Global Egalitarianism from a Relational Perspective

Global Egalitarianism from a Relational Perspective Kevin K W Ip Paper prepared for EPSA Annual Conference Vienna, June 2015 1 Introduction Equality is a value with more than one interpretation. Many egalitarians regard equality as a matter of equal distribution while others regard it primarily as an ideal of human relationships. For these “relational” (or “social”) egalitarians, living in a society of equals is inherently valuable and distributive inequalities are objectionable to the extent that they compromise people’s equal standing in their relationships to others. Most discussions about relational equality so far have focused on the relation among citizens of the same state. See, for example, R. H. Tawney, Equality (London: Allen & Unwin, 1931); Richard Normans, “The Social Basis of Equality,” Ratio 10 (1997): 238-52Elizabeth Anderson, “What Is the Point of Equality?” Ethics 109 (1999): 287-337; and Scheffler, “What is Egalitarianism?” Philosophy & Public Affairs 31 (2003): 5-39; “Choice, Circumstances, and the Value of Equality,” Politics, Philosophy & Economics 4 (2005): 5-28; and “The Practice of Equality,” in Carina Fourie, Fabian Schuppert, and Ivo William-Helmer eds., Social Equality: On What It Means to Be Equals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 21-44; Martin O’Neill, “What Should Egalitarians Believe?” Philosophy & Public Affairs 36 (2008): 119-56. The task of this paper is to provide an account of what relations of equality among individuals mean in the global context. For alternative accounts of global relational egalitarianism, see Gillian Brock, Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Andrew Altman and Christopher Health Wellman, A Liberal Theory of International Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 123-57; Rekha Nath, “Equal Standing in the Global Community,” The Monist, 94 (2011): 593-614, and “On the Scope and Grounds of Social Equality,” in Fourie, Schuppert, and William-Helmer eds., Social Equality, pp. 186-208. It is organized as follows. I first discuss three ways in which individuals can be related to one another as equals in the global context and then I will respond to a number of possible objections. By doing so I hope to show that relational equality has both instrumental and non-instrumental values. Human relationships can be more or less egalitarian depending on the pattern of interactions that emerge from these relationships and how participants view themselves and one another. To see this point, consider the case of marriage: the relation between spouses can involve very different patterns of interactions and distributions of rights and duties. For instance, terms of marriage may be patriarchal in the sense that a wife is expected to be submissive, to take up all household duties, and have little chance of divorcing her husband; but it is also possible for the relation to embody the value of mutual respect, a more equal distribution of duties, and effective consent. In what follows I will sketch an account of how our relationships in the global context should be constructed in order to accord equal standing to all. In today’s world, individuals stand in substantial relationships to one another in the global context which may produce morally problematic outcomes. Such relationships consist of living under a set of shared institutions with profound and pervasive impacts on each other’s life prospects, transnational interactions and interdependence for important interests. These relationships give rise to claims of distributive justice for three reasons. First, these relationships have profound and pervasive impacts on its participants’ life chances through producing a distribution of benefits and burdens that would not otherwise exist. Second, the ways in which this relation is constructed are subject to collective control. This means the fundamental terms of global interdependence and interactions could be altered to produce an alternative distribution of burdens and benefits among individuals. As such, it is possible to ask whether the current terms are fair or just and, if not, what ought to be done to promote justice. Third, the successful regulation of this relation requires as an instrumental condition a set of institutions that would maintain the necessary background conditions for different agents to interact with each other. 2. Relational Equality in a Global Context A “relational” egalitarian needs an account of what it is for people to relate to one another as equals. In this section, I will sketch an account of equality as a relational ideal as applied to the global context which has three different elements: (a) supporting the self-respect of each participant, (b) avoiding domination of some by others, and (c) embodying fair terms of cooperation for common endeavors. Each of these represents an aspect in which individuals have an equal standing with others in a relationship. Together they express a strongly egalitarian view on how people should be related to one another. My aim is to show that equality understood as a relational ideal has instrumental as well as non-instrumental values and these values should inform how our relations to foreigners in the global context should be structured. 2.1 Relations of Equality and Self-Respect The first element of equality as a relational ideal is the maintenance of self-respect. As a moral concept, self-respect consists of properly valuing one’s own life-project, status, and worth. This moral concept of self-respect is opposed to a psychological one which identifies self-respect with a positive attitude towards oneself. For this distinction, see Stephen J. Massey, “Is Self-Respect a Moral or a Psychological Concept?” Ethics 93 (1983): 246-61. For John Rawls, self-respect is the most important primary good and “without it nothing may seem worth doing.” Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 386. I need not defend such a strong claim here. My assumption is simply that self-respect is an important good and it contributes significantly to living a good life. Concern for self-respect reflects a distinctively egalitarian ideal: a person cannot have a secured sense of self-respect when she feels that her life-projects and interests are fundamentally less important or her life is subject to control by others. In fact, without seeing oneself as worthy of equal dignity like others, a person cannot be reasonably expected to develop a favorable attitude towards herself except as a result of systematic manipulation. Two observations can be invoked to support this claim. First, a plausible explanation for why deprivation of self-respect is morally objectionable must involve some account of the badness of being treated as an inferior in one’s relationship to some others. Although the evils of weakened self-respect can be partly explained by the subjective experience associated with it, the importance of preserving self-respect is not merely a psychological issue. As Derek Parfit puts it, “we may think it bad