LA SOCIEDAD DEL RIESGO Y LA INNOVACIÓN: SUS DESAFÍOS PARA EL DERECHO

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the duties agents have in relation to the serious and significant problem of global poverty. So far it has been established that we can understand much of the troubling poverty identified by Singer and Pogge as a form of structural injustice to which both local and national factors contribute. The purpose of this analysis of the problem is to develop an

understanding of poverty which can be utilised to identify the obligations agents have in relation to extreme poverty. Identifying obligations in relation to accounts of injustice is important. This is because it is not much use to recognise something as unjust if no agent or agency is identified as responsible for ending the injustice.

Statements about structural injustice alone do not make a direct claim on any party to change their actions. If an account of poverty as structural injustice is to have any chance of motivating change it must be connected to an account of who can and should take action to bring it about.

In this section I will proceed to the central task of this thesis: identifying

obligations that arise in relation to poverty. In this chapter a thorough analysis of the obligations agents have in relation to structural injustice will be undertaken. In the chapter that follows this one, these findings will be applied to the case of global poverty and details will be given of the courses of action agents could follow in order to fulfil their obligations.

In this chapter a systematic approach will be utilised. The first section of the chapter considers whether there are positive duties in relation to structural injustice. First the positive obligations individuals have to take direct unilateral action in relation to structural injustice will be considered. Next, the idea that considering collective action possibilities could reveal additional duties will be introduced. Whether a collective agent could promote structural injustice will then be discussed. Next, the possibility that members of an aggregate can sometimes have obligations to form a collective will be investigated. Virginia Held’s discussion of the responsibilities of a random collective will be utilised to suggest that agents have an obligation to work with others to form a collective capable of ensuring structural justice. It will then be proposed that an aggregate that could form a collective capable of ensuring structural justice has a positive duty to do so.

156 I have previously suggested that identifying an injustice as socially caused rather than simply something that can and should be socially addressed is significant (see chapters 2 and 4). Recognising a problem as socially caused suggests that

members of the society may have additional responsibilities in relation to the problem in question. It suggests that there may also be a negative duty not to cause the problem in the first place. This possibility will be considered in the second part of this chapter.

Again, it will be individual obligations to act unilaterally that will be considered first. Thus whether there is an individual duty to avoid contributing to structural injustice will be investigated. After which the analysis will again proceed to the collective level. Whether there is a collective agent who causes structural injustice will be investigated. It will be found that the group of individuals who contribute to structural injustice should not be considered a collective agent but an

aggregate. Virginia Held’s analysis of the obligations of random collective will then be extended to consider whether an aggregate who together cause harm violate the duty to avoid harming others. It will be suggested that an aggregate that together causes a structural injustice violates a duty to form a collective capable of avoiding the injustice. It will be argued that this obligation is distributable such that each member of the aggregate has a duty to work towards forming a

collective capable of preventing each from causing aggregative harm.

It will be suggested that where individuals are members of an aggregate that not only could prevent a significant problem but which actually causes the problem they have an additional reason to form a collective that can take preventative action. It will be argued that the fact that they are causally linked to the

impending injustice grounds an additional moral reason to form a collective and take action. This is on top of the members of that aggregate’s duties to prevent suffering and to promote justice. Possible explanations for this additional reason will then be explored. It will be suggested that agents have an obligation to form a collective capable of preventing structural injustice as a precaution to lessen the chance of future contribution to structural injustice.

Individual Obligations to Aid the Victims of Structural Injustice

Individuals can feel powerless when confronted with the fact that much of the world’s population is condemned to lives of extreme poverty. There is very little any individual acting alone can do to alleviate or prevent this problem. This is true

157 regardless of whether the problem is identified as the result of human institutions or of an amalgamation of institutions and patterns of treatment. Peter Singer’s work (The Life You Can Save: acting now to End World Poverty) highlights the fact that an individual can save lives and prevent suffering by sending money to those in poverty or by using money to buy essential resources that can protect the poor from premature death. Singer suggests that each individual with income in excess of what is needed for essentials could save many lives every year. He thus

identifies a positive individual duty to take action to save lives in this way (Singer, 1972).

The obligations individuals have in relation to structural injustice in general will now be considered. Individuals can take individual action to assist the victims of structural injustice. In this way, those who suffer from serious structural injustice can have their suffering relieved through individual acts of assistance. Structural injustice causes significant suffering. Since agents have positive moral obligations to relieve suffering, assisting the victims of structural injustice is required as part of this positive duty of assistance.

By taking individual action to alleviate suffering from poverty individuals

contribute to bringing about a distribution of resources closer to the distribution that is required by justice. Thus it could be that such action is required for reasons of justice as well as reasons of humanity. If individuals have positive duties to promote justice then it could be that these actions may be a means of fulfilling this duty.

