Bleached Foundations 123might be seen, on one reading, as an ideal way of thinking about issues of justice;
since it works impartially and universally, it does not fixate on the content of justice,
or the intrinsic good involved, but rather focuses on the much more mundane and
manageable task of seeing whether a practical consequence will maximize welfare. It
thus enables clear determinate policy. The public sphere inevitably places a wide range
of constraints upon what is possible, and utility provides a functional and rational
‘road map’ through these diverse constraints. In this sense, utilitarian argument would
have a vital role to play in arguments about justice.
However, the above still does not overcome certain crucial problems. Dominant
public policy outcomes can be deeply despotic. In the final analysis, utility is simply
what the majority of agents ‘want’, or, what satisfies them. There can be no qualitative
assessment of preferences, desires, or wants. Wants have no content. Further, it is not
clear why the simple fact of a desire entails that itoughtto be maximized. Yet, the
fear of what this quantitative view might entail—namely, anything that the majority
wantbecomes a good to be maximized, for example, attacks on minorities of asylum
seekers—has led to attempts, by other utilitarians, to smuggle in selective qualit-
ative criteria. We then see notions such as ‘rational interests’, ‘rational preferences’,
‘long-term welfare’, or ‘ideal higher utilities’, being deployed in arguments. Yet, the
latter undermine all the impersonality, neutrality, and calculative advantages of the
quantitative versions of the argument. Many utilitarians, fearing the consequences of
qualitative assessment, usually immediately shift ground again back to the quantitat-
ive view, which is indifferent to moral content and agnostic over moral ends (except
in relation to their consequences). However, even here there is nothing, as indicated,
to prevent a large majority being deeply delighted and immensely happy about gross
inequalities or injustices.
Utilitarianism is a highly promiscuous second order doctrine. It has, quite liter-
ally, appeared in many different ideological formats and there is no necessary link
at all to ideas of welfare state policy, caring for the poor or being concerned with
social justice. Many extreme anti-statists and anti-welfare liberal theorists, such as
Herbert Spencer, in late nineteenth-century Britain, employed a form of utilitari-
anism to make their extreme libertarian case (see M. W. Taylor 1992). If we recall
the point, made above, that utilitarianism, as such, actually containsnotheory
of justice or rights, at all, then we should hardly be surprised to see that second
order utilitarian argument can appear virtually anywhere. It can defendortotally
undermine social justice. Utility trumps all comers. As long as a value, doctrine, or
policy can be shown to have the consequence of maximizing the preferences, wants,
interests, of the greatest number, then it is acceptable. This may be convenient,
on one level, for simple-minded immediate public policy-making, and government
house utilitarianism, on a managerial level, but, it is, at the same time, morally
and politically bankrupt. An efficient public policy programme for racially based
pogrom could quite simply be justified on consequentialist utilitarian calculus. The
important point missed by utilitarianism is that no wants or preferences appear in a
political or moral vacuum. It is the context in which a utility claim arises which is all
important.