Politics of the Common Good
In Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? (2009), Michael J. Sandal argues that politics and society require a common moral purpose beyond the assertion of natural rights like life liberty and property or the utilitarian calculus of increasing pleasure and minimizing pain for the greatest number of people. He would move beyond both John Locke and Jeremy Bentham in asserting that "a just society can't be achieved simply by maximizing utility or by securing freedom of choice" (Sandal 261). Justice and morality involve making judgments on a wide variety of issues, including inequality of wealth and incomes, discrimination against women and minorities, CEP pay, government bailouts of banks and public education. Politics should take "moral and spiritual questions seriously" and not only on issues like sexual orientation and abortion, but also "broad economic and civil concerns" (Sandal 262). Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King added this moral dimension to U.S. politics in the 1960s when they criticized the Vietnam War, poverty and racial inequality and "appealed to a sense of community" (Sandal 263). So did Barack Obama in his 2008 campaign, although in practice achieving a politics of the common good in American society has been difficult, given the Lockean, natural rights basis of its 18th Century Constitution.
John Locke discusses the purpose of political society in Chapter IX of Two Treatises on Government (1690) in which he posits that rational human beings come together to form a community with certain shared goals that they cannot accomplish individually. Locke then asks why people should give up any individual rights and freedoms when they are the absolute lords and masters over their own persons and possessions. His central thesis is that in a state of nature, all of these rights are insecure, such each individual acts like a monarch in his own domain and most are not "strict observers of equity and justice." Therefore, being rational creatures, they realize that thy must give up certain rights and powers and unite "for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties and estates" (Locke Chapter IX). To escape from the state of nature, they contract together to formulate laws, regulations and a constitution which all are bound to respect, with the understanding that individuals will be punished by the state if they violate the mutually-agreed upon rules. A state of nature has no neutral and objective judges to dispense justice and settle disputes "according to the established law," but rather each person acts as "both judge and executioner of the law of nature" (Locke Chapter IX). In so doing, they may be guided by emotions and the desire for revenge rather than justice, for no one in the state of nature has the power to enforce laws in a rational and just manner. When human beings exit the state of nature, though, they give up the right of revenge and private justice and delegate it to the state. Locke's government is a very limited one compared to the virtuous republic that Sandal proposes, and certainly does not propose social, economic and racial equality, but creates a government that will protect life, liberty and property against the depredations of others.
Sandal would go much further in the direction of using government and the political system to uphold morality and the common good than Locke, who was mainly concerned with maintaining public order and preventing violence against persons and property. Sandal's central point is that the collective ideals of justice and the common good "must find a way to lean against purely privatized notions of the good life, and cultivate civic virtue" (Sandal 264). He recognized the moral limits of capitalist free markets far more than the Lockeans and supporters limited government, and regretted that capitalist ideology had been expanded into "spheres of life traditionally governed by non-market norms" (Sandal 265). Private contractors like Blackwater have taken over many of the duties of the military, while public schools and colleges have also been turned into privatized, for-profit organizations. In the Wall Street crash of 2008-09, large financial institutions received trillions of dollars from Congress and the Federal Reserve, to save them from a collapse that their own fraud and corruption had caused. This leads another important point in Sandal's thesis in that not only do capitalist interest control the political system for their own benefit rather than the common good, but also that they have caused a huge increase in poverty and inequality in the U.S. over the last thirty years. Indeed, the tremendous gap between rich and poor has now undermined "the solidarity that democratic citizenship requires" because the entire political system favors the wealthy elite (Sandal 266). America has developed an aristocratic, privileged caste that lives in gated communities, relies on privatized heath care and services while allowing the
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