Democracy: The Life Of Social Justice

Building a just society, in which social benefits and social burdens are reasonably apportioned, human essential demands are basically satisfied, human personity and dignity gained legal acknowledgement and equal protection, differences among persons winned social respects, is not only a fine desire of human being but also the important content of achieving societal harmony, and even a public problem about which the public in our country is quite concerned nowadays. Whether the problem is reasonably solved is relative to our country's long stability and continuable development. The social justice can't be realized without a normative market, a good law or even a democratic political system orderly operated. The central task of this doctoral dissertation is to do a normative research on the political conditions of realizing social justice, with the purpose of providing feasible way to realization of social justice from the view of politics.The social justice is a secular ideal peculiar to humankind, which concerns the fate of political community and the happiness of this life for every citizen. The human seeking for social justice is perseverant, but their understanding of social justice is full of divergence. In an unjust society, man with equal rights is treated unequally, the government can not create those necessary conditions for every citizen's decent life, and it can not also make all social members have equal chance to pursue the life cherished by them and decide the fate or future of their own. The justice is the base of the persistent social order, without social justice, it is difficult to keep social order. The social injustice is an important factor resulting in out-of-order society, which destroyed the citizens'virtue, encouraged and promoted human opportunistic behavior, weakened the sense of trust among people, debased the citizens'sense of attribution to the political community, increased interpersonal sense of alienation, breeded malignity, strengthened hatred, destroyed the sense that all citizens in the same political community helped each other. Social injustice is the root of crime, the most evident and extreme representation of disdaining social order is committing a crime. Social injustice is the also the source of social ferment. The unjust distribution of social wealth may lead to social division, estrangement, hostility and even violent conflicts each other among different groups. Social justice is an important force which improves the whole quality of human life, it provides a dependable base point for members of human society to survey the rationality of social systems and the limitation in public life, and moreover, it points out a direction for social members to ameliorate social systems and construct excellent public life by public negotiation.Democracy is the form of realizing the political justice, which views the unequal power relation among persons as not natural and predeterminate. Those authorities that are from nature and the God are counted as unjust. According to the democratic logic, nobody is doomed to the governed, and in the same way, there is nobody who should govern the others by birth. The injustice of natural authority is embodied in that it denies such characters of huma relations as formal equality among people and stipulation of the political power relation, that it determines the human fate completely according to those standards irrelative to individual endeavors. Democracy also takes the unequal power relation among persons as not decided by God, and the authority from God is unjust either. The justice of democracy is from that it denies the divinity of power relation and the responsibility of power holders to God, and it has transfered the responsibility of governor from God to the popular. Democracy is the form of realizing the political justice, which regards the unequal power relation among people as the result of postnatal creation and free choice of free men, and keeps the power relation voluntary. In democratic polity, the ultimate reason that authority is legitimate is that the authority derives from the citizen's consent and free choice. In some way, the power relation is the realation which every free man can join in or retreat from. Among those equal persons, whether nature, God's will or force, can not construct a just and legal power relation. The value-rationality of democracy lies in it bases the legitimate political authority on citizens'consent and acceptance, and regards citizen's choice and consent as the core factor which justified the unequal power relation. In modern states, democracy is a political system that allocates public power and makes the authority legitimization. The value-rationality of democracy exists in that it can remove the character of monopoly in allocating political power, keep the political system open, and make all social memebers have equal chance to get unequal political power via the law. Democracy is the form of realizing the political justice, which maintains the fluidity of public power and pacification of flowing power. By the system of limited term, democracy assures periodical flowage of public power, which has respected citizens'right to survival and opposition, reduced the loser's risk, provided the the chance to win again for the losers, and formed a competitive and cooperative not hatred relation among political actors. Democracy has kept openness of political system and acceptability of the criterion and manner of allocating political power, built a diverse and expedite merchanism for political expression, realized the reasonable division and flowage among political, economical and cultural elites, and transferred the relation from the govern and the governed to the serve and the served.Democracy provides an impartial procedure which helps to make social justice come true. Democratic procedure is a just political procedure with the quality of extensive inclusion. In democratic states, all persons have citizenship, everyone who is affected by political decision has equal right and chance to participate in policymaking and influence the result of decision-making. What democratic politics really requests is all public policies correlated to citizens'interests, if citizens hope to participate in decision-makting, they should be permitted to join in this process by themselves or their delegates. Democratic procedure is a just political procedure with openness and transparency. As a political system, democracy is based on a visible power. The ideal of democracy is to eliminate the invisible power and protect human society from the destructive effect on social justice that results from the invisible power. In democratic societies, all information that is correlative to public decision should be open to all citizens. All citizens can know information and rule relative to decision-making by different channels. In democratic society, the behavior and the process of decision are also transparent. The public in democratic society should know about not only what things have been decided and the ways to make decision, but also the decision's result. Democratic political procedure is an impartial political procedure which has treated its citizens equally. In democratic logic, all people are equal in political status. During the course of making collective decisions, democratic states or governments will consider all persons'interests equally, even for those persons restricted from decision-making, their happiness and well-being also should be taken into account. In the process of making collective decisions promissory to everyone, nobody is more important