This book offers an alternative to perspectives of distributive justice which fail to resolve economic inequality and exacerbate social problems by ignoring the real causes of inequality. The main impact of the book is to highlight the importance of self-ownership and private property, showing how market participation advances liberty and prosperity.
The idea that we should pay reparations to disadvantaged racial groups as compensation for historical injustice is deeply contested. The debates often focus on the practical implications of paying reparations, but overlook more fundamental questions about the meaning of justice. What is justice? What are the implications of wealth redistribution for individual liberty and the rule of law? This book answers these questions through an analysis of classical liberal perspectives in law, philosophy and economics.
The book questions whether economic inequality stems from historical injustice, and explores the wider implications of attempting to create equal outcomes through legislative mandates. The book argues that free markets, resting on libertarian rights, are the best way to help disadvantaged members of society and to create the conditions more likely to advance economic equality. The book will be of interest to researchers and students of economics, law, politics and philosophy.
This study co-authored by Wanjiru Njoya and David Gordon offers a closely reasoned argument against racial preferences and racial reparations. The authors offer a concept of justice that flatly contradicts these claims and which stresses self-ownership and individual responsibility. They correctly point out that the hardships that the ancestors of those now demanding special treatment may have been subject to in the past does not entitle them to special treatment at the expense of other Americans.
- Paul Gottfried, Raffensperger Professor Emeritus of Humanities, Elizabethtown College and Editor of Chronicles.
We can have individual liberty and property rights. Or we can have reparations. But we can't have both. This is the compelling message from Wanjiru Njoya and David Gordon, who skillfully skewer the idea of compensation between racial groups for "historical injustice". Do some groups of individuals owe other groups of individuals for circumstances that took place before any of them were born? Njoya and Gordon explain why the answer is 'no'.
- Bruce Pardy, Professor of Law, Queen's University and Executive Director, Rights Probe
This book offers an alternative to theories of distributive or restorative justice in resolving economic inequality, highlighting the importance of property rights and market participation in advancing liberty, prosperity and the rule of law. The book will be of interest to researchers and students of economics, law, politics and philosophy.
David Gordon is a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute and editor of the Mises Review. Dr. Gordon is the author of Resurrecting Marx: The Analytical Marxists on Exploitation, Freedom, and Justice, The Philosophical Origins of Austrian Economics, An Introduction to Economic Reasoning, and Critics of Marx.
Wanjiru Njoya is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter. She is a law graduate of the University of Nairobi, Kenya, and a former Rhodes Scholar (St Edmund's College, Cambridge, 1998). Dr. Njoya is the author of Economic Freedom and Social Justice: The Classical Ideal of Equality in Contexts of Racial Diversity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).
