Against global egalitarianism

Journal of Ethics

Volumn 9, Issue 1-2, 2005, Pages 55-79

  Miller, David ^a  

^a NUFFIELD COLLEGE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Cosmopolitanism; Culture; Equality of opportunity; Global justice; National self determination; Power

Indexed keywords

EID: 33847325333     PISSN: 13824554     EISSN: 15728609     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s10892-004-3319-6     Document Type: Article

References (46)

1. I am very grateful to Gillian Brock and Kok-Chor Tan for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.
2. Central, but not exclusive. See my defence of a pluralistic conception of social justice in David Miller, Principles of Social Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), Chapters 2 and 11.
3. Darrel Moellendorf, Cosmopolitan Justice (Boulder: Westview Press, 2002), p. 49.
4. See Charles Beitz, "Does Global Inequality Matter?" in Thomas Pogge (ed.), Global Justice (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001), pp. 106-122;
5. Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002).
6. Both had argued in earlier publications for the global application of Rawlsian principles of distributive justice - see Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), Part III;
7. and Thomas Pogge, Realising Rawls (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), Part III.
8. See, for instance, Simon Caney, "Cosmopolitan Justice and Equalizing Opportunities," in Thomas Pogge (ed.), Global Justice (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001), pp.123-144;
9. Simon Caney, "Global Equality of Opportunity and the Sovereignty of States," in Anthony Coates (ed.), International Justice (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), pp.130-149;
10. Moellendorf, Cosmopolitan Justice, Chapter. 4;
11. Kok-Chor Tan, Toleration, Diversity, and Global Justice (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), Chapter 7.
12. This conception is spelt out more fully in David Miller, "Justice and Global Inequality," in Andrew Hurrell and Ngaire Woods (eds.), Inequality, Globalization, and World Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 187-210;
13. and in David Miller, "National Self-Determination and Global Justice," in David Miller (ed.), Citizenship and National Identity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), pp. 161-179.
14. On this issue, see David Miller "Distributing Responsibilities, " Journal of Political Philosophy 9 (2001), pp. 453-471.
15. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), Sections, 12, 14, 46.
16. This issue is raised by Bernard Boxill in "Global Equality of Opportunity and National Integrity," Social Philosophy and Policy 5 (1987), pp. 143-168. Boxill discusses the implications of cultural diversity for global equality of opportunity without distinguishing as sharply as I would wish between culture's role in defining "success" and culture's role in motivating people to strive for success, however defined. In the present discussion I am bracketing the issue of motivation by defining equal opportunity as opportunity for people of similar talent and motivation. It may well be the case that children in rural Mozambique are not taught to aspire to be bank executives, but for purposes of argument I am assuming that we have a child with the appropriate motivation, and asking under what circumstances such a child could be judged to have equal opportunities with his or her Swiss counterpart
17. Replying to Boxill's concern about cultural diversity, Simon Caney suggests the following: "Global equality of opportunity requires that persons (of equal ability and motivation) have equal opportunities to attain an equal number of positions of a commensurate standard of living" ("Cosmopolitan Justice and Equalizing Opportunities," p. 130). This, however, is simultaneously too narrow and too vague. It is too narrow in focussing exclusively on opportunities to attain jobs; and it is too vague when it uses the metric "a commensurate standard of living" to compare them. What does this mean? Does it refer simply to salary, perhaps adjusted to take account of differences in purchasing power? Or does it mean "standard of living" in a much wider sense, in which case we would need to know how the different components that make up someone's life are to be weighed against each other? For a penetrating critique of Caney's view, see Gillian Brock, "The Difference Principle, Equality of Opportunity, and Cosmopolitan Justice" (unpublished).
18. Miller, "Justice and Global Inequality," pp. 191-193.
19. For instance Charles Beitz writes: "Cosmopolitanism need not make any assumptions at all about the best political structure for international affairs; whether there should be an overarching, global political organization, and if so, how authority should be divided between the global organization and its subordinate political elements, is properly understood as a problem for normative political science rather than for political philosophy itself. Indeed, cosmopolitanism is consistent with a conception of the world in which states constitute the principal forms of human social and political organization.⋯" [Charles Beitz, "International Relations, Philosophy of," in Edward Craig (ed.), The Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1998), Volume 4, p. 831].