for people if they are servile or too deferential, even if this does not frustrate their desires, or affect their experienced well-being” and, more importantly, this is bad only because our “conception of well-being is in part egalitarian.” Parfit, “Equality or Priority?” in Matthew Clayton and Andrew Williams eds., The Ideal of Equality (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 81-125, at 86. Imagine the following hypothetical case: A Happy Servant: Tom is an extremely deferential servant who honestly believes that his rights, life-project, and interests are of less importance than those of his master. He might even be eager to seek the approval from his master by expressing his servility and the master’s approval has become a source of self-esteem. This hypothetical case is morally troubling not because of any negative experience Tom might suffer but because, through seeing himself as an inferior in his relation to the master, he is not properly valuing himself. This egalitarian understanding of self-respect also explains why sometimes feeling offended or having a low self-esteem do not imply any deprivation of self-respect. To see this point, consider another hypothetical case: A Committed Aristocrat: Charles is a multi-billionaire from a distinguished family. He thinks he is superior to those with a humble origin and expects to be treated as such. Also, Charles firmly believes that, as an upper-class person with proper upbringing, he is entitled to more political power. He often complain about how democratic his society is and would feel strongly offended if others do not know their rightful place in the social ladder. Now it seems to me that Charles does not have a legitimate ground for complaint and his self-respect is not being undermined in any relevant sense. Two considerations seem to be at work here. First, no one is entitled to regard herself as superior to others and invoke self-respect to justify that demand. Second, preserving self-respect does not require the subjection of others. Thus, the conception of self-respect I am proposing here resonates with an egalitarian interpretation of Rousseau’s amour-propre as essentially a desire for equality among others. For this interpretation, see N. J. H. Dent and T. O’Hagan, “Rousseau on Amour-Propre,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Sup. Vol. 72 (1998): 57-73. See also Martin O’Neill, “What Should Egalitarians Believe,” p.129 n28. There are different ways in which being in a particular relation can be detrimental to its participants’ self-respect: (i) when the relation sanctions a pattern of interactions that encourages excessive deference for some and a sense of superiority for others; (ii) it publicly deprives certain rights of some participants which are taken for granted by others; (iii) it gives rise to a distribution of material goods that conveys a sense of inferiority to the worse off. T. M. Scanlon, “The Diversity of Objections to Inequality,” in The Difficulty of Tolerance: Essays in Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 202- 18, esp. 204-5, 212-14. Note that the normative significance of self-respect is not confined to the bounds of a single society. It would be morally objectionable that someone is unable to have a secured sense of self-respect because of her subjection to certain relations regardless of the person’s cultural or civic identity. And it is certainly possible that our relations to distant others possess some of the above features and are therefore inconsistent with the maintenance of self-respect. The unfortunate history of European Imperialism has perhaps demonstrated this point. So from the perspective of relational egalitarianism, if our transnational relations trigger any of these three mechanisms, then they should be reformed to make them more consistent with preserving people’s self-respect. 2.2 Non-domination as an Egalitarian Ideal The second element of relational equality is non-domination. Two persons are standing in a relation of equality with each other only if neither of them has the ability to exercise dominating power over the other. Non-domination is traditionally a republican political ideal. According to Philip Pettit, someone dominates another to the extent that (i) he has the capacity to interfere (ii) on an arbitrary basis (iii) in certain choices that the other is in a position to make. Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 52-3. Each of these points needs elaboration. (i) Capacity of Interference: the dominant agent must have some measure of control over what dominated agent does and thereby worsen the latter’s choice situation. But this aspect of domination can co-exist with the absence of actual interference. For example, a dominated agent may be tactful enough to avoid interference by behaving in a way that pleases the dominant agent but it remains true that the dominant agent keeps an eye on how the dominated agent is disposed to choose and is ready to interfere if the latter does not choose in a way he wants. Pettit, Republicanism, pp. 63-5. See also “Republican Freedom: Three Axioms, Four Theorems,” in Cecile Laborde and John Maynor eds., Republicanism and Political Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), pp. 102-30, esp. 111-12. (ii) Arbitrary Power: interference is dominating only if it is arbitrary. That means, first, such interference is subject solely to the discretion or judgment of the dominant agent and without reference to the relevant interests or the ideas of the dominated, and, second, exercise of power has no effective external constraint (e.g. rules, procedures, and goals which are common knowledge to both parties). For this definition of arbitrary power, see Frank Lovett, A General Theory of Domination and Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 95-8. (iii) Choices: domination may only be present in certain domains or aspects of life and does not extend to others. Pettit, Republicanism, pp. 56-8. Non-domination, however, could simply mean the absence of interference. Instead, it must be expressed in relations which are organized in a way that no party enjoys arbitrary and unchecked power over others. It is also important to note that non-domination is not so much a virtue of interpersonal relationships as a matter of institutional rules and practices. One could dominate another by virtue of one’s personal resources. However, domination is more often a kind of structure relation in which some can dominate others by virtue of their institutional position. Therefore, to understand the ideal of non-domination it is important to consider not only the actions of particular agents but also the institutions that define the background conditions for differently situated persons to interact with one another by shaping their mutual expectation and the possibility of their interactions. For instance, we should consider whether our shared institutions positively sanction or fail to prevent interpersonal domination or place some participants in a position of being under systemic threat of