VII The Meaning of Justice

BUT what is justice?—asks Plato. Don’t you see that our notion of justice is the very crux of the whole business? Is justice merely a matter of telling the truth? Nonsense; it may be well to have our children believe that; but those who are not children know that if a lie is a better instrument of achievement than the truth in some given juncture of events, then a lie is justified. Truth is a social value, and has its justification only in that; if untruth prove here and there of social value, then untruth is just.¹ The confusion of justice with some absolute eternal law comes of a separation of ethics from politics, and an attempt to arrive at a definition of justice from the study of individuals. But morals grow out of politics; justice is essentially a political relation. And taking the state as a whole, it is clear that nothing is “good” unless it works; that it would be absurd to say that justice demands of a state that it should be ordered in such a way as to make for its own decay. Social organization must be effective, and lies and class-divisions are justified if they make for the effectiveness of a political order. Surely social effectiveness forbids that men fit to legislate should live out their lives as cobblers, or that men should rule whose natural aptitude is for digging ditches. Justice means, for politics at least, that each member of society is minding his natural business, is doing that for which he is fitted by his own natural capacity. Injustice is the encroachment of one part on another; justice is the efficient functioning of each part. Justice, then, is social coördination and harmony. It is not “the interest of the stronger,” it is the harmony of the whole. So in the individual, justice is the harmonious operation of a unified personality; each element in one’s nature doing that which it is fitted to do; again it is not mere strength or forcefulness, but harmonious, organized strength; it is effective order. And effective order demands a class division. You may mouth as you please the delusive delicacies of democracy; but classes you will have, for men will always be some of gold and some of silver and some of brass. And the brass must not pass itself off as silver, nor the silver as gold. Give the brass all the time and opportunity in the world, and it will still be brass. Of course brass will not believe that it is brass, but we had better make it understand once for all that it is so, even if we have to tell a thousand lies to get the truth believed.

And as for variation and plasticity, remember that these too are valueless except as they make for a better society. They assuredly make for change; but change is not betterment. History is a chaos of variations; without some organ for their control they cancel one another and terminate inevitably in futility. Our problem is not how to change, but how to set our best brains to controlling change for the sake of a finer life.