5The Socio-Political, Socio-Ethical Perspective: Social and Generational Justice

What is new and obvious about the current global situation is that it tends to divide into two normative universes based on contradictory principles regarding their functioning and justification. The global money market knows no boundaries, but it is a lack of boundaries that human beings, with their social ties, cannot get to grips with, although it produces crises with serious consequences for them. This sends out shockwaves of injustice which cannot, however, lead to a socially related discourse on justice, precisely because the injustice which is sensed or felt cannot be determined in socially mediated contexts. Equally, doubt is growing about the policy on justice put forward by the welfare state, which is not equipped to combat those global changes. In view of this it was only to be expected that the discourse on justice within society, previously centred on the welfare state, would break up into a number of discussions seeking new focuses. Considering these developments, social work can no longer rely as a matter of course on the formula for justice proposed by the welfare state but is instead forced to build up a perspective on justice from situations it comes across in practice and then find a new place for this perspective within social policy. This is where David Miller’s theory of justice, with its empirical social links, can help us. Miller (2008) distinguishes between three principles of justice which take effect in three empirically identifiable spheres of everyday understandings of justice. The first is an awareness that citizens have equal rights; the second is a meritocratic recognition that people deserve different incomes and earnings depending on the different values of their function within an organization, and the third principle is a feeling for the fundamental needs which exist within social milieus and social relationships – needs which are often not subjectively comparable. Miller thus proposes a pluralist account of justice in which the principle of equality among citizens has just as much of an effect as the meritocratic principle within organizations and the market, or the principle of need within solidary communities. These principles of justice can exist alongside one another, compete with one another and be related to one another.

We can draw an analogy between this empirical concept of justice and the cosmos of justice in which social work clients live. In this regard, our theory is that the way in which the socially disadvantaged experience and are able to live out justice depends on the effects of the socio-political safety net beneath them and the opportunities and obstacles this creates. This can be seen empirically in extended or regressive forms of coping. If the welfare state’s web of justice, as in a socio-political safety net, rips apart, this can trigger attitudes in people which involve their sense of justice coming undone from the ties of the welfare state and, so to speak, undergoing a U-turn. After all, the sense of justice promoted by the welfare state even predominates within groups on the margins of society as long as they still perceive themselves as a social group which has socio-political recognition, though (being on the margins) they do not usually look for any comparison group beyond their own milieu. Where required, they usually see the socio-political principle of care as a principle of justice which they can demand within their rights as citizens. However, if this socio-political safety net is at risk, even those standing on the margins seek out social comparison groups, though not usually within the intrasocietal hierarchy of status and income (which is of course traditionally left alone) but within groups of similar status from which they can dissociate themselves. These are mainly migrants and refugees, on whom their newly awakened sense of injustice is projected.

Thus, there are close connections between people’s sense of justice and their pressure to cope. Social justice must be addressed alongside gender justice. The main impetus for this comes from the works of Nancy Fraser (1996). “Following this line of thought, the justice of the welfare state is characterised by the two principles of social justice/the distribution of the wealth and a symmetrical recognition of the sexes” (Klein, 2009, p. 300). Considering that in structural terms, there is still a hierarchical gender-based division of labour, this makes sense, as the discourse on social justice leaves out (usually implicitly) the field of reproduction. In other words, socially necessary labour needs to take up a position alongside economically necessary labour, with a regime of its own legitimized by civil society. This will, however, require a key socio-ethical idea which can counterbalance the socially disembedded logic of economics. In this context it is worthwhile for social work, in particular, to take up the thread of the discussion on care. The care perspective covers our society’s future socio-economic problems: the redefinition of the meaning of “work”, strategies to counter social disembedding and the development of a perspective of social citizenship involving family and public care (see Brückner, 2011). Society’s future problems, or those left behind by today’s generation, will have to be dealt with by later generations. For this reason, the modern discourse on justice must necessarily include the issue of forward-looking generational justice and thus sustainability. “Sustainability” is originally an environmental term, but sustainability is also a social problem, as human beings must be understood as part of nature; our lives cannot easily be disengaged from that connection. This does not just mean that environmental problems cause social problems, as seen from the way poverty has developed in African or Asian regions. Our aim is, more importantly, to show that economization, in capitalizing on nature and social factors, triggers a single, consolidated sustainability problem. Under pressure from the market and from the urge to maximize profits, social goods are used in much the same way as natural goods. The welfare state has created lasting social infrastructures to counter this situation, in the institutional form of the public services, but these are at risk of being dismantled step by step. Protecting them against that risk and developing them further is thus considered the central issue of socio-political sustainability. As a result, the social and socio-political standing of social work will also be considerably influenced in the future by whether, and to what extent, social work can play a part in sustainably maintaining the social infrastructure and, above all, whether it deliberately seeks out this means of entry into social policy.

It is of interest for the discourse on sustainability within social work whether sustainability-related approaches can be found within the economic discourse itself; concepts objecting to the continuation of the market-centred formula for growth, which ignores the market’s failure as regards the social costs of the current economic system.

The fact that two billion people have now fallen beneath the poverty line was seen as a failure on the part of the market, despite the global economic output increasing as a whole. Continuing to follow the productivist approach amounts to a hastening of that trend, in that it promotes routines of growth which, instead of improving matters, tend as a whole to exacerbate the crisis situations. (Diefenbacher & Zieschank, 2008, p. 12)

In Western Europe, the welfare state has so far been thought of as able to control and limit poverty. Now, even in affluent European regions, many people are gripped by a fear of new forms of poverty (e.g. “the working poor”) and are watching the familiar socio-political safety net wear away. Social problems previously held in check could become topics of vital importance in people’s lives, putting once privileged sections of the population in a comparable position to those in the world’s poorest regions, at least in terms of risk theory. People are also gaining personal experience of what happens when a global economy is based on expropriation. The privatization of public goods (commons), especially basic goods such as water and power, is triggering distress and an experience of collective dependency, provoking discussion on sustainability. This opens up opportunities for social workers to find their own, new positions and join others in showing that social achievements are one of the fundamental principles of social sustainability. It must constantly be reiterated that these achievements are the historical result of social conflicts being played out in public and transformed through a social filter. Democratic conflict and social sustainability are mutually dependent.