Our University-Culture, Chapter 4: The Collective Guilt Culture (Part 2)

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VII. Social Justice

With collective guilt comes several other ideas as well. A common one is “social justice.” Social justice as an idea is a fairly recent one. We can make sense of this idea — and its recent emergence — in light of the emergence of collective guilt as a social regulator and a certain idea of privilege associated with it. The dynamics is as follows:

Group A is privileged relative to Group B
The world is a zero sum game
Therefore, what Group A has was necessarily taken from Group B
Therefore, Group A should feel guilty about their privilege
And, equally, therefore, Group B deserves social justice from Group A

If you believe in evil, Group A must be destroyed one way or another, even murdered; if you believe in bad, Group A should be taxed and have the money distributed to Group B and be made to feel so guilty they won’t object. The early 20th century saw the consequences of collective guilt being combined with the idea of evil. One may not like the welfare state, but one must admit that it’s far better than the Marxist alternative proved itself to be.