Public Goods and Social Justice

Article Public Goods and Social Justice Margaret Kohn Why should the state provide public goods? I explore this question by focusing on the example of public parks. It examines the three most influential approaches to public goods (the market failures, the normative, and the democratic) and concludes that they fail to explain why parks should be public. I propose an alternative that I call solidarism, a social justice-based approach that provides a response to liberal arguments about the neutrality of the state. Solidarism emphasizes that modernity gives rise to growing levels of interdependence that generate benefits and burdens that are not shared fairly. Public goods as such are a way of compensating for the negative externalities of urbanization and industrialization. Left libertarians argue that such compensation should exclusively take the form of individual benefits. I challenge this view and provide three reasons for building public infrastructure that is shared among people who live together in a physical space: solidarity, decommodification, and politics. Exploring the publicness of parks provides a window into the broader question about the limits of the market and the importance of public space for democracy. T he justification of public goods is a conceptual advance “perfectionist values” by funding pursuits like the problem for liberal democracies. A democratic state arts and sciences (2001, 151-152). He does concede, in can tax residents and use the money to pay for the a footnote, that public funds could be used to support goods and services that the majority want: bread or ballet, public spaces such as museums and parks because such armies or air quality, humanities or health care. Classical places foster political values, yet the text fails to explain the liberalism, on the other hand, restricts the scope of public connection between public space, political values, and goods to necessities that cannot be adequately provided justice. This lacuna is emblematic of the broader concep- by the market (Smith 2012). The seminal works of John tual confusion over the legitimacy of state support for Rawls exhibit the tension between these two different discretionary goods in liberal, pluralistic societies. approaches. In A Theory of Justice Rawls argues that To what extent should tax revenue subsidize collective support for non-essential public goods must be unanimous consumption goods? The answer to this question is one (Rawls 2009, 266-267). In Justice as Fairness, Rawls of the key differences between left- and right-wing suggests that public resources should not be allocated to ideologies. The privatization of public goods is among the central policy objectives of the right, and neo-liberals have articulated a cogent defence of privatization that is rooted in the principles of freedom and efficiency (Buchanan and Musgrave 1999, Biebricher 2019, Brown Margaret Kohn is Professor of Political Theory at the 2015). I explain the connection between public goods and University of Toronto. Her primary research interests include social justice. I provide a solidarity-based rationale for the history of political thought, critical theory, social justice, public space and use the example of public parks as a lens and urbanism. Her most recent book The Death and Life of for addressing the broader question about public goods. the Urban Commonwealth (Oxford University Press, 2016) Today, public parks enjoy broad popular support. One won the David Easton Award for Best Book in Political study found that voters approved 72% of ballot measures Theory and the Judd Award for Best Book in Urban and related to conservation and parkland (Myers 1999). Yet Local Politics. She is the author of Radical Space: Building there is also an ongoing struggle about the degree to which the House of the People (Cornell University Press, 2003), parks and other public spaces should be privatized.1 For and Brave New Neighborhoods: The Privatization of example, Liberty State Park, a 1200-acre waterfront park Public Space (Routledge, 2004) and Political Theories of in New Jersey, was recently the site of struggle over public Decolonization (with Keally McBride, Oxford University access and privatization. Under the administration of New Press, 2011). Her articles have appeared in such journals as Jersey Governor Chris Christie, the state sought commer- Political Theory, Perspectives on Politics, Journal of cial partners to increase revenue in the park. One proposal Politics, Polity, Dissent, Constellations, Theory & Event, involved leasing part of the shoreline to a Texas-based and Philosophy and Social Criticism. company, which planned to create a 500-slip marina. The doi:10.1017/S1537592719004614 1104 Perspectives on Politics © American Political Science Association 2020 https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592719004614 Published online by Cambridge University Press  view of the Statue of Liberty, opponents contended, would legitimate when it is necessary to rectify injustice but literally be blocked by a massive wall of mega-yachts. After problematic when used to advance some discretionary popular mobilization and a change in administration, the interests at the expense of others. According to liberal State Department of Environmental Protection ultimately theory, the state is supposed to be neutral about different rejected the plan, but similar struggles play out on smaller conceptions of the good. This makes it difficult to explain scales, when local governments introduce or increase user why the state should subsidize some non-universal goods fees to finance the improvement and maintenance of and not others (Feinberg 1994). State support for sporting parks. Even when these spaces are still publicly owned, events or opera companies takes resources away from some they become less inclusive and more commodified (Honan people (taxpayers who do not have a preference for the 2015). Localities have also used public/private partner- activity) and redistributes it to others. The problem ships or “parks conservancy” organizations to raise private becomes especially apparent under conditions of cultural money and to limit public sector control (Katz 1998). pluralism. Why should everyone pay for jazz festivals and It is difficult to assess these changes because the not sitar or tabla performances? underlying reasons for the public provision of parks are Left libertarians such as Philippe van Parijs argue that unclear. A clear theoretical rationale for the public pro- a just distribution of primary goods would largely solve vision of parks can help us evaluate the privatization of this problem (Parijs 1998). If everyone had sufficient public space. I examine the three most influential resources at their disposal, then they could simply approaches to public goods (market failures, basic needs, purchase goods on a market. Some people prefer parks and democracy) and explain why they fail to justify the and others prefer libraries or museums. If each individual public provision of parks. I propose another approach that were to pay an admission charge to gain access to his or her I call the solidarist approach and show how it can preferred amenity, then the production of such amenities illuminate debates about the regulation and funding of should respond to the effective demand. From the left parks. Exploring the publicness of parks provides a window libertarian perspective, the problem is not the market into the broader question about the limits of the market mechanism, but rather the distortion that comes from the and the importance of public things for democracy (Sandel vastly unequal distribution of resources among potential 2013; Satz 2010; Honig 2017). consumers (Levy 2017). There may be equal latent demand for saxophone and sitar concerts, but if saxophone Non-Universal Public Goods fans have large amounts of disposable income and sitar fans Political theorists have devoted a great deal of attention to have none, then the market will not respond to both economic inequality and the distribution of material groups’ preferences. resources (G.A. Cohen 2000, 1995; Van Parijs 2004, In the second half of the