Chris was asserting the first: his original post explicitly denies the second.

To quote Chris:

I asserted that a central purpose of trade rules should be to promote justice.

But the legitimacy of political institutions lies precisely in the fact that they do not behave this way.

Domestically, I actually agree. Internationally—not so much.

And, those who have tried to devise instituions to constrain self-interest in national affairs are hardly a tiny minority.

I assume you mean “international affairs” here. Certainly, many people have put much effort into devising institutions to constrain self-interest in national affairs—so far, without much success. Of course, even if they succeed one day—and I’m open, and not unfriendly, to the possibility that they might—I don’t see why that will suddenly change the nature of international trade negotiations from hard-headed business deals to mushy ruminations on justice, any more than domestic governmental constraints on self-interest have turned all business negotiations among corporations into charity events.

(Strikes me that Dan Simon is arguing as if the 20th century never happened—“justice doesn’t have much relevance to global trade rules” would have looked smart in 1911 or so.)

Au contraire—I’m quite confident that the best and the brightest of 1911 were far more naive about the nature of international relations, including trade relations, than are most informed folk these days. If nothing else, the 20th century taught most of us that getting national government representatives together in a room and telling them that they should work together for global justice—whether in the context of trade negotiations, mutual defense treaties or anything else—is simply a non-starter. Unfortunately, a few stragglers have failed to learn that lesson.

But the legitimacy of political institutions lies precisely in the fact that they do not behave this way.

And, those who have tried to devise instituions to constrain self-interest in national affairs are hardly a tiny minority. In fact, I would say that the track record of institutions based on some notion of fairness is rather better than those based on might-makes-right.

Chris was asserting the first: his original post explicitly denies the second.

Your previous arguments do indeed give the impression that you are sceptical about the whole idea of justice. If you are trying to make a more specific point then you haven’t made this very clear.

Shorter Engels: You don’t agree with me about X, so you’re an idiot, and there’s no point discussing X with you.

As a matter of fact, I don’t believe that justice has much relevance to global trade rules—at least under the current global political order, and possibly under any other global political order. I also believe that my opinion is completely conventional, and that yours and Chris’ are the outliers.

To use an imperfect analogy: when two corporations negotiate a business deal—even in the most acutely justice-conscious countries in the world—one doesn’t normally expect justice to take center stage in their negotiations, or to figure prominently in either side’s goals. There are those, of course, who believe that every such negotiation should be dominated by (usually some outside authority’s idea of) furthering the cause of justice. But they are a tiny minority, and their ideas have historically not had the best track record when applied in real life.

And if someone were to proclaim loudly that justice should self-evidently be a major component of any such negotiation, and that its habitual absence is head-shakingly absurd and incomprehensible—well, his or her reception in most circles would be far less polite than you and Chris have garnered so far.

Now, one could argue that countries negotiating international trade agreements are different from corporations negotiating business deals, in a way that makes the case for placing justice front and center in the former case, if not in the latter one. But that would be actually arguing the issue at hand, whereas you and Chris appear reluctant to do more than demagogue it.

I’ll agree to discuss justice and morals with you, without insulting you for not taking the premises of the Talmud on faith, if you’ll agree to discuss justice and morals with me, without insulting me for not taking the premises of A Theory of Justice on faith. (Dan Simon)

Dan, you don’t seem to believe that there is such a thing as justice. Given this fact, it’s rather hard to have a discussion about it with you, isn’t it? Rather like trying to have a discussion about atomic physics with someone who believes that everything is made of cheese.

I’ll agree to discuss justice and morals with you, without insulting you for not taking the premises of the Talmud on faith, if you’ll agree to discuss justice and morals with me, without insulting me for not taking the premises of A Theory of Justice on faith. (Dan Simon)

Dan, you don’t seem to believe that there is such a thing as justice in global trade rules. Given this fact, it’s rather hard to have a discussion about it with you, isn’t it? Rather like trying to have a discussion about atomic physics with someone who believes that everything is made of cheese.

Really? The direct participants clearly don’t think so. And I’d venture to guess that apart from you and a small clique of like-minded colleagues, almost none of the billions of indirect participants think so. Just about everyone else in the world understands them to be a hard-headed deal-making process among entirely self-interested nations. If you’re saying they’re all wrong, then it would help if you offered a justification.

Rawls, to name but him, addresses his arguments not to the moral sceptic, but to the person who already has a commitment to justice but wants to know what it requires.

Aaah, Rawls….another master of the grandiosely-proclaimed, utterly unfounded global moral imperative.

Frankly, I doubt that there’s anything that can be said to people like you, Dan.

Right back at you, Chris. Look, I’ll make you a deal: I’ll agree to discuss justice and morals with you, without insulting you for not taking the premises of the Talmud on faith, if you’ll agree to discuss justice and morals with me, without insulting me for not taking the premises of A Theory of Justice on faith. Deal?

Those negotiations are about what the terms of co-operation among human beings linked through a global division of labour should be. So just about as central a case for the virtue of justice to apply as anywhere. If you want an argument based on some further consideration beyond justice (such as rational self-interest) that explains why justice applies to such a case then one can’t be given, since the imperative to justice is basic rather than derivative.

Rawls, to name but him, addresses his arguments not to the moral sceptic, but to the person who already has a commitment to justice but wants to know what it requires. Frankly, I doubt that there’s anything that can be said to people like you, Dan.

These claims are much more controversial than you make them out to be. Should Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation”, for instance, not have been made, because it portrays the Ku Klux Klan sympathetically? How about “The English Patient”, a film which eulogizes a fictional romantic hero who collaborates with the Nazis out of love? Should all artistic considerations really take a back seat to “justice”?

More generally, saying that justice is an overriding moral imperative that ought to govern everything in a general way, says nothing about its relevance to the details of pursuing specific activities. For example, we might agree that the proving of mathematical theorems is an activity that should be pursued in an overall just manner—granting credit where due, for instance. But I’d hope we’d also agree that considerations of justice have little guidance to offer regarding the pursuit of the activity itself. Likewise, one might believe that delegates to an international trade negotiation should refrain from murdering each other, treat their colleagues fairly, and so on. But that doesn’t mean that justice ought to be prominent in the substance of their negotiations. Do you have an argument for why it should?

This weekend I just read Tom Geoghegan’s new pamphlet The Law in Shambles. It’s an excellent little book, but some passages I thought went a little too far, verged on hysteria. Like this:

I could say they [the new right] think government is illegitimate. But it’s really worse than that. They think everything is arbitrary and illegitimate. It’s all subjective. When people like me talk about the good and the true, they stick their tongues out at us….

In the schools, right and left line up in such a different way than we do in the courts. In the courts, we on the left beleive in the moral absolutes and the nagels of our better nature, while people on the righ take the side of the prison guards an torturers and say that everything is relative.

As I say, I thoguht he was maybe painting with too broad a brush. But no, as soru shows, he’s got it exactly right.