held Muslims had an obligation to assist those Muslims in need. It held that zakat (alms-giving) was not voluntary charity, but rather the poor had the right to assistance from the more fortunate. Most Islamic governments therefore enforce the zakat through taxes.

Judaism

Main article: Tikkun olam

In To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks states that social justice has a central place in Judaism. One of Judaism's most distinctive and challenging ideas is its ethics of responsibility reflected in the concepts of simcha ("gladness" or "joy"), tzedakah ("the religious obligation to perform charity and philanthropic acts"), chesed ("deeds of kindness"), and tikkun olam ("repairing the world").

Eastern religions

Hinduism

The present-day Jāti hierarchy is undergoing changes for a variety of reasons including 'social justice', which is a politically popular stance in democratic India. Institutionalized affirmative action has promoted this. The disparity and wide inequalities in social behaviour of the jātis – exclusive, endogamous communities centred on traditional occupations – has led to various reform movements in Hinduism. While legally outlawed, the caste system remains strong in practice.

Traditional Chinese religion

Main article: Mandate of Heaven

The Chinese concept of Tian Ming has occasionally been perceived as an expression of social justice. Through it, the deposition of unfair rulers is justified in that civic dissatisfaction and economical disasters is perceived as Heaven withdrawing its favor from the Emperor. A successful rebellion is considered definite proof that the Emperor is unfit to rule.

Social justice movements

Social justice is also a concept that is used to describe the movement towards a socially just world, e.g., the Global Justice Movement. In this context, social justice is based on the concepts of human rights and equality, and can be defined as "the way in which human rights are manifested in the everyday lives of people at every level of society".

Several movements are working to achieve social justice in society. These movements are working toward the realization of a world where all members of a society, regardless of background or procedural justice, have basic human rights and equal access to the benefits of their society.

Liberation theology

Main article: Liberation theology

Liberation theology is a movement in Christian theology which conveys the teachings of Jesus Christ in terms of a liberation from unjust economic, political, or social conditions. It has been described by proponents as "an interpretation of Christian faith through the poor's suffering, their struggle and hope, and a critique of society and the Catholic faith and Christianity through the eyes of the poor", and by detractors as Christianity perverted by Marxism and Communism.

Although liberation theology has grown into an international and inter-denominational movement, it began as a movement within the Catholic Church in Latin America in the 1950s–1960s. It arose principally as a moral reaction to the poverty caused by social injustice in that region. It achieved prominence in the 1970s and 1980s. The term was coined by the Peruvian priest, Gustavo Gutiérrez, who wrote one of the movement's most famous books, A Theology of Liberation (1971). According to Sarah Kleeb, "Marx would surely take issue," she writes, "with the appropriation of his works in a religious context...there is no way to reconcile Marx's views of religion with those of Gutierrez, they are simply incompatible. Despite this, in terms of their understanding of the necessity of a just and righteous world, and the nearly inevitable obstructions along such a path, the two have much in common; and, particularly in the first edition of [A Theology of Liberation], the use of Marxian theory is quite evident."

Other noted exponents are Leonardo Boff of Brazil, Carlos Mugica of Argentina, Jon Sobrino of El Salvador, and Juan Luis Segundo of Uruguay.

Health care

Social justice has more recently made its way into the field of bioethics. Discussion involves topics such as affordable access to health care, especially for low income households and families. The discussion also raises questions such as whether society should bear healthcare costs for low income families, and whether the global marketplace is the best way to distribute healthcare. Ruth Faden of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and Madison Powers of Georgetown University focus their analysis of social justice on which inequalities matter the most. They develop a social justice theory that answers some of these questions in concrete settings.

Social injustices occur when there is a preventable difference in health states among a population of people. These social injustices take the form of health inequities when negative health states such as malnourishment, and infectious diseases are more prevalent in impoverished nations. These negative health states can often be prevented by providing social and economic structures such as primary healthcare which ensures the general population has equal access to health care services regardless of income level, gender, education or any other stratifying factors. Integrating social justice with health inherently reflects the social determinants of health model without discounting the role of the bio-medical model.

Health inequalities

The sources of health inequalities are rooted in injustices associated with racism, sex discrimination, and social class. Richard Hofrichter and his colleagues examine the political implications of various perspectives used to explain health inequities and explore alternative strategies for eliminating them.

Human rights education

Main article: Human rights education

The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action affirm that "Human rights education should include peace, democracy, development and social justice, as set forth in international and regional human rights instruments, to achieve common understanding and awareness to strengthen universal commitment to human rights."

Ecology and environment

Main articles: Climate justice and environmental justice

Social justice principles are embedded in the larger environmental movement. The third principle of the Earth Charter is social and economic justice, which is described as seeking to eradicate poverty as an ethical, social, and environmental imperative, ensure that economic activities and institutions at all levels promote human development in an equitable and sustainable manner, affirm gender equality and equity as prerequisites to sustainable development and ensure universal access to education, health care, and economic opportunity, and uphold the right of all, without discrimination, to a natural and social environment supportive of human dignity, bodily health, and spiritual well-being, with special attention to the rights of indigenous peoples and minorities.

