Generative Justice versus Distributive Justice : a crucial distinction for guiding engineering towards a more peaceful and democratic world

The term “justice” is easy to convey in a discussion of individual rights Criminal law violation – “lawbreaker was brought to justice” Civil rights violation – “this will deny their right to vote” International human rights violations—“injustice by dictator X in arresting his political opponents”

The term “justice” is harder to convey in a discussion of “social justice” Common for undergrads to misinterpret “social justice” as meaning “socialism” We can define social justice as “Increasing equity of risk and resource distribution among different social groups”

Examples of social justice Examples: Environmental degradation: low-income communities should not bear greater health risks than high-income communities College admissions: black students should not be admitted at lower rates than white students Health budgets: men’s disease should not be funded at a higher rate than women’s disease

Critics of social justice Individual responsibility: if more people in low- income communities choose to smoke, they should bear responsibility for that choice Meritocracy: If my grades are high it is due to my talent and hard work; thus college admissions should reflect that and nothing else. Reverse discrimination: prostate cancer and breast cancer occur at about the same rate, but funding for breast cancer is about double that of prostate cancer

Critics of social justice “Democrats want to fight over who gets the biggest slice of pie, but we Republicans want to bake a bigger pie for everyone”

Confusion over social justice in the case of Open Source Software Kevin Kelly is wrong: Open source software does not fit the category of “socialism” Yet it is relevant to “social justice” – how do we resolve this contradiction?

Socialism is based on distributive social justice 1)Money appears to be a self-generating source of value 2)Actually money disguises the true source of value: self-generating capacity of labor and nature 3)Capitalism extracts self-generated value, creating injustice and alienation 4)Capitalism raises profits by "externalizing" costs, damaging health and environment

Liberalism is also based on distributive social justice 1)Socialism attempts to return that surplus value by state ownership 2)Liberalism attempts to return that surplus value by taxes

Open Source is a case of generative social justice

Generative justice reconfigures the flow of value: from labor back to labor Previously the software developers labor value can be privatized (extracted) But Open Source ensures that value is available to its source of generation via the public commons

Generative justice reconfigures the flow of value: from nature back to nature Previously nature’s value can be privatized (extracted). But Critical Growing (Lyles) ensures it is available to its via the natureculture commons.

Why should small scale waste recycling be better than large scale industrial waste systems? Because the small-scale case offers greater opportunity for Generative justice

Generative social justice Increasing the public capacity for self-generating practices and resources Social entrepreneurship: capital at the service of social justice Generative public spaces: Community gardens, murals Generative technologies: DIY, Maker-faire, Arduino, fan fiction, citizen journalism Generative educative practices: Recovering heritage, history, futures