From global poverty to global equality a philosophical exploration

From Global Poverty to Global Equality


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From Global Poverty
to Global Equality
A Philosophical Exploration

Pablo Gilabert

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3
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# Pablo Gilabert 2012
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Acknowledgments

In parts of this book I have used (and systematically revised) material from the
following articles:
“The Duty to Eradicate Global Poverty: Positive or Negative?” Ethical Theory
and Moral Practice 7 (2005), 537–50 (Springer).
“Basic Positive Duties of Justice and Narveson’s Libertarian Challenge,”
Southern Journal of Philosophy 44 (2006), 193–216 (Wiley-Blackwell).
“Cosmopolitanism and Discourse Ethics, A Critical Survey,” New Political
Science 28 (2006), 1–21 (Taylor and Francis).
“Contractualism and Poverty Relief,” Social Theory and Practice 33 (2007),
277–310 (Florida State University).
“Global Justice and Poverty Relief in Nonideal Circumstances,” Social Theory
and Practice 34 (2008), 411–38 (Florida State University).
“Does Global Egalitarianism Provide an Impractical and Unattractive

Ideal of Justice?” International Affairs 84 (2008), 1025–39 (co-authored with
Christian Barry) (Wiley-Blackwell).
“The Feasibility of Basic Socioeconomic Human Rights. A Conceptual
Exploration,” Philosophical Quarterly 59 (2009), 559–81 (Wiley-Blackwell).
“Political Feasibility. A Conceptual Exploration,” Political Studies
(co-authored with Holly Lawford-Smith, forthcoming) (Wiley-Blackwell).
I thank the publishers for allowing me to draw on this material. I also thank
the referees of these papers for their comments.
I am enormously grateful for the copious help that I have received in the
completion of this book. The referees of Oxford University Press provided me
with sharp criticisms and generous comments and suggestions on the whole
manuscript. One of them, who revealed herself and showered me with superb
comments, was Laura Valentini. My OUP editor, Dominic Byatt, was kind,
patient, and resourceful. I also thank Lesley Montford for her help in editing
the manuscript. I am grateful to many people for comments on specific chapters and arguments discussed in this book, and for conversations on related
matters. They include Arash Abizadeh, Elizabeth Ashford, Christian Barry,
Geoffrey Brennan, Simon Caney, Rainer Forst, Matthias Fritsch, Roberto
Gargarella, Mariano Garreta-Leclerq, Robert Goodin, Carol Gould, Osvaldo
Guariglia, Holly Lawford-Smith, Colin Macleod, Julio Montero, James Nickel,
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Acknowledgments

Kai Nielsen, Thomas Pogge, Lisa Rivera, Eduardo Rivera Lopez, Ingrid Robeyns,
Andrea Sangiovanni, Henry Shue, Nicholas Southwood, Adam Swift, Jesse
Tomalty, Andrew Williams, and Lea Ypi. I cannot remember everyone who
helped me, and I apologize for any unintended omission. I presented arguments included in this book in numerous conferences and lectures, and I am
grateful to the audiences for their input. My research was supported by grants
from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and by

the funding and stimulating environments provided through an HLA Hart
Visiting Fellowship at the University of Oxford, a Visiting Fellowship at the
Australian National University, and a Visiting Scholarship at the Universidad
Torcuato di Tella. I discussed many of the issues addressed in this book in
courses and seminars at Concordia University, and I thank my students for
sharing with me the excitement of exploring new philosophical ideas. Finally,
I am deeply thankful to Elizabeth and to Manuel.
I dedicate this book to the memory of my father, Abelardo Gilabert. He was
a loving parent, an accomplished psychiatrist, and a fighter for social justice.
He often embodied the humanist ideals that this book defends by embracing
the suffering of others, and by supporting their struggle to increase their
autonomy and wellbeing.

vi


Contents

1. Introduction: the complexity of the debate on global justice
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Three kinds of distributive principles
1.3 Arguments for scope: desirability and feasibility
1.4 Levels of argument about scope
1.5 Cosmopolitanism, globalism, and humanism
1.6 Justice and humanitarianism
1.7 Preview of the contents of the book
Notes

1
1

4
6
8
10
11
18
20

Part I: Beyond Global Poverty
2. Basic positive duties of justice: a contractualist defense
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Scanlon’s contractualism
2.3 Beneficence and institutional justice
2.4 Objections and implications
2.5 Cosmopolitanism, contextual specificity, and special
relationships
2.6 Human rights, humanism, and diversity
Notes
3. Negative duties and the libertarian challenge
3.1 Introduction
3.2 A response to the libertarian challenge
3.3 Comments on Pogge’s approach to the duties of global justice
Notes
4. The feasibility of global poverty eradication in nonideal
circumstances
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Desirability, feasibility, and obligation
4.3 Dimensions of a conception of justice and the distinction
between ideal and nonideal theory
4.4 Two kinds of responses to infeasibility

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28
30
44
58
62
63
73
73
74
92
101
111
111
114
122
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Contents