The climate justice and environmental justice movements also incorporate social justice principles, ideas, and practices. Climate justice and environmental justice, as movements within the larger ecological and environmental movement, each incorporate social justice in a particular way. Climate justice includes concern for social justice pertaining to greenhouse gas emissions, climate-induced environmental displacement, as well as climate change mitigation and adaptation. Environmental justice includes concern for social justice pertaining to either environmental benefits or environmental pollution based on their equitable distribution across communities of color, communities of various socio and economic stratification, or any other barriers to justice.

Criticism

Michael Novak argues that social justice has seldom been adequately defined, arguing:

[W]hole books and treatises have been written about social justice without ever defining it. It is allowed to float in the air as if everyone will recognize an instance of it when it appears. This vagueness seems indispensable. The minute one begins to define social justice, one runs into embarrassing intellectual difficulties. It becomes, most often, a term of art whose operational meaning is, "We need a law against that." In other words, it becomes an instrument of ideological intimidation, for the purpose of gaining the power of legal coercion.

Friedrich Hayek of the Austrian School of economics rejected the very idea of social justice as meaningless, self-contradictory, and ideological, believing that to realize any degree of social justice is unfeasible, and that the attempt to do so must destroy all liberty:

There can be no test by which we can discover what is 'socially unjust' because there is no subject by which such an injustice can be committed, and there are no rules of individual conduct the observance of which in the market order would secure to the individuals and groups the position which as such (as distinguished from the procedure by which it is determined) would appear just to us. [Social justice] does not belong to the category of error but to that of nonsense, like the term 'a moral stone'.

Hayek argued that proponents of social justice often present it as a moral virtue but most of their descriptions pertain to impersonal states of affairs (e.g. income inequality, poverty), which are cited as "social injustice." Hayek argued that social justice is either a virtue or it is not. If it is, it can only be ascribed to the actions of individuals. However, most who use the term ascribe it to social systems, so "social justice" in fact describes a regulative principle of order; they are interested not in virtue but power. For Hayek, this notion of social justices presupposes that people are guided by specific external directions rather than internal, personal rules of just conduct. It further presupposes that one can never be held accountable for ones own behaviour, as this would be "blaming the victim." According to Hayek, the function of social justice is to blame someone else, often attributed to "the system" or those who are supposed, mythically, to control it. Thus it is based on the appealing idea of "you suffer; your suffering is caused by powerful others; these oppressors must be destroyed."

Ben O'Neill of the University of New South Wales and the Mises Institute argues:

[For advocates of "social justice"] the notion of "rights" is a mere term of entitlement, indicative of a claim for any possible desirable good, no matter how important or trivial, abstract or tangible, recent or ancient. It is merely an assertion of desire, and a declaration of intention to use the language of rights to acquire said desire. In fact, since the program of social justice inevitably involves claims for government provision of goods, paid for through the efforts of others, the term actually refers to an intention to use force to acquire one's desires. Not to earn desirable goods by rational thought and action, production and voluntary exchange, but to go in there and forcibly take goods from those who can supply them!

See also

• Activism
• "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence", one of many pro–social justice speeches delivered by Martin Luther King Jr.
• Choosing the Common Good
• Counterculture of the 1960s
• Education for Justice
• Environmental racism
• Essentially contested concept
• Global justice
• Labour law and labour rights
• Left-wing politics
• Resource justice
• Right to education
• Right to health
• Right to housing
• Right to social security
• Social justice art
• Social justice warrior
• Social law
• Social work
• Solidarity
• National Union for Social Justice (organization)
• World Day of Social Justice

 

Progressivism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism

Progressivism is a political philosophy in support of social reform. Based on the idea of progress in which advancements in science, technology, economic development and social organization are vital to the improvement of the human condition, progressivism became highly significant during the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, out of the belief that Europe was demonstrating that societies could progress in civility from uncivilized conditions to civilization through strengthening the basis of empirical knowledge as the foundation of society. Figures of the Enlightenment believed that progress had universal application to all societies and that these ideas would spread across the world from Europe.

The contemporary common political conception of progressivism emerged from the vast social changes brought about by industrialization in the Western world in the late 19th century. Progressives take the view that progress is being stifled by vast economic inequality between the rich and the poor; minimally regulated laissez-faire capitalism with monopolistic corporations; and the intense and often violent conflict between those perceived to be privileged and unprivileged, arguing that measures were needed to address these problems.

The meaning of progressivism has varied over time and differs depending on perspective. Early-20th century progressivism was tied to eugenics and the temperance movement, both of which were promoted in the name of public health and as initiatives toward that goal. Contemporary progressives promote public policies that they believe will lead to positive social change. In the 21st century, a movement that identifies as progressive is "a social or political movement that aims to represent the interests of ordinary people through political change and the support of government actions".