paper, I will explain why the 1991; Rawls 2001; E.S. Anderson 1999). The distribution solidarist rationale for public goods is relevant in a society of public goods, however, has received considerably less with a just distribution of private goods, but for now I attention (Miller 1979; Zuidervaart 2010; Murphy and start from the perspective of non-ideal theory. This helps Nagel 2001). Without a theory of public goods, it is us focus on the concrete choices about public goods difficult to evaluate the allocation of public resources and within societies like our own where the degree is of the privatization of government functions. “Public goods” inequality is significant and rising (Mills 2005; Galston is sometimes used to describe anything provided by the 2010; Sluga 2014). Solidarist arguments apply not only to state, but I will focus on collective consumption goods that parks but also to other public spaces such as libraries, are broadly enjoyed. Some public goods such as clean transit, and schools. I focus on parks because the case for water and national defence benefit everyone, but not all state provision is harder to justify on other grounds (such public goods are universal, in this sense. Non-universal as economic benefit) and therefore requires more careful public goods are collective consumption goods that the theoretical elaboration. state provides even though they are not preferred or enjoyed by all people. When non-universal public goods Three Accounts of Public Goods are distributed, the need for a theoretical account becomes The scholarly literature on public goods is relatively thin, even more urgent (Ferdman 2017). In using the term but it does provide three major answers to the question distribution, I mean to draw attention to the way that why the state should provide public goods: market government resources are allocated unequally when they failures, basic needs, and democracy. Each of these subsidize some collective consumption preferences and theories explains the reason for the public provision of not others. The classic example is government funding of some types of goods, therefore my objective is not to elite cultural tastes such as opera and classical music refute these theories but to supplement them. The (Dworkin 1985; Brighouse 1995). The provision of market failures approach is the most influential and non-universal public goods is problematic from a liberal best-known approach. According to the classic econo- perspective (Franken 2016). It involves coercion, which is mistic account, goods should be provided by the state December 2020 | Vol. 18/No. 4 1105 https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592719004614 Published online by Cambridge University Press  Article | Public Goods and Social Justice under two circumstances: when the provision of benefits may not only be the inability to provide green space but is non-excludable and the enjoyment of the goods is non- also the inability to provide a collective, inclusive, and rivalrous (Samuelson 1954). Non-rivalrous means that the diverse place of encounter. Scott Roulier described such enjoyment by one person does not diminish another a park as “the visual articulation of civic equality” (Roulier person’s ability to enjoy the same good. The term “non- 2010, 330). In such spaces, hierarchies are temporarily excludable” highlights the fact that it is impossible to suspended (Zacka 2018, 151). provide a benefit to one person without others gaining A proponent of private provision might respond that access to it. According to the market failures approach, the state is not the only agent capable of funding parks markets are not able to produce such goods efficiently. The that are open to the public. For example, in 2017 Wall classic examples are national defence and clean air; Street financier Paul Johnson donated $100 million to economists concede that these are best provided by the the Central Park Conservancy (Williams 2017) . Philan- state. If the state does not compel everyone to contribute, thropy often exacerbates inequality because it is not then there will be a problem of free-riding and, in spite of subject to democratic control. Eric Beerbohm calls this the fact that these goods are highly valued, they will be the free-provider problem. It alters the distribution of our under-produced. resources and even when it benefits some deserving people, The range of public goods that broadly exhibit this it does so in a way that weakens the ability of the relevant structure increases when we expand the meaning of non- agent—the body of citizens—to rectify the structures that excludable to take into account transaction costs (Touffut produce injustice (Beerbohm 2016). The funding of parks 2006). There are very few things that are truly non- provides a striking illustration of this point. There are excludable. Even the paradigmatic example—sunlight— 1,700 other parks in New York City, many of which are could in principle be transformed into an excludable good, located in less affluent neighborhoods and in a poor state if an enormous sunshade were constructed over a territory of repair. The “parks conservancy” system was introduced and people were charged for access to a sun-hole. Yet there in 1980 to ensure that the underfunding that was destroy- are many goods that in practice are non-excludable because ing parks in other neighborhoods did not impact Central the cost of the gatekeeping function is higher than the Park. Today, Central Park, which is largely maintained value of the good itself. Roads often fall into this category. through philanthropy, has one gardener for every six acres. It is possible to collect tolls, but tollbooths have high In the rest of the system, the ratio, is one gardener for 133 transaction costs that decrease the efficiency of transit. acres (Surico 2018). The private money that maintains Until recently, when technological innovations signifi- Central Park also makes it possible for elites living in cantly reduced the cost of “gatekeeping,” roads were classic Manhattan to remain indifferent to the condition of the public goods in this broader sense of valuable things that other parks. could not be efficiently produced by private actors. The second approach to public goods is a normative Where do parks fit in this schema? It is tempting to theory that holds that state provision is justified when it is include parks with roads in this broader category of necessary to supply primary goods (Klosko 1987). This market failures, but this would not be correct. A striking approach builds on Henry Shue’s seminal work Basic illustration of the relative ease of excluding non- Rights (Shue 1996). Shue argues that regardless of one’s contributors is Gramercy Park. This is a small, fenced substantive conception of the good, it is necessary to secure park in an affluent neighborhood of Manhattan. Eligible certain material conditions such as adequate food, shelter, residents pay an annual fee and receive a key. This model health and security. The theory of basic rights is consistent builds on a long history of large, gated private parks in with what John Rawls famously called political liberalism; Europe. The proliferation of private health clubs and it remains neutral about different substantive understand- amusement parks demonstrates that there is no classic ings of the good life by focusing on the minimal things that market failure in the commercial provision of recreational are necessary for people in pluralistic societies to live space. New technology has already eliminated the job of together peacefully (Rawls 2001). The normative ap- toll-taker, and it is possible to imagine a world in which proach begins with the premise that everyone desires GPS and automated payments commodify public space. a decent life, which entails both agency and well-being The enjoyment of a private park may also be different (Fabre 2000). If individuals cannot secure their own basic from the experience of a public park. In both cases, the needs, then the responsibility to do so devolves on those individual has access to green space, but the social who can, which includes other people and the state. This is experience of the two types