---
title: "Distributive justice"
chunk: 4/4
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributive_justice"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:57:46.338543+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Friedrich von Hayek ===
Within the context of Western liberal democracies in the post-WWII decades, Friedrich von Hayek was one of the most famous opposers of the idea of distributive justice. For him, social and distributive justice were meaningless and impossible to attain, on the grounds of being within a system where the outcomes are not determined deliberately by the people but contrarily spontaneity is the norm. Therefore, distributive justice, redistribution of wealth, and the demands for social justice in a society ruled by an impersonal process such as the market are in this sense incompatible with that system.
In his book The Road to Serfdom, there can be found considerations about social assistance from the state. There, in talking about the importance of a restrictive kind of security (the one against physical privation) in front of one that necessarily needs to control or abolish the market, Hayek poses that "there can be no doubt that some minimum of food, shelter, and clothing, sufficient to preserve health and the capacity to work, can be assured to everybody". Providing this type of security is for Hayek compatible with individual freedom as it does not involve planning. But already in this early work, he acknowledges the fact that this provision must keep the incentives and the external pressure going and not select which group enjoys security and which does not, for under these conditions "the striving for security tends to become higher than the love of freedom". Therefore, fostering a certain kind of security (the one that for him socialist economic policies follow) can entail growing insecurity as the privilege increases social differences. Notwithstanding, he concludes that "adequate security against severe privation, and the reduction of the avoidable causes of misdirected effort and consequent disappointment, will have to be one of the main goals of policy".
Hayek dismisses an organizational view that ascribes certain outcomes to an intentional design, which would be contrary to his proposed spontaneous order. For this, Hayek famously firstly regards the term social (or distributive) justice as meaningless when it is applied to the results of a liberal market system that should yield spontaneous outcomes. Justice has an individual component for Hayek, is only understood in the aggregation of individual actions which follow common rules, social and distributive justice are the negative opposite as they need a command economy. Secondly, following Tebble's (2009) view, the concept of social justice is for Hayek a reminiscence of an atavistic view towards society, that has been overcome by the survival capacity of the catallactic order and its values.
The third Hayekian critique is about the unfeasibility of attaining distributive justice in a free market order and this is defended on the basis of the determinate goal that all distributive justice aims to. In a catallactic order, the individual morality should freely determine what are distributive fairness and the values that govern economic activity, and the fact that it is impossible to gather all the individual information in a single pursuit for social and distributive justice results in realizing the fact that it cannot be pursued. Lastly, Hayek claims for the incompatibility between the free market and social justice, for, in essence, they are different kinds of inequalities. The former is one determined by the interaction of free individuals and the latter by the decision of an authority. Hayek will, on ethical grounds, choose the former.

=== Robert Nozick ===
One of the major exponents of the libertarian outlook toward distributive justice is Robert Nozick. In his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia he stresses how the term distributive justice is not a neutral one. In fact, there is no central distributor that can be regarded as such. What each person gets, he or she gets from the outcomes of Lockean self-ownership (a condition that implies one's labor mixed with the world), or others who give to him in exchange for something, or as a gift. For him, "there is no more a distributing or distribution of shares than there is a distribution of mates in a society in which persons choose whom they shall marry". This means that there can be no pattern to which to conform or aim. The market and the result of individual actions provided the conditions for libertarian principles of just acquisition and exchange (contained in his Entitlement Theory) will have as a result a distribution that will be just, without the need for considerations about the specific model or standard it should follow.

== See also ==

== Notes ==

== References ==
Konow, James. 2003. "Which is the fairest one of all?: A positive analysis of justice theories", Journal of Economic Literature 41(4):1188–1239. doi:10.1257/002205103771800013.
Laczniak, Gene R., and Patrick E. Murphy. 2008: "Distributive Justice: Pressing Questions, Emerging Directions, and the Promise of Rawlsian Analysis." Journal of Macromarketing 28(1):5–11.
Maiese, Michelle. [2003] 2013. "The Notion of Fair Distribution." Beyond Intractability.
Phelps, Edmund S. 1987. "Distributive justice." Pp. 886–888 in The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics 1.
Rescher, Nicholas (1966). Distributive Justice. New York: Bobbs-Merrill.
"Principle of Distributive Justice." Ascension Health. 28 Feb 2009.

== Further reading ==
Bullemore, Thomas (2013), Justicia Distributiva y Riesgos, Academia.edu
Hegtvedt, Karen A.; Markovsky, Barry (1995), "Justice and Injustice", in Cook, Karen S.; Fine, Gary Alan; House, James S. (eds.), Sociological Perspectives on Social Psychology (1 ed.), Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon (published 1994), pp. 257–280, ISBN 0-205-13716-4
Leventhal, Gerald S.; Karuza, Jurgis Jr.; Fry, William R. (1980), "Beyond Fairness: A Theory of Allocation Preferences", in Mikula, Gerald (ed.), Justice and Social Interaction: Experimental and Theoretical Contributions from Psychological Research, New York City: Plenum, pp. 167–218, ISBN 3-456-80787-2

== External links ==
Fieser, James; Dowden, Bradley (eds.). "Distributive Justice". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. ISSN 2161-0002. OCLC 37741658.
Distributive Justice on The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy