Equality and International Justice
Comments on Debra Satz
Daniel
Little
Bucknell
University
American
Philosophical Association
Eastern Division
12/29/98
The question that Debra Satz poses is a critical one:
is there a normative basis—grounded in principles of justice or
elsewhere—on the basis of which to evaluate, judge, or criticize economic
and political arrangements and conditions outside one’s own country? It is relatively clear that there is
moral salience in the fact of extreme poverty in the developing world; but what
is the basis of that moral salience, and what obligations does it create for
citizens, organizations, and governments in developed countries? This is the foundational problem of
international ethics, or more pointedly, development ethics. Satz’s essay represents an important
and credible effort. It is rich,
careful, and nuanced. In the final
analysis, however, I believe that it is less than fully successful. It identifies the wrong
problem—inequality rather than poverty; and for the problem it identifies
it offers the wrong basis for judgment—non-domination rather than
exploitation.
The domain
of the question is this: Which among various troubling facts in the world
today—high infant mortality, low longevity, extreme inequality, extremely
low incomes (poverty), extreme differences in life prospects and
well-being—are morally salient?
What ought to be done about these morally salient facts? And who ought to do or effect the
changing—that is, how do these morally salient facts sort out into
obligations for specific agents (persons, organizations, governments)? What, in short, is the normative
ground—or the collection of grounds—governing the existence of
moral obligations for countries and citizens of the affluent world towards
countries and citizens of the poor world?
My
central point in this commentary is that there are two distinct moral problems
when we consider the economic and political circumstances of the developing
world: poverty and inequality. The
problems are sometimes conflated, and indeed they are certainly linked in
complex ways. But they are
ultimately distinct, and they ought not be collapsed onto a single
condition. And even if we came to
the conclusion that certain, even extreme, forms of inequalities are
unproblematic on grounds of a theory of distributive justice, the fact of
extreme and persistent poverty remains a morally compelling circumstance in
urgent need of remediation. Satz
puts her argument in terms of inequalities, and the circumstances under which a
given inequality is morally suspect.
But I maintain that this is to get the focus slightly off center: it is
poverty, not inequality per se, that is the morally compelling fact about the
developing world. But this implies
that a theory of inequalities is secondary; the primary issue is poverty and
the human bad that it represents.
Poverty is the central moral
problem of development because of the extreme effects which poverty has on the
life prospects and well-being of the majority of the world’s population. It is not the breadth of the gap
between the typical Indonesian rice farmer and the typical Newton doctor that
matters; it is the fact that the former is not in a position to fully develop
his or her human capabilities to their fullest extent. The fact of the persistence of extreme
poverty, then, provides the strongest possible imperative toward the
orientation of economic development policy. The debt to Sen, Nussbaum, and others in the “realization of
capabilities” family of views is evident in these remarks. These points will be explored below.
Distributive
justice does have relevance to some of the inequalities that exist in the
developing world today (and between the developing world and the developed
world); but not primarily in the way that Satz believes (in my view). To be deprived of access to a deserved
share of the world’s material wealth is a bad thing in and of itself; and if
the fact of one’s deprivation derives from unfair actions taken by others, it
is unjust. So certain kinds of
inequalities constitute an injustice, not as a result of the forms of
domination that they facilitate (as Satz argues), but because they are the
effects of processes which unfairly deprive some people of the means of
material well-being for the benefit of others. We may describe an economic relationship between two parties
that involves a coercively enforced transfer of wealth from one to the other as
an instance of exploitation.
The case is often made that the poverty of at least some developing
countries (and the extreme poverty of some segments of many developing
countries) results from straightforward exploitation by other agents
(multinational corporations, extranational investors, other governments). It is also evident that this is not the
case in all instances; there are countries and segments of countries which are
poor for reasons that do not derive from exploitation (for example, low
resource base, low technological development, low productivity of labor). Where exploitation exists, those who
benefit from a pattern of exploitation have specific duties of justice to
rectify the system and effects of exploitation. So the conclusion that I would come to concerning
inequalities per se is this: persons, organizations, and states which benefit
from the exploitation of others have a duty to stop exploiting, and a duty to
correct the effects of past exploitation.
So: in assessing the justice or injustice of a given set of
inequalities, it is critical to diagnose the causal or systemic origin of those
inequalities. The debt here to
analytic theories of exploitation along the lines of Roemer is apparent
here. These points too will be
explored below.
