No more make-believe

For the modern American liberal, “social justice” is the kinder, gentler side of woke. It’s the diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda wrapped in Christianese language or the façade of Catholic social teaching. Economist Thomas Sowell, a fellow at Stanford University, demolishes the intellectual underpinnings of that agenda’s central claims in his book Social Justice Fallacies (Basic Books 2023).

Sowell is legendary in conservative circles, with 44 published projects to his credit. Reading his slim new volume is like watching a heavyweight boxer work over a weaker opponent. “Fact!” “Fact!” “You gonna throw a punch at me?” Graceful dodge then—boom—“Fact!” Throughout the book, Sowell dispatches one after another of the left’s favorite canards, from racial discrimination to income inequality to the mechanics of taxation.

His consistent point is straightforward: The world does not work as the liberals wish because everyday Americans are rational actors who respond to incentives. “Both history and economics show that people are not chess pieces, carrying out someone else’s grand design.” Yet politicians so often act that way, as though an increase in tax rates will guarantee a corresponding increase in tax revenue, thinking no one will move jurisdictions, retire early, or invest in tax-exempt bonds in response to the higher rates. This “exaltation of desirability and neglect of feasibility” is one of the “fundamental fallacies of the social justice vision.” As Christians, we might say policy must be rooted in reality, which includes the nature of Creation and the fallenness of man. This creates problems for the utopians in our midst.

Sowell is African American, and his first chapters are dedicated to critiquing popular fallacies based on race. But racialist fallacies are found and refuted throughout the book, a subtle reminder of how central race is to the modern liberal project.

Sowell’s writing is efficient to the point of Spartanism. There is no conversational tone or overarching narrative. Indeed, the book does not even include an introduction that lays out its purposes and plan, a missed opportunity to synthesize the content to come.

Instead, Sowell’s style is to pick a topic, a proposition—a social justice fallacy—recite the typical liberal assertion one might find in a Washington Post column or PBS news broadcast, and then deconstruct it in two pages of logic, history, academic studies, and facts before moving on to the next one. It’s not meant to be entertaining, though it’s hard not to smile occasionally when he lands his best punches.

His style has its audience: those craving the intellectual vindication of things they already believe to be true and right about the world. This Sowell delivers, page after page, as throughout his 50-year polemical and academic career.