World Poverty and Human Rights. Cosmmopolitan Responsibility and Reform

291 Pages·2002·18.77 MB·English

by  Thomas W Pogge

For Ling
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Copyright €> Thomas W. Pogge 2002
The right of Thomas W. Pogge to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with the Copyright. Designs and Patents Act
1988.
First published in 2002 by Polity Press in association with Blackwell
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General Introduction 1
1 Some cautions about our moral judgments 2
II Four easy reasons to ignore world poverty 6
III Defending our acquiescence in world poverty 11
IV Does our new global economic order really not harm
the poor? 15
V Responsibilities and reforms 20
1 Human Flourishing and Universal Justice 27
1.0 Introduction 27
1.1 Social justice 31
1.2 Paternalism 34
1.3 Justice in first approximation 37
1.4 Essential refinements 39
1.5 Human rights 44
1.6 Specification of human rights and responsibilities
for their realization 48
1.7 Conclusion 50
2 How Should Human Rights be Conceived? 52
2.0 Introduction 52
2.1 From natural law to rights 54
2.2 From natural rights to human rights 56
2.3 Official disrespect 59
2.4 The libertarian critique of social and economic rights 64
vi Contents
2.5 The critique of social and economic rights as
“manifesto rights” 67
2.6 Disputes about kinds of human rights 69
3 Loopholes in Moralities 71
3.0 Introduction 71
3.1 Types of incentives 73
3.2 Loopholes 75
3.3 Social arrangements 76
3.4 Case 1: the converted apartment building 77
3.5 Case 2: the homelands policy of white South Africa 80
3.6 An objection 82
3.7 Strengthening 83
3.8 Fictional histories 85
3.9 Puzzles of equivalence 87
3.10 Conclusion 89
4 Moral Universalism and Global Economic Justice 91
4.0 Introduction 91
4.1 Moral universalism 92
4.2 Our moral assessments of national and global
economic orders 94
4.3 Some factual background about the global
economic order 96
4.4 Conceptions of national and global economic justice
contrasted 100
4.5 Moral universalism and David Miller's contextualism 102
4.6 Contextualist moral universalism and John Rawls's
moral conception 104
4.7 Rationalizing divergent moral assessments through
a double standard 108
4.8 Rationalizing divergent moral assessments without
a double standard 110
4.9 The causal role of global institutions in the
persistence of severe poverty 112
4.10 Conclusion 116
5 The Bounds of Nationalism 118
5.0 Introduction 118
5.1 Common nationalism: priority for the interests
of compatriots 120
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5.2 Lofty nationalism: the justice-for-compatriots priority 129
5.3 Explanatory nationalism: the deep significance
of national borders 139
5.4 Conclusion 144
6 Achieving Democracy 146
6.0 Introduction 146
6.1 The structure of the problem faced by fledgling
democracies 148
6.2 Reducing the expected rewards of coups d'etat 152
6.3 Undermining the borrowing privilege of
authoritarian predators 153
6.4 Undermining the resource privilege of authoritarian
predators 162
6.5 Conclusion 167
7 Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty 168
7.0 Introduction 168
7.1 Institutional cosmopolitanism based on human rights 169
7.2 The idea of state sovereignty 177
7.3 Some main reasons for a vertical dispersal of
sovereignty 181
7.4 The shaping and reshaping of political units 190
7.5 Conclusion 195
8 Eradicating Systemic Poverty: Brief for a Global
Resources Dividend 196
8.0 Introduction 196
8.1 Radical inequality and our responsibility 197
8.2 Three grounds of injustice 199
8.3 A moderate proposal 204
8.4 The moral argument for the proposed reform 208
8.5 Is the reform proposal realistic? 210
8.6 Conclusion 214
Notes 216
Bibliography 256
Index 267
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Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health
and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing,
housing and medical care.
Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the
rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.
UDHR, Articles 25 and 28'
The eight essays collected in this volume were written between 1990
and 2001. They develop different aspects of a normative position on
global justice. The General Introduction states this position in a uni-
fied and non-technical way. With this overview, chapters can be read
selectively and in any order. Chapters 1-3 are the most philosophical
discussing universal justice, human rights, and moral theorizing. Chap-
ters 3-5 show that the common moral acceptance of the existing
global order is incoherent with firmly entrenched moral convictions
about interpersonal morality and domestic justice. Chapters 6 8 pro-
pose modest and feasible, but significant, global institutional reforms
This general introduction has been improved by very helpful comments from Robert
Amdur. Christian Barry, Charles Beitz. Danielle Cclermajcr, Mona El-Ghobashy.
Andy Kupcr. Andy Nathan, and Ling Tong. I also want to thank Daniela Mitrovich
for her substantial help in harmonizing the eight chapters and in constructing the
index.