4.5 Two nonideal circumstances
4.6 Transitional standpoint, dynamic duties, and political
empowerment
Notes

138
145

152

Part II: Toward Global Equality
5. Humanist versus associativist approaches to global equality
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Global sufficientarianism, intermediate inclusion, and
egalitarianism
5.3 Discussion of specific associativist accounts
5.4 Convergence?
Notes

165
167
182
186

6. A humanist defense of global equality
6.1 The humanist approach
6.2 Distributive justice, social justice, and global justice
Notes

195
195
217
229

7. The feasibility of global equality
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Feasibility and dynamic duties
7.3 The status and role of principles of justice

7.4 Accessibility and the appraisal of transformational projects
7.5 Transitional standpoint and pragmatic considerations
7.6 Appendix: The feasibility test and “reasonable probability”
Notes

237
237
238
244
248
254
263
266

8. Conclusion: Exploring responsibilities of global justice
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Resources and procedure for the exploration
8.3 Two cases of exploration regarding global poverty and inequality
Notes

275
275
275
281
291

Bibliography
Index

295

307

viii

163
163


1
Introduction: the complexity of the
debate on global justice

1.1 Introduction
This book provides a philosophical exploration accounting for the moral
desirability and the practical feasibility of implementing global principles of
poverty relief and egalitarian distributive justice.
It addresses the following questions: Do we have positive duties to help
others in need or are our moral duties only negative, focused on not harming
them? If these basic positive duties exist, are they strong and strict demands or
are they weak and discretionary? Can we say that such duties are also duties of
justice that respond to rights and are worthy of coercive enforcement by
institutional structures? Can the scope of some of these duties be global or
should all of them be circumscribed to what we owe to our compatriots?
If global positive duties exist, are they only focused on helping others meet
their basic needs or can they also target their relative deprivation? Is global
equality a requirement of justice or is global sufficiency all that global justice
amounts to? How should the scope of the principles of distributive justice be
determined? Can a humanist construal of them as responding to rights that all
human beings as such have be developed successfully or must the scope of
distributive justice be seen in an associativist way, as tracking already existing

associative frameworks of statehood, nationality, or economic cooperation?
Are the eradication of severe global poverty and the achievement of global
equality practically feasible or are they merely the content of hopelessly
utopian wishes? The far-reaching technological capabilities and accumulated
wealth in our contemporary world, coupled with the increasing inequality in
their distribution, and the fact that 18 million people die each year due to
poverty-related causes make these questions very pressing. This book answers
these questions and defends three theses. The first is that there are basic
positive duties of justice to help eradicate severe poverty that have global
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From Global Poverty to Global Equality

scope. The second is that global egalitarian principles are also reasonable even
if they cannot be fully realized in the short term. Third, this book argues that
it is feasible to articulate significant responsibilities to pursue the transition
from global poverty to global equality in the face of nonideal circumstances
that involve the absence of robust international institutions and the lack of a
strong ethos of cosmopolitan solidarity.
I defend these theses by developing a philosophical exploration that identifies the central dimensions of an account of global normative responsibility
to be embedded in social practices and institutions. These dimensions concern
the objects, structure, scope, moral justification, political articulation and
motivation for the fulfillment of duties to alleviate global poverty and pursue
global equality. This book makes two main original contributions. First,
it addresses routinely neglected problems regarding nonideal theory as they
result from the circumstances mentioned above, and provides an account of
what I call “dynamic duties” to generate conditions of feasibility for the
fulfillment of certain distributive responsibilities when these are not yet present. More generally, the very notion of feasibility is crucial for moral and
political reasoning, but has received very little explicit philosophical discussion. This book helps to fill this theoretical gap by providing a systematic

analysis of that concept besides considering its application to global justice.
The second main contribution of this book is that it arbitrates the current
debate between associativist and humanist accounts of the conditions of
applicability of principles of justice. I provide a defense of the humanist
approach and challenge several versions of the associativist approach, which
remains the most popular one amongst political philosophers. My development of the humanist approach is distinctive in two ways. First, I develop
it by drawing on moral contractualism, the view according to which we
should act on the basis of principles that no one could reasonably reject.
Second, by explaining how contractualist reasoning can guide us in the
identification and proper treatment of possible tensions and combinations
between humanist and associativist considerations, I also seek to integrate the
insights underlying each view. The upshot is a set of theoretical resources with
great relevance for addressing certain crucial practical questions regarding the
future of globalization.
The significance of the themes addressed in this book is not only philosophical. The fact that approximately 50,000 human beings (most of them children) die each day due to poverty-related causes when this could be prevented
at moderate cost to the wealthiest individuals and nations in the world is one
of the greatest moral scandals of our time. The governments of the richest
nations (members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) have pledged, within the framework of the United Nations (UN)
Millennium Development Goals, to contribute 0.7 per cent of their GNP to
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The complexity of the debate on global justice

fulfill the goal of halving world poverty by 2015. Almost all rich nations
have consistently failed to reach this target. Developing a compelling account
of the justification, articulation, and implementation of responsibilities to
alleviate global poverty is thus not only of philosophical interest, but also of
great practical importance for improving the life prospects of those suffering
severe poverty and for expressing the moral integrity of wealthy citizens in

