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A Rawlsian Dual Duty of Assistance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 July 2015

Hugo Omar Seleme
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This paper seeks to specify the requirements that follow from the Rawlsian duty of assistance. In order to determine them, the hypothesis I will defend is that this duty is a specification of the natural duty of justice. This interpretation has several advantages: a) It facilitates the task of appreciating how one of the most important parts of the Rawlsian conception of international justice presented in The Law of Peoples is connected with the natural duty of justice presented in A Theory of Justice. b) It enables one to appreciate a new requirement of the duty of justice overlooked by Rawls: the duty of contributing to maintaining well-ordered foreign institutions. c) This new requirement enables one to appreciate the critical potential of justice as fairness in relation to one of the most pressing problems nowadays: the foreign debt of developing countries.

Type
Research Article
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Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 163 - 178
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Copyright © Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 2010

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References

I owe special thanks to Alyssa Bernstein and Paula Casal for their critical reading of this text and their important suggestions. I thank the participants of the Pompeu Fabra University political philosophy seminar for their helpful questions and remarks concerning my argument.

1. Cosmopolitans have developed objections of the two types. In the first group of objections we find, for example, those indicating that in the international domain, Rawls maintains that the morally relevant subject is a collective entity—the people—while in previous works, he stated that the morally relevant subject is the individual. Also included in this group are the critics who allege that the same arguments that led Rawls to maintain the unjustified nature of the difference of resources founded on morally irrelevant factors such as race and social class should have led him to maintain the unjustified nature of the difference of resources between individuals on the basis of their different political memberships. Pogge points out: “In opposition to cosmopolitan views, which are based on the interests of all individual human beings worldwide, Rawls claims that economic inequality in his society of peoples is morally indifferent (p. 120), suggesting that our concern for the justice of societies fully exhausts our concern for the freedom and well-being of persons….” ( Pogge, Thomas W., “Rawls on International Justice” (2001) 51 Phil. Quarterly 246 at 252).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

In the second group of objections we find those who maintain that the Rawlsian conception does not allow criticism of certain morally incorrect scenarios at an international level. For example, Pogge maintains: “Securing merely a fixed minimum, Rawls’ Duty of Assistance does not Protect poor societies against skewed (and deteriorating) international terms of co-operation exacted from them through the greater (and increasing) bargaining power of the affluent….” Ibid. at 251.

Both types of objection are also found in Beitz, Charles, “Rawls’s Law of Peoples” (2000) 110 Ethics 669 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Buchanan, Allen, “Rawls’s Law of Peoples: Rules for a Vanished Westphalian World” (2000) 110 Ethics 697 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pogge, Thomas, World Poverty and Human Rights (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Tesón, Fernando R., A Philosophy of International Law (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Tan, Kok-Chor, “Liberal Toleration in Rawls’s Law of Peoples” (1998) 108 Ethics 276 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Tan, Kok-Chor, Toleration, Diversity and Global Justice (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000).Google Scholar

2. The first to maintain this interpretation, based on different arguments and extracting different consequences, was Alyssa Bernstein in her doctoral dissertation. Bernstein, Alyssa. Human Rights Reconceived: A Defense of Rawls’ Law of Peoples’ (Ph.D. Thesis, Harvard University, 2000)Google Scholar [unpublished].

3. As Beitz notes: “… Rawls’s strategy is to Press social liberalism toward its most progressive ex Pression and then to ask what more could reasonably be required. If successful, this approach would disarm cosmopolitan liberalism of its critical thrust by showing that a view with more conservative premises converges with it at the level of policy” (Beitz, supra note 1 at 678).

4. Maintaining that institutional principles have a “specification” relationship with the natural duty of justice has no implications for the sequence in which institutional principles and principles for individuals must be obtained. Thus, by means of the resource of the original position, Rawls obtains some institutional principles before obtaining principles for individuals, and some after. Specifically, two institutional principles—the basic equal liberty principle and the difference principle—are obtained before the natural duty of justice, while the institutional principle of just savings is obtained later. Nevertheless, both the former and the later of these institutional principles satisfy the “specification” relationship with the natural duty of justice, insofar as organizing institutions according to these principles, contributing to maintaining these institutions so organized and complying with institutional requirements are ways of satisfying the natural duty.

5. Rawls, John, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999) at 107 Google Scholar [emphasis added].

6. Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1999 (orig. 1971)) at 257.Google Scholar

7. Paula Casal coined the term “sufficientarian.”

8. One might also object that since all institutional principles, including the difference principle, are specifications of the natural duty of justice, stating that the duty of assistance is a specification of the natural duty of justice is rather uninteresting. The content of the duties of assistance or just savings, however, can be determined only on the basis of the natural duty of justice. Thus, the specification relationship is always present, but in a different role.

The way in which Rawls obtains the two domestic institutional principles and the duty of just savings can illustrate the difference. First, institutional principles (the liberty and difference principles) are obtained for a society self-contained in space and time. Then, employing these principles the content of the natural duty of justice is specified with its two requirements. The following step (yielding the just savings principle) is to determine which institutional principles should regulate the basic structure so that citizens are able to satisfy the natural duty of justice in connection with future generations.