domination by others. For this distinction between interpersonal and structural domination, see Lovett, A General Theory of Domination and Justice, pp. 71-4; see also Marie Garrau and Cecile Laborde, “Relational Equality, Non-Domination, and Vulnerability,” in Fourie, Schuppert, and Williann-Helmer eds., Social Equality, pp. 45-64. In fact, dominant agents often exercise domineering influence through shaping the shared institutional rules and conventions to their own favor at the expense of the weaker parties who have no choice but to comply with these rules. Non-domination has been typically identified with a form of freedom but it is also an egalitarian ideal. Domination consists of a relation in which some are subject to the arbitrary power of others and it prevents people from viewing themselves and each other as equal agents. Pettit, Republicanism, pp. 60-1. See also Pettit, Just Freedom: A Moral Compass for a Complex World (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014), p. xxvi. The dominated agent cannot enjoy the psychological status of an equal. Rather, they are in a position where fear and deference will be normal order of the day, not the frankness that goes with intersubjective equality. Because the dominated agent is in a position where he is vulnerable to the arbitrary interference from the dominant agents, it is often in his pressing interest to exercise a strategy of deference and anticipation. Pettit, Republicanism, pp. 87-90 Nonetheless, the problem of domination cannot simply be reduced to its impacts on people’s attitudes. Another reason why domination is incompatible with a relation of equality is that it allows the dominate agents to determine without reciprocation the conditions for others’ actions. For this characterization of domination, see Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 38. Thus, it constitutes a form of power inequality that cannot be justified to the disadvantaged parties. The potential harms to the subordinate such as reduced capacity to carry out their life-project or to defend their own legitimate interests make domination always morally objectionable. Furthermore, domination always implies that some agents are relatively powerless in face of others. Therefore, reducing power inequality among agents is an effective means for promoting the overall level of non-domination. Extra resources given to the disadvantaged persons will improve the overall level of non-domination because that will improve the relative position of the disadvantaged persons and thus their enjoyment of non-domination without thereby worsening the level of non-domination enjoyed by the advantaged. Pettit, Just Freedom, pp. 82-3. Giving extra resources to the advantaged persons will, by contrast, lower the overall level of non-domination, for it will further worsen the relative position of the disadvantaged and thus worsen their level of non-domination without correspondent increase in the level of non-domination of the advantaged. Therefore, promoting non-domination for each requires reducing inequality. The next question is whether non-domination is an egalitarian ideal which should apply globally. Many contemporary republican theorists have sought to extend the scope of non-domination beyond the context of the state. See, for example, the collection of essays in Barbara Buckinx, Johnathan Trejo-Mathys, and Timothy Waligore eds., Domination and Global Political Justice: Conceptual, Historical, and Institutional Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2015). The reasons why domination is morally objectionable seem to hold whether or not domination occurs within states. For example, domination subjects some agents to the arbitrary power of others and undermines the ability of the dominated agent to pursue her rational plan of life in a way that cannot be justified to her. So if domination is a form of injustice at the domestic level for these reasons, it must also be a form of injustice in the global context. In fact, it is sometimes argued that being subject to a tyranny of one’s own nation is preferable to being governed by “some cautious, just, gentle, well-meaning administrator from outside.” See Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” in his Liberty: Incorporating “Four Essays on Liberty”, ed. Henry Hardy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 166-217, esp. 203-4. So there might actually be stronger reason for rejecting transnational domination. Moreover, domination does occur in the global domain. As I stated earlier, the current global order is characterized by a system of transnational institutions, intensive interactions, and complex interdependence. This fact makes a large number of individuals living in poor societies vulnerable to the potentially domineering influences of powerful foreign governments, corporations, and international organizations. For instance, affluent countries and corporations often use their greater influence to shape the international economic laws and institutions—the WTO (and other treaty-based trade agreements), IMF, World Bank and international development lending—for their own gains. Frank J. Garcia, Global Justice and International Economic Law: Three Takes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). These laws and institutions greatly restrict the choice of national economic policies of many developing states and in turn have profound impacts of the lives of many people living in these states. It might be tempting to say that what matters from an egalitarian point of view at the global level is the relation among states or nations, not individuals. Compare Rawls, Law of Peoples (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 113-15. After all, powerful states are still the key players in writing global regulations and their preferences determine whether there can be effective global governance in a particular policy arena. Denial W. Drezner, All Politics is Global: Explaining International Regulatory Regimes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007). However, it is morally desirable to strengthen the bargaining power of poorer countries in the international forums precisely because this helps to protect individuals in these countries from domination by external agents. Pettit, “The Republican Law of Peoples: A Restatement,” in Buckinx, Trejo-Mathys, and Waligore eds., Domination and Global Political Justice, pp. 37-70; and Just Freedom, pp. 153-4. From the perspective of relational egalitarianism, this brings about more favorable background conditions for those individuals living in the affluent and the poorer countries to relate to one another as equals. That is why we do not normally consider it morally desirable to give equal status to those states whose government is dominated by narrow local interests and is oppressive towards its own people. Moreover, a wholly state-centered approach is inadequate. For one thing, private interests within a state often determine a state’s policies and positions in its negotiation with other governments. This is