of parks is not the same. In the reason why education and healthcare are treated as Gramercy Park users will likely encounter neighbors who public goods (Weinstock 2011). Joe Heath agrees that occupy a similar class position. A public park provides the a social safety net should be provided by the government, opportunity to encounter a broader cross-section of but he justifies such programs as “a special instance of state society, and a network of public parks affords a variety provision in the face of missing or inefficient private of different experiences. The source of the market failure markets” (Heath 2011, 27). The market failure here, 1106 Perspectives on Politics https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592719004614 Published online by Cambridge University Press  however, is the fact that some people do not have enough There is both a descriptive and a normative version of resources to meet their basic needs, therefore the rationale the democratic theory. The normative version of the is still the normative argument that there is a collective democratic approach holds that discretionary goods such responsibility to provide the preconditions of a decent life. as parks should be public if the majority wants them to be. Goods such as single-payer health care may be provided According to Rutger Claassen, majority decision is through the market, but they are described as public goods a legitimate way to reconcile competing claims. His when access to the good is guaranteed by the government argument rests on the premise that liberal states must (Heath 2011, 27). be neutral about different conceptions of the good. What The normative theory is important but incomplete. It does this neutrality require? John Rawls thought that does an excellent job justifying a role for the state in coercion was legitimate only when employed to secure ensuring that residents have access to goods that fulfill justice. The state should not force taxpayers to subsidize basic needs, but it does not explain the reasons for public discretionary goods that they do not value. Rawls argued provision of things that seem to be discretionary such as that unanimous consent would be required to authorize parks. The enjoyment of parks is not a basic need in the state to provide discretionary public goods, which Shue’s sense. Many people choose to spend their leisure seems like an impossible standard. Claassen, however, time in libraries or coffee shops or bars rather than parks. It disagrees with Rawls and argues that majority rule is is possible to live a minimally decent life without regular a legitimate way to resolve disputes about public goods access to parks. According to Fabre, the entitlement to (Claassen 2013). The underlying rationale is the follow- a minimally decent life includes shelter, food, medical care, ing: citizens disagree about whether the state or the education, and other basic necessities like clothing, but she market is the most appropriate institution to allocate is careful not to expand it to include all valued things discretionary goods. If the state must be neutral about (Fabre 2000). In a similar vein, Rutger Claassen distin- different conceptions of the good—in this case, state and guishes between necessary and discretionary public goods. market—then it should allow voters to decide between Parks do foster individual and social benefits, which I will private and public goods. highlight later, but they are discretionary goods. “Non- Claassen’s democratic approach is an improvement over necessary infrastructure” (Claassen 2013) may foster both the descriptive democratic theory and Rawls’ una- human flourishing, but it is possible to live without it. nimity requirement, but it does not ensure a fair compro- The third rationale for public goods is the democratic mise between different conceptions of the good. Claassen one (Sekera 2016; Claassen 2013). Often the term “public concedes as much, noting that the majority could consis- good” is used to describe private goods that are provided by tently vote for complete marketization or complete state the government (Holcombe 1997; Epple and Romano control. In the absence of an underlying norm of fairness 1996). According to this approach, public goods are goods and reciprocity, majoritarian decision-making does not provided by the “public” (e.g., the state) to the “public” ensure that minorities will be able to allocate a share of (e.g., citizens or residents). In democratic states, the term resources according to their preferences. The real problem public goods is often used to describe the things that the with Claassen’s analysis, however, is that it rests on the majority of the citizens, through their elected representa- assumption that there is no principled reason for preferring tives, choose to provide. This descriptive approach, public to private allocation of some non-essential goods. It however, does not help us answer the crucial questions: is this assumption that I wish to challenge. why should parks be public and how public should they be? I argue that a novel approach that I call the solidarist By that I mean that this view fails to provide convincing account provides a principled reason for public parks, one reasons for subsidizing some goods and not others. What that should convince fellow citizens, even if they have we need in a theory of public goods is some guidance about a preference for private or club goods. In making how to decide which goods should be provided by the state a principled argument in favor of public provision, my and how they should be distributed. My critique of the position seems to be a variant of the “merit goods” democratic approach rests on a distinction between approach (Schwartz 1995). The term “merit good” was legitimacy and justification. Legitimacy is a procedural introduced in the late 1950s by the economist Richard notion. A policy that was adopted through democratic Musgrave (Zuidervaart 2010; Musgrave 1957). In his procedures is legitimate, as long as it does not violate basic work on public finance, Musgrave identified a category of rights. There are legitimate policies that are not justified, goods that are socially recognized as things that should not because the normative rationales are not persuasive. For be distributed on the basis of the ability to pay. Merit example, I think that the decision to build a football goods are subsidized by the government because they are stadium with public money would be legitimate but not intrinsically valuable but under-consumed when allocated justified. The descriptive approach does not provide through a free market. Examples of merit goods include reasons for preferring some public goods over others, nor university education, public broadcasting, arts subsidies, does it provide tools to criticize or justify privatization. and humanities research.2 December 2020 | Vol. 18/No. 4 1107 https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592719004614 Published online by Cambridge University Press  Article | Public Goods and Social Justice Musgrave introduced the concept of merit goods as and “a common place” (1941, 1146). Solidarism also a way to challenge the market fundamentalism of public builds on the strand of republicanism that aimed at choice economics. Trained in the continental, neo- limiting vast fortunes in order to secure civic equality Hegelian tradition of Finanzwissenschaft, he objected to and independence (Harrington 1992; Pettit 2013). In an approach that left no room for the state as an agent of Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, Rousseau challenged collective aspirations. According to Maurits de Jongh, the assumption that private property advanced the good of Musgrave favored an extensive role for government in the all and argued that the law often legitimized privatization provision of goods and rejected the view that the state and inequality (Rousseau 1984). In On the Government of should be “the defendant who must prove his innocence.” Poland, Rousseau argued that in order to cultivate citizens (de Jongh 2019, 84) willing to prioritize the common good, a polity had to In liberal theory, however, the case for merit goods provide