The same happens with the duty of assistance. First, we establish the principles of decency or justice that a self-contained society should satisfy. Then, the content of the natural duty of justice is specified (in its general version). The following step (yielding the duty of assistance) is to determine how to interpret the institutional principle of foreign policy that requires assistance to other peoples so that the individuals within the institutional framework satisfy the natural duty of justice to other peoples. I thank an anonymous referee for a question that prompted this note.

9. Hinsch, Wilfried, “Global Distributive Justice” in Pogge, Thomas, ed., Global Justice (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001) at 63.Google Scholar

10. My interpretation departs from Hinsch’s suggestion (ibid.) of understanding the duty of assistance as a natural duty whose subjects are peoples, understood as individual agents.

11. Rawls, supra note 5 at 24-25.

12. Rawls writes: “[I]n developing the Law of Peoples within a liberal conception of justice, we work out the ideals and principles of the foreign policy of a reasonably just liberal people …” (ibid. at 10).

13. Rawls attributes this characteristic to all natural duties, including the natural duty of justice. He writes: “… A further feature of natural duties is that they hold between persons irrespective of their institutional relationships; they obtain between all as equal moral persons …” (supra note 6 at 98-99).

14. One might surmise that a natural duty of justice requires not only policies, but individual actions as well. For example, if I promote a foreign aid plan that my co-citizens reject, I have a secondary duty to aid. However, insofar as for Rawls the primary aim of political justice revolves around the basic institutional structure, the requirements of justice are mediated by the existence of a certain institutional organization (ibid. at 6-10). Political justice is therefore a virtue of institutions. In my view, this is partly why Rawls maintains that peoples are the privileged subjects of the law of peoples. Individual behaviors that are unmediated by these basic institutions may be demanded by morality but not by justice.

15. The analogy with just savings is useful here. Individuals belonging to different generations satisfy their natural duty of justice by organizing their political institutions according to the just savings principle. The subjects of the natural duty of justice are individuals. The same is true internationally: individuals belonging to different peoples satisfy their natural duty of justice by organizing their foreign policy according to, inter alia, the duty of assistance. The just savings principle can be seen as “… an understanding between generations to carry their fair share of the burden of realizing and preserving a just society …” (supra note 6 at 257 [emphasis added]) while the duty of assistance can be seen as an understanding between peoples to determine the equal share of effort each should exert to create and maintain other peoples’ well-ordered institutions. Rawls notes that “… persons in different generations have duties and obligations to one another just as contemporaries do …” (ibid. at 258). So do individuals belonging to different peoples.

16. I thank an anonymous referee for a question that prompted this section.

17. Rawls, supra note 6 at 110.

18. Rawls, supra note 5 at 61.

19. Ibid. at 30-35.

20. Here, I am defending my interpretation from the accusation of inconsistency with either Rawls’ belief in dualism or the social nature of justice. I would need another paper to defend those Rawlsian beliefs.

21. Rawls, supra note 6 at 293 [emphasis added].

22. Rawls, supra note 5 at 37 [emphasis added].

23. A decent society satisfies the following requirements: (i) it lacks aggressive aims toward other peoples, and works through peaceful means such as diplomacy and trade; (ii) it orders its legal system according to a common good idea of justice which respects human rights; (iii) its legal system imposes duties and obligations on individuals within its territory, which it regards as decent, rational, and responsible; it need not consider its citizens as equal, but as responsible and cooperative; (iv) officials must sincerely and reasonably believe that the law is guided by a common good idea of justice (Rawls, supra note 5 at 65-67). By contrast, a liberal society is a constitutional democracy, with a political (rather than common good) conception of justice (Rawls, ibid. at 12, 34, 40).

24. Rawls, supra note 5 at 83.

25. Ibid. at 107.

26. The difference lies in the fact that TJ’s aim is to build appropriate liberal, domestic principles, and the savings principle aims at liberal justice, rather than mere decency. LP, by contrast, presents a saving principle for any well-ordered society.

27. Both requirements of the natural duty of justice in its general version are obtained by extending TJs statement of this duty.

28. Rawls, supra note 5 at 37.

29. See Anderson, Elizabeth, “What Is the Point of Equality?” (1999) 109 Ethics 287 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a similar argument focused on individuals. See Casal, Paula, “Why Sufficiency Is Not Enough” (2007) 217 Ethics 296 at 318-323CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a discussion of how the requirement to remain above sufficiency may provide a way of balancing our respect for the freedom or autonomy of individuals (and perhaps peoples) and our ex Pression of equal respect and concern for them.

30. Rawls, supra note 5 at 118.

31. Ibid. at 37.

32. Rawls disregards the possibility of current generations not merely failing to save, but appropriating the savings of future generations. Since the just savings principle ensures that each generation receives the economic benefits it deserves from its predecessor and does its part in benefiting its successors, Rawls wrongly assumes “[i]t is a natural fact that generations are spread out in time and actual economic benefits flow only in one direction …” (Rawls, supra note 6 at 254). When a generation takes out a loan which will burden future generations, it has not only failed to fulfill its obligation of benefiting them, but has actually profited at their expense. Economic benefits can flow in either direction and the principle of just savings should contemplate this possibility.

