Debates

LeoCasey at aol.com LeoCasey at aol.com
Mon Oct 16 08:34:11 PDT 2000


Justin wrote: << Leo asks how the claim that "the free development of each is a condition for the free development of all" can be anything but a principle of distributive justice. Well, it can be a factual claim: that there cannot asa matter of fact be free development for each without there being free development for all. Moreover, if it is a normative claim, it is not a distributive one. It does not tell us that we are to distribute freedom equally, or that we may distribute unequally just insofar as necessary in order to promote greater freedom. In fact, it tell sus nothing about the distribution of freedom or free development except that it must be universal for individuals to enjoy it. That's consistent with a very large number of inconsistent distributions. - --jks >>

Justin:

I have to admit that it was surprised and puzzled by your post above. Surprised because I would have thought that you would be most unsympathetic to rigorous Foucaultian claims that one needs to dispose altogether with the language of justice, as opposed to re-working and re-thinking it, most unsympathetic to claims that one can dispose altogether with normative standards for the type of society one is aspiring to bring into being. Indeed, I had figured you to be more wedded to re-working those notions than myself, who would say that we needed provisional, historically limited -- as opposed to concepts grounded in some notion of human nature -- notions of ideas such as justice. Puzzled because this seems, to me at least, that your point is philosophically tendentious. For although one could make a technical claim that "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need" is a mere factual claim, it almost never been used in that way (I say "almost never" because although I can not recall of any such use, it is plausible that an "analytical Marxist" might try to force it into this apolitical form) and it was certainly not presented in that way by Marx, who quite clearly used it as a normative basis for communism. And I don't see how you read it as a claim regarding the distribution of freedom; I would have thought that it is quite clearly a principle regarding the production and distribution of material goods and resources -- each contributes to the production according to his ability and capacity, and each receives, in the form of distribution, what he needs. Certainly the Marxian conception of communism as a realm of freedom as opposed to necessity is based on this system of production, but I don't see freedom in this framework as a resource which can be distributed in lesser or greater amounts.

Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --



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