because government officials can choose to answer only to a highly selected group of individuals in their constituency: private-corporate actors may play an important role in negotiations over the details of regulations due to their expertise, resources and interests in specific policy areas. Walter Mattli and Ngaire Woods, “In Whose Benefit? Explaining Regulatory Change in Global Politics,” in Mattli and Woods eds., The Politics of Global Regulation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 1-43, esp. 32-6. See also Tim Büthe and Walter Mattli, The New Global Rulers: The Privatization of Regulation in the World Economy ((Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), pp. 214-15. For another, many governments of developing countries and local elites of these societies are in fact working with foreign governments or other transnational agents to maintain the relations of domination between these agents and their own people, and they receive benefits from doing so. Thus, a would-be global egalitarian does not have to choose between international equality and equality among individuals. If empowering the weaker states in their relations to external agents is sufficient for securing relational equality among individuals worldwide, then it would be desirable. But if that is not the case, then there is a need to look for other solutions to the problem of transnational domination. Transnational domination has often been associated with the problem of global poverty. Cecile Laborde, for example, contends that, at the global level, one should adopt a more restricted account of domination which focuses on relations of domination that are capability-denying—the forms of domination that significantly threaten or deny the basic capabilities of the dominated agents. Cecile Laborde, “Republicanism and Global Justice: A Sketch,” European Journal of Political Theory 9 (2010): 48-69, at pp. 54-6. However, Lea Ypi argues that if we object to capacity-denying domination, we should also object to the power inequality between states in the international arena, which underlines such capacity-denying domination, and this in turn constitutes a form of instrumental egalitarianism. See Global Justice and Avant-Garde Political Agency (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 112-29. My position is that power inequality matters even when it does not result in absolute deprivation of the subordinate agents. Here I must concede that domination would be most objectionable from a moral point of view if it threatens people’s ability to meet their basic needs and that domination in the global sphere is often like this. But I do not think that the justification for global non-domination lies ultimately in the avoidance of absolute deprivation. For Laborde, domination does not always infringe our basic interest in maintaining control or personal autonomy and thereby deny our agency as human beings because otherwise the alleged distinction between capability-denying and non-capability-denying domination will simply collapse. However, if the point is that domination is capability-denying only when it becomes sufficiently intensive and pervasive, it would be unclear how this line can be drawn in a non-arbitrary way. Besides, even if a non-arbitrary line can be drawn, one still needs to provide a further argument for why less intense and pervasive domination, which is objectionable when it takes place within the domestic context, is not a problem of justice in the global context. It is highly counter-intuitive to claim that relations of domination in the global context are morally permissible when they do not endanger people’s subsistence rights. To see this point, imagine a case where A dominates B in a way that reduces B’s standing of living to a point just above the level of subsistence. It is hard to see why this relation of domination would be morally permissible simply because B happens to live outside A’s country. In response, it may be argued that, at the global level, our legitimate concern is only with a core set of basic human interests, whereas at the domestic level we need to consider a set of more expansive and substantive relevant interests. The reason is perhaps is that the content of basic capabilities, such as the capabilities to avoid starvation and premature death, can be specified independently of particular local and cultural contexts. Beyond these fundamental interests, however, the full content of the more specific capabilities which should be respected can only be defined through some democratic procedures in different societies. This is Laborde’s own view, see ibid., p. 56. Thus, on Laborde’s account, global non-domination requires only that powerful states or transnational agents respect the basic needs of people living in a foreign country. However, this understanding of global non-domination seems to me unduly narrow and it ignores many important interests that non-dominating interference should track. For example, individuals do have an interest in being able to participant in transnational cooperation with others on terms that are fair, to receive fair value for their contributions to the production process, to disentangle themselves from oppressive social relations, and to expand their economic and social opportunities. It seems very implausible that such interests should not be respected in the global context. The point is that the dominant agent would fail to respect others’ status as equals even when the subsistence rights of the dominated agents are protected. In addition, the fact that there are cross-cultural disagreements about what counts as relevant interests that non-dominating interference should track does not entail that we should adopt the minimalist approach. For example, non-dominating interference should be one that can be justified to the agents who are liable to being disadvantaged by such interference, and something may be unjustifiable even if it leaves people above the threshold. Furthermore, assuming that the full content of the relevant interests to non-domination can be identified only through democratic deliberation, these democratic processes need not be confined to the level of a single political community. Why shouldn’t there be some sort of consultation with the local community to determine what kinds of interests the powerful foreign agents ought to respect? Those vulnerable to arbitrary interference should be allowed the chance to voice their views regarding what counts as the relevant interests that non-dominating interference must track whether such interferences originate outside their own community or not. 2.3 Fair Terms of Cooperation in Collective Endeavors Having discussed the issue of domination, let us turn to another aspect of treating people as equals in their relations—people stand in a relation of equality to one another only when their collective endeavors, if any, express fair terms of cooperation. That is to say the parties to a putatively egalitarian relation should be committed to making fair cooperation among equal participants the basis for their interdependence. For people to be treated as equal participants in their collective endeavors and practices, the following conditions must be met: negatively, the terms of their interactions must be free from exploitation (and there should be appropriate institutional arrangements to prevent people from being exploited by more powerful agents), and, positively, each participant in the cooperative scheme is to have fair access to the benefits resulting from their cooperation with one another. Transnational Exploitation and Fairness In the most general sense of the term, exploitation simply means “to use” or “to take advantage of” something, some situation, or someone. Exploitation in this general sense is not always morally objectionable, but I will limit my attention to the cases of wrongful exploitation in which advantage taking is morally objectionable. There are many different accounts of exploitation which I cannot hope to provide a comprehensive review. For Marxists, exploitation essentially means the coercive appropriation of the surplus values of labor by the capitalists. For example, the non-producers exploit the producers when they take advantage of their vastly superior social power to establish an extremely unequal distribution of economic advantages which cannot be justified in terms of their deservingness. Richard Arneson, “What’s Wrong with Exploitation?” Ethics 91 (1981): 202-27. In this paper I adopt a non-Marxist account of exploitation that appeals to unfairness: A exploits B when A takes advantage of B (or a characteristic of B or B’s situation) and benefits unfairly by doing so. Joel Feinberg, Harmless Wrongdoing: The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 178. Terms of interaction among different agents are exploitative to the extent they sanction or create the background conditions that encourage exploitative interactions. The idea is that a person (or a group of persons acting together) is able exploit some others in their relation not because she is able to take advantage of some extraordinary or unexpected situations but because the background institutions which define people’s position in relation to one another allow some to benefit unfairly from the vulnerability of others. Exploitation often coexists with domination since the dominant agent often has strong incentive to extract benefits from her interference with the dominated agent and thus also exploits the latter. However, exploitation and domination are conceptually distinct: a person can take unfair advantage of another without arbitrary interfering with her choices. For example, a sweatshop owner may in some sense expand the choices of a poor unemployed female migrant by offering her an exploitative contract. Domination, on the other hand, may exist without exploitative interactions, for the dominant agent could refrain from interacting with the dominated but still have the ability to interfere at will. To elaborate the concept of exploitation, consider the following key elements of exploitation. (1) Benefits for the exploiter: the first element of the concept of exploitation is the benefits to the supposed exploiter. The exploiter must receive some advantages from her interaction with the exploited party. It follows that A cannot exploit B if A fails to gain from her interactions with B although it remains possible that A still mistreats B in some way. Therefore, unlike domination, exploitation requires actual interactions to take place between the supposed exploiter and the exploited party. Also, it is possible to distinguish exploitation from other forms of wrongful gains such as robbery because the exploiter does not have to use coercion as a means to secure the compliance of the exploited party or one could say that exploitative relations are formally consensual. (2) Effects on the exploited party: second, whether exploitation would impose harm on the exploited party depends on the benchmark against which one measures the loss or gain of a party from a particular interaction. If one adopts the benchmark of no interaction—the level of well-being each party is expected to enjoy if the interaction never takes place—then the exploited party may actually gain from the unfair interaction in the sense that she is better off than she would be in the situation where no such interaction takes place. Therefore, some cases of exploitation are indeed “mutually advantageous” in the sense that the exploited gains something from the transaction in absolute term. Nonetheless, if one adopts the benchmark of fairness—the level of well-being each party is expected to enjoy if the terms of their transaction are fair—then the exploited party will always be harmed by exploitation because she is made worse off by the interaction as she receives less than what she would have if the terms of the interaction had been fair. David Miller, “Justice and Global Inequality,” in Andrew Hurrell and Ngaire Woods eds., Inequality, Globalization, and World Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 204-9. Not all theorists, however, see this distinction. For example, Richard Arneson, “Exploitation and Outcome,” Politics, Philosophy & Economics 12 (2013): 392-412. (3) Unfairness: finally, exploitation involves advantage-taking that is unfair. Some theorists have argued that a transaction is unfair to the extent that one party receives less than what she could expect in a situation of a competitive market. See, for example, Wertheimer, Exploitation, and Miller, “Exploitation in the Market.” However, it is questionable that standard market price can be used as benchmark for assessing the fairness of a particular interaction. To see why it is so, consider for a moment the practice of child labor. It is exploitative both to the children themselves and to their families even though the children involved are getting paid according to the market value of their labor. Moreover, one should not assume that the background conditions under which market transactions take place are always fair. Some market may simply reflect the underlying vulnerabilities of some parties because people come to the market with varying resources and they are unequally vulnerable to one another. But sometimes these vulnerabilities cannot be traced back to the deservingness of the parties. Debra Satz, Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale: the Moral Limits of Markets (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 97. Instead of appealing to the standard of the market, there are other ways to determine whether particular interactions are fair. There are at least two ways in which one can benefit unfairly from one’s transactions with others. First, transactions could be unfair to the extent that one party takes advantage of the desperate neediness of another and derive benefits from the latter’s bargaining weakness. Richard W. Miller, “Global Power and Economic Justice,” in Charles R. Beitz and Robert E. Goodin eds., Global Basic Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 156-80, esp. 