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Since its inception in the early days of modern capitalism and the spread of the Enlightenment in Europe, the socialist tradition has increasingly come to hold that the fundamental basis of justice can be found only in the equality of freedom – that is, in the real opportunities available in life. Freedom, understood in its fullest sense, is both freedom from something and freedom to do something. The understanding of justice in this sense, which is decisive for the current program of social democracy, was incorporated into the SPD’s 1959 Godesberg Program by ethical socialists in the tradition of Leonard Nelson, primarily by Grete Henry-Hermann and Willi Eichler.
Fulfilling the liberal promise of freedom requires enabling actual access to the means for self-determined action.
The social democratic understanding of justice is based on two foundational principles: first, the Enlightenment’s recognition that every human being has the same inherent right to the recognition of their dignity and freedom in the sense of a self-determined life, and, second, a basic generative experience drawn from the early days of capitalism. The true fulfillment of the liberal promise of freedom for all, in turn, requires two further steps. First, there must be a negative dimension: ending the arbitrary interventions by state, social, or economic power into people’s sphere of action. Second, social democracy insists upon a positive dimension as well: enabling actual access to the means for self-determined action. Only in this way can all human beings truly have the necessary resources available in their lived reality to carry out the decisions they have made for themselves.
To anchor this set of principles ostentatiously and unambiguously in public debates and distinguish it from competing political currents, the French philosopher and Eurocommunist Étienne Balibar has articulated the democratic-socialist understanding of justice through the concept of »Egaliberté« (»freequality«).
No Justice Without Equality
In the political debates of recent years, once the long-lasting boom of neoliberalism had begun to wane, one could observe a gratifying renewal of interest in the topic of equality. Surprisingly, empirical happiness research in our time has lavished some extraordinarily enthusiastic praise upon social equality. Richard Layard, a renowned economist at the London School of Economics, has summarized the global research findings of the past decades. His conclusion is clear: People’s perceived happiness, understood as satisfaction with their lives, depends crucially on whether they inhabit social relationships characterized by a high degree of social equality. Persistent social inequality makes those affected – including even many of those who benefit from it – less happy, in part because such inequality is experienced as a denial of recognition and as a disruption of social relationships.
It is therefore social equality – in the sense of a basic equality of material resources for living –that ultimately determines an individual’s perceived satisfaction with his or her life – not the level of income (beyond a sufficient baseline), the material standard of living, or the latter’s steady growth.
The market, as a generator of inequality, cannot determine the degree of approximate basic equality or the scope for assessing the acceptable level of nequality to be tolerated in the distribution of income and other material goods. Instead, as John Rawls convincingly demonstrates, these levels can be determined solely through an uncoerced discourse among all those potentially affected. They alone can jointly determine what degree of »just« inequality is most likely to result in the increasing prosperity of all. That is, the special contributions made by those particularly favored by limited inequalities may well expand the material opportunities for freedom for everyone and thus would be considered to be justified.
Respect and Recognition
In this context, one can also consider the political concept of respect as introduced by Olaf Scholz during the 2021 federal election campaign. Although he himself has scarcely explained which policies he intends to associate with the idea of respect, the connection to social democracy’s egalitarian concept of justice is clear. Among other things, it harks back to the ideas and demands of the early labor movement during the political Vormärz period in Germany (i.e., the era from 1815 until the 1848 revolutions), which found unforgettable expression in Ferdinand Freiligrath’s combative poem »Ehre der Arbeit« (»Honor of Labor«) By the same token, the connection between »respect« and social democracy is also becoming more relevant today in light of working conditions and incomes in many service sectors of the digital platform economy. Freiligrath’s poem demands equal recognition (»honor«) for every socially desirable form of work, not only in words but above all through wages and working conditions that embody that recognition.