20. Brian Barry, "Statism and Nationalism: a Cosmopolitan Critique," in Ian Shapiro and Lea Brilmayer (eds.), Nomos: Global Justice (New York: New York University Press, 1999), pp. 35-36.
21. A similar account of cosmopolitanism is offered in Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights, pp. 169-170.
22. I borrow this from David Miller, "Cosmopolitanism; A Critique," Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 5 (2002), pp. 80-85.
23. It also follows from this that "cosmopolitanism" may not be a very helpful concept in distinguishing between different approaches to global justice. If we remain with the general definition given in the text, then almost everyone who writes on the subject will fall under the cosmopolitan umbrella. Some authors provide stronger and therefore more discriminating definitions - for instance Beitz distinguishes "cosmopolitan liberalism" and "social liberalism" as competing approaches to the philosophy of international relations, saying of the former that it "accords no ethical privilege to state-level societies" and that it "effectively extends to the world the criteria of distributive justice that apply within a single society" [Charles Beitz, "Social and Cosmopolitan Liberalism," International Affairs 75 (1999), pp. 519-520].
24. I have commented on this tendency for conceptions of cosmopolitanism to slide between weaker and stronger versions in "Caney's 'International Distributive Justice': A Response," Political Studies 50 (2002), pp. 974-977,
25. replying to Simon Caney, "International Distributive Justice," Political Studies 49 (2001), pp. 974-997.
26. Caney, "Cosmopolitan Justice and Equalizing Opportunities," p. 125.
27. See also "Nationality is just one further deep contingency (like genetic endowment, race, gender, and social class), one more potential basis of institutional inequalities that are inescapable and present from birth" (Pogge, Realizing Rawls, p. 247).
28. See my general argument to this effect in David Miller, "Two Ways to Think about Justice," Politics, Philosophy and Economics 1 (2002), pp. 5-28.
29. I have discussed the idea of equality as a default principle in Miller, Principles of Social Justice, pp. 233-236.
30. Miller, "Justice and Global Inequality,"
31. and Miller, "National Self-Determination and Global Justice."
32. This argument is also made in John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), Section 16.
33. For this challenge, see for instance Cecile Fabre, "Global Egalitarianism: An Indefensible Theory of Justice?" in Daniel Bell and Avner De-Shalit (eds.), Forms of Justice (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2003), pp. 315-330;
34. Beitz, " Social and Cosmopolitan Liberalism," pp. 526-528;
35. and Pogge, Realizing Rawls, pp. 252-253.
36. In David Miller, "Holding Nations Responsible," Ethics 114 (2003-2004), pp. 240-268;
37. and in David Miller, "National Responsibility and International Justice," in Deen Chatterjee (ed.), The Ethics of Assistance: Morality and the Distant Needy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 123-143.
38. As I shall point out in the next section, valuing self-determination also gives us a reason to limit global inequality. I assume here that an ethically acceptable nationalism must treat self-determination as a universal value. So, on the one hand, national communities must have the opportunity to set their own priorities in terms of economic policy, environmental policy, population policy and so forth, even though such collective choices will inevitably generate inequality along particular dimensions over time. On the other hand, these decisions may not deprive other national communities of opportunities for self-determination by, for example, creating global economic conditions in which their choices are almost completely constrained by the demands of economic survival. This need for a balance may justify transferring some powers - say over economic and environmental issues - upwards to international bodies. Valuing self-determination does not mean accepting national sovereignty in its traditional sense.
39. T. M. Scanlon, "The Diversity of Objections to Inequality," Lindley Lecture, University of Kansas, 1996,
40. now reprinted in T. M. Scanlon, The Difficulty of Tolerance: Essays in Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 202-218;
41. Beitz, "Does Global Inequality Matter?"
42. See also Debra Satz, "International Economic Justice," in Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Practical Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 636-637.
43. I have explored this more fully in David Miller, "Equality and Justice," Ratio 10 (1997), pp. 222-237
44. and in Miller, Principles of Social Justice, Chapter 11.
45. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 536-537.
46. For an approach to historic redress that emphasises this forward-looking consideration, see Janna Thompson, Taking Responsibility for the Past: Reparation and Historical Injustice (Cambridge: Polity, 2002). I have discussed Thompson's position in "Inheriting Responsibilities" (unpublished).