Satz is
interested in providing a principle that will serve as a criterion of unjust
inequalities. Satz writes:
“My view is that
equality in some distributional dimension is relevant to treating people with
equal respect only insofar as distributional equality is needed to prevent one
person or group or institution from dominating another person or group” (2).
Satz emphasizes the
relational character of the circumstances of justice: the assessment of the
justice or injustice of a given set of arrangements depends crucially on the
human relationships embodied in those arrangements.
There
are several noteworthy points about this criterion. First, her criterion involves diagnosis of causation. But her criterion focuses on the effects of a given set of
inequalities, whereas the exploitation criterion identifies those inequalities
which have a certain kind of cause or origin.
Note
that this principle has the implication (which Satz accepts late in the paper)
that, if A and B are causally isolated from each other, then inequalities
between them in any dimension are not morally salient qua inequalities. It follows from this criterion,
however, that it is very possible for a set of inequalities to be exploitative
(caused by an unfair system of economic and property relations) but
non-dominative (because the disadvantaged are insulated in some way from the
influence of the advantaged)—in which case the inequalities are not
unjust! The principle of
non-domination is therefore incomplete, in that it fails to capture a set of
inequalities which are in fact unjust (according to common moral intuitions,
anyhow).
The
principle is defective in the other possible way too, however, in that it
identifies certain inequalities as unjust (because they give rise to the
possibility of some sort of weak “domination” by some of others), which we
would not ordinarily consider unjust.
For example, there may be inequalities of talent (e.g. speaking ability,
media skills) that give some people greater likelihood of wielding political
power. Are these inequalities
morally suspect? Or is the fact
that these factors exercise their influence through democratic institutions
sufficient to make them acceptable?
There are some unequally distributed assets (e.g. “people skills”) that
permit some to “dominate” others in the political process; but we would not
wish to attempt to “correct” such inequalities. (We might, however, have a concern to mitigate the coercive
powers created by such talents.)
This is a Nozick-like point.
The supposed
link between inequality and domination is weaker than Satz’s principle
presumes. There are situations of
domination which work perfectly well within the context of substantial equality
(Cuba); and it is possible to have high distributional inequality and low
domination (India).
Finally, the
link between inequality and domination implied by the principle leads us off in
the wrong direction when we begin canvassing remedies. The principle implies that the
appropriate remedy is to reduce the suspect inequalities; whereas it is often
much more credible to hold that the remedy is institutional reform in the
direction of greater democracy (so that the inequalities in question will be
less likely to generate a pattern of domination). The remedy for domination—even domination induced by
high distributional inequality—is not necessarily to reduce the
inequalities, but to introduce political mechanisms that guarantee democracy
even within the context of unequal assets.
If it is
non-domination that we are concerned with, then our focus should be on the full
range of remedies available to reduce the scope of domination, including
especially democratic institutional reforms. Material inequality is sometimes a source of power leading
to the possibility of domination; but so are many other factors. It would be more economical to hold a
non-domination principle directly: don’t permit domination; encourage
democracy.
I will
briefly note a point of agreement with Satz. She spends significant time on assessing the applicability
of the difference principle to the world’s population as a whole. She is right, I believe, in judging
(against Pogge) that this is unjustified in general. The argument for the DP depends on the facts associated with
“fair conditions of social cooperation” within a system of interrelated activity. In general, this is not an apt
description of the whole of the world’s population. And where two representative positions fall within
substantially distinct economic systems—the peasant farmer in 1900 North
China plain and the factory manager in 1900 Pittsburgh—there is no
credible sense in which the well-being of each depends on the productive
contribution of the other; so there is no basis of fairness to dictate that
both must be included within a single global “original position”. As above: where we should insist on the
dictates of distributive justice is in instances where unfair and exploitative
transfers take place.
I don’t find
that the non-domination principle helps much in assessing international
inequalities. It does not identify
the most basis deficiency created by extreme inequalities, which is the
widespread frustration of full human development. Unfair material deprivation
is morally problematic in its own terms—not merely because it gives rise
to the further possibility of domination by the affluent. The non-domination principle doesn’t
give traction on the human welfare deficiencies created by extreme inequalities
adequately. It’s not that people
are vulnerable to domination that is wrong in Brazil’s income distribution; it
is that citizens in the bottom 50% are blocked by material circumstances from
achieving full human development.