shared public things. Rousseau suggested that the (e.g., discretionary, non-universal public goods) is con- proper enjoyment of public space could form civic citizens troversial when it rests on a theory of perfectionism. By (Rousseau 1972). perfectionism, I mean the philosophical theory that The solidarists built on Rousseau’s ideas. The solida- rejects liberal neutrality in favor of the view that there rists were a group of radical republicans writing in late is an objective account of the individual good that nineteenth-century France. Influenced by Rousseau and supersedes individual preferences (Carr and Hurka Durkheim, they tried to articulate an alternative to both 1995; Sher 1997; Ferdman 2017). It is impossible to classical liberalism and socialism (Kohn 2016). Solidarism avoid a certain amount of perfectionism when thinking has three related features: a descriptive social theory, about “goods.” Even the argument for health care or a normative theory and a political theory (Bouglé 2010; education rests on the view that health and knowledge are Hayward 1961). The social theory is an account of better than sickness and ignorance. In this paper, I interdependence that serves as the foundation for a nor- disaggregate the category of discretionary, non-universal mative argument in favor of fair allocation of the social goods into two subsets. The first subset includes things product secured by democratic institutions in both state that do not have a political or justice-based rationale. and civil society. The social theory builds on Durkheim’s These are particular interests, often the cultural tastes of notion of organic solidarity. Durkheim argued that elites such as opera and art galleries, and they are justified modern societies differ from pre-modern societies in two on strong perfectionist grounds.3 The second category ways. They have higher levels of interdependence due to includes goods that are still discretionary insofar as access the division of labor and lower levels of mutual identifi- should not be conceived as a justiciable basic right that cation and shared values, because of the differentiation of could be enforced by a constitutional court; nevertheless, roles (Durkheim 1960). The solidarists aimed to foster there are strong socio-political or justice based arguments shared values by increasing recognition of interdependence for state provision.4 These public goods can be justified as and its attendant obligations. They emphasized the a way of compensating for negative externalities of state empirical claim that the division of labor, urbanization, actions or socially produced injustices (Kingwell and and industrial production generate a social product. The Turmel 2009; Kallhoff 2014). They may also be justified value of a piece of urban land is a particularly striking instrumentally as a way of securing the civic solidarity illustration of this claim because it is widely recognized necessary to sustain the political will to redress social that the value of land reflects a range of social factors: injustice. proximity to markets, infrastructure, transit, schools, and The solidarist approach is a historical approach to population growth. The land may be owned privately but public goods (Desai 2003). The premise is the claim that the value is produced socially. modernity gives rise to growing levels of interdependence Solidarism was a critique of possessive individualism that generate benefits that are not shared fairly. Public and the economic inequalities that classic liberalism had goods are a way of correcting or compensating for the legitimized. The philosopher Alfred Fouillée developed negative externalities of urbanization and industrialization. his theory of social property through a critique of John The next section of the paper provides a brief introduction Locke’s justification of private property. Fouillée argued to solidarism. The final sections show how this approach that it is a fallacy to assume that mixing individual labor provides a deeper understanding of conflicts over public with commonly owned material generates a privately space and how it illuminates broader debates about public owned product (Fouillée, 1908). Logically, the product goods. is a hybrid composed of social and individual value. Once the social or hybrid character of property is acknowledged, Solidarism it becomes necessary to reconsider the unquestioned status The roots of the solidarist approach to public space date of the right to private property in liberal thought. The back at least as far as Aristotle, who thought that to be solidarists argued that this logic applied well beyond the a political community you must have some shared things private appropriation of common land in the state of 1108 Perspectives on Politics https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592719004614 Published online by Cambridge University Press  nature. They insisted that the social, cultural, political, and valuable because they fulfill human interests. While they technological infrastructure was also a kind of inherited are not basic needs in Henry Shue’s sense, they are among common property, and therefore the products of modern the important things that promote human flourishing. I society were also composed of both social and individual describe some typical uses of park space and then identify shares. the broader underlying individual social interests that The goal of solidarism was to develop an approach that motivate such use. My own enjoyment of parks began could help diagnose and cure social ills. The central idea when I learned how to ride my bike in a large urban park. was to demonstrate the connection between the benefits The underlying interest is recreation and exercise under and harms of social cooperation. The modern metropolis conditions of safety. In the United States, public parks provided a vivid illustration of this point. Urbanization were introduced in the period when the number of traffic and industrialization generate all sorts of benefits, which fatalities was exploding. To take just one example, the economists call positive externalities of agglomeration. number of “street and steam railway” casualties in Phila- These include economic growth and cultural vitality, but delphia increased from 19 in 1856 to 236 in 1894 (Lane much of this benefit, especially the economic benefit, 1979). Parks provided a space shielded from the dangers of becomes concentrated in the hands of a small group of vehicular traffic. people. Urbanization and industrialization have literally Another reason to walk in the park is to have access to changed the world in ways that are both good and bad, nature. For people who live in the heart of densely but some people get more of the benefit and others bear populated and noisy neighborhoods, the park provides more of the burden. quiet, fresh air, sunlight, and greenery. This was an The solidarists challenged the assumption that the important theme in the writings of early park promoters market is the natural default method of allocating goods such as Frederick Law Olmsted. He emphasized the need and the attendant view that any deviation from the for healthy air, sunlight, and a break from the sensory market must meet an extremely high threshold of overload of urban life. Like other Mugwumps, he was justification. Drawing on Ricardo’s theory of rent, the also worried about the disorder caused by rapid urban- solidarists emphasized the significance of the concept of ization; reform projects like parks and public recreation unearned increment, a term that describes the difference were both a way to meet the needs of the urban poor and between the value created by the individual’s contribution also a mechanism of social integration and control and the benefit received. The most striking examples of (Rosenzweig and Blackmar 1992; Rybczynski 2000; rent occur in cities, places where the division of labor, Wilson 1994). In the late nineteenth century, the dis- infrastructure, and social networks inflate the value of land course on parks still reflected the romantic ideal of the and labor. In urban property markets, unearned increment elevating effect produced by contemplating