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International Economic Justice and the Guaranteed Minimum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

R. Bruce Douglass
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Extract

Inequality is still with us. For all of the talk (and worry) about the appeal of egalitarianism in modern politics, the benefits which derive from living together in organized society continue to be distributed in highly unequal ways. The reports of the death of privilege are greatly exaggerated. Some people live in opulence while others live in squalor. From birth some have secure life prospects while others survive, much less flourish, against enormous odds. Some people live comfortably well into old age, while others suffer and die from curable diseases in childhood or youth. In certain respects and in certain societies there no doubt has been some progress toward more equality, but in numerous other respects inequality persists. Indeed, it has grown.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , January 1982 , pp. 3 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1982

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References

1 Kenneth Boulding has estimated that the gap in per capita income between the richest and poorest countries has grown from 5/1 in the early 1700's to 40/1 today. Cf. “The Shadow of the Stationary State,” Daedalus (Fall 1973), pp. 98–9.

2 Cf. the collection of essays in Aiken, William and Follette, Hugh La, ed., World Hunger and Moral Obligation (Englewood Cliffs, 1977)Google Scholar; and Brown, Peter G. and Shue, Henry, ed., Food Policy (New York, 1977)Google Scholar.

3 Acts of charity are what moral philosophers characterize as supererogatory acts — i.e., doing more than what duty requires. Acts of supererogation are expected of saints and other moral exemplars, but not of ordinary people. Cf. Urmson, J. O., “Saints and Heroes,” Essays in Moral Philosophy, ed. Melden, A.I. (Seattle, 1958), pp. 198–216Google Scholar.

4 Cf. the resolutions adopted by the 6th Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly in May, 1974, under the title “Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order” and the accompanying “Programme of Action.” Cf. also Leontiev, Wassily et al. The Future of the World Economy (New York, 1976)Google Scholar; and the report prepared for the Club of Rome by Tinbergen, Jan and associates entitled Reshaping the International Order (New York, 1977)Google Scholar.

5 The label “new egalitarianism” was coined by Tucker, Robert W., whose book The Inequality of Nations (New York, 1977)Google Scholar provides the most complete statement of the case against reform available to date. For other statements, cf. Moynihan, Daniel P., “The United States in Opposition,” Commentary (03 1975), pp. 31–44Google Scholar; Bauer, P.T. and Yamey, B.S., “Against the New Economic Order,” Commentary (04 1977), pp. 25–31Google Scholar; Cooper, Richard N., “A New International Economic Order for Mutual Gain,” Foreign Policy (Spring 1977), pp. 81–90Google Scholar; Sumberg, Theodore A., Foreign Aid as Moral Obligation? (Beverly Hills, 1973)Google Scholar. For a sympathetic review of the thinking of Henry Kissinger on this matter cf. Ball, George W., Diplomacy for a Crowded World (Boston, 1976), pp. 278–98Google Scholar. An argument based in quite different premises that comes to similar conclusions is presented by Hardin, Garrett in The Limits to Altruism (Bloomington, 1977)Google Scholar.

6 The authors of Reshaping the International Order observe that “the demands for a new international order … (are) a natural evolution of the philosophy already accepted at the national level” (Tinbergen, p. 24). For an argument which explicitly links the case for a new international economic order to what is currently the most fashionable defense of the welfare state, John Rawls's theory of justice, cf. Beitz, Charles R., “Justice and International Relations,” Philosophy and Public Affairs (Summer 1975), pp. 360–89Google Scholar.

7 What is under discussion here, it needs to be emphasized, is not how the welfare state does in fact work, but rather what it represents in principle. The extent to which the practice of the welfare state approximates the principle is a separate question, which can only be answered in a serious way on a case-by-case basis. A step in this direction is provided by the recent book by Furniss, Norman and Tilton, Timothy entitled The Case for the Welfare State (Washington, 1977)Google Scholar.

8 Cf. Germillion, Joseph, ed., The Gospel of Peace and Justice (New York, 1971), p. 74Google Scholar.

9 Tucker, , Inequality of Nations, p. 44Google Scholar.

10 Cf. Bauer and Yamey, “Against the New Economic Order.”

11 As Garrett Hardin, the noted biologist, observes in a recent paper, “On the average, poor countries undergo a 2.5 percent increase in population each year; rich countries, about 0.8 percent. Only rich countries have anything in the way of food reserves set aside, and they do not have as much as they should. Poor countries have none. If poor countries receive no food from the outside, the rate of their population growth would be periodically checked by crop failures and famines. But if they can always draw on a world food bank in time of need, their population can continue to grow unchecked, and so will their ‘need’ for aid. In the short run, a world food bank may diminish that need, but in the long run it actually increases the need without limit.