Non-domination is important; but so is just treatment and an end of
poverty.
Second, the
non-domination principle doesn’t give appropriate attention to exploitation and
causal processes generating inequalities.
These are important independent of domination and are an independent
source of injustice.
Third,
the non-domination principle suggests the wrong remedy (in some cases), since
the most credible remedy to a situation of domination is institutional reform
towards greater democracy in international regimes, not correction of the
underlying inequality. Elephants
and mice don’t work out harmonious life together by reducing the size of the
elephant; they do so through political arrangements which permit the mice to
adequately represent their interests through political institutions of
democracy. The superior economic
power of the US vis a vis Honduras
allows the former to “dominate” the latter in international regimes. But this does not imply that the right
thing to do is to end the inequality, but rather to create more democratic
international regimes.
I
turn now to a different point, concerning the hybrid nature of Satz’s
position. She explicitly joins
together a human rights view (“a threshold below which no human being can
justifiably fall”) and a criterion of the justice of inequalities among
individuals above the threshold (“avoid inequalities which all a person or group
to dominate other persons or groups” [9, 19]). In fact, when she summarizes the view in the conclusion, it
is clearly a hybrid view: first secure human rights, basic needs, and
democratic participation; then assess equality. But it appears to me that the human rights and sufficiency
principle carries almost all of the weight; and it is not argued or
analyzed. Satisfying the “high
sufficiency” criterion will require heroic efforts on the part of the global
system, and will require real political will and normative conviction to bring
about. So it seems important to
establish the compelling basis of the principle of establishing a high
minimum. Here the complaint is
that Satz assumes away too much.
A minor
point: Satz probably pays too much attention to the need to “appear in public
without shame.” This is a highly
subjective; what about the application in Beverly Hills? If a Ford Taurus is a humiliating ride
in La Jolla, does this have implications for justice?
What is the
status of the obligations created for “us” in face of, for example, premature
mortality in Senegal? (Satz finds
it obvious that such circumstances are morally unacceptable.) Does she believe that “we” then have
strict obligations to take effective remediative action (as argued by Peter
Singer, for example)? Is it a
defeasible moral claim on our discretionary income? Is it a strong or weak claim on the fiscal resources of
“our” state? Is it a perfect or an
imperfect obligation? Does it
require heroic efforts on our part, or would we endorse something like this as
a principle delineating our obligations:
·
Satisfy
urgent contemporary needs of household or polity first; then direct
discretionary income and wealth toward alleviation of the urgent poverty of
others.
I
turn now to more general points. I
believe that it is useful for a discussion of global inequalities to give a
more nuanced account of the varieties of inequality in play internationally. A national economy consists of a system
of production and exchange. It
constitutes a system of economic slots for individuals, with associated
incomes. It is always appropriate
to ask about the justice of these basic arrangements. Rawls’s theory of justice is a highly appropriate basis for
evaluating the economic arrangements of any national economy: are positions
open to all in a system of fair and impersonal equality of opportunity? Are inequalities distributed in a way
that improves the position of the least-well-off? Does the system represent, overall, a fair system of social
cooperation? Another approach
which has promise is the theory of exploitation; we can view some economic
systems as systems of surplus or wealth extraction; and we can attempt to
identify patterns of exploitation through which some individuals benefit at the
expense of others.
Let us
briefly inventory some of the forms of inequality that are to be found in the
developing world.
·
Wealth
and income
·
Political
power
·
Coercive
power
·
Access
to powerful institutions
·
Political
liberties and rights of participation
·
Access
to health, education, nutrition
·
Attainments
in terms of development of human capacities
·
Citizens
of country A have greater political liberties than those of country B
·
Standard
of living—life expectancy, health status, educational attainment
·
Human
capabilities realization
·
Consumption
·
Wealth
and income
Let’s take
one or two of these and test them against the Satz position. The 50th percentile of
Canada’s GDP in 1997 was $16,000 [?]; in Indonesia the 50th
percentile of income was $250 [?].
Does the Canadian income result from exploitation of Indonesia? Does it give rise to the ability of the
median Canadian to exercise political or social power over the median
Indonesian? If neither is true,
then this inequality is not morally salient. (The absolute poverty of the median Indonesian is salient;
but not on grounds of inequality.)
in other words: the moral principles associated with equality do not
demand that Canada ought to tax itself in such a way as to distribute a large
proportion of its national income toward relieving Indonesian poverty. (An interesting collateral point: if
the moral theory of equality did have this consequence, the elephantine
disproportion of population between Canada and Indonesia would imply dramatic
reduction in Canadian standard of living without visible improvement in
Indonesian standard of living.)