nature. Today is created socially and does not naturally belong to the there is a burgeoning empirical scholarly literature on the property owner (Kohn 2016). According to the solidarists, psychological and health benefits that come from access to this should be reallocated to benefit society. Reallocation nature (Sullivan, Kuo, and Depooter 2004, Hartig et al. can take the form of universal insurance that secures the 2014; Shanahan et al. 2015; Bratman et al. 2015; Berman, individual against misfortune or collective benefits such as Jonides, and Kaplan 2008; Maller et al. 2006). hospitals and infrastructure. In addition to the health, safety, and recreational While urbanization generates an enormous amount of interests of users, parks also have an important social common wealth, it also makes some things that were role to play. For parents of young children, the park is the once free such as access to nature or relatively inexpensive site of informal and limited yet important social inter- like shelter– into commodities and commodification actions, a relief from the monotony and isolation of generates exclusion. To put it more forcefully, attached staying home to care for pre-verbal children. For teens, to the aggregate prosperity of modernity are public bads the park is a different kind of social space: an accessible, such as pollution, traffic, unsanitary housing, and alien- decommodified place relatively free from the surveillance ation from nature. Solidarism is a theory of compensatory and authority of adults. justice and, while it might at first seem like an odd way to think about it, public parks are a way of compensating for Solidarity and Parks the loss of nature. The value of parks, in my account, is quite expansive and a critic could respond that this is part of the problem. If Why Are Parks a Good? parks are all things to all people, then how do we In order to answer the question “why should parks remain adjudicate between conflicting uses? How can we even public” we must first consider why parks are seen as goods, criticize forms of partial privatization such as user-fees or as valuable things. I leave aside the contentious issue of the commercial concessions when we employ such a broad intrinsic value of protecting the natural environment definition of value? Olmsted, with his romantic un- (O’Neill 1992) and focus on the way that parks are derstanding of parks as natural oases from urban life, December 2020 | Vol. 18/No. 4 1109 https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592719004614 Published online by Cambridge University Press  Article | Public Goods and Social Justice had a principled reason for excluding almost all com- political practices that fostered affective identification with merce and even most recreational facilities from his parks. society. If parks are natural, civic, and social, then how do we In his path-breaking work City of Quartz, Mike Davis resolve conflicts over their design and use? demonstrated that spaces that are welcoming to some users The solidarist approach does not have a formula for are unwelcoming to others (Davis 2006). Starting in the resolving these disputes, but it does provide some 1980s, the managers of public parks began to control principles that can inform contextual judgement in unwanted users and activities through landscape design and meaningful ways. The neo-solidarist normative theory is architectural cues. Uneven surfaces made it difficult to sit or a theory of compensatory justice based on the solidarist lie down on benches or ledges; shrubbery was removed to concept of debt. According to the solidarist Leon facilitate surveillance and small guardhouses were added to Bourgeois, the distribution of the social product is unfair discourage less privileged users from entering public space. and largely reflects the power of capital and elites. He In fact, these disciplinary strategies have a long history, but argued that the wealthy owed a “quasi-contractual” debt they have taken different forms. Olmsted designed Central to the disinherited (Bourgeois 2013; Blais 2007). Like the Park with the goal of educating—or disciplining—the obligation that binds heirs to repay debts of the deceased immigrant urban masses by facilitating appropriate leisure from the estate, so do the wealthy have an obligation to activities. Many popular activities such as carnival games, repay social debts to those who have not gained access to sports, and the consumption of alcohol were prohibited and an adequate share of the social product. enthusiasts, usually the working class, were effectively This debt could be repaid in a variety of different ways, excluded (Rosenzweig and Blackmar 1992). including means-tested welfare benefits or some type of The park can be a site of negotiation and even struggle universal basic income, but there are reasons why many between different activities that some users see as in- solidarists included collective consumption among their compatible (Mitchell 2003). Parks are often lightning rods proposals, rather than focusing exclusively on individual for conflict over issues like homelessness because they are benefits. I will briefly explain three reasons in favor of sites where social problems are made visible to people who providing spaces such as parks that are shared among are otherwise sheltered from exposure to them. Iris Marion people who live together in a physical space: solidarity, Young argued that this exposure is one of the democratic decommodification, and politics. These benefits can be effects of public spaces. Even when the reaction to enjoyed by all residents but an ethos of solidarity is homelessness is aversion, there is an epistemic gain in particularly important for citizens because they are the recognizing that there are people without access to safe ones who exercise power through democratic institutions. housing (Young 1999). The first argument is that the collective consumption Sometimes the tensions around public space can be of goods such as education and natural/recreational space diffused through regulation or informal norms such as enables the lived experience of solidarity. In a democratic taking turns or allocating space for specific activities, but state, as opposed to the world of ideal theory, citizens often the pluralism is constitutive. By this I mean that must be conscious of their interdependence (Kallhoff one characteristic of the public park is its openness to 2011, 2014). Empirical research confirms that support for different meanings, uses, and experiences. One reason for redistribution correlates with a feeling of solidarity and going to the park may be that users do not have to relate interconnectedness (Baldwin 1990; Gelissen 2000; Hall to one another directly but yet can still experience an 2017; Banting and Kymlicka 2017; Bauböck and Scholten indirect connection through the conductivity of public 2016; Johnston et al. 2017). The solidarists emphasized space (Alexander 2006). Public space facilitates a lived the links between political and moral theory. Like Dur- experience of solidarity that does not require something as kheim, Fouillée criticized Kant for his lack of attention to demanding as mutual respect for fellow citizens. It is the problem of moral motivation (Durkheim 1960; a somatic version of what Benedict Anderson described as Fouillée 1908). Durkheim emphasized that people must imagined community (Anderson 1991). The physical recognize and affirm their interdependence if it is to have experience of co-presence in a particular space can be political efficacy. Durkheim’s argument about civic soli- a way of imagining a connection with the broader public. darity is similar to Karl Marx’s better-known argument This is an interpretive claim, but there is some empirical about class consciousness. For Marx, social class was an evidence that supports it. A number of studies have shown objective economic fact, but class consciousness, the that participation in local park stewardship initiatives are recognition of social class and its significance, had to be linked to increased levels of civic participation (Yagatich, produced politically and historically. This is the signifi- Galli Robertson, and Fisher 2018), and a broader com- cance of the famous distinction between class in and for parative study of urban regime types showed a correlation itself. Similarly, for the solidarists, the fact of interdepen- between trust and a built environment with a robust dence created through the division of labor and urbaniza- infrastructure of public spaces (Emerson and Smiley tion had to be recognized and affirmed through social and 2018). 