The Idea of Justice
By Amartya Sen
London: Allen Lane, 2009
467 pages + xxviii

Modern economic theorists have drifted too far from the actual world.  In the beginning, economics was predominated with two main themes: ethics and economic rationality. However, later theorists have too narrow focus of human as homo economicus that people are purely self-interested.

In this book, Sen brings back the idea that people care for others and observe social norms. Although the values of freedom from hunger, disease, indignity and discrimination are perhaps complex, they are not impossible to measure. Sen, the Nobel winning economist, wanted to put the long forgotten ethics, or in this case more precisely said as ‘social justice’, back in the economic debates along with alternative perspectives to the long dominant Rawlsian theory of justice. While omitting the three decades debates on the liberal or illiberal issues in Rawls, he proposes a processual and negotiable notion based on practical notion of rationality.

Sen portrays the multi-faceted and complex notion of justice by an illustration: three kids – Anne, Bob and Carla- and a flute (p.12). Anne claims the flute because she is the only one who knows how to play it (the others do not deny this).  Bob says the flute should be given to him because he is so poor that he has no toys of his own and the flute would give him something to play with (the other two concede that they are richer). Carla speaks up and points out that the flute is her own labour (the other confirms this), and just when she finished her work, she complains, “these expropriators came along to try to grab the flute away from me”.

The illustration shows that that justice is not a monolithic ideal, but a pluralistic notion with many dimensions. Who gets the flute depends on your philosophy of justice. Bob, the poorest, will have full support of the economic egalitarian to reduce gaps. Carla, would receive immediate sympathy from the libertarian. The utilitarian will bicker a bit but will eventually come to conclusion that Anne’s pleasure is likely to be stronger because she is the only one who can make the flute to function. Different philosophies would come to totally different resolutions as being obviously right.

By recognizing the complexities, Sen charges John Rawls, an American philosopher who died in 2002 and previously argued in The Theory of Justice (1971) that justice requires a “perfectly just institution”. Focusing in the search of such just institution, Sen argued, is distracting and ultimately fruitless way to think about social injustice.

Therefore, Sen offers two alternatives. Firstly, instead of spending energy on establishing a hypothetical perfectly just institution, a theory of justice should have central recognition that is deeply concerned with systematic assessment of how to reduce injustice in the world.

Although there may be no agreement on the shape of perfect justice (even if people did agree about what would be immaculately just), but we can still have reasoned agreement on many removable cases of manifest injustice. Blatant cases are all around, from slavery, subjugation of women, widespread hunger and deprivation, the lack of schooling of children, to absence of available and affordable health care.

With this perspective, Sen favours Smith, Condorcet, Wollstonecraft, Bentham, Mill and Marx. Each, according to Sen, thought about justice in comparative rather than absolutist terms. They did not ask what is a perfectly just society, but focused on particular injustices.

Secondly, analysis of justice has to pay attention to the lives that people are actually able to lead, rather than exclusively concentrating only on the nature of “just institutions”. This point is inspired by Indian philosophy of justice, in which Sanskrit has two distinct words to refer to: niti, which denotes the rules and behavioural norms of justice, and nyanya, the actual social realizations of justice – the lives that people are actually able to lead regardless the provision of ‘just institutions’. From the latter perspective, the prevention of blatant injustice is more important and more feasible than the pursuit of perfect justice.

However, can we agree on a measure to judge a society, whether it is getting closer or drawing away from justice? Sen has a preferred category, which is of capabilities. He means not just the resources to live certain kinds of life that we have reason to value, but the capability of an individual to choose to use – or not use – the resources at hand to achieve what he has reason to value. Sen focuses on outcomes, but unlike the utilitarians that almost has no interest in nothing else, he also gives crucial notions on how those outcomes are brought about.

Then, Sen comes with his final important point: democracy. However, Sen also offers a different perspective to look at democracy. It is not merely an institution that holds regular free elections, parliaments, etc, but a process of collective reasoning that injects more information, perspectives and voices into debates. Democracy, for Sen, is a government by discussion – to make people get involved and informed in making important decisions for their lives, and subsequently able to fulfill their potentials.

From the whole arguments in this book, we can see that Sen’s hero might still be Adam Smith, but not the Smith of free-market mantra as understood by the neoliberals. Adam Smith that Sen refers to is the father of political-economy who understood economics as the force of moral constraints, ethics and the value of sociability. With this majestic book, Sen put back the original idea of “oikos-nomos”, the original word of “economy”, in which ethics and economics are not two subjects, but one.

Lastly, after reading this book I come to a conclusion that Sen did not explicitly say in his book. Justice is not about who gets what and how much – the main questions of the neoclassical economics –, but rather a never-ending effort to make everyone able to fulfill his/her potentials as human beings. Thus, justice is not a choice; it is an action!

*The writer, Martin Manurung, is a political-economic and development analyst based in Jakarta. He graduated from the Faculty of Economics, University of Indonesia and the School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, England. A member of the Steering Committee of the Network of Social-Democracy in Asia, he can be reached at  martin@martinmanurung.com