developed nations. For those who endorse egalitarian ideals, the facts regarding global inequality should also be alarming. The difference in the average
life expectancy between a low-income and a high-income country is 19 years.
The richest 10 per cent of individuals in the world receive one half of the
world’s income. The richest 5 per cent receive one third of the world’s income,
while the bottom 5 per cent receive just 0.2 per cent. In US dollars, the ratio of
the top 5 per cent to the bottom 5 per cent is 300 to 1.1
This book has two parts. The first focuses on sufficientarian requirements of
global poverty relief, and the second on more exigent demands of global
equality. Of the three central claims mentioned above, the first belongs to
the first part of the book, the second is developed in the second part, and the
third straddles both parts. The exploration of contractualist reasoning, the
humanist approach, and the dynamic conception of feasibility will be central
to both parts. The remainder of this introduction provides an articulation of
the current debate on global distributive justice and explains further the main
themes, aims, and theses of this book. Although its role is mainly to clarify the
background for the substantive arguments advanced in the book, the articulation of the current debate on global justice presented in sections 1.2 through
1.6 has independent significance. Work in political philosophy about global
justice is booming. The debate is increasingly complex and often rather
confusing. It helps to identify some of its core aspects by introducing some
important distinctions.
I proceed as follows. Section 1.2 identifies three kinds of distributive principles: basic sufficientarianism, egalitarianism, and intermediate inclusion.
Basic sufficientarianism demands that everyone have enough to avoid absolute poverty. The other two kinds of principles also address concerns about
relative deprivation. Egalitarianism demands that everyone have equal
access to certain important advantages. Intermediate inclusion commands
that inequalities not be so wide as to allow for relations of domination and
exploitation.
Section 1.3 elucidates two types of considerations that bear on fixing the
scope of application of distributive principles. Considerations of feasibility
concern the issue of whether a certain principle can be implemented within
a certain domain. Considerations of moral desirability, on the other hand,

concern the issue of whether such implementation is morally justifiable.
I identify humanism and associativism as two families of accounts of moral
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From Global Poverty to Global Equality

desirability regarding the scope of distributive justice. I argue that although
considerations of feasibility and moral desirability are often conflated, they are
importantly different. They provide two crucial but conceptually different
axes of assessment of principles of distributive justice. Section 1.4 illustrates
this point by considering desirability and feasibility challenges to global
egalitarianism. Section 1.5 explains the distinction between humanism, cosmopolitanism, and globalism. Cosmopolitanism is a moral stance on the
scope of moral respect and concern, according to which all individual
human beings are equal and ultimate units of moral respect and concern for
everyone. It is compatible with different views on the scope of principles of
distributive justice. Globalism is one of these views, according to which the
scope of distributive justice is global. Globalism is compatible with, but not
entailed by, cosmopolitanism. Although humanism yields globalism about
distributive justice when feasible, not all forms of globalism are humanist.
Some forms of associativism yield globalism as well. Section 1.6 discusses the
important, but often obscure, distinction between duties of justice and
humanitarian duties. Finally, section 1.7 provides a preview of the main theses
and arguments in the book.

1.2 Three kinds of distributive principles
Is the scope of distributive justice global? To answer this question, we need to
consider three further questions: What are the relevant kinds of distributive
principles? What are the desirability conditions for fixing their scope? What
are the feasibility conditions for their implementation? I address the first

question now, and proceed to consider the other two in the next section.
Discussions on distributive justice, domestic or global, often involve at least
three kinds of principles. They can be schematically stated as follows.
Sufficientarianism: We should, to the extent that we reasonably can, pursue social
arrangements in which everyone has enough access to certain important advantages, thus avoiding absolute deprivation.
Egalitarianism: We should, to the extent that we reasonably can, pursue social
arrangements in which everyone has equal access to certain important advantages, thus avoiding relative deprivation.
Intermediate inclusion: We should, to the extent that we reasonably can, pursue
social arrangements in which everyone has a level of access to certain important
advantages that secures the avoidance of absolute deprivation and the absence of
glaring forms of relative deprivation.

Five things must be said to clarify these kinds of principles. First, being kinds
of principles, they can be specified in different ways, according to which
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The complexity of the debate on global justice

advantages we deem appropriate. We may focus on resources, opportunities,
welfare, capabilities, etc. The difference between these alternatives, and the
possible variation within each of them, are of course important, but for
the purposes of this discussion the crucial point is the general idea that
distributive justice is concerned with important advantages that contribute
to the autonomy and wellbeing of those who have access to them.2 Second, all
these principles have a universal quantifier identifying the scope of beneficiaries. However, such a quantifier need not range over all of humanity. The
reference to “everyone” may concern every member of an association or
community smaller than humanity. Third, the difference between sufficientarianism and egalitarianism stems from the difference between absolute and
relative deprivation. Attending to the first, sufficientarianism demands that
nobody be below a certain threshold of advantage. A common metric for this