160-1. These transactions are unfair because one has a prior duty to relive desperate neediness of others and, instead of relieving others’ destitution, one tries to extract benefits from one’s interaction with the poor. Second, terms of interactions can be unfair when one party deliberately takes advantage of the injustice done to others. It is unfair even when one is responsible for causing such injustice. For example, the low wages of many developing countries are in fact partly a result of their government’s suppression of the workers’ right to unionize. To the extent that foreign investors take advantage of such injustice to maximize their profits, they are exploiting these workers. Sample, Exploitation, pp. 57, 162-4. At first sight, my objection to exploitation does not appear to be particularly egalitarian because it does not require an equal (or roughly equal) distribution of benefits arising from interactions—that some parties benefit more than others from their interaction does not necessarily make the transaction exploitative. However, a relational egalitarian has very good reasons to worry about exploitative transactions. First, exploitation always denies the victims equal standings in their relations to others because they are unfairly disadvantaged for the benefit of others. More specifically, in these transactions, which constitute a particular relation between the transacting parties, the benefits or privilege of some is gained or sustained through the hardships or restrictions endured by others. Although it is sometimes the case that the exploited party gains in absolute terms from the interaction, she receives less than she could for no good reason except for her relative vulnerability. Therefore, any relation of equality must be free from exploitation. Second, exploitative interactions are morally objectionable even if it does not push the exploited party below the threshold of minimally decent life. To put this point in a differently way, there is important moral reason against exploitation even when everyone is living above a certain threshold. Third, the source of exploitative transaction lies in the power inequality between the parties which enables exploiter to interact with the exploited party on terms that are more favorable to him. This also suggests that the exploited is vulnerable to him either in absolute terms or in the sense that he has little bargaining power relative to that of the potential exploiter in determining the terms of their interaction. Fair Chance to Benefit from Cooperation A second dimension of being treated as an equal participant in a scheme of fair cooperation is that each individual participant should have a fair chance to attain the advantages arising from their cooperation. For a similar point, see Nath, “Equal Standing in the Global Community,” pp. 603-4. This means that participants should not face morally irrelevant obstacles in attaining the advantages in question and thus be able to enter into cooperative arrangements with others on a footing of equality. Therefore, in order to determine whether those actual or potential participants in a scheme of cooperation have a fair chance to benefit, one needs to consider the background conditions against which their interactions take place. Three points of clarification are in order here. First, having a fair chance to benefit from a scheme of cooperation is compatible with requiring the participants to do their part in the cooperation in order to claim the benefits that flow from such cooperation. Second, what participants should have a fair chance to attain are the advantages arising from the scheme of cooperation, not advantages of any kind. Third, I am talking here about a participant’s chance to attain certain advantages if she so chooses. The idea of a fair chance to benefit from cooperation only aims at granting people the chance to attain certain goods which they remain free not to seize. Simon Caney, “Cosmopolitan Justice and Equalizing Opportunities,” Metaphilosophy 32 (2001): 113-34, at 130. A participant cannot enjoy a fair chance to benefit from a scheme of interaction when she faces morally irrelevant obstacles in trying to attain the advantages at stake. We can distinguish between two principal forms of morally irrelevant obstacles which compromise people’s fair chance to benefit from cooperation. First, procedural unfairness in determining the terms of cooperation could undermine the chance of some participants to benefit from that cooperation when their interests are not duly represented. Some parties may use their vastly superior bargaining power to structure the terms of their future interactions in their own favor, and, as a result, they capture an unjustifiably large share of the benefits arising from their interactions. The unfairness of their actions lies in the fact that the resulting distribution of burdens and benefits cannot be justified to the disadvantaged parties except by appealing to the stronger parties’ ability to manipulate the process of institutional design. But their stronger bargaining power does not bear any moral relevance regarding who should get what from that cooperation. Consider how the present world’s trading system favors the relatively affluent individuals in the developed countries over those living in poorer societies. One pernicious example is tariff escalation. Developed countries typically apply low tariffs to raw commodities but rapidly rising rates to intermediate and final products. These tariffs effectively transfer revenue from producers in poor countries to agricultural processors and retailers in rich countries. Worse still, tariff escalation confines many developing countries to the export of unprocessed raw material, locking them into a volatile, low value-added raw commodity market. United Nations Development Project (UNDP), Human Development Report 2005 (New York: UNDP, 2005), pp. 126-7. Second, whether potential participants can enter into cooperative arrangements with others on roughly equal terms could also affect their ability to attain the advantages arising from their cooperation. This is because one’s ability to benefit from a cooperative scheme depends on something more than how the rules are defined. Individuals come to cooperate with others with widely varying resources and opportunities to develop their own capacities; and this fact determines their position within the scheme of cooperation from the start and what they can reasonably expect from their cooperation. Therefore, substantive inequalities in their starting places could also undermine people’s chances to benefit from cooperation. 3. Is The Relational Approach Defensible? The attempt to apply the relational ideal of equality beyond the bounds of a political community faces a number of serious objections. In what follows I will discuss three such objections: (1) the relational approach to global equality gives the wealthy and powerful an incentive to disassociate themselves from the disadvantaged; (2) the relational ideal of equality does not apply globally because comparisons of social status are meaningless beyond the state; (3) the relational ideal of equality derives its moral force from the value of being an equal citizen in a democratic society. 