The Identification of Inequality with Injustice and of Equality with Social Justice Have Become Characteristic of “the Socialists of All Parties”

Consider, for example, quotations from a Fabian Society review of the 1974-9 Labour Party administrations in the United Kingdom. The Editors proclaim “that the Labour Party can and should light a flame in a world of injustice and inequality.” Contributor after contributor speaks of “socialist canons of equality and social justice” and of “a more socially just and equal society”. One even goes so far as to lay it down — without attempting to explain what this might mean or why we should accept it as true — that, in particular, “Racial equality requires a society which is equal in all respects”.

Such identification of inequality with injustice and of equality with social justice have become characteristic of “the socialists of all parties”. According to Bosanquet and Townsend, these identifications were manifested in two ways. In the first place, none of the contributors made any attempt to respond to the request of the editors that they should examine and elucidate “the meaning of equality”. In the second place, and perhaps still more significant, the editors failed to demand, and the contributors neglected to offer, any reasons at all either for adopting equality as a value or for concluding themselves entitled or required to impose that value upon others by force. No doubt it appeared to one and all altogether obvious that a just society must be an equal one; if not perhaps, if this is conceivable, “a society which is equal in all respects”. For, given the equation between equality and justice, then there would certainly be no need for further justification on either count.

--Antony G. N. Flew, "Socialism and 'Social' Justice," Journal of Libertarian Studies 11, no. 2 (Summer 1995): 77-78.