33. The fact that on certain occasions such judgments should be made in conditions of extreme uncertainty does not dismiss the obligation of formulating them. The error caused by uncertainty may be an excuse to avoid moral reproach for the duty neglected but it does not eliminate the transgression. I do not think that this excuse is available to the creditor countries of the Latin American public debt. As evidenced by the data referring to the Argentine case, the loans were granted with total disregard for the effects they would produce on the domestic institutions.

34. I owe this paragraph to Paula Casal.

35. Rawls, supra note 5 at 37.

36. In 1975, the private sector’s debt was $4.941 million while the public sector’s debt was approximately $9.144 million. By the end of the military dictatorship in 1983, private debt had reached $13.526 million and public debt had reached $31.561 million ( Calagno, Alfredo & Calagno, Eric, La Deuda Externa Explicada a Todos (los que deben pagarla) (Buenos Aires: Catálogos, 1999)).Google Scholar This capital largely surfaced in personal accounts abroad ( Rapoport, Mario, Historia Económica, Política y Social de la Argentina (1880-2000) 2nd ed. (Buenos Aires: Macchi, 2003) at 825).Google Scholar The fund’s other destination involved paying the profits of the financial speculation which took advantage of the differential between domestic and foreign interest rates. Lastly, part of the debt was used to buy arms. The main arms exporter was the Federal Republic of Germany (Rapoport, this note at 808). Virtually all Latin American countries have been affected by massive foreign debts. Between 1970 and 1980 the region’s global debt rose from $20.9 million to $243 million, an increase of 1.162%. What makes the Argentinean case paradigmatic, however, is the destination of the funds. Debt was contracted by an illegitimate government to finance an economic plan that destroyed its productive apparatus. The policies financed with foreign debt had a deep impact on the population. During 1976 alone—the year of the coup—real wages dropped by 37%, to the 1945 level. The participation of wages in the national income dropped from 45% in 1974 to 27% in 1983 ( Lattes, Alfredo, “Auge y Declinación de las Migraciones en Buenos Aires” in Jorrat, Jorge Raul & Suti, Ruth, comp., Después de Germani. Exploraciones sobre la Estructura Social de la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 1992) at 186–96 Google Scholar). Another pernicious effect was the income concentration. Urban Gini coefficients increased from 0.366 in 1975 to 0.410 in 1980 (Rapoport, this note at 834). The magnitude of the change in the Argentinean basic structure can be appreciated by considering that in 1950, the participation of wages in the national income was 60.9%, while only five years earlier, in 1945, it was 46.7%. ( SAE, Secretaría de Asuntos Económicos, Producto e Ingreso de la República Argentina en el Período 1935-1954 (Buenos Aires: SAE, 1955)).Google Scholar

37. In 1983, the recently elected democratic government faced a foreign debt of 70% of the GDP, with no international reserves. Although the reserves available had amounted to $1.5 million, a few days before handing over power, the military government drained the reserves by paying weapons that had been used in the Malvinas conflict ( Treber, Salvador, Salvador, , La economía argentina actual: 1970-1987. (Buenos Aires: Macchi, 1987)).Google Scholar When democracy returned, the country owed $20 million and had to postpone payments. It tried to re-negotiate so that payments would not exceed 15% of exports, thus avoiding the need to accept the de Pressive requirements of an IMF Stand-by loan. At a London G7 meeting, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia ex Pressed the need to revise the debt, given its illegitimate origins. The response was devastating: a bilateral “solution” included severe austerity measures for the indebted. Argentina promoted the “Cartagena’s Consensus” by bringing together eleven nations representing 93% of the Latin debt and establishing the principle of co-responsibility of the creditor countries in debt accrual, which Western Pressure rendered wet paper ( Russell, Roberto, “Democracia y Política Exterior” in Perina, Rubin M., Russell, Roberto, eds, Argentina en el Mundo. 1973-1987 Colección de Estudios Internacionales (Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Latinoamericano, 1988)).Google Scholar

So the Argentinean government ultimately signed an IMF stand-by loan to pay back its foreign debt. Consequently, the country faced the following difficulties: i) worse terms of exchange reduced the income of foreign currency, mainly due to subsidies for agricultural products and closing markets in central countries; ii) state accounts were hard to balance because of the debt’s high interests; iii) public spending and salaries were drastically cut, which generated a recession; iv) the need to purchase foreign currency to pay interest on the debt generated inflation; and v) the foreign currency generated by the trade surplus was insufficient; therefore, it was necessary to increase the debt to make good on interest payments. The debt burden chiefly contributed to hyperinflation, causing the fall Alfonsín’s government in 1989. Again, the impact on the basic structure was devastating. In 1989—after the debt generated austerity, recession, and hyperinflation—the participation of wage earners in the national income was barely 20% (Rapoport, supra note 36 at 926).

38. Pogge, supra note 1 at 153-54.

39. Given the effects of such a loan’s impact on future generations, I believe Pogge would agree with the implications of the dual duty of assistance.

40. Rawls, supra note 5 at 107 [emphasis added].