Fairness and the majority

Richard Murphy touches on an issue which, though neglected, divides political activists from many observers, and social democrats from Marxists. He says: "[when] it comes to fairness  majority opinions matter."

Now, this is true in the sense that a society whose policies and institutions violate the majority's perceptions of fairness will be an unstable one - as nation-builders often discover.

Where it is doubtful, though, is whether majority opinion decides what's fair.

There's a long tradition in ethical thinking, from the book of Exodus - "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil" - to Amartya Sen (pdf) and some interpretations of intersectionality which doubts the ability of the majority to decide what's fair.

Most of us would accept these doubts in the context of other societies. We don't think the repression of women and gays is fair in Saudi Arabia, nor that it was fair in the past, merely because most people in Saudi Arabia or in early 20th century England thought them so. The statement: "slavery was fair once" would strike most of us as absurd, or at least as requiring a lot of justifying.

But why should we suspend such doubts in today's Britain? Most people - to take one example - agree with the statement: "it is fair that foreigners should be excluded from much of the UK labour market." But a few decades ago, most would have agreed with the statement: "it is fair that women should be excluded from much of the labour market." What, morally speaking, is the difference? Could it be that we see one merely because Peter Singer's "expanding circle" of concern has expanded to include women but hasn't yet expanded to include foreigners?

Let's face it, the standard of public "debate" about moral questions is not high; most claims about morality are mere emotivist spasms or expressions of narcissistic self-righteousness.

I suspect - though this might be the confirmation bias! - that recent thinking has deepened scepticism about the ability of the majority to perceive what's fair. Cognitive biases such as the just world fallacy, stereotype threat, adaptive preferences and anchoring effect help to provide popular support for inequality; John Jost calls this system justification (pdf).

It's in this context that there's a difference between Richard and me. He says:

On the welfare cap I have no doubt the majority will consider what is being proposed  to be profoundly unfair if they realise just who is affected.

But I don't much care what the majority thinks; the cap is either fair or not, regardless of what the majority think.

This difference reflects two differences between us. One is that Richard's a social democrat and I'm a Marxist. Whereas social democrats try to work within the confines of what the public considers "fair", and try to tweak those perceptions, we Marxists fear that this is a forlorn task because the power of ideology warps those perceptions.

The other is that Richard is an activist and I'm an observer. And in a democracy, success as an activist is determined by what the majority think - by whether you win elections; how often do we see politicians cite opinion polls as if they decided matters?

And this is what bothers me. Public opinion might decide what is a successful political strategy, but it is more questionable whether it should decide what is a morally right one. One of my fears about Labour politics is that this distinction is often ignored.

Comments

[Mark Scott]

I've yet to see any definition of "fair" that can command universal agreement.

[Donald A. Coffin]

"The statement: "slavery was fair once" would strike most of us as absurd..."

What about "Slavery was once widely regarded as fair"? (Note that "widely regarded does not imply a majority.) I suspect that in the US at least until the early-to-mid 1800s, and longer than that in the south, slavery was widely regarded as fair. Those who regarded it as fair were wrong, but that may not be the point.

[Neil Wilson]

Sorry Chris but 'fair' is in the eye of the beholder.

The standard political attack is to say that somebody is failing to pay their fair share of taxes.

And it is very difficult to counter that line.

There is no objective way of defining what is fair and what is not. It is concluded via negotiation between humans within a society.

What they do at that point in time is 'fair' and the future may see it as 'not fair', but that's just because change is the only constant.

[Shinsei1967]

Yes, I doubt most would have justified slavery in the past as "fair".

More likely it would have been considered just part of the natural order.

[Leslie48]

But in the end the social democrats deliver while the Marxists can not. Yes their analysis of our society and Neo-Liberalism is very true more or less - although I am with Gramsci the ordinary man can see through the hegemony at times. I sat upright when I read Andrew Rawsley in the great Observer last Sunday: " yet the governments of Tony Blair did more to improve the lives of working people than Tony Benn ever managed to do" How true.

[Dipper]

"fair" is a word that is a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Politics is about power. When politicians use the word "fair" they are expressing a power relationship about the right of one group to determine and limit outcomes for another group. The Labour Party uses "fair" to limit the amitions and achievements of the mass of the working population and so preserve the power of the ruling clique over the people they are meant to represent.

[BenSix]

"And in a democracy, success as an activist is determined by what the majority think - by whether you win elections; how often do we see politicians cite opinion polls as if they decided matters?"

If this was true, surely an EU referendum would have taken place; immigration would not have risen; capital punishment might never have been abolished; gay marriage would be a marginal concern and environmental issues would receive a small fraction of the press that have been given in modern times?

One's success as an activist, as far as I can tell, is more liable to be determined by *who* one can influence than by *how many* people one inspires.

[stephen]

Shinsei

How could you describe anything as "unfair, but part of the natural order"?

[Andrew]

"Could it be that we see one merely because Peter Singer's "expanding circle" of concern has expanded to include women but hasn't yet expanded to include foreigners?"

Yes, exactly that.

I think about the expanding circle of concern a lot. Particularly interesting is the question: is it *right* in a deontic sense that the circle should be expanded?

It can't be by definition. Since if it were, it would clearly betray a concern for those outside the circle of concern.

This means that it is merely a morally neutral fact. There may be some ratchet mechanism that favours expansion in good times, because it would never be right to want to decrease the circle, again by definition.

Of course there isn't a circle so much as a woolly penumbral gradient of concern, and actually it isn't a circle, but a mess dictated by psychological distance.

As have often been noted on this blog, things which decrease this distance increase empathy and sympathy such as merely the act of communicating. The same for TV appeals, e.g. featuring distant victims.

People often imply (as I believe Chris does) that we *should* expand our circle, for example to foreigners. And yet they don't seem to acknowledge that it isn't possible to have uniformly weighted concern regardless of psychological distance. I quite literally do not value the life of someone I've never heard of and will never meet on a par with a family member.

Either you propose some moral argument why I should (which will require deontic axioms most people will not agree to) or you explain how the circles should be structured.

Assuming the latter, why exactly *should* we structure a circle to include foreigners on a par with fellow nationals (all other psychological relationships being equal?). A national boundary is not an arbitrary one when it comes to issues of communication and administration. Why *not* have a rough contour line of concern around it?

[p j g]

Fair is not a word, its an emotional impulse. It describes a condition not a result.

[Peter Risdon]

People have innate differences and these are responsible for differences of political opinion. You're using nice words like 'fairness' to camouflage despotic ambitions.