1110 Perspectives on Politics https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592719004614 Published online by Cambridge University Press  Parks are sites of civic solidarity in the minimalist sense book Spheres of Justice, Michael Walzer argued that goods that they are accessible to all and not rationed on the basis such as friendship or Nobel prizes cannot be bought and of the ability to pay. This is the inverse of what Michael sold because such allocation would contradict the social Sandel has called the “sky-boxification” of public life meaning attached to the goods (Walzer 1984). Debra Satz (Sandel 2013). Sandel laments the fact that we are losing points out that notwithstanding some easy cases, the social the few places where rich and poor encounter each other in meaning of goods is usually contested and political everyday life. According to Sandel, increasing segregation philosophy should provide grounds for favoring one makes it more difficult for citizens to think of themselves as meaning over another. In Why Some Things Should Not engaged in a common project. Some critics have rightly Be for Sale, Satz introduces specific criteria to help decide pointed out that the stronger arguments about the re- whether desired things such as babies and healthy organs lationship between citizenship and public space are not should be allocated on the market. She does not write persuasive; mere exposure to difference does not lead to about public space and much of her analysis focuses on mutual recognition or understanding (Putnam 2007). extreme situations: “extreme vulnerability of contracting Even proponents of the “contact hypothesis” never parties” and “extremely harmful outcomes.” Two of her suggested that sporadic and limited encounters with arguments, however, are relevant for this discussion of the diverse others could dismantle prejudice, aversion, or commodification of everyday life. indifference. Indeed, in the research project that generated Satz argues that markets are problematic when they the concept “contact hypothesis,” Allport showed that structure social relations in harmful ways and when they a number of demanding criteria have to be met in order for are characterized by “very weak or highly asymmetric social interaction to decrease prejudice: interactions must knowledge and agency” on the part of participants (Satz be sustained, organized non-hierarchically, oriented to- 2010, 96). It is useful to think about land use decisions ward shared goals, and supported by institutional culture with these criteria in mind. Land use decisions dramati- (Pettigrew and Tropp 2006, 2005). Specific programming cally affect future generations and yet future residents have such as community gardens or sports leagues could meet no say over them (“weak agency”). While most decisions these criteria but the more sporadic uses of parks do not. affect future people, the preservation or destruction of Yet these more minimal uses could still help secure nature and open space is particularly hard to reverse.5 One attachment to a shared world. The very fact of living characteristic of the built environment is its stability and together requires a certain minimal collective responsibil- fixity (Hayward and Swanstrom 2011). Constraints are ity for maintaining a shared world. Public space aggregates literally set in stone. After land has been developed for resources in order to create something beneficial that most high-density, high-value private uses such as commerce individuals, in isolation, could not enjoy. and housing, it is extremely difficult, both physically and Any claim to create a shared world or to realize economically, to make it available for other uses. This common values must also be cognizant of its own means that future generations do not have the choice exclusions. Parks are no exception. In settler-colonial about how to balance urbanity and nature, private and societies, parks are almost always constructed on land common uses. One meaning of public authority is taken from Indigenous peoples. In the early twentieth fiduciary responsibility for the interests of future gener- century, the creation of national parks was a tool used to ations and this entails preservation. The social meaning of exclude native peoples from their traditional lands public ownership is different from corporate ownership. It (Spence 1999). In Stanley Park in Vancouver, a métis is not collective ownership for individual benefit but rather community was dispossessed for the express purpose of a public trust for all citizens, including those of the future. creating an urban public park (Mawani 2005). This Public parks and land trusts are a way to set some limits on history reminds us that the concept of the public good the destruction of natural environments and ensuring can function to marginalize other claims and interests that common space for future generations. become constructed as particular. The solidarist approach The second concern raised by Satz is the way that de-naturalizes private property but it doesn’t provide markets structure social relations in harmful ways. For a framework for addressing the injustices of colonialism Olmsted, parks were intended not only as a place free and should not be seen as a complete theory of justice. from the noise and pollution of the city, but also as a respite from commodified and competitive social Decommodification relations (Olmsted 1997; J. Cohen 2017; Zacka 2018). The second reason for subsidizing public parks, rather In industrial and post-industrial urban, capitalist societies, than providing vouchers for the purchase of recreational many valuable things are allocated through competitive services, is the value of the lived experience of decom- processes. In his article “Why Should We Care about modification. What is wrong with commodification? The Competition?” Waheed Hussain explains why this is expansion of market logic has been the focus of critique harmful. Competitive processes “pit people against each by political theorists (Brown 2015). In his influential other”: they put people in circumstances where the only December 2020 | Vol. 18/No. 4 1111 https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592719004614 Published online by Cambridge University Press  Article | Public Goods and Social Justice way for one person to secure an important good is by In an influential essay, Charles Taylor introduced the preventing another from acquiring it (Hussain 2018). concept of “irreducibly social goods.” (Taylor 2002) He According to Hussein, social connectedness is valuable, had in mind things like culture and language: the both as an intrinsic dimension of a good human life and as background conditions that enable particular assessments an instrument that is necessary to achieve other goods such of value. I want to suggest that public spaces like libraries, as political democracy and collective responses to injustice. schools and parks fit into an expanded understanding of If this is true, then competitive institutions are harmful this category. They are sites of social connectedness and and should be curtailed. Current practices, however, are also little windows into the world of inherited knowledge, moving in the opposite direction. As Jurgen Habermas beauty, and diverse possibilities. When social connected- pointed out already in the 1980s, we are witnessing the ness is achieved through egalitarian rather than hierarchical expansion of competitive market dynamics into areas of ties, it becomes a public good. The decommodification of life that were previously coordinated by other mechanisms. public space is a constitutive feature. If every experience He described this as the colonization of lifeworld by comes with a price-tag attached, then