“Without some system of worldwide food sharing, the proportion of people in the rich and poor nations might eventually stabilize. The overpopulated poor countries would decrease in numbers, while the rich countries that had room for more people would increase. But with a well-meaning system of sharing, such as a world food bank, the growth differential between the rich and the poor countries will not only persist, it will increase. Because of the higher rate of population growth in the poor countries of the world, 88 percent of today's children are born poor, and only 12 percent rich. Year by year the ratio becomes worse, as the fast-reproducing poor outnumber the slow-reproducing rich” (“Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor” in Aiken, and Follette, La, World Hunger, pp. 16–17)Google Scholar. Cf. also Hardin's book, The Limits of Altruism.

12 Tucker, , Inequality of Nations, p. 137.Google Scholar

13 The simplest answer to the denial of responsibility because certain conditions have not been met is to say that the responsibility in question is not conditional. This clearly plays a role in much of the argument which has been put forward to date in defense of expanding the scope of distributive justice. Populorum Progressio and other statements in this vein take it for granted that there are certain moral obligations which human beings have towards one another irrespective of how they are related. There is something to be said for this. If I, for example, am capable of saving a person who is drowning without significant harm to myself, I am hardly justified in refusing to act because the person in question is a foreigner. Anyone who seriously worried about nationality in such circumstances would probably be viewed by most people as morally retarded. In some cases ordinary moral intuition would seem to suggest that moral obligations are not restricted to national boundaries, and that they can arise simply by virtue of shared humanity. It is not obvious, however, that the problem of world poverty presents an analogous case. Addressing this problem is likely to be much more demanding than throwing a lifeline. It is a task which is likely to go on and on, and the burdens will probably increase over time. Therefore more is needed to establish obligation than simply an assertion of common humanity. The point of the demand for some more specific connection between the parties — which grows out of the contractarian tradition — is precisely that what is likely to be involved is a continuing, long-term obligation. Moral intuition may dictate that I have an obligation to help a foreigner in a moment of immediate crisis, but it does not dictate (at least presently) that I have an obligation to assume a continuing responsibility for his fate. The latter can be established only if other considerations are brought into play.

14 Beitz, , “Justice and International Relations,” p. 373Google Scholar.

15 “In Nairobi, UNCTAD was faced with the situation that whereas in the 1960's the collective annual debt of Third World nations was in the order of $12 billion annually, by 1972 it had leapt to $30 billion, and is expected to increase to $45 billion in 1976. These figures arein no way compensated for by grants provided in the assistance programmes of the industrialized countries. … Given this, it is legitimate to pose the question: in which direction does the net flow of funds actually go and, therefore, who is in fact assisting whom?” Tinbergen, , Reshaping the International Order, p. 61Google Scholar.

16 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, 1972)Google Scholar.

17 To those who might want to persist in asserting collective responsibility as a way of denying this claim, it is worth noting that the idea of collective responsibility cuts two ways. If citizens of the industrialized countries are to assert a right to benefits on the basis of their ancestors' achievements, they are also liable for the injustices committed by the ancestors — especially if those injustices have a bearing on their present benefits. They are liable for claims of reparations, which, in some cases at least, could impose redistributive burdens much heavier than anything discussed in this paper. Consider, e.g., the reparations claims that can be built on the basis of unjust land seizures from the American Indians.

18 Cf. Harmon, David P. Jr, and Chou, Marylin, “Food Enough for All,” Worldview (09 1975), pp. 33–37Google Scholar.

19 Lewis, John P., “Oil, Other Securities, and the Poor Countries,” World Politics (10 1974), p. 73Google Scholar.

20 Berger, Peter, “The Ethics of Economic Ignorance,” Worldview (04 1975), pp. 6–7Google Scholar.

21 Beitz, Charles, “Global Egalitarianism: Can We Make Out a Case?” Dissent (Winter 1979), p. 62Google Scholar.

22 Past history would suggest that as development succeeds and a modern econ; actually comes into being, greater distributive justice is a more or less natural by-product. The polarization between a small, wealthy elite and large mass of impoverished peasants which is characteristic of traditional and transitional societies fades away, and in its place emerges the more complex stratification characteristic of industrial societies. The population becomes literate; the work force becomes increasingly industrial; a large middle class is created; and perhaps most important, there emerges the welfare state, with the redistributive functions discussed earlier.

23 Cf. Ajami, Fouad, “The Global Logic of the Neoconservatives,” World Politics (04 1978), p. 462Google Scholar.

24 Evans, Joseph W. and Ward, Leo R., ed., The Social and Political Philosophy of Jacques Maritain (Garden City, 1955), p. 90Google Scholar.

25 Brown, Lester R., World Without Borders (New York, 1973), p. 10Google Scholar.