I
turn now to a brief exposition of the two substantive points that constitute my
central disagreement with Satz’s approach: the overriding importance of poverty
rather than inequality, and the salience of exploitation rather than
non-domination as the source of injustice in inequalities.
A
central focus of any discussion of ethical issues in development is on the
problem of poverty and poverty alleviation. Why is this so?
Why should we place the problem of poverty ahead of other important
values in the context of development and modernization—e.g. provision of
clean, safe urban environments, preservation of environmental resources, or
raising the average standard of living for the whole population? Why is poverty such a central
concern? The most fundamental way of
approaching this problem is to ask, what is the fundamental good which
underlies judgments of value in social decision-making? One particularly compelling answer to
this question is this: it is the example of a human life lived well and fully,
in circumstances which embody the freedoms of the individual and the rights and
liberties of all citizens. What,
then, is involved in living well?
It
is important to explore a detailed consideration of the bad of poverty, and
more generally, the ways in which we may most fruitfully think about the human
goods promoted by economic development.
Here we consider various theories of human need and human welfare, and
then turn to a more extensive discussion of what I judge to be the most
fruitful conception: A. K. Sen's framework of capabilities and
functionings. On this approach,
the good of development and the bad of poverty can both be understood in terms
of the ability of typical persons to better realize their human
capacities.
·
a
plan of life,
·
a
set of needs,
·
a
conception of the good for him- or herself,
·
a
set of rights and liberties
·
set
of preferences that derive from needs and the conception of the good.
The bad of poverty is
that material deprivation makes it difficult or impossible for the person to
come close to fulfilling his or her human capabilities; to satisfy human needs;
to carry out a complex plan of life; to satisfy his or her conception of the
good; and to fully exercise basic rights and liberties.
We
sometimes understand the problem of poverty in income terms: the poor are
identified as persons and groups falling below a given level of income. The rationale for this approach is that
the satisfaction of human needs—food, clothing, shelter, medical care,
education, and so on—requires income; so having low income strongly
reduces the ability of persons to satisfy minimal human needs. This approach needs qualification on
several grounds. First, it is
clear that income is not the ultimate value at issue in poverty
alleviation. The ultimate concern
is with the ability of the poor to live fully human lives—to fulfill
themselves as full human beings.
Increasing the realization of human capabilities by the poor (so
eloquently stressed by A. K. Sen[1])
is the goal toward which poverty alleviation is directed.
Sen’s
basic insight is that well-being is best defined in terms of the individual’s
capability to become a fully functioning human being. “In assessing the standard of living of a person, the
objects of value can sensibly be taken to be aspects of the life that he or she
succeeds in living. The various
‘doings’ and ‘beings’ a person achieves are thus potentially all relevant to
the evaluation of that person’s living standard” (Sen 1985:29). If we were fortunate enough to live in
a world in which all persons, rich and poor, were fully capable of realizing
their human capacities, then the issue of inequalities of income and wealth
would be of secondary concern. In
our world, however, the limitations on personal development imposed by poverty
are all too obvious: malnutrition, illiteracy, poor health, boring and dangerous
conditions of work, and early mortality are plainly serious obstacles in the
way of full human development for the poor.
Second,
it must be noted that increasing the realization of capacities can be achieved
through other means besides simply raising incomes; putting the point in
another way, it is possible for the poor in one society to have higher income
and lower capacity realization than the poor of another society, due to
differences in the public provision of capacity-enhancing amenities. Societies in which there is extensive
provisioning of education or health services, for example, will have a higher
level of well-being in its poor population—even though the absolute
income flowing to this stratum may be as low or lower than that of other
societies.
This
point brings to the fore a third qualification of the income-based criterion of
poverty. Given the possible
divergence between income and capacity-realization, we need to have other ways
of measuring the extent and depth of poverty in different countries. It is here that a variety of “quality
of life” indicators prove their merits.
For it is possible to measure other variables besides income that have a
more immediate relation to capacity-realization. Malnutrition is directly and patently incompatible with full
realization of human capabilities; so, other things being equal, one society
with a higher level of malnutrition than another is worse-off from the point of
view of the condition of the poor.
