Social Justice in the Liberal State

...they are often incredibly shallow and reflect that peculiar foolishness of the exceptionally ate ligent and educated person, totally enmeshed in a rationalist web of his own construction...

...It is not a citizen because it cannot speak to challenge its being disadvantaged and therefore "fails the dialogic test-more plainly than do grown-up dolphins...

...By virtue of being white, male, a capitalist, or genetically normal, one is necessarily an "exploiter" of some others, and "normal white capitalist males (n/w/c/m) unequivocally exploit everyone else, while everyone except handicapped black female proletarians would have a more complicated relationship to exploitation...

...Why not some other adult...

...Too many of the non-handicapped may seek to opt out...

...They may find less conversation-stopping than Ackerman does the handicapped's assertion "I'm at least as good as you are...

...BOOK REVIEWS SOCIAL JUSTICE IN THE LIBERAL STATE Bruce Ackerman / Yale University Press / $ 17.50 Lino A. Graglia W hen, on his first page, Bruce Ackerman uses the feminine pronoun as a general referent, the reader knows at once that he is in the presence of an advanced liberal thinker...

...The question of "whether a 'natural' parent has the right to kill the child rather than transfer it to a parent who wants to 'adopt' it" is "not a rhetorical question...

...As Ronald Dworkin discovered earlier in Taking Rights Seriously, "justice" is in essence modern-day liberalism, requiring or supporting, for example, readily available abortions, affirmative action, strict limitation of parental authority, and judicial activism...

...All departures from equality are therefore indefensible in the ideal liberal state, and at least prima facie unjust in any real world state-and Ackerman is even more skeptical than Rawls of incentive arguments for inequality...

...superior in, say, creativity, productivity, courage, aggressiveness...

...Ackerman derides Burke's and Oakeshott's esteem for tradition and established institutions as a prejudice resulting from life on a "tight little island," but Ackerman's esteem for equality could as easily be dismissed as the product of living in the even tighter world of late twentieth-century American academia...

...For example, in less than two pages (127-8) Ackerman concludes that justice requires the availability of abortions...

...Ackerman is equally helpful on the question of infanticide...

...And that settles that, except for answering the mistaken objection that the fetus also has rights...

...Whether or not Ackerman's "analyses of a wide range of pressing issues" are "incisive," as the book jacket states, they certainly are predictable...

...Yes, "if a majority so choose," Ackerman answers, but for reasons that are less than clear: "In brief, treating-everything as if it were manna [a natural resource] for citizen exploitation may be taken as an unsatisfactory expression of the liberal community's principled agnosticism about the 'proper' relationship between the state and the larger universe...

...The attempt to have them count for nothing-as in Ackerman's requirement that the genetically handicapped not only be treated as equals but compensated for their handicaps-may not be consistent with the continuance of human society...

...Is it not at least arguable-subject to empirical investigation-that some people are "intrinsically" (innately...

...If, after thinking the matter over, the parents decide that it is bad to have a child, the state cannot tell them they are making the wrong decision...

...Like Rawls (and Dworkin)-indeed, even more fundamentally than Rawls- Ackerman assumes a natural right to equality for all human beings...

...Can not the state intervene to stop such brutality...

...The ideal liberal dispute ordinarily ends with the advantaged party standing mute before the unanswerable assertion of the other, ' 'I'm at least as good as you are.'' Applying this technique of "constrained dialogue," Ackerman quickly and easily arrives at the ideal liberal state's just solution of a number of seemingly very difficult problems...

...Communicative animals, you see, can be citizens of the liberal state...

...Ackerman builds his system on the proposition that in the "ideal liberal state" all challenged inequalities (including genetic ones) must be found to be "unjust" unless an advantaged party can defend its advantage without claiming to be better than anyone else or to have a better "conception of the good...

...In Ackerman's system it is impermissible for anyone to claim that he is "intrinsically superior" to anyone else...

...Indeed, given the necessarily small distance that even the most highly developed society can remove itself from the state of nature, a great change in the natural condition of inequality is not to be expected...

...Such talk may be rhetorically useful, but it does not lend clarity to a serious discussion of social arrangements, it begs rather than answers the most difficult questions...

...To the stars you may surely complain of your condition, but to the non-handicapped who give up some of what they could keep in order to permit you to live, you should show gratitude-small recompense that it is-not envy...

...All citizens (people, and perhaps other creatures, capable of asserting claims) are, by simple fiat, "intrinsically" (an undefined term, involving, I suspect, much question begging) equal...

