by any means necessary?

By any means necessary?

A liberal theory of social justice activism

Temitayo Ogunye

Contents

Chapter 1

Introduction

Chapter 2

An intersectional approach to grounding remedial duties

Chapter 3

Three sites of social justice activism

Chapter 4

Law, political authority, and the ethics of radical activism

Chapter 5

Social norms, civil society, and the ethics of informal activism

Chapter 6

Stereotypes, social environments, and social justice activism

Chapter 7

Conclusion: a liberal theory of social justice activism

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Chapter 1: Introduction

ideal thinkers who want to have some impact on reality should pay more attention to issues of transition.

Wolff 1998:113

Justice is probably the most commonly invoked value in contemporary political philosophy, and social justice is perhaps the most frequently discussed variant of this value. Rival theories of social justice abound, varying across multiple dimensions, but one feature very many accounts share is that they focus on describing and defending what each account takes to be the perfectly just society. Borrowing terminology coined by John Rawls, let us call any theory that purports to describe the perfectly just society an ideal theory of social justice, and let us call any account that seeks to explain how it is that perfect social justice is to be achieved or worked towards a nonideal theory.

Rawls famously focuses most of his scholarly attention on developing the former, and only a very small proportion of his work is concerned with the latter. This is not because Rawls holds the implausible view that nonideal theory is somehow uninteresting or unimportant. He insists that the issues covered by nonideal theory are the pressing and urgent matters. the things we are faced with in everyday life. Instead, Rawls's stated rationale for focusing primarily on ideal theory over nonideal theory is that this

offers the only basis for the systematic grasp of these more pressing problems (Rawls 1999a:8). As he puts it: until the ideal is identified. nonideal theory lacks an objective, an aim, by reference to which its queries can be answered (Rawls 1999b:90). Perhaps unsurprisingly given his influence in contemporary political philosophy, Rawls's position on the priority of ideal over nonideal theory is emblematic of a wider literature in which there are very many rival accounts of the perfectly just society, but comparatively little has been said about how it is that perfect social justice is to be achieved or progressed towards from real-world circumstances that all agree are unjust.

My aim in this dissertation is to develop an account of how to advance social justice and remedy social injustice. Let us label any attempt to advance social justice and remedy social injustice social justice activism. Social justice activism is the subject of nonideal theory and so the contribution I intend to make in this dissertation can be described either as an account of nonideal theory or as a theory of social justice activism; 4

I will typically use the latter formulation. More specifically, my aim in this dissertation is to buck the trend in the literature described in the previous paragraph in two ways: not only will I undertake the neglected task of developing a theory of social justice activism, but I will do so without first endorsing a fully-developed theory of the perfectly just society. In this introduction, I will first provide some context for the aim just described.

Then, I will outline the account of social justice activism I will develop to deliver on that aim.

0.1. The challenge of developing of theory of social justice activism without endorsing a fully-developed ideal theory

To understand the context for my aim of developing a theory of social justice activism without first endorsing a fully-developed ideal theory of social justice, we must first understand the rationale for prioritising ideal over nonideal theory in more detail. The rationale is not that one cannot tell what counts as an injustice - and so what one would wish to see remedied - in the absence of a theory of the perfectly just society. Ideal theory is not necessary to identify the most egregious and uncontroversial social injustices. As Amartya Sen observes, just as we don't need to know that Everest is the tallest mountain in the world in order to compare two smaller mountains and to see which one is taller, so we do not need to know what perfect social justice entails in order to know that a society in which slavery has been successfully abolished, say, constitutes an improvement on an otherwise identical society in which slavery is widely practised (Sen 2006:221-2).

Instead, the rationale for prioritising ideal over nonideal theory is that we do not want whatever incremental steps we take in the short term to foreclose the possibility of much more ambitious gains at a later date. In other words, we need to chart a viable route - a

navigation map (Robeyns 2012:160) - from where we are to where we eventually want to be. But, clearly, in order to do that we need to know where it is that we eventually want to be - that is, we need to know what perfect social justice looks like. As A. John Simmons notes, building on Sen's Everest analogy,

which of two smaller 'peaks' of justice is higher (or more just) is a judgment that matters conclusively only if they are both equally feasible paths to the highest peak of perfect justice. And in order to endorse a route to that highest peak, we certainly do need to know which one that highest peak is (Simmons 2010:35 italics in original).

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However, given the sheer variety of rival accounts of perfect social justice that political philosophers have produced, the rationale for prioritising ideal over nonideal theory just offered would seem to suggest that there is simply no prospect for agreement about a theory of social justice activism. If this is the case, then nonideal theory is likely to be inescapably partisan; each of the competing social justice factions will have a different account of the final destination to be arrived at and so of the route to get there.

