The Social Minimum as a Distributive Concern

The moral, legal, and political assessment and categorization of the provision of a social minimum is controversial because it borders on being an essentially contested concept from at least four distinct perspectives through which political economic activity is evaluated: the market viewpoint (commutative perspective), the labor and production viewpoint (contributive perspective), the public institution viewpoint (distributive perspective), and the unproductive expenditure or complementary consumption viewpoint (donative perspective). This paper will focus on the viewpoint of public institutions responsible for determining what constitutes a socially just distribution of a social minimum. To accomplish this, it will outline a conceptual framework in which the distribution of a social minimum can be meaningfully debated in conceptually transparent terms. The hypothesis behind building this platform is that understanding the social minimum as a distribuendum should be based on an understanding of distributable goods as a valuable kind of resource, whether material or immaterial. Accordingly, the paper will outline the conceptual variations of a resource-oriented understanding of the social minimum as a requirement of distributive justice.