When justice is not about "who" but "what": or, Politics as neither war nor law case

(Social) justice is one of two things. Either it is who does what is done, and whom they do it too. In that case, the point of a radical politics is to change who is in which places. But that is not a radical politics, but a fraudulent ideology.

The other possibility is that justice is what is done. Its effects and purposes are evaluated less in terms of the interests of parties, as the purposes which justify means, and are justified in turn by what is wanted. No matter who by. The question "What?" leads to asking why. 

The first kind of question leads naturally to either civil war or legal proceedings. In fact, with its scheme of opposing parties, it can be said that this way of thinking makes politics war by imagining it as a lawsuit or criminal prosecution. 

The second kind of question leads not to war but arguments. It leads not to court trials but to disputes in governing councils. It therefore involves criticism and argument, but not, normally, accusation. 

The first kind of system is one of lawyers, politicians, and bosses. In a world of bosses, life is business, and its purpose is to get things done. Argument is rare because those who rule are, a priori, only rarely in the wrong. This will lead to a society that is liberal but not democratic. 

The second kind of society is one of scholars, scientists, and artists. People whose profession involves thinking may pursue it as a job or as a way of living. This should thus include all of us. This would lead to a society that is democratic in a participatory way, and in which liberty is not limits to the other's powers so that there is merely domination hedged about and moderated (this was Shakespeare's politics; he always affirmed existing authority and always problematized it, but only ethically, and the problematizations were baroque mirrorings addressed to a contemplative intelligence), -- not to that but to a liberty based on freedom from work, the Aristotelian idea that Marx generalized. 

We don't live in that kind of world. We all inhabit the first kind of scenario, which is getting old already.