0.2. Overcoming the challenge by assuming the core of ideal theory I think that it is possible to develop a theory of social justice activism that is more ecumenical than this pessimistic but tempting thought suggests. I say this because, though there are exceptions, it seems to me that there is far more agreement amongst political philosophers regarding what perfect social justice entails than is typically acknowledged. Put simply, while there may be a very wide variety of final destinations, starting from where we are, many theories demand that - for the time being at least - we move in the same direction on the same motorway and make the same pit-stops.

There are three areas of agreement I would like to highlight in particular. First, arguably many political philosophers would agree that, in a perfectly just society, all citizens would enjoy equal and secure access to the content of certain rights. These include the right to bodily integrity, the right to freedom of thought, the right to freedom of expression, the right to freedom of association, and the right to vote and stand for political office. Second, it seems to me that many political philosophers would agree that, in a perfectly just society, all citizens would be entitled to a minimum level of resources, such that no one is forced by material necessity to starve or live a life that lacks basic decency. Of course, many theories of perfect social justice have prescriptions related to access to and the distribution of resources that are much more demanding and complicated than this. Nevertheless, I think that secure access to a minimum level of resources is the very least most ideal theories would require. Finally, amongst those political philosophers who allow that a perfectly just society would contain unequal positions when it comes to authority or income, many would agree that all citizens should 6

have fair opportunities to develop their talents and compete for these more advantaged positions.1

I want to suggest that these three requirements - that all citizens enjoy equal basic civil and political rights; that all citizens are entitled to at least the minimum level of resources necessary to avoid starvation and degradation; and that, if unequal positions of authority and income are permitted at all, al must have fair opportunities to compete for them - would be included in any plausible and complete ideal theory. Put another way, while there are many rival ideal theories of social justice which differ in various ways, all plausible and complete ideal theories will have certain things in common. I want to suggest that the three requirements just mentioned will be amongst these things held in common. Let us call those features which are common to all plausible and complete theories of the perfectly just society the core of ideal theory.2 Though I provide some arguments in support of some features of the core of ideal theory in chapter 4 of this dissertation, for the most part I will seek to develop a theory of social justice activism on the assumption that the core of ideal theory is settled and so not up for debate. I will take no stand on what perfect social justice requires over and above the core of ideal theory.

Most, perhaps all, contemporary societies fall short of the core of ideal theory as I have described it. Moreover, the fact that we are in possession of the core of ideal theory means that it is possible to develop an account of social justice activism that is ecumenical, despite the ongoing debate about what perfect social justice entails. That is, we can begin to address the 'pressing and urgent' questions of nonideal theory without a fully-developed account of the ideal. This is compatible with the rationale for prioritising ideal over nonideal theory. The claim is not that we do not need ideal theory, but that

"enough of ideal theory is settled that we can already begin to derive from it (conjoined 1 The scope of political philosophers who can endorse these commitments ranges from (some) libertarians (e.g., Lomasky 1987) to liberal egalitarians (e.g., Rawls 1999a). Liberal socialists (e.g., Cohen 2009) can endorse the first two claims. However, because socialists are generally very suspicious of inequality in relation to authority and income, I have phrased the third commitment in the conditional form in the hope of describing the core of ideal theory in as ecumenical way as possible.

2 Structurally, though not necessarily in terms of content, what I call the core of ideal theory is very similar to what Gopal Sreenivasan calls "non-ideal theory as anticipatory theory. According to Sreenivasan, the latter makes assumptions about the minimum requirements that any plausible and complete ideal theory of justice will include" (Sreenivasan 2007:221 italics in original).

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with our social scientific knowledge) the rudiments of nonideal theory" (Simmons 2010:36, also see Stemplowska and Swift: 2012:380).

I acknowledge that there will be those who do not endorse the core of ideal theory as I have described it, either because they disagree with the substance of the requirements or with the conceptual framework and normative vocabulary with which they have been articulated. And I accept that the theory of social justice activism I develop in this dissertation may not be able to speak to those who disagree with the three requirements I have identified. Nevertheless, given how widely endorsed these requirements are, it seems to me that a theory of social justice activism based on them will still be relatively ecumenical.

0.3. A liberal theory of social justice activism: an outline of the account Having introduced the core of ideal theory on which my account of social justice activism will be based, let me now turn to outline the account itself. The theory of social justice activism I develop in this dissertation can be divided into three parts. First, I seek to establish the grounds of the duty to remedy social injustice. Though the question of how social injustice is to be remedied has been underexplored in contemporary political philosophy, the idea that most if not all societies are unjust and that the citizens of such societies have duties to remedy the injustice in their midst seems to be a common and perhaps even the consensus view. This raises the question: what are the grounds of these duties? The grounds of a duty are the values and principles that are invoked to explain or justify it. In chapter 1 of this dissertation, I argue that focusing exclusively on any one of the principles that have been advanced as grounds for remedial duties in the literature generates counterintuitive implications which can only be avoided by appealing to multiple principles. Moreover, according to the approach I advocate, and unlike some other accounts, the various values and principles that are invoked to ground remedial duties can combine and interact. This is why I call the account I defend in chapter 1 'an intersectional approach to grounding remedial duties'.