specification, relevant for debates on global justice and the one that I will
assume as operative in this discussion, is basic socioeconomic human rights
(including food, housing, basic health care, and basic education). Thus, whenever I refer to sufficientarianism, I will have in mind a specific form of it. This
basic sufficientarianism is to be distinguished from more demanding forms of
sufficientarianism.3 Attending to relative deprivation, egalitarianism demands
that everyone have equal access to important advantages. Thus the first crucial
difference between these views concerns the distinction between demanding
that everyone have enough and demanding that everyone have as much as
everyone else. A second difference is that, normally, the advantages considered by egalitarians are well above the threshold identified by sufficientarians.4 Most egalitarians assume that the more advantages people have access
to the better.
Fourth, consider intermediate inclusion. I present this kind of principle in
a deliberatively imprecise way. Its defining features are to be understood by
contrast with the other two kinds of principles. It demands less than egalitarianism, but more than sufficientarianism. Like the latter, it says that everyone
should have enough. But like the former, it is also concerned, at least to some
extent, with comparative considerations. It is difficult to say more about this
general principle without addressing specific versions. It plays, as we will see,
a significant role in debates on global justice. But forms of it are significant
for discussions of domestic justice as well. A theory of domestic justice could,
for example, demand not only that everyone be able to avoid absolute poverty, but also that the distance between the relatively wealthy and the relatively poor not be too wide, for otherwise political domination of the latter
by the former would be very likely, or people’s sense of self-respect and social
solidarity would be seriously undermined, or economic interactions would be
highly exploitative.5

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From Global Poverty to Global Equality

Finally, notice that these principles are not necessarily disjointed. There
may be conditions in which they all apply. An equal distribution of X may

be such that enough of X is accessible to all and no glaring relative deprivation
occurs.

1.3 Arguments for scope: desirability and feasibility
The central question for us is whether distributive principles have global
scope. We want to know whether the universal quantifiers used in the three
kinds of principles mentioned are bound to specific groups of people or
whether they range over all persons across the globe. To answer this question
we need to consider two further questions concerning two kinds of conditions
for fixing the scope of a principle P. The first tracks moral desirability conditions.
A statement of these conditions is meant to answer the question “What
features of any two persons are morally relevant for claiming that they have
duties of distributive justice toward each other under P?” We need to distinguish this kind of question from a second kind that tracks feasibility conditions.
A statement of these conditions answers the question “What features of any
two persons are logically and causally relevant for claiming that they are
capable of fulfilling certain putative duties of distributive justice toward each
other under P?”
The distinction between these two kinds of conditions is a central issue of
this book. I will have a lot to say about it as we proceed. But four things must
be said right away. First, we can distinguish between two families of conceptions of desirability conditions. The first, which I will call humanist, says that
for it to be morally appropriate that some distributive principles apply
between two individuals it is enough to say that they both are human beings.
The second view, which I will call associativist, is more restrictive. In its
strongest, and most common, form it adds the necessary condition that
individuals be co-members of a certain association.
Second, feasibility conditions need not be coextensive with desirability
conditions. It may be desirable that a certain principle P apply to a certain
set of people S even if it is infeasible for members of S to fulfill it, and it may be
feasible for members of a set S* to apply a principle P* even if it is not desirable
that they fulfill it. A global anarchist system securing equality without coercive political institutions might be an example of the first point, and a global

neoliberal order dismissing any serious demands of distributive justice might
be an example of the second.
Third, let me say a word about the technical and perhaps peculiar use of the
expression “moral desirability” in this book. In my use, if an action is morally
desirable then it is pro tanto, or prima facie, morally obligatory.6 The reference
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The complexity of the debate on global justice

to moral obligation is meant to mark the fact that moral desirability as
considered here is not just any kind of desirability, but one associated with
moral injunctions. It is, then, different from nonmoral uses of “desirable”
(such as hedonistic ones), and it is narrower than certain moral uses which do
not involve obligation (such as those praising supererogatory acts). I assume
that “moral desirability” can be used by different moral theories, and thus that
it does not presuppose any specific one. Furthermore, the reference to what is
“pro tanto” or “prima facie” obligatory is meant to allow for the possibility that
in certain circumstances although there may be moral reasons to do A, there
may be stronger moral reasons to do something else B which is incompatible
with doing A. In those circumstances, although there are reasons rendering
A morally desirable, there are stronger reasons rendering B more morally
desirable, so that doing B is all things considered what we ought to do. My
use also grants the possibility that in the end one does not have an all things
considered duty to do A because one cannot do it. Saying that A is morally
desirable means that one should seriously consider doing A if one could, but
allows that inability to do A may falsify the claim that A is all things considered what one ought to do.
As indicated, my use of “moral desirability” is such that the fulfillment of
feasibility conditions is not a precondition for something to be morally desirable. Notice, however, fourth, that I assume that it is important for a conception of justice to factor in feasibility considerations. This is because I take a
conception of justice to be geared to the prescriptive identification of agents’

all things considered obligations, and these involve more than the weighting
of moral desirability considerations. It seems odd to say that agents have all
things considered obligations they are incapable of fulfilling. Considerations
of moral desirability without considerations of feasibility yield only hypothetical obligations (obligations that would involve actual prescriptions only if
their fulfillment were feasible). A conception of justice should also factor in
feasibility considerations to yield all things considered actual prescriptions
(obligations people actually have in practice, given that they really can do
what they have moral reason to do in the circumstances). Thus claims about
the scope of justice, to yield actual obligations, must satisfy both desirability
and feasibility constraints. Notice that this does not entail that political
philosophers who focus on comparing hypothetical social frameworks in
terms of their relative moral desirability are not doing something relevant.
Certainly when it comes to identifying the outcome we ought to pursue
amongst the feasible ones, we need to draw on considerations about their
relative moral desirability. Furthermore, as we will see, comparative considerations can also guide us to undertake efforts to make feasible certain outcomes
which are not currently so.7