than the others, similarly, nobody has more decision-power than the others. In democratic society, whether they are rich or poor, each has one and only one vote. Moreover, each vote is with equal weights and is equally counted, and each citizen's preference has equal importance and effect. Democratic procedure is an impartial procedure which treats all citizens equally, the rule of majority is the decision-rule by which democratic procedure must abide. The rule of majority is protective and equal in opportunity. The majority and minority in democratic procedure is not changeless but transferred one another. Furthermore, the proportion of the majority and minority in democratic procedure is not inherent but the result of free choice of citizens with free will. According to democratic procedure, those decisions made by the majority are not close and unchangeable but temporary and amendable.Building a just society needs a government responsible to the people. Democracy has established the idea that government should be responsible to the people, and made this idea come true by a series of institutional arrangements. Democracy is a good political system, which makes various preferences of citizens expressed and aggregated, and timely conveys the public demands which are constantly adjusted to the government; Democracy is a good political system, which insures that the government be responsible to the people relying on political inspiration and competition; Democracy is a good political system, which assures the responsibility of government to the people through political supervision and the institution of accountability. Democracy can not only punish the government irresponsible to the people but also eliminate the government which can't supply the people with satisfying public services in proper time. The meaning of democracy for human civilization exists in that it makes the people choose their desired government freely without migration. The value of democracy consists in that it makes the people build a government responsible to them dispensing with violent revolution or migration.Building a just society and realizing social justice both need democracy. Democracy can facilitate the achievement of social justice, and make social injustice repaired and restored too. From positive aspect, democracy is an important measure to promote social justice. From negative aspect, democracy is an effective political mechanism to tackle and repair social injustice. Democracy can make the social injustice freely expressed and widely attended, and it can also build a good relation between citizen and government that is full of comprehension and cooperation. The judicial systems in democratic society can constantly repair social injustice, and prevent social injustice from politicalizaiton or generalization. As an important merchanism to hand over one's power peacefully, the system of limited term in democratic society can make the power holder alterative periodically, and during this course, it make the public policy adjusted in certain phase and social injustice repaired in time. Although democracy can not completely eradicate social injustice, it can prevent social injustice or discrimination from being eternalized, and alleviate or reduce the probability of crime, violence and social turbulence which result from social injustice.Democracy is a very important political ideal, the main symbol of human political progress and the political conditions of realizing the social justice. Democracy is indispensable to realization of social justice, but this doesn't means that democracy is omnipotent, just the contrary, democracy is also limited. In someone's opinion, democratic politics is only a game belonging to the rich and it often crumbles to the mob rule. Democratic politics may increase political costs, reduce administrative efficiency, and even encourage politicians to cheat and pretend. Democracy is a political form that insures the principle of popular sovereignty. But a lot of political practice indicated that whether president or the popular is untrustworthy to some extent. The people may be brutal and impuissant. Both brutal democracy and impuissant democracy are difficult to make the social justice come true. The brutal democracy can impinge on the minority rights, and that impuissant democracy is difficult to make reasonable decisions. In real political life, the majority may be intolerant and those decisions from majority may also be unjust. The majority is short-sighted as well as irrational, which causes them unable to discover long-term interests and easily do some things only by their emotion. The majority can not respect the minority rights, and even deprive minority of their interests unduly as well as infringe minority's freedom of thought. Practice has proved that the decision made by majority is very important to realize social justice, but the power of the majority must be limited, because the majority can't say they are right just by reason of the great number. In the process of realizing social justice, democracy is important and likewise limited. The social justice realized by democracy can't be quite equal to social justice but only close to the criterion of justice for ever. In order to realize the social justice, we need democracy, but the healthy operation of democracy also needs the restrictions from justice. The problems that democracy faces include"tyranny of the majority"and"inability of the majority". So how to solve the two problems is the guarantee that enhances the ability of democracy in accelerating the realization of social justice.Justice is the primary value of social institutions and one necessary condition of human civilized life. Democracy is the intrinsic requirement of civilized society and absolutely necessary political conditions of realizing social justice in modern multi-society. Without the support of democracy, the ideal of social justice must become a Utopia difficult to come true. Similarly, without the restriction of justice, democracy must sink to the naked tyranny of the majority over the minority. From the aspect of political choice, what realizing social justice needs is not king-philosopher but democracy. Furthermore, to ahieve social justice, what we need is not degraded but perfect democracy. Democracy is the political condition of realizing social justice, as is not equal to say that all democratic states have actualized social justice and been enjoining the fruits brought by social justice, that all the other political polities but democracy can not realize the social justice absolutely. If we look on the developing experiences of various human sociey with a global, developmental and unitary eye, it will be not difficult for us to find that the people under democratic polity are more possible to realize the social justice and enjoin the fruit produced by social justice. When we say that democracy is the political condition of realizing the social justice, we also say not only that social justice can not be realized under arbitrary, autarchic or authoritative polity, and all of these polities need transfer to democracy, but also that what we need in realizing social justice is not declined and corrupt but excellent democracy. In actual life, the most critical problem to realize social justice consists in not only whether we need democracy but also what quality of democracy we need. Democracy is no doubt important, but the implement of democracy is conditional and the ways of realizing democracy is diverse. It is just this diverity that makes it possible for human being to deepen the understanding of democratic ideal and study each other.