Second, in chapter 2, I argue that, in order to understand how to remedy social injustice, we must first understand the different kinds of social phenomena that can underpin injustice. I identify three such phenomena: laws, social norms, and stereotypes.

We are perhaps most familiar with social injustice generated by law - examples include laws that denied women or black people the right to vote. Social norms are more informal 11

rules of conduct and can also underpin social injustice - consider, for instance, how gender norms can limit women's opportunities in the workplace. Finally, stereotypes can generate social injustice via the phenomenon commonly known as 'implicit bias'. I refer to these social phenomena as 'the three sites of social justice activism' because I will explore the ethics of activism that seeks to intervene in each of them in chapters 3-5. In the process of introducing these three social phenomena as potential vehicles of social injustice, I also suggest amendments to and an integration of the leading theory of social norms on the one hand and of law on the other. Thus, as well as laying the foundations for the chapters to come, an additional aim of chapter 2 is to contribute to debates in social ontology.

In the third part of the theory of social justice activism I develop in this dissertation, I explore how social justice activism that intervenes in each of the three social phenomena introduced in chapter 2 should be practised. This third part is itself further divided into three as I devote a chapter to each mechanism of social injustice.

Regarding law, in chapter 3, I explore the ethics of forms of activism that seek to change the law via means that are either illegal or violent. Examples of such means include civil disobedience, rioting, militancy, and civil war. I call such forms of activism 'radical activism'. To the extent that the ethics of radical activism has been discussed in the literature, it has typically been considered in light of the fact that states claim they have the right to rule and that their citizens have a correlative duty to obey the state's commands because the state has issued them. That is, states claim to have political authority. This is why I focus on radical activism: its raises distinctive political authority-related concerns. In chapter 3, I highlight that the standard framing of the ethics of radical activism presupposes a binary account of political authority, argue that we should disaggregate political authority and so reject a binary account, and draw out the implications of this disaggregation for the practice of radical activism.

Regarding social norms, in chapter 4, I explore how it is that we should encourage people to abandon prevailing unjust social norms and to comply with new, more just social norms instead. I call this kind of activism 'informal activism'. My discussion of informal activism is divided into two parts. First, I highlight the limits of a widely assumed view, according to which citizens' duties to remedy social injustice must be discharged by encouraging the state to change law and policy. The fact that this view is limited suggests that citizens should sometimes seek to remedy social injustice via means that 12

are not mediated by the state. In the second part of my discussion in chapter 4, I explore the question of how citizens should engage in informal activism that is not mediated by the state. I argue that the value that should guide the practice of informal activism is respect for moral personhood, and highlight what this implies about the forms of influence that informal activists may engage in.

Of the three social phenomena I introduce in chapter 2, it is the operation of stereotypes that is the most subtle and mysterious. Thus, in chapter 5, I seek to better understand the role that stereotypes play in generating social injustice and to draw out the implications of this role for the practice of social justice activism. My strategy is to begin by examining a recent debate between Elizabeth Anderson and Tommie Shelby regarding the ethics of racial integration, and then to use the insights this investigation yields as a platform on which to build an account of activism that I call 'stereotype activism'. Stereotype activism involves attempting to remedy social injustice by changing the stereotypes that are present in a culture. I argue that this will often involve intervening to change the social environment that people inhabit and defend this form of activism against the charge that is it manipulative.

In chapter 6, I conclude by reviewing my argument: I explain why I call my account

'a liberal theory of social justice activism', and I draw out some implications of my view for the practice of activism in western societies.

0.4. Ambitions and limitations

As should be clear from the outline given in the previous subsection, much of my attention in this dissertation will be focused the question of how social justice activism should be engaged in and the precise form it should take in different circumstances. I think that much more can be said in response to this question than is typically assumed, and my ambition is to provide as much practical guidance as I can. That said, it is also worth emphasising that there is of course a limit to the amount of guidance that any theory designed to apply to a general class of cases can provide. Despite my best efforts, I'm sure that I will not reach that limit in this piece of work. In fact, an additional ambition of this dissertation is to invite others to further probe and explore how much more political philosophy can contribute in answer to the pressing and urgent question 'how should we promote social justice and remedy social injustice?'.

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Chapter 2

An intersectional approach to grounding remedial duties

the processes through which men incur obligations are unavoidably pluralistic.

Walzer 1970:15

Introduction

A common - perhaps the consensus - view in political philosophy is that most