Max Tallberg
In our recent blog posts and podcast episodes, we have explored Western theories of justice and related themes that have influenced – and continue to influence – our thinking on justice. We conclude this series with two blog posts, the first of which examines whether justice prevails in the present-day world. In the second, I reflect on what a just world might be like. Questions of justice are rightly at the heart of the moral reflections. However, the debate on justice and ethics is not only relevant from the viewpoint of philosophical reflection. Above all, this debate has been pursued since justice is a central concept in the study of human life, social relations, and societies, including on a practical level. All human beings seem to have a sense of morality – the ability to judge how to act in social contexts. The experience of justice – or rather of injustice – is the key element of this judgement: people recognise and react to situations that they perceive as unjust. In turn, an unjust society or aspects of human life within it in also affect the society and its society as a whole. For example, if employees in a single workplace perceive their pay to be unfair compared to another group within the same workplace, the aggregate productivity of workers in the workplace as a whole is likely fall.
Justice is closely connected with other concepts of ethical reflection than the mere experience of injustice. Equality is one of the most important of these. Indeed, justice is always associated with the notion of equality at some level, at least if we look at it from the present-day perspective and that of our association. It is also clear that a just and equal world is one in which universal human rights are realised. This means that all people are guaranteed nationally enshrined basic fundamental rights as well as the fulfilment of fundamental basic needs. It is this holistic approach that is at the core of the values endorsed by Global Visions: all people in the world should be guaranteed the conditions for a good life and all should be practically equal. This is why the approach and perspective of this text is above all global. When a just world is considered, the important demand should be stressed that all people in the world should have real, equal and fair opportunities to pursue a pleasant, better, and dignified life – regardless of their birth and external circumstances.
When looking at the present-day world, a good place to start is by looking at the historical developments that have led to the current situation. It is fair to say that the world has made enormous progress in the last two centuries. The historical analysis of world poverty is an obvious part of this development and a key indicator of justice. In 1820, most of the world’s population lived in absolute poverty, unable to meet the minimum standards of a dignified life, while only a small elite enjoyed a higher standard of living. In 1970, the number of people living in absolute poverty was the highest in history, at 2.2 billion individuals. Thus, in 150 years, there had been no positive development in this area. In 1981, when the World Bank started collecting data on global poverty, it found that 44% of humanity was living in absolute poverty. In 1990, this figure was 36%.
Yet, as we entered the 21st century, huge progress has been made in the fight against poverty. In 2000, the UN Millennium Development Goals set the target that by 2015, global poverty should be halved from its 1990 level. This was achieved ahead of schedule in 2010. Significant progress has also been made in other areas apparently related to justice and equality: Education is the one of the most important of these, as it can rightly be seen as one of most important means for individuals to pursue a better life for themselves. In 1800, only less than 100 million people could read and write, while today 4.6 billion people are literate. By the 2000s, 16% of the children in the world were not in school, while today the figure is half of that, at 8%. It is therefore fair to say that the modern world has made progress in many areas regarding justice. There is a clear reduction in poverty, while at the same time an increasing proportion of the world’s population have access to education. There is also a growing number of actors in the world who are focused on creating a better world. These include many UN organisations, funds and programmes, various charities, and aid agencies, but also the frameworks that underpin a just world, such as international human rights treaties, legal systems and democratic political governance. It could be argued that the world today is more just than ever before.
This does not mean, however, that justice would prevail de facto in the present-day world, even if there has been obvious progress from a historical point of view. For example, in 2023, 9.2% of the world’s population are still living on less than $2.15 a day. Such absolute poverty – defined as a life in which individuals cannot afford to meet basic needs such as food, shelter, and clothing – is concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa; 24% of the world’s population i.e. 1.9 billion people live in vulnerable position, where living conditions are impoverished and scarce. In terms of education, although the number of children not attending school has halved, the figure is still 58 million. It is therefore clear that the modern world cannot guarantee all the world’s citizens a dignified and good life, or a genuine opportunity to pursue it. People are also still discriminated against on grounds such as ethnicity, religion, and gender – despite the progress made in this area in the 20th and early 21st centuries.
There are also still fundamental problems in the developed countries when viewed in the light of the requirements of this text. In the United States, for example, more than 37 million people will be living in poverty in 2021. Of this number, 11.1 million were children. It is also reasonable to argue that we are still living in class societies, and social class is still strongly inherited. In England, for example, social mobility is only slightly higher today than in the pre-industrial era. Thus, people still born into disadvantaged circumstances have fewer actual opportunities to improve their lives significantly. In OECD countries (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) in Europe, children born into the most disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds earn up to 20% less as adults than those born into better circumstances. In OECD countries it is also seen that it takes almost five generations for children born into low-income families to reach the level of those enjoying the average earnings in their country. Similarly, OECD citizens believe in the power of class society: they estimate that six out of ten poor children remain poor once they reach adulthood. In general, wealth is also unevenly distributed in OECD countries: the richest decile owns more than half of the financial wealth of households in the whole country. In OECD countries, this unequal distribution of wealth is also reflected in the education and related expectations of young people from the poorest families: only half of them expect to complete higher education compared with wealthy families where more than four in five children is expected to complete higher education. These different expectations are reflected not only in later income levels (as we have already seen) but also in health. Such expectations also contribute to the fact that children of parents with a tertiary education are 45% more likely to graduate from university compared to children of parents without a secondary education. It is therefore reasonable to suggest that a large proportion of people in OECD countries do not have a genuine enough opportunity to pursue a significantly better life for themselves. The life course is therefore still strongly determined by inherited wealth and socio-economic status.