3.1 The Problem of Inclusion and the “Rich Persons Club” Let me begin with the objection that the relational approach to global equality generates malign incentives for the better-off persons. If egalitarian obligations of justice exist only between persons who stand in the relevant sort of relation to each other, then the wealthy and powerful can then permissibly relinquish their obligations of justice by disassociating themselves from the disadvantaged persons or by eschewing interaction with them. Simon Caney, “Global Poverty and Human Rights: The Case for Positive Duties,” in Thomas Pogge ed., Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right: Who Owes What to the Very Poor? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 275-302, at 284-6. This argument is originally intended to be a critique of the wholly institutional account of human rights, but I think his point can also be applied to the relational approach to global equality. Imagine that the relatively affluent persons decide to disassociate themselves from the disadvantaged persons in poorer societies (say, by disinvestment and cutting off trades with poorer societies) and to avoid any future interaction. By establishing to a “rich persons club” the affluent persons are now free from the more demanding egalitarian obligations that they previously owed to the disadvantaged. The problem, the objectors claim, is that the relational approach treats equality as a “club good”, which is shared only among the parties to certain relations but not those who are excluded from such relations. Robert Goodin, “Clubbish Justice,” Politics, Philosophy & Economics 7 (2008): 233-7. It could, of course, be argued that the current level of global interdependence makes it practically impossible or extremely costly for the affluent persons to end their relation with the foreign poor. They would lose lucrative investment opportunities, cheap imported goods and raw materials, among other things. But there still remains a question of whether the relational approach generates malign incentives for the wealthy and powerful could permissibly minimize their obligations of justice if it were possible to end their relations. Caney, “Global Poverty and Human Rights,” p. 285. Now it may be worth stressing that disassociation is sometimes morally permissible, and in such cases the participant to a relation could justifiably renounce her obligations to others by ending their relation unilaterally or refuse to partake in the relation any more. There are at least three kinds of these cases: 1. Unfair treatment: those who are treated unfairly in their relations to others can choose to disassociate themselves from the other participants. It will be unreasonably demanding to those who are treated unfairly if they are obliged to stay in that relation. For instance, it is morally permissible to end friendship with someone who never cares to reciprocate one’s affection or return a favor. 2. Morally objectionable relationships: a person can legitimately end her relation with others when the point of the relation in question is to promote some morally objectionable or perverse ends. In fact, there is a moral obligation for them to put an end to such relationships. A member of a drug cartel, for example, could legitimately leave the organization and renounce any obligations that she formerly owes to the other members. 3. Relationships that harm non-participants: a person could justifiably leave an on-going relationship which imposes harm on outsiders. For instance, a part-owner of a factory may decide to end her investment because she discovers that the production is putting the health of others at risk. It seems to me that she does not wrong in ending the relationship unilaterally although she has not been treated unfairly, and the relationship in question is not inherently unethical The rich persons who want to retreat to the “rich persons club” cannot appeal to any of the above grounds to justify their disassociation since their action is primarily, if not entirely, motivated by the desire to avoid the obligation to construct their relations to the disadvantaged in ways that respect each other’s equal status. In addition to this, disassociation would not be morally troubling when some conditions are met. For example: (a) Humanitarian obligations: it is important to note that secession of the affluent persons does not imply that they owe nothing to the poor, for they still have duties to help the poor simply in virtue of the extreme neediness of the latter. (b) Due care: the affluent persons have a moral obligation to take reasonable steps to ensure their activities do not cause harm to others. For example, instead of ending their relationships or shared institutions with the poor overnight, they should devise a several-year plan that would enable a gradual transition and minimize the disruption of their disassociation. Also, it implies that after their secession, the affluent persons should take reasonable steps to ensure that their activities do not cause harm to outsiders. (c) Compensation: one final condition is that, before the disassociation, the affluent persons should compensate others for past abuses or the harmful effects of their activities. It would certainly be unacceptable if the affluent persons have exploited the poor to become rich and then seek to detach themselves without paying proper compensations. All of these demonstrate, I think, that the objection of the “rich persons club” is not as problematic to relational egalitarianism as it first appears to be. 3.2 Comparisons of Standing are Meaningful Only within a Single Society The second objection maintains that equality as an ideal for human relations can only apply to a group of persons among whom comparisons of standing and status are possible and meaningful. In a society of equals, suggests David Miller, people “use common mode of address…they shake hands rather than bow, they choose friends according to common tastes and interests rather than according to social ranks, and so forth.” Miller, “Equality and Justice,” Ratio 10 (1997): 222-237, at 232. See also, Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (New York: Basic Books, 1983), pp. 249-59. If one understands relational equality as Miller does, then there is indeed no point talking about relations of equality in the transnational context because no meaningful comparisons of status can be made among individuals living in separate societies. There is no consensus on where people stand in a system of social classes in relation to those living in other communities because the ways in which social ranking can be expressed within a particular community, such as titles, special form of address, conventional modes of displaying deference, simply do not exist at the global level. For these ways of expressing social ranking, see David Miller, “Complex