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From Global Poverty to Global Equality

1.4 Levels of argument about scope
We can now begin to unpack some of the complexity of the current debate on
global justice. The first level of complexity concerns the conclusions for
which different sides to the debate argue. The conclusions vary in two respects. First, they may be globalist or anti-globalist, according to whether they
affirm or reject the global scope of certain principles. Second, they may vary
according to the kinds of principles whose global scope they affirm or reject.
Thus, for example, some authors accept global sufficientarianism, demanding
that everyone across the globe have access to the objects of their basic human

rights, but reject a global egalitarianism that demands that everyone in the
world have equal access to important advantages going beyond such rights.
Other authors propose global intermediate inclusion, demanding some forms of
global distribution that are less exigent than strict egalitarianism but go
beyond sufficientarianism. The three kinds of globalism are not logically
incompatible. Indeed, some authors consistently endorse global sufficientarianism and reject global egalitarianism, others affirm global sufficientarianism
or global intermediate inclusion and remain agnostic about global egalitarianism, and still others affirm versions of the three principles.
The complexity regarding the conclusions argued for is of course
compounded by the complexity regarding the premises invoked in their
justification. Two important kinds of disagreement at this level concern considerations of desirability and feasibility. Take, for example, discussion on
global egalitarianism, the view that (at least some) principles of egalitarian
distribution apply globally. We can conceive of two kinds of argument why
it should be rejected (I put aside the obvious case in which it is rejected
by someone for whom egalitarianism is never correct, regardless of scope).
One such argument starts with the following normative premise.
Associativist egalitarianism: Principles of egalitarian distribution apply only among
those who share an associative framework of the relevant kind.8

This premise qualifies egalitarianism’s scope, saying that its appropriate application tracks certain facts of association. The second, factual premise of this
argument says that there is no associative framework of the relevant kind that is
global in nature. It follows that global egalitarianism must be rejected, at least
until the relevant global associative framework emerges. There are of course
many versions of this kind of argument, depending on which associative
framework is deemed relevant. Here are some examples formulated by Joshua
Cohen and Charles Sabel. According to “statism,” the relevant associative
framework must be co-membership in a political community involving a centralized use of legitimate coercion (a state). According to “institutionalism,”
duties of distributive justice exist where there are institutions that can be
8

The complexity of the debate on global justice

charged with the responsibility of assigning the relevant advantages. According
to “cooperativism,” the relevant associative framework is some consequential
regime of mutually beneficial cooperation. According to “interdependence,”
the triggering condition is present “whenever the fate of people in one place
depends substantially on the collective decisions taken by people in another
place, and the fate of people in that latter place depends substantially on
the collective decisions of people in the former.”9 We could add to this list
some forms of nationalism according to which people have duties of (egalitarian) justice to each other only if they are co-nationals (i.e. share a certain set of
political institutions, a language, and a collective history).
A different argument against global egalitarianism starts with another normative premise.
Humanist egalitarianism: Some principles of egalitarian distribution apply among
all human persons qua human persons.10

This premise differs from associativist egalitarianism in that it takes the desirability conditions for the application of some forms of egalitarianism to be
independent from associative frameworks. A version of this view could claim,
for example, that inequality in access to important advantages arising through
no fault of those involved merits redress. The argument still rejects global
egalitarianism, however, by invoking a factual premise according to which it is
not feasible for people around the world to do much to implement a principle
of global egalitarian distribution.
Thus, the first argument rejects global egalitarianism on grounds of moral
desirability, whereas the second rejects it on grounds of feasibility. To defeat
the second argument, a defender of global egalitarianism would have to show
that the implementation of demands of global egalitarian distribution is not
really infeasible. To defeat the first argument, the defender of global egalitarianism must, in addition, show that the current international circumstances
are such that associative frameworks of the relevant kind actually exist, or that
the desirability of some forms of egalitarianism need not be premised on
associative facts. As is evident, in both cases an important part of the debate

would concern the characterization of the current trends of globalization.
Fact of globalization: There is a tendency toward ever-greater economic and political integration across national borders.

Those who reject global egalitarianism normally do not reject the fact of
globalization. What they do, instead, is to try to show that the deliverances
of global integration are not yet intense or profound enough to trigger the
desirability conditions of associativist egalitarianism and/or the feasibility
conditions of global egalitarianism. In response, the associativist defenders
of global egalitarianism need to argue that globalization is already deep
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From Global Poverty to Global Equality

enough to trigger global associative egalitarian duties. And both associativist
and humanist defenders of global egalitarianism must show that globalization
is, or can be made to be, deep enough to make it sufficiently feasible for certain
forms of egalitarian distribution to take place across the globe at some point in
the future.
Discussions of the same structure would of course exist regarding global
sufficientarianism and global intermediate inclusion. Thus, a central aspect of
debates on global justice concerns the elucidation of the appropriate desirability and feasibility conditions for the global implementation of principles
of the three kinds identified in section 1.2.