In the light of this information, we can now turn to the question of whether the justice prevails in the present-day world. It is clear that the answer to this question depends on each individual’s own worldview and values. Just as it is not possible to create an exhaustive and definitive theory of justice, it is hardly ever possible to claim that the real world is unequivocally just. However, focusing on values and their context can bring us closer to a well-founded answer. As noted earlier, human beings have an inherent moral compass and a strong experience, if not directly of justice, at least of injustice. In this context, the global perspective on justice is adopted as mentioned before: arguably that all people in the world should be treated with dignity, fairness and equality. Here it may be useful to distinguish between two different perspectives on justice, which are coined here as individual and social. The individual perspective advocates an approach according to which each human individual is responsible for his or her own happiness and has a decisive influence on the course of his or her life. According to this perspective, happiness is also primarily a subjective, individual experience. Thus, the happiness or well-being experienced by others does not affect the individual’s own happiness. In political philosophy, neoliberals and libertarians advocate this approach. The individualist approach would also not place much weight on the influence of heredity on people’s chances of success in life; rather, success is a matter of one’s own hard work and the benefits achieved through it. According to this way of thinking, a just world would be one in which only self-determination, freedom of choice and equality of opportunity are guaranteed.
The other, opposite perspective could be called social. It would argue that human well-being is always primarily tied to social and societal conditions; the well-being and ill-being of both the individual and others radiate to each other reciprocally. Thus, societies should be constructed in such a way as to enable collective well-being. The perspective would also suggest that one’s background and heredity strongly influence future success and life performance. Therefore, success would not depend solely on the individual’s own efforts. This would also lead to the view that differences in family background, talent, innate characteristics, and personality should be compensated for at the societal level, for example through progressive taxation and different forms of support. Thus, merely achieving equality of opportunity would not guarantee the prevalence of justice in the world. It is therefore unclear what equality of opportunity would mean in practice, when viewed from a social perspective that emphasises the dependence of human happiness and well-being on other people. A social perspective would also highlight the fact that people do not always know how to use their freedom in ways that promote the happiness and well-being of others or even of themselves. Therefore, also at the societal level, people should be encouraged to make rational choices and discouraged from taking excessive risks. At the same time, individuals whose happiness and well-being suffer because of their own poor choices should also be supported. This would shift the emphasis from neoliberalism’s emphasis on unlimited freedom to a concept of enlightened freedom and the view that human beings fundamentally find their meaning in relation to others. A prosperous society would thus be defined above all by caring for all its members; caring for the most vulnerable would ultimately benefit the most well-off. Since humans are social beings, their successes and failures cannot be viewed in isolation from their relationship with others. For these reasons, this view of justice and the values that go with should be considered strongly supportable.
So, what does the present-day world look like from the perspective of justice? It seems clear that the modern world cannot be considered as one where justice prevails. This is particularly true when we look at the realisation of justice at a global level; it is evident that a large proportion of the world’s population does not have a real opportunity to pursue a dignified and good life – whether it is to rise above the poverty line or to have realistic opportunities for education. Thus, the individual perspective approach to justice that was highlighted earlier is not a sustainable one – especially in the global context. Thus, the social perspective and values outlined should be considered as a more fruitful and constructive approach to justice.
It is also legitimate to argue that the situation in developed countries is not just either from the point of view of the individual or of society. Family background, inherited advantages and characteristics still determine too much the future of the individual and the opportunities associated with it. It is also clear that investing in greater collective well-being would also allow for greater individual well-being. For example, it has been seen that in an equal society, also the privileged are better off than in an unequal society. This is also clear at the global level: helping people in sub-Saharan Africa and, more broadly, in the so-called Global South, to move towards sustainable development would benefit the developed countries as well in the long run. Moreover, from a moral point of view, providing this assistance is also an absolute obligation of the better off. Already in 1948, the UN Declaration of Human Rights made it an obligation to pursue such a world. Unmitigated climate change and other environmental disasters will also lead to a situation in which the citizens of the Global South will suffer the consequences of these ecological crises. This, in turn, would undermine the wider global situation and security. It is therefore more important than ever to ensure that all people in the world today have the conditions for a dignified life and the opportunity to pursue a dignified and good life.
Finally, it is also worth pointing out that there are many unjust events in the world that are beyond the direct control of humanity. People will always harm each other without a chance of a complete external preventive action. Natural disasters and accidents are also obvious examples of tragic events that cannot always be foreseen. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis have caused enormous human suffering throughout history and will continue to do so in the future. But rather than preventing these events, we can influence how national and international politics and its structures work: how humanity treats its members in general and what a just world would look like – to the extent that humanity can collectively influence it. This is the subject of the next blog post.
Sources:
Cohn, Alain, Fehr, Ernst & Goette, Lorenz (2008) Fairness and Effort-Evidence from a Field Experiment. Management Science.
Cohn, Alain et al. (2011). Social Comparison in the Workplace: Evidence from a Field Experiment, IZA Discussion Paper No. 5550. SSRN.
Soininvaara, O. (2021) Sociopolitics for the 2020s. Helsinki.
Wilkinson, R. & Pickett, K. (2011) The spirit level : why greater equality makes societies stronger. New York: Bloomsbury Press.
https://www.oecd.org/stories/social-mobility/
https://www.oecd.org/dac/states-of-fragility-fa5a6770-en.htm
