Fiscal and Distributive Justice

Abstract

Many States in the Twentieth Century have sought to redistribute the national wealth according to some principle of distributive justice, usually an egalitarian one. They have failed. Wealth is not a material substance that can be completely controlled or manipulated, and the attempt to control its distribution requires great concentrations of power, which themselves generate inequalities far worse than the ones they were supposed to remedy.

Equality is not only an impracticable, but an incoherent, ideal. It only makes sense when the respect is specified in which people are, or should be, equal; and however many the respects in which people are equal, there are others in which they are, and should be, different. The arguments for egalitarianism are fallacious, although in some situations distributive justice requires limited equalities. In most business contexts, however, distributive justice requires that regard be paid to the contribution made by each individual, and hence favours differentials, though often practical difficulties, and sometimes ideological principles, may argue against. Even if distributive justice, rather than equality, is the aim, the State cannot distribute national wealth fairly, or adopt an overall incomes policy that is just, because the State does not exist for an agreed, overriding aim (though there is enough agreement on values to enable the State, in those few cases where such decisions have to be made, to make them on the basis of distributive justice).

Because the State cannot be based on distributive justice, no satisfactory justification of the economic set-up can be given. There always will be grounds for legitimate complaint, based on the irrationalities and injustices that emerge when many people are making free decisions. Businessmen and others who make decisions should do what they can to be humane and to mitigate the misfortunes of the unlucky.