Longevity is a general indicator of the quality of health services
available to the population (and the poor, since poor health care for a large
share of the population will translate into reduced life expectancy on
average). Infant mortality
statistics are generally taken to be another sensitive indicator of the health
and nutrition status of the poor; downward fluctuations in the latter lead to
significant increases in the former.
Likewise, data about school enrollments at various levels—primary,
secondary, post-secondary—provide important information about the extent
to which a given society is succeeding in providing education to its poor; and
lack of education is plainly intimately related to obstacles in the way of
capability-realization. (Literacy
statistics can serve the same purpose.)
Measures
of these non-income variables provide a fairly sensitive indicator of the
condition of the poor in a way that permits informative cross-cultural
comparisons. Several important
indices of well-being have been constructed using such information. Central among these are the Physical
Quality of Life index and the Human Development index.
Martha
Nussbaum offers an analysis of gender issues in development that flows from the
“capabilities” approach to the analysis of quality of life (Nussbaum,
1995). Advocated and developed by
Amartya Sen in a variety of writings, this approach attempts to define
well-being in an objective way, by identifying a set of core human capabilities
that are critical to full human functioning and assessing well-being (and the
success of development policies) by the degree to which the individual is in
circumstances which lead to the realization of these capabilities. The approach is studiedly critical of
standard utility and preference-satisfaction approaches to the measurement of
well-being. Along with its
predecessor volume, The Quality of Life (Nussbaum and Sen, eds., 1993), the book
provides a superb basis for discussions of justice and morality within the
context of economic development policy.
(It should be noted that the Human Development Report, published annually by
the United Nations Development Programme, offers development statistics for
about 150 countries that are designed to provide empirical information about
quality of life in developing countries.
The methodology of these reports is very much influenced by the
capabilities theory advanced by Sen, Nussbaum, and others.)
The
core of the theory is a principled account of a set of fundamental human
capabilities which are held to be essential to a good human life. The Aristotelian origins of the
approach are manifest. Martha
Nussbaum’s essay, “Human Capabilities, Female Human Beings,” provides an
effective exposition of the theory (as does David Crocker’s piece in the same
volume). It is Nussbaum’s
contention that we can say a great deal about what is needed for a good human
life; and this account is substantially independent of cultural variations
(that is, human beings have the same capabilities for functioning in a wide
variety of social and cultural settings).
The capabilities involved in a good human life may be listed and
justified, and the resulting list can serve as both a guide and a critical
standard for development policy.
Nussbaum devotes much care to the composition of this list; in brief, it
includes:
·
Being
able to live to the end of a human life of normal length.
·
Being
able to have good health, adequate nutrition, adequate shelter, opportunities
for sexual satisfaction and choice in reproduction, and mobility.
·
Being
able to avoid unnecessary and non-beneficial pain and to have pleasurable
experiences.
·
Being
able to use the senses, imagine, think, and reason; and to have the educational
opportunities necessary to realize these capacities.
·
Being
able to have attachments to things and persons outside ourselves.
·
Being
able to form a conception of the good and to engage in critical reflection
about the planning of one’s own life.
·
Being
able to live for and to others, to recognize and show concern for other human
beings.
·
Being
able to live with concern for and in relation to animals and the world of
nature.
·
Being
able to laugh, to play, to enjoy recreational activities.
·
Being
able to live one’s own life and no one else’s; enjoying freedom of association
and freedom from unwarranted search and seizure.[2]
Nussbaum
characterizes the significance of this list in these terms: “My claim is that a
life that lacks any one of these capabilities, no matter what else it has, will
fall short of being a good human life” (p. 85). Further, she maintains that the list, and its associated
argumentation, ought to be taken seriously by development theorists in the
design of development strategies.
Public policy must be guided by a conception of the human good that
gives the policy maker strong guidance in selecting goals and priorities for
the development process. “The
basic claim I wish to make . . . is that the central goal of public planning
should be the capabilities of citizens to perform various important functions”
(Nussbaum and Glover, p. 87).
There
is a class of international inequalities that poses an element of urgent moral
concern. These are inequalities
that result from exploitation: coercively facilitated transfer of resources and
commodities from one person or group to another. An international inequality is morally troubling if it
results from a structure of economic activity in which the exploited party is
coercively bound to the relation, and in which the exploited party could have
done better if he/she had been permitted to exit from the arrangements with a
share of the resources in play. It
is easy to think of international state-state relations which are exploitative
in this sense. It is also easy to
think of international inequalities which do not result from exploitation. And if exploitation is the basis for
concern about inequalities per se, then it follows that not all international
inequalities are morally problematic.