This thesis has identified poverty not simply as a misfortune that can be alleviated but as a form of injustice that should not continue. The suffering inflicted by poverty is the result of a combination of human actions and practices and is thus unjust. Individual action to alleviate poverty adds to the combination of human actions and practices so as to improve the position of some of those who will otherwise be placed in a difficult and unjustifiable position. However, the gross structural injustice that systematically makes much of the global population vulnerable to extreme poverty cannot be altered through individual assistance of its victims. This is because such assistance does nothing to alter the fact that a significant sector of the population is vulnerable to extreme poverty. Those who receive such aid have no guarantee that this assistance will continue; they are vulnerable to having assistance cut off on the whim of the individual who aids

158 them. Furthermore, individuals who receive such aid are dependent on aid in a way that will make them vulnerable to domination. If the aiding individual makes assistance conditional on going to church or adopting a particular way of life the dependent will have no option but to fulfil this demand.

This example shows that those who rely on aid can be dominated by those who give aid. Thus individual aid is not a means by which the poor can have a minimum level of income, wealth and opportunity secured and thus avoid vulnerability to serious deprivation and domination. Justice requires that no individual is placed in a social position where they are vulnerable to significant deprivation and

domination relative to others. Since aid cannot remove such vulnerability it cannot promote justice. Hence, such individual giving cannot be a means of fulfilling a positive obligation to promote structural justice.

Even if we understand justice as a state of affairs in which no individual is arbitrarily disadvantaged in terms of access to resources opportunity and wealth (compared to others), individual assistance cannot promote justice. This is because it does not secure a just position for those who are aided. Individual acts of assistance do not bring about an alternative system of distribution of income in which the socio-economic rights of those who are currently poor are secured. As a result, such action cannot be seen as fulfilling the positive demand to promote justice. Thus the moral demand to promote justice cannot be fulfilled through individually assisting those who are in unjustifiable positions of disadvantage.

However, this does not undermine the fact that the moral demand to assist those who suffer does ground an obligation to assist the victims of structural injustice.

It looks as if there can be no positive duties to promote structural justice because individuals cannot alter social structures so as to prevent systematic vulnerability.

However, so far we have considered only what an individual can achieve by acting unilaterally. Although there is little individuals can do to bring about structural injustice, there could be much a committed collective of individuals could do to bring about structural justice. As previously mentioned, Tracy Isaacs has discussed how considering collective action can allow us to identify possibilities which would otherwise remain invisible (Isaacs, 2011, p. 36). Collectives can produce effects and perform actions which go well beyond what a group of uncoordinated individuals can achieve. It could be that considering collective action possibilities is the key to identifying obligations with regards to structural injustice.

159 Collective Action and Positive Obligations

Organisations and institutions have much greater power to address poverty than do individuals. Aid organisations can coordinate donations, make assessments of need and deliver assistance effectively and efficiently to those suffering from poverty. If individuals donate to such agencies they work together with others to assist those who are suffering and thus amplify the effects of their efforts. Singer recommends that assistance take the form of donation to organisations that coordinate relief efforts and spend money efficiently. He recommends websites that rate charities for their ability to change money into positive results in terms of lives saved (Singer, 2009, pp. 81-90). Individuals can best alleviate suffering and assist the victims of structural injustice by acting through these agencies. By joining their relief efforts with those of others they can do more to assist those who suffer. Thus individuals can best fulfil individual duties to assist by donating to organisations whose aim is to alleviate such suffering. Individuals could work with existing organisations to promote the goal of poverty alleviation.

Alternatively, they could work with others to establish new organisations that aim to assist the victims of structural injustices.

Collective efforts can do more than assist the victims of structural injustice.

Particular sorts of organisations could actually prevent the continuance of structural injustice by securing access to income and opportunities and thus preventing vulnerability to deprivation and domination. Some institutions can alter social structures so as to end systematic disadvantage and secure access to resources, opportunities and wealth. Institutions can stop groups from being vulnerable to serious deprivation by regulating behaviour to avoid actions coming together to place agents in inferior positions or by securing access to resources and services that dramatically and securely improve agents’ social positions. This can be done through governing institutions that coercively enforce these

measures or by forging collective agreements with enforcement mechanisms. In this way the socioeconomic rights of the poor can be guaranteed and their vulnerability to deprivation ended. These organisations can set in place

arrangements whereby the poor have secure access to basic necessities either by regulating the practices and trends that lead to structural injustice or by providing

160 a collective means to improve the position of the poorest through a safety net of benefits and social security.⁷⁴

The positive duty to promote justice gives agents moral reason to work together to overcome structural injustice through these sorts of organisation. Organising regulatory institutions to coordinate their action to avoid injustice is one way in which structural injustice can be prevented. Individuals can join existing

organisations or create new organisations that aim at this purpose. Working with others to alter structures permanently and systematically offers individuals a means to overcoming structural injustice because it secures access to goods and income and therefore ends vulnerability. Furthermore, using regulatory

institutions can allow people to fairly share out the costs of avoiding structural injustice.