we will carefully system (Habermas 1985). Solidarism provides arguments choose the experiences that are consistent with our tastes. against the colonization of public space by market By subsidizing certain collective practices, we are encour- rationality. aging people to take part in them rather than others and The lifeworld approach to public space follows a dis- this helps to facilitate social coordination. Parks are tinctive logic. Truly public parks, places that do not a paradigmatic public space, but this logic of the argument charge admission, provide a brief reprieve from the world extends to other communal spaces such as plazas, squares, of calculation. A parent does not have to worry whether and community centers. Instead of the tragedy of the taking her daughter to play a game of catch means that commons, this often creates positive externalities as in- she will not be able to pay for a new pair of shoes. tensive use creates more conviviality. Transforming public goods into club or toll goods The third reason for collective consumption is a polit- (Kallhoff 2014) also changes the structure of social ical once: the state disguises the compensatory logic by interactions. Consider the following hypothetical example providing goods to everyone. Universal benefits tend to that illustrates what happens when a park introduces have higher levels of political support compared to a “pay-to-play” system to generate revenues for park means-tested programs. The high levels of electoral maintenance. In “Gentrification City Park” three friends support for parks mentioned at the beginning of this from the Mixed-Income High basketball team play pick- article is one illustration of the fact that voters tend to up basketball in the post-season. They want to improve fund things that they think they may use. Especially in their performance after a losing season, but “Gentrification the United States, many voters object to taxing some City Park” implements a new reservation system with people’s incomes in order to provide benefits to others. a user fee, and the two less affluent friends cannot afford This means that there is an instrumental reason for the fee. The pick-up games stop. Two of the players lose providing public goods as opposed to means-tested pro- the chance to take part in a favored past-time and the team grams. Some universal programs end up having a regressive performs poorly during their next season. This is un- effect. For example, tax incentives for college savings fortunate, but not an “extremely harmful outcome,” the accounts end up primarily benefitting wealthy households. kind of outcome that concerns Satz (2010, 9). So what is Collective consumption provides a way around this di- troubling about it? lemma. Investment in public infrastructure can be a form The commodification of social space decreases oppor- of de facto compensation that is universal yet not re- tunities for social connectedness and restructures social gressive. Less affluent residents have less access to private interaction along class-stratified lines. The team’s win-loss goods and therefore they have greater need for public record may have no intrinsic value, but the quality of team- goods. Public goods are accessible to everyone but, used ness is important. For whom is it important? When the more intensely by people with greater needs. pick-up players see each other every day, they develop the To summarize, solidarism provides two arguments that connections that enable them to collaborate on school- are relevant to our discussion of public parks and these work, to notice and help one another during difficulties, apply to a wider range of public infrastructure such as and to aggregate their efforts in service of other objectives. schools and transit. It links a structural theory of Teachers want their students to get to know each other so compensatory justice to a politics of civic solidarity. This that they can ask one another about missed work and get politics of civic solidarity emphasizes the importance of help. So social connectedness benefits the group members, public things. Collective enjoyment of shared things is but also the teacher, whose job of ensuring students do not a way to redistribute social property that has been fall behind becomes more manageable. Relationships are unjustly appropriated, but it does so while also building sources of information and know-how that teach people to social ties among citizens and fostering identification with access the broader resources of our common world. the idea of the common good, even if the common good 1112 Perspectives on Politics https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592719004614 Published online by Cambridge University Press  is subject to dispute. The social theory of solidarism ethos of solidarity. Some scholars acknowledge the social highlights the fact of interdependence, emphasizing that character of property (Van Parijs) and others link national it generates mutual benefit in the form of economic solidarity with redistribution (Miller) but only the solida- productivity, technological innovation and cultural vital- rists weave these into a coherent framework. The solidarist ity; the solidarists used this premise to criticize the way approach is more than just recognition of the need to that the associated burdens are allocated unfairly and to compensate for negative externalities. It also incorporates justify the taxation necessary to provide public goods. the more radical position that the positive achievements Cities are increasingly using this logic of compensation to are produced collectively and a critique of modes of address the negative externalities of development. Zoning allocation that reflect power and luck rather than justice. changes and public infrastructure increase the value of urban land, and “value capture” and “community benefits Implications agreements” are ways of ensuring that the costs and the Solidarism can strengthen the case for public goods, but remedies (new public spaces) are targeted. The beneficia- the provision of public goods alone cannot bring about ries of what the solidarists called “rent or “unearned a state of fairness. At most, it mitigates unfairness and increment” fund the public goods that create a more just create a political community in which unfairness can be city (Kohn 2016). addressed. Solidarism can also help resolve practical Cities are increasingly using this logic of compensation conflicts over the regulation of public space. To demon- to address the negative externalities of development. strate this, I return to the hypothetical case introduced Value capture is a way of compelling the beneficiaries earlier and ask how we should view the user fee in- of urban development to pay for the attendant costs. For troduced by the Parks Department in Gentrification example, rezoning for high-rise development places strain City? The user fee was introduced after a process of on the surrounding neighborhood. If the public and consultation and a major renovation, replacing the private sectors share the value added, then the public cracked concrete, improving drainage, and adding light- portion can be used to provide compensatory natural and ing to improve the playing field. The rationale was two- civic spaces. Tax policy can ensure that the beneficiaries fold: it helped recover some of the cost of maintenance of what the solidarists called “rent” or “unearned in- and it provided a way of allocating playing time. There crement” fund the public goods that create a more just city were conflicting ideas about how to share public space. A critic might object that solidarism seems less Permit holders wanted to play league games, but neigh- distinctive when we consider the range of other theories borhood residents, who had played for free in the past, that also recognize the importance of solidarity. For objected. They insisted that their community norm, example, Cass Sunstein and Edna Ullmann-Margalit allocating access to the basketball courts through a rota- argue that the value of collective consumption goods is tion system, should be respected. composed of the enjoyment of the good and the feeling of Can a theory