1.5 Cosmopolitanism, globalism, and humanism
It is important to emphasize a point that is often missed in the debate on
global justice: the need to distinguish between cosmopolitanism, globalism, and
humanism. It is often assumed that a cosmopolitan conception of justice must
endorse distributive principles with global scope and defend them on humanist grounds. This assumption is unhelpful because it conflates the different
levels of argumentation that we have just distinguished. Cosmopolitanism is

best seen as a basic commitment to the following idea.
Cosmopolitan idea of moral equality: All individual persons are ultimate units of
equal moral respect and concern for everyone.11

This is the familiar idea that all human beings have equal moral worth.
Commitment to it does not by itself entail a humanist or a globalist view
regarding principles of distributive justice. A substantive argument is needed
to move from moral equality to lower-level principles of distributive justice.
What this idea imposes, instead, is a constraint on the development of
any such principles, demanding that they be such that they express equal
concern and respect for those to whom they apply. This constraint could also
be construed in terms of justification.
Cosmopolitan justifiability: We should treat each other on the basis of principles of
justice that no one, as free and equal persons, could reasonably reject.

The idea that principles of justice must be justifiable to all as free and equal is
an epistemic operationalization of the idea of moral equality. To treat people
as morally equal is to treat them in ways that they could not reasonably reject.
This is an important constraint. For example, it rules out taking supraindividual entities as basic, it prevents simply discounting the reasons for and
against certain principles that people who are not near and dear to us might
have, and it forces us to consider the viewpoint of all those affected by the
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The complexity of the debate on global justice

implementation of distributive principles, including not only those benefited
by them, but also those shouldering the costs they impose. But it is still quite
indeterminate. It does not, by itself, decide whether distributive principles
should be given a humanist or an associativist formulation. It also does not,

by itself, select between globalism and anti-globalism about the scope of
principles. Further substantive argument is again needed to support answers
to these questions as moves in a discussion framed by cosmopolitan justifiability. Associativist conceptions can be based on cosmopolitan grounds. And
they may or may not, depending on factual considerations, yield globalist
conclusions.12 Alternatively, humanist conceptions may succeed at showing
that the implementation of certain global principles is desirable, but fail to
show that it is feasible.

1.6 Justice and humanitarianism
This book is focused on duties of justice. It argues that distributive schemes to
eradicate global poverty and to approach global equality are mandated by
justice. But what makes a duty a duty of justice? Why are the distributive
demands just mentioned not better seen as humanitarian duties (or as duties
of charity or beneficence)?13 To answer these questions we need a clear
account of the contrast between duties of justice and humanitarian duties.
And it should be noted upfront that there is no consensus in the philosophical
literature as to how to characterize the relevant contrast. Different usages of it
arise in different contexts, and it is hard to elucidate a common core that
is invariant across them. Given the framing importance of this issue for
this book, it is worth pausing to consider it in some detail. In what follows,
I will identify some proposed explanations of the distinction which appeal to
six further contrasts, present my own suggestion as to how we should understand the distinction, and explain how it relates to the additional contrasts
proposed by elucidating some reasonable conditions of adequacy on the use
of the concept of justice. I conclude with a deflationary remark regarding the
significance of the discussion about the distinction between justice and other
domains of morality.
The following are some of the further contrasts that have been proposed to
account for the specificity of duties of justice.
I. Duties of justice, unlike humanitarian duties, are concerned with giving
people their due.

II. Duties of justice are negative, whereas humanitarian duties are positive
(the former demand that we avoid depriving others of access to certain
important advantages, while the latter demand that we provide them
with such an access).
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From Global Poverty to Global Equality

III. Duties of justice are perfect, whereas humanitarian duties are imperfect
(the former are, and the latter are not, such that it is always clear who
owes what to whom in what circumstances).
IV. Duties of justice are justifiably enforceable, whereas humanitarian
duties are not.
V. Duties of justice have correlative rights, whereas humanitarian duties
do not.
VI. Duties of justice are institutional, whereas humanitarian duties are
interpersonal.14
I will discuss these views momentarily. Before doing that, let me state
my own suggestion as to how to understand the specificity of justice. I suggest
that we conceive of duties of justice as duties to preserve or promote
people’s access to important advantages to which they are entitled and
whose fulfillment is prima facie enforceable. This enforcement is all things
considered justifiable if it is necessary for or strongly contributes to securing
the required preservation or promotion and can be feasibly introduced without imposing unreasonable costs. This view combines some elements of contrasts I, IV, and V. It sees duties of justice as ranging over what is due to
people. It sees just distribution as responding to people’s rights to what
is distributed. And it sees the distribution as meriting enforcement. Such
an enforcement is seen as only prima facie justifiable because enforcement
imposes limitations on the freedom of agents and involves costs to them, and
such limitations and costs must themselves be justifiable as feasible and

reasonable. A duty might then be a duty of justice even if a specific implementation of it turns out to be not justifiably enforceable, all things considered, in
a certain context (either because in the circumstances such an enforcement
is infeasible or because it imposes unreasonable costs given other, stronger,
conflicting demands of justice). Since pro tanto support for action remains,
one may have to find other (feasible, reasonable) ways to honor it, or change
the circumstances so that some form of honoring or support becomes
possible.
This schematic account will be developed in this book. But let me give a
sense of its plausibility by explaining how it relates to the six contrasts
mentioned. To do this, it is helpful to proceed by considering some reasonable
desiderata on an account of the nature of duties of justice. These are some of
the desiderata we should recognize when we ask ourselves: What do we want
to accomplish by identifying some duties as duties of justice? What theoretical
and practical work would a distinction between such duties and humanitarian
duties do for us?