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that would better align our international order with our moral values.
These last three chapters offer the most accessible entry to the book.
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During the last 220 years, moral norms protecting the weak and the
vulnerable have become increasingly restrictive and increasingly effect-
ive. Forms of conduct and social organization that were accepted
and practiced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and for
millennia before domestic violence, slavery, autocracy, colonialism,
genocide - are now proscribed, outlawed, and displayed as paradigms
of injustice. On the face of it. at least, there has been tremendous
moral progress.
Yet. how well are the weak and vulnerable faring today? Some
2,800 million or 46 percent of humankind live below the World Bank's
S2/day poverty line - precisely: in households whose income per per-
son per day has less purchasing power than S2.15 had in the US in
1993. On average, the people living below this line fall 44.4 percent
below it. Over 1.200 million of them live on less than half, below the
World Bank's better-known SI/day poverty line. People so incredibly
poor are extremely vulnerable to even minor changes in natural and
social conditions as well as to many forms of exploitation and abuse.
Each year, some 18 million of them die prematurely from poverty-
related causes. This is one-third of all human deaths - 50.000 every
day. including 34,000 children under age five.2
Such severe and extensive poverty persists while there is great and
rising affluence elsewhere. The average income of the citizens of the
affluent countries is about 50 times greater in purchasing power and
about 200 times greater in terms of market exchange rates than that
of the global poor. The latter 2,800 million people together have about
1.2 percent of aggregate global income, while the 903 million people
of the ‘fchigh-income economies” together have 79.7 percent. Shifting
merely 1 percent of aggregate global income - $312 billion annually3 -
from the first group to the second would eradicate severe poverty
worldwide.
In reality, however, the shift in global income goes the other way.
Inequality continues to mount decade after decade as the affluent get
richer and the poor remain at or below the subsistence minimum.
Over a recent, closely studied five-year period, real growth in global
average per capita income was a respectable 5.7 percent. The top
quintile (fifth) of the world's population got all of the gain - and then
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some: real incomes declined in all other income segments. "The bottom
5 percent of the world grew poorer, as their real incomes decreased
between 1988 and 1993 by ]U while the richest quintile grew richer. It
gained 12 percent in real terms, that is it grew more than twice as
much as mean world income (5.7 percent)."4
This juxtaposition of great progress in our moral norms and conduct
with a rather catastrophic moral situation on the ground raises two
questions:
1 How can severe poverty of half of humankind continue despite
enormous economic and technological progress and despite the
enlightened moral norms and values of our heavily dominant
Western civilization?
2 Why do we citizens of the affluent Western states not find it morally
troubling, at least, that a world heavily dominated by us and our
values gives such very deficient and inferior starting positions and
opportunities to so many people?1'
Answers to the second question help answer the first. Extensive,
severe poverty can continue, because we do not find its eradication
morally compelling.6 And we cannot find its eradication morally com-
pelling until we find its persistence and the relentless rise in global
inequality troubling enough to warrant serious moral reflection. To
be sure, many among us know only the bare outlines of the problem.
But this is mostly because those who do know more of the relevant
data - economists and other academics, journalists, politicians - find
them not morally disturbing enough to highlight, publicize, and dis-
cuss. They do not see global poverty and inequality as morally import-
ant issues for us. To understand why this is so, one must examine
their conscious and semi-conscious reasons for seeing things the way
they do: the justifications they give themselves and others, or would
give if pressed. Beginning with section II, next, much of this book is
such an examination.
To answer our two questions fully, one must also explore other causal
factors that influence how our social world and moral values develop
in interaction with each other. A rather too neat account of such
other causal factors is Marx’s historical materialism, claiming that
dominant conceptions of justice are shaped by the dominant group's
shared interests, which in turn are shaped by its specific role in con-
trolling the means of economic production (capital, technologies, labor
power, land, and natural resources). Thus, historical materialists refuse
to see the history of the last 220 years as a success of moral effort and