Structural Injustice, and the Piacular
David Estlund (Brown) visited Amsterdam, and as part of the festivities we read and discussed with him his "What’s Unjust about Structural Injustice?." Ethics 134.3 (2024). I don’t have much to contribute to discussion of Estlund’s overall argument, but at the start of section II there is a passage that I found fascinating and worth a digression. Estlund’s own understanding of is is this: “How might a social structure be not only bad but also wrong apart from individual moral wrongs?” (p. 337) Here’s what he writes:
In October of 1971, the New York Times reported, “Delegates to the world Synod of Bishops are moving toward a conviction that the Roman Catholic Church must broaden its understanding of sin to include the ‘structural’ injustice of major social institutions that many people assume to be morally neutral.” This, the first published appearance of the term ‘structural injustice’ that I have found, comes with a surprise. Catholic bishops were urging that structural injustice be counted as a case of sin. The document they eventually produced not only avowed that they were “listening to the cry of those who suffer violence and are oppressed by unjust systems and structures” but also spoke of “the present-day situation of the world, marked as it is by the grave sin of injustice.” Sin? In systems, structures, and situations themselves? This was more or less novel for the church, and the idea of social structural wrongs in the broader culture seems to date from around the same time. John Paul II eventually granted that groundbreaking claim of the bishops that some social structures are cases of sin. But he insisted, as the bishops had not, that it is all ultimately individual sin. “The real responsibility ... lies with individuals. A situation—or likewise an institution, a structure, society itself—is not in itself the subject of moral acts.”16—pp. 336-337.
I am not so sure I agree with Estlund’s view of Church history here. We can discern in its (19th and 20th century) responses to Communism the idea of social, structural wrongs originating in human sin. For example, in Pope Pius XI’s (1931) “QUADRAGESIMO ANNO,” he endorses Pope Leo XIII’s breaking with liberalism, and so providing the state a role in securing institutions that provide for the common good in particular “chief consideration ought to be given to the weak and the poor.” (sect. 25). Not unlike John Paul II, Pius XI goes on to treat both unbridled capitalism and Leninist communism as instantiating defective social structures that can be traced back to individual sin (see sect 132).* By contrast Pius XI advocates for the idea that “the institutions themselves of peoples and, particularly those of all social life, ought to be penetrated with this justice, and it is most necessary that it be truly effective, that is, establish a juridical and social order which will, as it were, give form and shape to all economic life.” (88) That is to say, it seems that for Pius XI it’s conceptually possible that institutions of social life are (let’s say) tainted with injustice, even if the origin of this injustice can be traced back to individual sin. (That’s a fine example of methodological individualism!)
At this point it’s worth noting — especially because the Catholic diagnoses of structural injustice occurs within a polemic, in part, againt liberalism — that within echt-liberalism there is a strain that allows that institutions are morally highly defective even if the individuals that serve in them are practically (relatively) blameless. In his (2021) “Structural Injustice and the Tyranny of Scales,” Kirun Sankaran calls attention to a very striking passage from Wealth of Nations:
Since Smith was quite familiar with some of the corruption and misdeed by servants in the East India Company, I assume his point is partially rhetorical here in order to focus on the incentives that create odious outcomes. That is to say, for a Smithian liberal it’s quite natural to say that individuals may be (relatively) blameless while the structure or institution that shapes their incentives is not. To be sure, as Sankaran emphasizes, “Smith’s point (and mine) is not that appeals to individuals’ attitudes and appeals to features of social structure are mutually exclusive. It is compatible with his view that particular agents might be acting in a blameworthy way.”
Now my language of ‘taint’ above and Smith’s language of ‘censure’ side-step the unease deontic thinkers feel when confronted by the very idea of an impersonal institution being unjust. (Smith’s focus on character reminds us of the virtue-theoretic strain in his thought that he embeds in a kind of methodological, intellectual/analytic egalitarianism such that we all would behave sort of alike when faced by the same incentives.) I assume they wouldn’t feel this unease if one could show that there was nothing over and beyond an institution other than a collective/group identity, but as my nod to incentives reveal, I do think there is more to an institution than the character of group identity.
So much for set up. I do suspect the temptation to speak of structural injustice (not unlike the temptation to speak of unconscious bias) is to let particular individuals and populations off the hook for political/tactical purposes.
Be that as it may, on my view conceptually structural injustice is analogous to bad moral luck if one agrees with Smith, as I do, that individuals can be relatively blameless while the institutions they operate in are not. My friend Keith Hankins wants to discuss such cases in terms of what he calls (in a forthcoming paper) “associative responsibility.” For in such cases these individuals are just like the unlucky people who happen to find themselves in a miserable chain of causes leading to the misfortune of others.** Smith treats this category of people as ‘piacular,’ that is tainted (with a kind of shame). Piacular relates to the Latin “piāculum,” which means propitiatory sacrifice, and from “piāre,” which means to appease.
Interestingly enough, for Smith the fact that one is blameless (albeit piacular) in the bad moral luck of others doesn’t mean one has no obligations to victims of the situations. In fact, there is a sense in which on this view one must atone to the victims (and their families) for the harms done to them. I have argued that for Smith the norms governing the ‘price’ of atonement are determined by the kind of harm (to norms of society, others, self, etc.) and the extent of that harm (how fatal, etc.)–both of which take precedence over the relative social status of victim and involuntary cause. So, if the analogy between bad moral luck and structural injustice holds,+ it seems that for Smith one could argue that there should be at least some compensation done to those on the receiving end of structural (and historical) injustice by those who benefitted from it due to the incentive structure they faced (Hankins also seems to argue this).
Obviously, the two preceding paragraphs evade non-trivial detail (not the least the size and kind of compensation). But my interest today is to say the following: what Anscombe and MacIntyre really get right is that contemporary moral theory (be it deontic or utilitarian) is defective in a way because it finds it so difficult to accommodate many morally-inflected ‘taints’ in our lifeworld. My own more skeptical diagnoses (closer to MacIntyre than Anscombe) is that such moral theories are tempted by a kind of rationalizing instinct about our moral universe. But this instinct leaves too much of it unaccounted for. That the bishops were tempted by the language of sin to describe social institutions bears witness to this truth.
*Here’s a passage from sect 132:
**My teacher Iris Marion Young had tried to distinguish structural injustice from cases of bad luck in chapter 2 of Responsibility for Justice. While there may be cases of bad luck that are entirely devoid of moral significance, it doesn’t follow all such cases are.