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The complexity of the debate on global justice

1.6.1 Capturing the stringency of justice
An intuitive component of the notion of justice is that it tracks particularly
stringent moral demands. This is captured by the reference to enforceable
claims in the account I have suggested. The idea here is that the demands of
justice on which political philosophers normally focus are a specific kind of
moral demand. As Adam Swift puts it, “[p]olitical philosophy . . . is a very
specific subset of moral philosophy, and one where the stakes are particularly
high. It’s not just about what people ought to do, it’s about what people are
morally permitted, and sometimes morally required, to make each other

do.”15 A difficulty with contrast I is that it does not capture this point. The
characterization of justice as giving people their due is too broad. On this
account, any moral duty whatsoever could be seen as a duty of justice, as
anything that is a moral duty (rather than, say, something that would be
praiseworthy but not wrong not to do), could be construed as delivering
what is due, or owed, to someone.
It might be objected that the reference to “reasonable costs” to duty-bearers
in my proposal would make some duties to help the poor or needy not as
stringent as duties of justice typically are, and thus undermine their characterization as duties of justice rather than as weaker humanitarian duties. Let us
consider two scenarios. In the first, Amy is destitute and Ben owes Amy X (a
certain sum of money), which Amy previously loaned to Ben. In the second
scenario Amy is destitute and Ben could help Amy by giving her X. Let us
assume, further, that in both cases giving X to Amy would be quite costly to
Ben: his financial situation would deteriorate, he would have to work longer
hours, not be able to send his children to a good school or buy them Christmas
presents and so forth. Now many would think that in the first scenario, where
Ben is indebted to Amy, Ben has a duty to return the money even if this is very
costly to him. Why? Because it is a stringent duty of justice. In the second
scenario, it is not clear that Ben’s duty of aid requires such a big sacrifice. Ben
certainly has a general duty to help those in need, but this duty is subject
to a “reasonable costs” proviso (i.e. Ben has a duty to help, so long as this is
not too costly to him) and, arguably, in the second scenario, the costs are
unreasonable.
This example appears to suggest that taking demands of justice to be
sensitive to costs would deprive them of part of their characteristic stringency
(as opposed to the lesser stringency of humanitarian demands). But this
suggestion is mistaken. First, we can say that all demands of justice should
be sensitive to costs, to the limitations on the range of significant choices they
impose on those to whom they apply.16 We would not say that Ben has (in the
first scenario) to do everything that is necessary to return X to Amy. There may

be extenuating circumstances such that Ben’s debt payment may be justifiably
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From Global Poverty to Global Equality

lowered, or delayed, or cancelled. Imagine that Carlos offers Ben the option to
undergo an extremely risky operation to give some of his organs in return for
X. Does Ben have a duty of justice to accept the offer if it is the only way to get
the amount owed to Amy? Furthermore, in the second scenario Ben could still
have a stringent duty to do something for Amy. Ben might not be required to
give up all the things mentioned in the example, but he may be required to cut
on some expenditures. We are in fact familiar with the idea that it is not
wrong to tax people like Ben to help people like Amy. Ben’s duty to help Amy
need not be construed as Ben’s duty to provide everything that Amy needs no
matter the cost. Third, and most importantly, we can see some duties as being
weightier than others without having to say that the former are, and the latter
are not, duties of justice. We are familiar with the idea that there are demands
that can outweigh, or even constrain, others, while being all demands of
justice. A typical example is Rawls’s “lexical ordering” of his two principles
of justice, where the first principle protecting equal civil and political liberties
constrains the second principle promoting economic justice, and where
one part of the second principle concerning fair equality of opportunity
constrains the other part (the “difference principle”) demanding the maximization of income for the least advantaged.17 Of course, it is difficult to determine what the appropriate structure and relative weight of different claims
are. But the important point here is that there can be duties of justice with
different weights, all of which might merit, prima facie, enforcement to the
extent that this is feasible and reasonable.
Notice that this characterization is consistent with the important point that
duties of justice normally have priority over humanitarian duties in the sense
that the former, unlike the latter, are constitutive of an account of what is

rightfully owned. This is a point emphasized by Philippe Van Parijs, who
claims that “[h]umanitarian duties fall short of duties of justice, not because
they are morally less obligatory, nor because they cannot be legitimately
enforced, but most plausibly because they are not meant to track entitlements,
they do not define what people justly possess but rather what they ought to
do with what they justly possess.”18 Some positive duties of aid can be seen
as contributions tracking people’s positive entitlements. For example, when
we say that wealthy people can be justifiably taxed to assist poor people, we
can meaningfully say that the wealthy are not entitled to the part of their pretax income that could be used to assist the poor, and that the poor are entitled
to that part.