...too many, succumbing perhaps to "irrational" biological urges, may prefer to keep for themselves and their children (they may think more highly of the family than Ackerman does) more of what they can capture or produce...

...The reader is therefore not surprised to find the remainder of the book a spirited defense of all current liberal positions...

...But unfortunately Ackerman's analyses are not incisive...

...Because of imperfect methods of contraception, "embryos are conceived before the parents have had time to decide whether they really want to be parents...

...Finally, the assumption of a deep principle-whether Rawls' difference principle, Nozick's natural rights, or Ackerman's equality-invariably requires an almost other-worldly, and certainly unrealistic, process whereby that principle is made to apply to social issues...

...Ackerman spends most of his working hours on a campus in New Haven-indeed, in a small law school-where his beliefs and values can be inspired with every breath...

...There is no a priori reason, however, to expect or require equality in human society, any more than we can expect or require it in the "state of nature" where it is so obviously and brutally absent...

...The fact that the fetus is a ' 'potential citizen'' does not change the fact that it cannot speak, and no one can speak for it because no one can "claim to have access to the world of disembodied spirits...

...Similarly, Ackerman's system prohibits anyone from claiming the superiority of his particular "conception of the good," but Ackerman is in fact asserting that his own particular conception of the good-perfect equality of endowments (material, cultural, genetic, etc...

...They might respond, "That can be put to the test if necessary...

...The United States is a larger and more diverse place than Britain, but young (under 40) Mr...

...Finally, Ackerman comes down against a right to infanticide because of his earlier discovery of a right to adoption and because of "the principle against wanton cruelty developed in our discussion of abortion...

...One thing we may be sure of is that the issue cannot be resolved, as Ackerman recommends, by playing a verbal game according to Ackerman's unworldly rules, that an attempt fundamentally to transform society and the world according to some carefully calculated system will result only in revealing some catastrophic error in the calculations...

...I know that your mentor Ackerman, like all egalitarians, is very strong on envy, equating it with a 'proper sense of [one's] moral dignity,' and would have his polity give up a great deal of material prosperity in order to cater to envy, but that only shows that he has rationalized himself into some other world than this one...

...Sexism" is another major obstacle to justice: Some parents, it seems, would unjustly prohibit "their" (the quotation marks are Ackerman's) five-year-old daughters from playing with trucks-but Ackerman, happily, finds a "right" on the part of strangers to intervene on the child's behalf, for what, after all, "gives the parent the right to decide whether the child's wishes will be fulfilled...

...The only real difficulty-"a final, terrible case"-Ackerman sees with the abortion question is that a couple may "simply enjoy abortions so much that they conceive embryos simply to kill them a few months later...

...A citizen of the ideal liberal state has the right simply to destroy "his fair share of manna," and "a day-old infant is no more a citizen than a nine-month fetus.'' Infanticide presents a different question than abortion, however, because "the biological parents have had time to consider whether they want to be parents" and "once the infant is viable, some other adult may want to take on the task of child rearing...

...The catch, however, is that Ackerman's effort to define justice through a process of constrained dialogue is also based on an assumption of natural rights...

...It may be that vigorous government action to create greater equality than now exists in America would lead to a more stable and satisfying society for all or most of us, but it may also be that leveling tendencies have already gone too far, have produced an "unnatural" degree of equality inconsistent with individual liberty, social stability, and material progress...

...The fetus cannot have rights, Ackerman explains, because the "simple truth is that a fetus is not a citizen of a liberal state...

...among all "citizens"-is superior...

...My self-interest and instinct for survival-even, or particularly, considering the long run-indicate that there is only so much of what I can get and keep that I can sensibly give up so that you may be better off...

...He criticizes these writers, correctly in my opinion, for assuming that it makes-sense to talk of pre-political ("natural") rights...

...It seems unlikely that unusual strength, speed, and cunning, for example, can ever be made to count for little or nothing in a society necessarily existing in a physical and biological order in which they count for so much...

...Racism, it would appear, is endemic: "poor black ghetto youths," we are told with no presentation of evidence, are "processed by an illiberal education system...

...If you would not survive two weeks on your own, why do you think you must not only survive but prosper equally in this society...

...Throughout the book, Ackerman contrasts his approach and results with those of John Rawls in A Theory of Justice and, to a lesser extent, of Robert Nozick in Anarchy, State, and Utopia...

...But why may no one assert that he is "intrinsically" superior to others in some socially significant respect...

...At what time "viability" should be thought to occur is the type of detail with which Ackerman does not deal...