The possibility of working with others offers individuals the opportunity to make more of a difference. If successful, such action can maximise the efficiency of efforts to promote justice. If collective action to establish institutions that prevent the continuance of structural injustice works then the effort expended on

establishing these institutions will have done more good than a similar amount of effort aimed at directly assisting those who suffer from structural injustice or working with organisations that aim to assist the victims of structural injustice.⁷⁵ Whether individuals have an obligation to develop such institutions will now be investigated. This is a difficult question because establishing such institutions requires collaboration between agents. It is not something that individuals can achieve alone. I will consider whether random collectives of individuals can be obliged to work together to achieve particular outcomes.

Virginia Held has developed an account of how in some cases a random collection of individuals can be obliged to work together to prevent a tragedy. In her analysis Held draws on an example in which a group of bystanders could prevent a serious assault if they worked together. She suggests that in certain circumstances a

74 Henry Shue in his account of obligations to fulfil human rights to subsistence suggests that obligations to protect individuals from having their basic rights violated can be fulfilled by establishing governing institutions that can coordinate action and fairly distribute the burdens of such action. He explains that there is a duty to develop and preserve such institutions (Shue, 1996, pp. 17, 54-62).

75 For this reason charitable organisations, like Oxfam, engage in lobbying governments and international institutions and trying to forge international agreements that improve the position of the global poor. By taking such action they aim to permanently alter structures as an effective means to preventing future suffering and deprivation

161 random collection of individuals must become a collective and take action to prevent a tragedy. Held’s account of the responsibilities of bystanders suggests that in the absence of organisations powerful enough to prevent a significant moral problem a random collection of individuals, who could form such an organisation, have an obligation to do just that. This organisation then has a positive duty to take action to prevent the problem (Held, 1970). Held’s account suggests that people have a responsibility to form such a collective in order to prevent suffering. She even suggests that this obligation is ‘distributive’ such that each member of the random collective has an obligation to work with others to establish a collective capable of preventing the problem (Held, 1970, pp. 475-477).

In a similar way, in the absence of the existence of an organisation with the ability to prevent structural injustice, otherwise seemingly unconnected collections of individuals could have an obligation to create such an organisation. Where there are no governing institutions capable of coordinating activity in such a way as to prevent an on-going structural injustice, those who could form such institutions could be obliged to form such an institution. Where the on-going structural injustice is significantly serious the duty to relieve suffering as well as the duty to promote justice will require such action. Each individual who could be part of an organisation that prevents structural injustice from continuing is obliged to work towards such an organisation.

So far this analysis has suggested that in relation to global poverty there are not just individual duties of aid. There are also duties to work with others through existing collectives like charitable organisations to alleviate the suffering caused by structural injustice. Where there are no such charitable organisations agents can work together to establish such organisations. In addition to these duties I have proposed that there are obligations to work with others to establish and maintain governing institutions charged with preventing the continuance of structural injustice. Any such governing organisation must fulfil the demands of legitimacy in order to have the proper authority to systematically shape social structures. Where such governing organisations are absent individuals can work together to form an organisation capable of shaping social structures. However, any such organisations they create must meet the standards of legitimacy if they are to avoid illegitimately coercing others.

162 The analysis here suggests that individuals have positive obligations both to aid the victims of structural injustice and to work towards establishing a collective organisation capable of ending this injustice.⁷⁶ If these institutions are successfully established aid will become unnecessary. However, whilst these institutions have not been fully established there will still be obligations to assist the victims of structural injustice directly. Thus, in many scenarios, individuals will have to split their efforts between campaigning for political change and providing direct assistance.

Agents who are committed to charitable assistance efforts cannot argue that they have discharged their duties to promote justice by taking such action. This is because direct assistance efforts cannot secure social conditions in which agents are not vulnerable to deprivation or domination (as argued above). However, if the charitable organisation in question attempts to alter social structures permanently by lobbying governing institutions or establishing sustainable businesses their action becomes political and can count as promoting justice. In such circumstances such action cannot be distinguished from collective efforts to bring about just social structures.

However, agents who take political action may claim that by doing so they discharge duties to relieve suffering as well as promote justice. Thus they may claim that by taking such action they fulfil obligations of assistance. However, it could be argued that such agents still have moral reason to assist the victims of structural injustice in the short term because it is unlikely that political efforts will be immediately successful. This argument relies on the idea that it is

unreasonable to ignore an individual’s legitimate request for aid on the basis that

unreasonable to ignore an individual’s legitimate request for aid on the basis that