1.6.2 Not begging substantive questions through definitional shortcuts
We should avoid the temptation to deal with substantive problems merely
through definitional maneuvers. These maneuvers do not solve the substantive
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The complexity of the debate on global justice

problems. The positions rendered impossible by definition will simply resurface
through challenges to the definitions proposed, or through challenges to
the weight in our overall reasoning of the claims belonging to the categories
as defined.
Take for example contrast II, which depends on the claim that no duty can
be a duty of justice unless it is a negative duty (or a positive duty of compensation or rectification derived from the violation of a negative duty). This
claim is best seen as a substantive claim, not a claim about meaning. Otherwise it would question those who assert that there are underived positive
duties of justice. If the challengers were told that the positive duties they
talk about are not duties of justice they would either contest the assumed
definition of justice as unduly narrow or say that some of the positive duties
they advocate would in fact outweigh some of the negative duties deemed to

be duties of justice. It would be better, I suggest, to keep the definition of
justice broad enough to make room for the substantive debate. Thus, a libertarian view of all fundamental duties of justice as negative duties should
be seen as a substantive theory of justice, not merely as a definition of the
term “justice.” I will in fact address and argue against this substantive view in
Chapter 3.19
The account I have proposed is broad enough to invite rather than circumvent the substantive discussion that contrast II represses. My account is also
broader than contrasts IV, V, and VI in ways that allow important substantive
debates regarding issues concerning each of these contrasts. There are two
difficulties regarding contrast IV. To begin with, justifiable enforceability
is not a sufficient condition for justice. Some contributions could be justifiably
enforced without having to be construed as duties of justice. For example,
Allen Buchanan has argued that some forms of enforcement can be seen as
securing contribution to the provision of certain collective goods that do
not track correlative rights. This thesis is debatable, as the collective goods
Buchanan mentions—clean air, energy conservation, national defense—could
plausibly be seen as tracking rights.20 But one can imagine cases in which
rights are in fact not tracked. An example could be the promotion of cultural
practices of the kind Rawls discusses when he identifies the tasks of a hypothetical “exchange branch” in a well-ordered society.21 Or perhaps, in another
example, we can conceive of some forms of renewed assistance to people who
repeatedly and blamably squander the resources they receive.22 A second
difficulty with contrast IV is that justifiable coercion is not a necessary condition for justice. As G. A. Cohen has argued, some duties of justice may be
nonenforceable, pertaining to the ethos or moral culture of a society.23
A society without a racist (or sexist) culture would be more just than a society
with a racist (or sexist) culture even if the coercive institutions were the same

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From Global Poverty to Global Equality

in both cases. This point also affects some versions of contrast VI that see
justice as only ranging over coercive institutions.
My account of duties of justice keeps these questions open while capturing
the important intuition involved in contrast IV. The important intuition is
that demands of justice are strong enough for their enforcement to warrant
serious consideration because of the involvement of rights claims. The reference to rights establishes a strong, stringent justification for proposals of
enforcement that is lacking in the examples of enforceable humanitarianism.
On the other hand, this point is qualified by seeing enforceability as being
only prima facie and conditional upon considerations of feasibility and reasonable costs. Proposals of enforcement can be turned down when they would
not really help in securing the fulfillment of the duty in question, or would
impose costs that are unreasonable.
It should be clear by now that my proposal partly absorbs contrast V, as it
sees duties of justice as responding to correlative rights. However, my proposal
does not simply collapse into that contrast. One reason is that, as we saw, it
also refers to prima facie enforceability. Not every right is seen as giving rise to
demands of justice. In addition, I would warn against certain accounts of
rights that link contrast V with contrast III. On this narrow view, someone
has a right to X only if there is a perfect duty on the part of someone else to do
certain clearly specified things to preserve or promote access to X by the rightholder. As I will explain in later chapters, this is an unduly narrow account of
rights. We can identify rights with different levels of precision, so that some
rights may correlate to both perfect and imperfect duties.24
The distinction between perfect and imperfect duties is not coextensive
with the distinction between duties of justice and humanitarian duties.
There are duties of justice that are imperfect, and there are humanitarian
duties that are perfect. An example of the former is the duty to contribute to
institutional change in an unjust society. This is one of the “natural duties of
justice” for individuals mentioned by Rawls in A Theory of Justice.25 It is clearly
imperfect because it does not by itself specify what, and how much, any
person should do to fight injustice.26 An example of perfect humanitarian
duties could be Alice’s duty to rescue Beatriz when only Alice can do so at

reasonable cost, and when the disadvantage Beatriz is facing is the result of
repeatedly squandering resources previously received (perhaps in fulfillment
of duties of sufficientarian or egalitarian justice).

1.6.3 Avoiding uncritical deference to the status quo
A further problem with contrast III, which is shared with some construals of
contrast VI, is that it may lead to a failure to develop a critical and dynamic
attitude toward the status quo. But these are crucial things we expect the
16