of public goods help resolve this conflict? solidarity that comes from enjoying them together Claassen’s democratic approach would favor the permit (Sunstein and Ullmann-Margalit 2001). While Sunstein holders. In this scenario, the Parks Department, a bureau- and Ullmann-Margalit use the term solidarity good, I cracy that is accountable to elected representatives, en- think that the term “connectivity goods” would be more gaged in public consultation and adopted a reasonable accurate because it better captures the non-normative policy that balanced the interests of different users. The sense of the concept. For the solidarists, however, connec- economistic rationale supports user fees and the basic tivity is only a part of solidarity and not the most needs approach would have to stretch the meaning of basic important one. Indeed, the market can provide connec- beyond recognition. The solidarist approach enables us to tivity goods, but it does so in a way that reinforces class and see this conflict in a different way and to ask different identity-based divisions. Public goods, on the other hand, questions. If the purpose of public parks is to compensate reinforce and enable a more inclusive mode of connectiv- for the way that the benefits and burdens of social ity, one based on social membership. Public goods connect cooperation are unfairly allocated by the market, then it residents to one another (Kallhoff 2014, 2011). If society is hard to see how commodifying park space will meet this is composed of separate individuals who are free to pursue objective. The open access system is more efficient; it their own interests and tastes, it is unclear why citizens allows for wide access without the costs of gatekeeping. should support redistribution that undermines their own Charging a fee for a publicly subsidized good is a regressive interests. form of redistribution. All citizens pay through taxes yet How then does solidarism differ from accounts such as only those who can afford the extra cost of the permit get David Miller’s, which also connect solidarity and citizen- a share. Solidarism places structural advantage or disad- ship (Miller 1979, 31)? The distinctiveness of the solidarist vantage at the core of the approach. A theory of compen- approach is the link between the normative theory of social satory justice forces us to ask who deserves compensation, property/debt and the political argument in favor of an which rests on an assessment of relative advantage. December 2020 | Vol. 18/No. 4 1113 https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592719004614 Published online by Cambridge University Press  Article | Public Goods and Social Justice The solidarist approach is not a comprehensive theory A key feature of the solidarist approach was the claim that of public goods. It is a supplement to the normative public goods could be seen as a way of correcting or (“basic needs”) and the market failures approaches, both of compensating for the negative externalities of modern which provide compelling arguments to clarify why certain society while also fostering the sense of we-ness necessary things should be provided for free by the state. The for joint political action. Solidarism provides a rationale for solidarist approach explains why some things that do not state provision of goods that are not strictly necessary to meet the normative or efficiency criteria should still be fulfill basic rights. Yet solidarism was not simply a justifi- public. By this I mean that the solidarist approach provides cation of state authority. The solidarists promoted mutual reasons that should have significant weight in democratic aid societies, cooperatives, and trade unions, and they deliberation. The democratic theory of public goods treats shared the republican worry about excessive state power. such goods as preferences or tastes. The solidarist approach From the solidarist perspective, the responsibility for advances principled arguments why citizens should sup- promoting the common good does not rest solely on the port public goods even if they will not personally use them. state; it is the co-obligation of those involved in a shared It also has implications for how we allocate resources. Yet practice. Instead of juxtaposing the commons and public deliberation and majoritarian decision-making government-provided public goods, solidarism tries to must still play an important role in prioritizing different find ways of promoting virtuous circles of interplay sites of solidarity and forms and levels of collective between the public (compulsory) and common (volun- consumption. Compensating for the negative externalities tary) provision of goods. of social cooperation is a potentially vast requirement. It could justify public parks but also public libraries, Notes broadband and housing. There will be disagreements 1 According to the Trust for Public Land, a conservation about the amount of social property that should be advocacy group, fourteen major cities were facing the reallocated and the urgency of unmet needs and unrecti- loss of parkland and eighteen reported that they had lost fied losses. a total of 688 acres over the past five years; Carlton 2016. Conclusion 2 According to economists, there are two main reasons for I have argued that public goods are a theoretical problem the under-supply of merit goods; Ege and Igersheim for liberal democratic theory. To have to justify public 2010. The first concern is that consumers tend to goods, however, seems to treat the private provision as maximize short-term utility and underinvest in long- natural or at least as preferable under most circumstances. term benefits. The second concern is that consumption The burden of proving superiority is placed on the of such goods generates positive externalities that are public. This way of framing the issue is not only not taken into account by consumers, who only weigh characteristic of liberalism; it was even incorporated into individual rather than aggregate social benefit. the slogan of the 1959 German Social-Democratic Party: 3 Joe Heath incorporates “minority public goods” in his “markets whenever possible, the state when necessary.” public economics model. He argues that without state (cited in Heath 2011,13) We could start from a very involvement these tastes would not be satisfied, “be- different premise, such as that of Henri Lefebvre, whose cause of contracting problems among private parties”; “right to the city” rests on a more radical claim that social 2011, 27. It is unclear why cultural events and art value is produced collectively and should be controlled by galleries could not be provided by private parties. The the people (Lefebvre et al. 2009). Solidarism was an case for minority public goods seems to rest on what I alternative to late-nineteenth-century socialism, so it is call the democratic argument: minority groups want not surprising that the solidarists had a response to these state provision and are willing to engage in a quid pro more radical arguments. In Proprieté Sociale et la Demo- quo arrangement that yields state support for many but cratie, Alfred Fouillée argued that the natural world not all minority goods. While this seems like an accurate belonged to everyone in common but the value created description, it begs the question of whether there are by labor belonged to the individual. In contrast to Locke, principled (as opposed to self-regarding and strategic) Fouillée concluded that the world was composed of things reasons to support public goods. that were composites of social and private value and were 4 One implication of my argument, however, is that so intertwined that it was impossible to separate them. For public goods that are both compensatory and solida- the solidarists, neither private nor state control were ristic should have priority over merit goods such as elite natural and unproblematic, which meant that both needed culture that don’t have these features. justification. Writing in the context of a liberal society 5 Nature reserves and urban parks have a different without a modern welfare state, their goal was to convince structure. 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