»The perception that one has been denied recognition is probably one of the most potent motives for contempt toward democracy.«
Modern philosophical anthropology from Hegel to Charles Taylor accords this insight special significance because it understands recognition not as a mere ornament in human life, but as one of the primary human needs. Inequality perceived as unjust violates this powerful basic need. The perception that one has been denied ecognition is probably one of the most potent motives today for contempt toward democracy and the turn toward populism that can be observed in many democracies worldwide. In the end, when the quest for equality and recognition consistently fails, and opportunities to change this under the given circumstances appear illusory, only resignation, discontent, or revolt remain.
Fundamental Social Rights as »Foundational Equality«
In the meantime, this understanding of justice as equal freedom has been incorporated into international law and is thus has become mandatory. It underlies the universal human and civil rights enshrined in the United Nations‹ 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In clear terms, the substantive preamble to this legally binding international treaty explains that no person can be called free unless they possess not only civil and political rights but also the social and economic fundamental rights that guarantee them access to the social goods that make a self-determined life in dignity possible in the first place. The totality of universal fundamental social rights and their interrelationships create a broad basis of obligation for a policy favoring material equality. In short, justice as equal freedom implies a social and economic foundation of equality for the central concerns of human life:
First, access to gainful employment combined with the right of each person to earn a decent living
Second, social security in its various basic forms, particularly protection in the event of illness or unemployment.
Third, market-independent access to all basic social goods such as education, health care, and a secure livelihood.
Fourth, the protection of human dignity in working life as well, primarily through trade union representation rights in the workplace and in political life.
The real value of freedom for all depends on the guarantee of this elementary, just, and fundamental equality. By their very nature, the covenants on universal fundamental rights define a legally enforceable minimum level (a kind of »floor«) of equal provision of basic social goods. Moreover, broader questions of the just distribution of the product of social labor and people’s life chances are left to the political process in democratic countries. That process, in turn, is protected by the civil and political fundamental rights of equal citizenship.
At stake here are questions of distribution, which in every society and in global society as a whole can be addressed only through public discourse, negotiations, and related political processes based on a shared understanding of justice. In the covenants themselves, the concept of justice does not come into play except in the context of fair wages and fair working conditions. The entirety of the declared fundamental social and economic rights is based – as it were, as a lower safety net (precisely a »foundation«) for which a universal consensus on action can be reached – based on the norm of equal formal and material protection of dignity and freedom for all people. While such a standard of justice currently may appear to many countries around the world as an unattainable ideal, for others it merely represents the legally secured starting point for significantly more far-reaching claims to justice regarding the distribution of income and wealth.
Current Demands
Today, we are particularly concerned with the problem of the equitable financing of the constitutional and social state, which must ensure the guaranteed baseline equality. In the current situation in the Federal Republic, the most urgent tasks for social democracy – given the most glaring deficits – are:
• the reintroduction of the wealth tax,
• the increase of and substantial improvement in the efficiency of taxation on large inheritances,
• the raising of the assessment thresholds for social security contributions, and
• the inclusion of civil servants in the financing of the social welfare state.
It is in fulfilling these demands – and not in cutting the existing social security benefits, which are by no means luxurious in this country anyway – that the path toward a more equitable distribution of life chances lies. Those measures would steal the thunder of the protest populists while enabling social democracy to return to its true historical mission.
»Justice must include the claim of future generations to the preservation of a natural environment that enables a good life.«
As the world’s leading researcher on equality, Thomas Piketty, has recently demonstrated once again, justice in our age of civilization’s advancing ecological self-destruction, but even beyond that, consistently must include future generations‹ rightful aspirations. That is, it must honor their legitimate expectation that the natural environment should be preserved relatively intact. Without that, a good quality of life will be practically impossible. This newly added future dimension of a social democratic concept of justice is by no means of lesser importance than the present-day distributional issues outlined above. It requires an effective greening of the overall social democratic program that simultaneously meets the outlined requirements for fair distribution and social security. This is certainly the prerequisite for social democracy to regain clear political visibility and, as a result, likely also the political support necessary for the implementation of its program.