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Justice Across Boundaries
From: Cambridge University Press
| By:
Onora O'Neill |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
From third-world debt to cheap labor in the developing world, globalization has served to demonstrate further the deep division between rich and poor economies. But it is not clear who should respond, and how they should do it. In this extract from her latest book, Bounds of Justice, philosopher Onora O'Neill seeks a starting-point for discussion of the issues. |
 he discussion of world-wide justice, and in particular of world-wide economic justice, is both new and messy. The messiness extends to the very terms used. The older term 'international justice' ostensibly presupposed that we begin with nations as units. In the modern period the units presupposed have in fact been not nations, but states, many of them not nation-states. However, the term 'interstatal justice' has gained no currency. This may be just as well, since the idea that justice could be divided into intrastatal and interstatal justice--justice within and justice between states--is also obsolete. The activities and relationships that link not only states but many other corporate bodies, including substatal political units, businesses, international and governmental agencies, non-governmental agencies, communities, professional organizations and charities, may all raise issues of justice. On the other hand, the term 'global justice' seems to beg questions by presupposing that the topic under discussion is a single regime of justice for the world. With misgivings I settle here on the relatively new terms 'transnational justice' and 'transnational economic justice', with the thought that these at least point to relations of (economic) justice that cross boundaries, that are not confined within any one set of states or institutions. |
World-wide economic relations
Behind this terminological messiness lie substantive difficulties. Transnational justice, and in particular transnational economic justice, is a hard topic because global economic relations and global economic distribution are also new possibilities. Moreover, principles of economic justice are themselves highly contested. One difficulty of extending any of these principles to address transnational issues is that it is unclear to whom they will then have to be addressed: who are the agents of change? Who can act on or flout principles of transnational justice? Which of the parties affected have what sorts of claims to have them observed? |
The novelty of discussing the justice of world-wide economic relations also has technical and historical aspects. Evidently wealth and entitlements have always been adequate or better for some, while poverty and hunger have been unevenly distributed and acute for many. However, traditional societies could do little to change the circumstances of distant strangers. Without modern technologies and institutions it is hard or impossible to end or reduce distant poverty, or even to send a food surplus from one region to redress deficits in others. Within the great empires of the past, grain distribution was sometimes well controlled from the centre, but the boundaries of empire were also the maximal boundaries of redistribution. Transport of grain or goods even within those boundaries was problem enough; global transport simply impossible. Global economic justice was hardly imaginable. |
This being the case, traditional codes said little about economic justice to those who lived beyond the frontiers, whether of tribe, community or empire. There might be limited advice on the right treatment of 'strangers', but strangers were thought of not as distant but as outsiders (travellers, refugees) who entered a territory and were present for a limited time and in limited numbers, with limited claims to share resources. The duties of hospitality and succour and the claims of strangers cannot offer an illuminating model for the distribution of resources where investment, production and goods can be shifted and development planned across huge distances, where trade is global and globally regulated, where economic processes can surge around the world affecting vast numbers. |
It is not obvious that better models for thinking about economic and distributive justice across large distances will be found within traditional Western political thought. In early modern European thought and politics 'outsiders' were often denied moral standing. Their occupation of land was not recognized as ownership; their customs and institutions were undermined and often destroyed. The European colonial expansion, which has shaped the present world economic and political order, was achieved in part by invasion, genocide, expropriation, transportation, slavery and proselytizing that Europeans would have condemned as unjust in dealings with those whose standing they acknowledged. |
Questions, answers and ethics
Today questions of transnational justice will arise whether or not we can find the theoretical resources to handle them. Modern technical and institutional possibilities make wider and more distant intervention not only possible but unavoidable. We can now hardly avoid asking how individuals, institutions and societies may change (exacerbate, alleviate) distant poverty and distress. Current answers range from the laissez-faire view that it is permissible, or even obligatory, to do nothing, to claims that global economic justice is required and even that it is obligatory to use any surplus to alleviate distress, wherever it may be. |
These answers are not only contentious but often ill focussed. To make them more precise we would have to establish who is (or is not) obliged to take which sorts of action for whom. But since the agents and agencies whose action and operation produce, distribute and control resources are not only numerous but heterogeneous, no easy overview is available. The agents and agencies range from individual human beings to a great variety of corporate bodies, of which some operate only within a single jurisdiction, and others transnationally. Even corporate bodies which operate only within one jurisdiction may have complex links with and dependence on others that operate transnationally; those that operate transnationally will be affected by the laws of various states and by international agreements, and may also escape these controls in part. Equally, those who may be wronged by the present transnational economic order are scattered through many regions and jurisdictions, and have many differing forms of involvement with and dependence on others' economic activities. The very transformations that have made a degree of world-order a reality, and transnational economic justice at least a theoretical possibility, have vastly expanded the web of actions, practices and institutions that might be challenged by judgements about economic justice. |
This suggests that any discussion of transnational economic justice needs to take account of the diversity of capacities and scope for action of these various agents and agencies, and of the possibility and limits of their transformation. Yet discussions of economic justice have often been conducted on the basis of very incomplete views of agency. Some writers assume that the only relevant agents are individuals; others that they also include 'sovereign' states. Most are uncertain about the agency or the responsibilities of other corporate bodies (governments, businesses, international agencies, charities). While economists and development specialists are quite ready to use the vocabulary of action when speaking of a wide variety of agencies and institutions, discussions of the ethical issues often lags for lack of any general and convincing account of the responsibilities of collectivities. |
Nor is it easy to agree how to describe those on the receiving end of (just) economic relations. Presumably economic justice, and in particular transnational economic justice, should take account of certain human needs. Yet much modern ethical thought makes little or no use of the category of needs. In Utilitarian thinking, needs can be considered only if reflected in desires or preferences: an imperfect reflection. Some discussion of human rights takes no account at all of needs; some takes account of them in ways that place some strain on the basic structure of theories of rights. One of the more promising strategies concedes that a full account of transnational economic justice might require a complete account of human needs, but claims that less is needed for a discussion that considers basic economic rights. It is not controversial that human beings need adequate food, shelter and clothing appropriate to their climate, clean water and sanitation, and some parental and health care, without which they become ill and die prematurely. These basic needs may provide a basis for arguing for basic rights. It is controversial whether human beings need companionship, family life, education, politics, or food for the spirit--for at least some long and not evidently stunted lives have been lived without some of these. But these issues do not have to be completely settled for a discussion of hunger and destitution to proceed; discussion of transnational economic justice can at least begin with a rudimentary account of needs. |
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