Exploitation
may be defined in terms of coercion and surplus extraction; it describes a
transfer of wealth, labor time, or products from one group or individual to
another through "unfree" (coercive) mechanisms. Marx's primary use of this concept is
in his critique of the capitalist economy. But exploitation is also relevant to the forward-looking
problems of the global economy.
For once the formal structure of exploitation has been analyzed, it is
possible to ask whether, and in what circumstances, global exploitation might
occur, and it may be possible to use some of these ideas in order to provide a
basis for judging international justice.
What
is morally offensive about the inequality that exists on a coffee plantation
between peasant laborers and the owners and managers? It is that the former are not reaping a fair share of the
joint product; they are being exploited by the owners.
Examples
of international inequalities that derive from exploitation include:
·
Purely
extractive regimes that transfer resources from A to B through a coercive
mechanism.
·
Employment
regimes that suppress the wage in the domestic economy—e.g., prison labor
in China, factory labor in countries which use repression to restrict labor
organizations.
·
Investment
and capital regimes that have the effect of exporting the surplus product of a
given national economy—thereby blocking the possibility of further productive
investment in that economy.
Examples of inequalities
that do not derive from exploitation:
·
China’s
poverty in the 18th century.
In this instance a low per capita asset base and a low level of
development of technology implied poverty – not a systematic extraction
of resources.
·
Poverty
in Sudan, resulting from desertification and low asset base.
This approach requires
that we ask the causal or social systemic question: does the poverty or
disadvantage of Y derive from the affluence of X (symmetrically, does the
affluence of X derive from the poverty of Y)? If not, we consider that the corresponding inequalities are
not the result of exploitaiton, and therefore not unjust.
Which
cases of international inequalities represents instances of exploitation? And
are there reasons for development policy makers to avoid a set of arrangements
because they are exploitative?
John Roemer's theory of exploitation has shaped discussion of this issue
in recent years.[3] Roemer's theory is intended to be
general in the respect that historical forms of exploitation--feudal
exploitation, capitalist exploitation, socialist exploitation--may be seen to
be special cases of the general theory.
Roemer introduces a preliminary definition of exploitation in terms of
socially necessary labor time for subsistence. A exploits B just in case A works less than the socially
necessary amount of labor time, while B works more, and A's advantage depends
upon B's disadvantage.[4] Roemer's general theory of exploitation
takes the form of an analysis of the production process in a given society in
terms of hypothetical alternative arrangements. "A group [will] be conceived of as exploited if it has
some conditionally feasible alternative under which its members would be better
off."[5] This criterion is intended to capture
the connection between exploitation, coercion, and alternative production
arrangements. That is, if there is
an alternative form of production which some class in society could adopt by
withdrawing its share of the productive resources which would leave its members
better off, then that class is being exploited by other classes in existing
production arrangements. On this
criterion capitalist society is exploitative because it depends on a
coercively-enforced system of property arrangements in productive assets
through which a minority class derives a higher than average income at the
expense of the majority class of workers.
Capitalist exploitation may be overcome by distributing productive
assets on the basis of equal shares to each person.
Roemer
applies this framework to the problem of socialist exploitation as well. "A coalition is socialistically
exploited if it could improve its lot by withdrawing with its per capita share of society's
assets, once alienable assets are distributed equally."[6] In applying this criterion we are to
imagine that capitalist exploitation has been abolished through equal
distribution of alienable assets (land, factories, mines, and other forms of
capital), but that inequalities of income still persist because of inequalities
of talent, skill, and the like.
This remaining inequality is what Roemer calls socialist exploitation.
It
is intriguing to consider possible extensions of this approach to the problem
of international exploitation.
Such an extension depends critically on deciding which assets “belong”
to a particular nation or place, in order to establish the baseline of a
group’s “per capita share of society’s assets”. Is the baseline a per capita share of the planet’s assets, or
a per capita share of the assets of one’s home nation or region? If the former, then justice or
non-exploitation requires dramatic redistribution; if the latter, we need
further analysis to determine if a given global inequality is the result of
international exploitation.
