Table of Contents

Preface vii

Part I Social Justice: The Basics

1 Why We Need a Theory 3

2 The Machinery of Social Injustice 14

3 The Scope of Social Justice 27

Part II Equality of Opportunity

4 Why Equal Opportunity? 37

5 Education 46

6 Health 70

7 The Making of the Black Gulag 95

Part IV The Cult of Personal Responsibility

10 Responsibility versus Equality? 131

11 Rights and Responsibilities 142

12 Irresponsible Societies 154

Part V The Demands of Social Justice

13 Pathologies of Inequality 169

14 Wealth 186

15 Jobs and Incomes 200

16 Can We Afford Social Justice? 215

Part VI The Future of Social Justice

17 The Power of Ideas 233

18 How Change Happens 243

19 Meltdown? 251

20 Justice or Bust 261

Notes 274

Index 311

About the Author

Brian Barry is Lieber Professor of Political Philosophy at Columbia University.

Reviews

“A brilliant polemic against inequality.”
Roy Hattersley, The Guardian “Barry's pugnacious defence of a robust social democracy deserves to find a wide readership ... for disillusioned social democrats, Why Social Justice Matters stands as a refreshingly staunch and intelligent manifesto.”
New Statesman “Barry's writing is extremely engaging. His arguments are supported by a wide range of examples and illustrations and an impressive breadth of scholarship.”
Ethics and Social Welfare “This book is a powerful argument against the utter inequity of the current political and economic system in the UK and against the way in which a discourse of ‘equal opportunities’ is used to maintain what Barry describes as the ‘machinery of injustice’. In this extraordinarily simple and lucid book, Barry weaves striking threads of supporting evidence, anecdotes, quotations and statistics together to encourage us to insist that another (just) world is not only possible but that an unjust world cannot endure.”
British Journal of Sociology “Barry persuasively argues that differentials in positional goods allow the rich to have better personal health due to higher self-esteem, better access to more fulfilling jobs due to a wealth of social connections, and greater ability to capture the government and use it to secure their own interests.”
Utilitas