To what extent is the desire to achieve social justice controversial?

Introduction:

First define what social justice means: Social justice is defined as justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society. It can also be used to refer to the overall fairness of a society in its divisions and distributions of rewards and burdens and, as such, the phrase has been adopted by political parties with a re-distributive agenda.

Then explain how you will answer the question: This essay will look at how conservative, liberal, and socialist thinkers would address the issues of social justice, and to what extent they would argue that the desire to achieve social justice is controversial.

Main body of essay:

1. Conservative thinkers

• Social justice is controversial due to the lack of acknowledgement of the importance of heritage, private property, and natural order. *Burke argues that society should not be reformed (like Rawls suggests) due to the importance of tradition in society. *contemporary example: George Osbourne's claim that welfare benefits should be cut if someone has been unemployed for a long time as benefits deter people from seeking unemployment.

2.Liberals *The theory of social justice proposed by Rawls is too much state interference - goes against the idea of a minimalist state. *State intervention, according to Locke, prevents individuals from making rational decisions *Distributing resources (ie benefits) may help some that cannot find work. However may be detrimental to those who have worked hard in order to earn money - you're causing harm to them through a loss of earnings - Mill's Harm Principle.

3. Socialists *Rather than arguing that the desire to achieve social justice is too extreme, they would argue that achieving social justice does not go far enough. *Marx: wealth needs to be completely redistributed among individuals where everyone receives exactly the same, and everyone is also of the same moral worth. *We need full social justice through complete equality of outcome.

Conclusion: *all see it as controversial but in different ways - with conservatives arguing that we should not have social justice at all as it goes against principles of tradition, heritage and rights - to socialists arguing that we need more social justice through complete redistribution of wealth.