A
central idea in this account is the notion of per capita assets. A per capita share of productive
assets may be defined as an average share of each type of productive
asset--industrial capacity of various types, crop land of various fertilities,
transportation and communication assets, etc. This analysis can be converted
into per capita
income terms quite simply; each type of asset generates an average amount of
income per unit of labor in current technical conditions of production.[7] The basket of per capita assets then generates a
per capita
income which is the sum of the incomes generated by a share of each type of
asset.
On
these assumptions reference to per capita assets can be replaced by reference to per
capita
income. Thus socialist
exploitation reduces to certain types of inequalities of per capita incomes among
groups. The qualification required
here concerns the causes of these income inequalities. In order for inequalities to count as exploitative, it is
necessary to show that the higher incomes flowing to one group depend upon the
productive activity and lower incomes of the other group. (This captures the idea of surplus
extraction in a more general way.)
And it is necessary to show that these inequalities are brought about
through a coercive process.
How
does this criterion apply to specific cases? If there is a coercively maintained extractive regime in
place, then there is injustice.
But if the poverty of the place derives solely from asset inequalities
(soil, minerals, forests, fisheries, human capital), then there is no
injustice. Corruption of officials
leading to less than dynamic growth represents injustice—but only
internal to that place.
Let us tell
a story that constitutes a set of internationally exploitative
circumstances—call it Honduras.
The fruit companies buy huge plots of land at bargain prices (through
friendly relations to the state).
They create a sharecropping regime; suppress the wage; suppress
emergence of a peasants’ union; block urban migration; impede the emergence of
alternative more economically favorable enterprises; and export the profits of
the dominant agricultural product.
Relations to a friendly and repressive state are essential, and are
maintained through generous financial contributions (bribes).
This
ideal type fully embodies the characteristics of international
exploitation. The poverty of the
campesino is coercively and systemically enforced for the benefit of others; it
is exploitative; and it represents a form of inequality that must be counted
unjust.
Now
consider a second case: Mongolia.
Here we imagine a large population; low assets per capital; subsistence
smallholding economy; few exports or imports; and crushing poverty deriving
from low productivity and low asset base.
Here we would be forced to conclude that the poverty of the population
does not derive from exploitation, and is not unjust. (It is morally problematic for other reasons.) India is probably such an instance.
Are
there special moral obligations created by the fact of exploitation for the
affluent world? Surely there are
(stop exploiting; stop benefiting from exploitation; contribute to compensatory
justice schemes). There are also
general “imperfect” obligations created by our common humanity. But there is a special force in the
principle that we ought not profit from injustice or exploitation.
I
have taken the occasion of this comment to offer an alternative conception of
the moral facts presented by conditions in the global economy today, and an
alternative conception of the criterion of injustice which marks certain
inequalities as morally objectionable.
These comments take us to a series of conclusions.
1. The leading moral value
in development is to facilitate economic and political development in all
countries to most rapidly reduce poverty.
2. This objective gives a
moral basis for affluent nations to provide resources and help in achieving
these goals.
3. Where exploitation
exists, a special (perfect) obligation exists:
a. to reform so as to
eliminate exploitation
b. to contribute to a
process of compensatory justice.
4. Favor democracy and its
conditions
5. Agents—citizens,
organizations, and governments—ought to recognize their humanitarian
duties (towards alleviating poverty) and duties of justice (to correct patterns
of exploitation and to cease benefiting from unfair terms of economic exchange
with poor countries).
[1] See, for example, “Capability and
Well-Being” in Nussbaum and Sen, eds., 1993. Crocker (1992) provides a very clear exposition of the
theory.
[2] This list largely quotes Nussbaum’s
language, pp. 83-85.
[3] Roemer's theory is presented in A
General Theory of Exploitation and Class (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press,
1982). The main ideas of this
theory are summarized in "New directions in the Marxian theory of
exploitation and class," John Roemer, ed., Analytical Marxism, pp. 81-113. Note also his arguments to the effect that exploitation is not the central moral issue in Marxism in
"Should Marxists be interested in exploitation?", John Roemer, ed., Analytical
Marxism, pp. 260-82.
[4] Roemer, "New directions in the
Marxian theory of exploitation and class," p. 86.
[5] ibid., p. 103.
[6] ibid., p. 109.
[7] Note the formal parallel between this
concept and Marx's analysis of concrete and abstract labor in Capital.