Equality,” in David Miller and Michael Walzer eds., Pluralism, Justice, and Equality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 197-225, at 207. Although some relational egalitarians do put particular emphasis on advoiding stigmatizing status differences as a consideration in favor of restricting material inequalities. See, for example, Martin O’Neill, “What Should Egalitarians Believe?” I must concede that stigmatization of the disadvantaged persons is a social evil which relational egalitarianism must seek to overcome and such evil is most salient when people are vividly aware of their inferior status in relation to others through everyday encounters. But the kind of relational egalitarianism I am proposing here does not deny that some egalitarian considerations apply only within states. It should be stressed that relational equality is also about how standing in a particular relation to others affects each other’s range of options, opportunities to develop their capacities, access to resources, and vulnerabilities to one another. The value of standing in a relation of equality, as discussed in the previous section, cannot be fully explained by the absence of snobbery or deference usually associated with status inequality. Similarly, the evils of unequal social relations are certainly not confined to its social divisiveness. For instance, one can quite plausibly claim that two persons enjoy equal standing in their relation to each other when their pattern of interactions embodies fair terms of cooperation freely arrived at, or when they sincerely regard themselves and each other as undominated agents with an equal standing. These egalitarian considerations are not reducible to a matter of one’s social prestige or status. 3. 3 Bounded Citizenship and Equality Another possible objection to my account of relational egalitarianism is that the values of relational equality can only be as demands of equal citizenship. Relational egalitarians are particularly concerned with the social and political relations among citizens in a democratic society. See, for example, Anderson, “What is the Point of Equality?” pp.321, n78; and Scheffler, “Choice, Circumstances, and the Value of Equality,” pp. 18-19. Rawls also sees relational equality as a feature of democratic citizenship: “Equality is present,” he wrote, “at the highest level in that citizens recognize and view one another as equals. Their being what they are—citizens—includes their being related as equals; and their being related as equals is part both of what they are and of what they are recognized as being by others.” Rawls, Justice as Fairness, p. 132. This objection gains further support from a widely shared view that unequal social relations, such as those characterized by a pattern of deference and snobbery, are objectionable because they are incompatible with people’s most basic identity as equal citizens in a democratic society. But citizenship can make sense only within the cultural limits of the nation state and there seems to be little hope for having a form of citizenship that transcends nationality. Miller, “Bounded Citizenship,” in Citizenship and National Identity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), pp. 81-96, at 88. Hence, the relational concept of equality is simply out of place in the global context where people are subject to separate political communities. In response to this challenge, one could try to defend the idea of cosmopolitan citizenship and argue that it should also be founded on the basis of equality. I will, however, pursue a different strategy and assume for the sake of argument that we cannot even speak of “citizenship” beyond the context of a sovereign state. But even then a relational egalitarian can have two replies to the stated objection. First, It is not the case that relational equality is valuable because it is consistent with equal citizenship. It is, in fact, the other way around—equal citizenship is morally desirable precisely because it is essential for people to relate to one another as equals in the particular context of political communities. In other words, the importance of equal citizenship—characterized by equal political rights and freedoms, equal rights and freedom within civil society, and equal right to a threshold of economic welfare For this characterization of equal citizenship, see T. H. Marshall, “Citizenship and Social Class,” in Class, Citizenship and Social Development: Essays by T. H. Marshall (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1997), p. 100. Cf. Andrew Mason, Living Together As Equals: The Demands of Citizenship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). —stems at least partly from our commitment to the relational ideal of equality in the specific context of a political community, not the other way around. Second, the fact that the ideal of equality applies to a certain relation (such as citizenship) does not in itself tell us anything about the proper scope of such an ideal, for it is entirely possible to claim that the citizenship should be constructed on the basis of equality and yet there are other human relationships to which the relational equality should apply. 4. Concluding Remarks In this paper I have argued that equality as an ideal for human relations should apply in the global context where our relation to distant strangers are structured by a complex set of institutions, interactions and interdependence. More important, I argue that equality is a relevant ideal that should govern our relations to distant strangers in the global context because living in a global community of equals has instrumental as well as non-instrumental values: it is consistent with our status as equal moral agents and it supports our self-respect, protects freedom from domination, and promotes fair terms of transnational cooperation. Now it must be stressed that although the account of global relational equality I presented in this chapter is concerned fundamentally with relational problems, it is not indifferent to the distributions of advantages among individuals. From the perspective of relational egalitarianism, distributive inequalities of social and economic advantages are morally objectionable to the extent that they tend to promote morally objectionable relations among individuals, or are the results of such relations. A final challenge is this: although relational equality is an attractive social ideal, it is not a requirement of justice because the connection between relational equality and distributive equality is purely sociologically contingent. Miller, “Equality and Justice.” But one should not consider justice as simply a matter of distribution. The point of relational egalitarianism is precisely to challenge this narrow conception. In the next chapter I will discuss whether the account of global relational equality I defend in this chapter generates any egalitarian distributive commitment as opposed to a more minimal commitment of meeting people’s basic needs. Draft, please do not cite 15 Draft, please do not cite