History

From the Enlightenment to the Industrial Revolution

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant identified progress as being a movement away from barbarism towards civilization. 18th-century philosopher and political scientist Marquis de Condorcet predicted that political progress would involve the disappearance of slavery, the rise of literacy, the lessening of sex inequality, prison reforms which at the time were harsh and the decline of poverty.

Modernity or modernization was a key form of the idea of progress as promoted by classical liberals in the 19th and 20th centuries who called for the rapid modernization of the economy and society to remove the traditional hindrances to free markets and free movements of people.

John Stuart Mill

In the late 19th century, a political view rose in popularity in the Western world that progress was being stifled by vast economic inequality between the rich and the poor, minimally regulated laissez-faire capitalism with out-of-control monopolistic corporations, intense and often violent conflict between capitalists and workers, with a need for measures to address these problems. Progressivism has influenced various political movements. Social liberalism was influenced by British liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill's conception of people being "progressive beings". British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli developed progressive conservatism under one-nation Toryism.

In France, the space between social revolution and the socially-conservative laissez-faire centre-right was filled with the emergence of radicalism which thought that social progress required anti-clericalism, humanism and republicanism. Especially anti-clericalism was the dominant influence on the centre-left in many French- and Romance-speaking countries until the mid 20th-century. In Imperial Germany, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck enacted various progressive social welfare measures out of paternalistic conservative motivations to distance workers from the socialist movement of the time and as humane ways to assist in maintaining the Industrial Revolution.

In 1891, the Roman Catholic Church encyclical Rerum novarum issued by Pope Leo XIII condemned the exploitation of labour and urged support for labour unions and government regulation of businesses in the interests of social justice while upholding the right to property and criticizing socialism. A Protestant progressive outlook called the Social Gospel emerged in North America that focused on challenging economic exploitation and poverty and by the mid-1890s was common in many Protestant theological seminaries in the United States.

Contemporary mainstream political conception to the philosophy

Theodore Roosevelt

In the United States, progressivism began as an intellectual rebellion against the political philosophy of Constitutionalism as expressed by John Locke and the founders of the American Republic, whereby the authority of government depends on observing limitations on its just powers. What began as a social movement in the 1890s, grew into a popular political movement referred to as the Progressive era; in the 1912 United States presidential election, all three U.S. presidential candidates claimed to be progressives. While the term progressivism represent a range of diverse political pressure groups, not always united, progressives rejected social Darwinism, believing that the problems society faced such as class warfare, greed, poverty, racism and violence could best be addressed by providing good education, a safe environment and an efficient workplace. Progressives lived mainly in the cities, were college educated and believed that government could be a tool for change. President Theodore Roosevelt of the Republican Party and later the Progressive Party declared that he "always believed that wise progressivism and wise conservatism go hand in hand".

Woodrow Wilson

President Woodrow Wilson was also a member of the American progressive movement within the Democratic Party. Progressive stances have evolved over time. Imperialism was a controversial issue within progressivism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly in the United States, where some progressives supported American imperialism while others opposed it. In response to World War I, President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points established the concept of national self-determination and criticized imperialist competition and colonial injustices. These views were supported by anti-imperialists in areas of the world that were resisting imperial rule.

During the period of acceptance of economic Keynesianism (1930s–1970s), there was widespread acceptance in many nations of a large role for state intervention in the economy. With the rise of neoliberalism and challenges to state interventionist policies in the 1970s and 1980s, centre-left progressive movements responded by adopting the Third Way that emphasized a major role for the market economy. There have been social democrats who have called for the social-democratic movement to move past Third Way. Prominent progressive conservative elements in the British Conservative Party have criticized neoliberalism.

In the 21st century, progressives continue to favour public policy that reduces or ameliorates the harmful effects of economic inequality as well as systemic discrimination such as institutional racism; to advocate for environmentally conscious policies as well as for social safety nets and workers' rights; and to oppose the negative externalities inflicted on the environment and society by monopolies or corporate influence on the democratic process. The unifying theme is to call attention to the negative impacts of current institutions or ways of doing things and to advocate for social progress, i.e. for positive change as defined by any of several standards such as expansion of democracy, increased egalitarianism in the form of economic and social equality as well as improved well being of a population. Proponents of social democracy have identified themselves as promoting the progressive cause.

See also

• Australian Progressives
• Affirmative action
• Centre-left politics
• Democracy
• Democratic socialism
• Green politics
• Left-wing politics
• Liberalism
• Jim Anderton's Progressive Party
• Managerial state
• Modern liberalism in the United States
• Progressive conservatism
• Progressive Era
• Progressive Party of Canada
• Progressive Party (United States, 1912)
• Progressive Party (United States, 1924–34)
• Progressive Party (United States, 1948)
• Progressive tax
• Progressivism in the United States
• Radical centrism
• Radicalism (historical)
• Secularism
• Social Justice
• Secular liberalism
• Social democracy
• Socialism
• Transhumanism
• Transhumanist politics
• Techno-progressivism