Do Your Bit, Claim Your Share

Stockholm Studies in Politics 190 Markus Furendal What does justice require of individuals, and why? These questions are increasingly important in times when the everyday advocacy of justice Do Your Bit, Claim Your Share is more and more focused on evaluating and criticising the principles and values that people find acceptable and act on in their daily lives. Justice, Ethos, and the Individual Duty to Contribute Yet, since much contemporary political philosophy generally conceives of justice as a virtue of social institutions, it is incapable both of recognising how individuals’ daily choices steer society towards, or Do Your Bit, Claim Your Share Markus Furendal away from, an ideal of justice, and to evaluate and guide the practice of socially sanctioning unjust behaviour. This dissertation answers the questions above, by arguing that justice requires individuals to not only comply with just institutions, but to also fulfil a pro tanto duty to contribute in their daily lives towards the furthering of a just society – to do their bit. Further, it argues that a system of informal and decentralised social sanctions – an ethos – is the best way to promote adherence to this duty. The study thereby develops and defends an account of contributive justice, specifying who should contribute to justice and why, as well as what a contribution is and how an individual duty to contribute should be enforced.

Markus Furendal ORCID iD: 0000-0002-2378-750X

ISBN 978-91-7911-304-9 ISSN 0346-6620

Department of Political Science

Doctoral Thesis in Political Science at Stockholm University, Sweden 2020

Do Your Bit, Claim Your Share Justice, Ethos, and the Individual Duty to Contribute Markus Furendal Academic dissertation for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science at Stockholm University to be publicly defended on Wednesday 4 November 2020 at 13.00 in Aula Magna, Frescativägen 6.

Abstract Contemporary political philosophy primarily conceives of justice as a virtue of major social institutions. Yet, much advocacy of justice is increasingly focused on how well particular individuals live up to its demands, and proceeds by calling out and criticising their unjust behaviour. The institutional focus renders political philosophy unable to inform and evaluate such attempts to change, not legal frameworks, but rather the principles that people find acceptable and act on in their daily lives. To address this shortcoming, this dissertation provides a political philosophical analysis of what justice requires of individuals, and why. It does so by developing and defending an account of contributive justice, which answers the inquiry’s guiding questions of who should contribute to justice and why, as well as what a contribution is, and how individual duties of justice should be enforced. The arguments provided support the conclusion that achieving a just society is not simply a question of designing and complying with the right kind of institutions, but that we all have a pro tanto duty to contribute in our day-to-day lives towards the furthering of a just society, and that relying on informal and decentralised social sanctions is the best way to promote adherence to this duty. The duty to contribute defended in this dissertation differs from existing policies that make access to welfare state services conditional on individuals’ willingness to work or study. It also differs from prominent existing philosophical defences of similar positions, centred around the ideas of equality, reciprocity, and fairly sharing burdens. Critically analysing these accounts, the dissertation shows that, although each account can justify a duty to contribute, their specific answers to the guiding questions are ultimately unsatisfactory. For instance, they are unable to explain both why it is unjust to opt out from doing your bit of the labour necessary to meet the demands of justice, and why individuals who cannot contribute should nevertheless be able to claim the share that they are due. These shortcomings can be avoided, however, by combining concerns about equality, reciprocity, and fairly sharing burdens into a hybrid account. This generates a two-part pro tanto duty to contribute whereby, firstly, everyone has a duty to contribute towards making sure that everyone receives what they are due as a matter of justice. If and when this level is reached, everyone then has an obligation to benefit others, conditional upon them benefitting from the work of others. While it is unjust to refuse to contribute in the first way, the hybrid account leaves room for people to reject additional benefits and thereby absolve themselves from having to contribute further. Furthermore, the pro tanto nature of this duty means that it could be outweighed by other morally important considerations. Although demanding, it will hence not crowd out all personal pursuits. The dissertation also suggests that adherence to this duty should be enforced not through state action, but rather by individuals responding to and upholding a system of social sanctions. Contrasting this so-called ethos of justice with similar systems of social control, such as peer-to-peer online monitoring and sanctioning, and the Social Credit System currently being implemented in China, arguably shows that the informal and decentralised nature of the ethos allows it to avoid the potentially freedom-curtailing effects of the similar systems.

Keywords: duty to contribute, distributive justice, contributive justice, reciprocity, fair burdens, markets, ethos, social sanctions, John Rawls, G. A. Cohen.

Stockholm 2020 http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-185258

ISBN 978-91-7911-304-9 ISBN 978-91-7911-305-6 ISSN 0346-6620

Department of Political Science

Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm

DO YOUR BIT, CLAIM YOUR SHARE

Markus Furendal

Do Your Bit, Claim Your Share

Justice, Ethos, and the Individual Duty to Contribute

Markus Furendal ©Markus Furendal, Stockholm University 2020

ISBN print 978-91-7911-304-9 ISBN PDF 978-91-7911-305-6 ISSN 0346-6620

Cover illlustration: "Pigen i køkkenet" ("Girl in the kitchen") by Anna Ancher, 1883-86. Anna Ancher / Public domain. Digital image: Villy Fink Isaksen https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Girl_in_the_Kitchen_(Anna_Ancher).jpg

Printed in Sweden by Universitetsservice US-AB, Stockholm 2020 For Lovisa, Lilly, and Henning

Contents

Acknowledgements ...... x Chapter 1 – Introduction. An account of contributive justice ...... 1 1. Summarising the account and the political and philosophical context of the inquiry ...... 2 2. Guiding questions and the structure of the inquiry ...... 8 3. Theoretical background and the contributions of the inquiry ...... 9 3.1 Rawls’s theory of justice and Cohen’s critique ...... 9 3.2 Literature about who should contribute...... 13 3.3 Literature about why contributing is a duty ...... 16 3.4 Literature about what a contribution is...... 19 3.5 Literature about enforcing the duty to contribute ...... 21 3.6 Distributive, productive, and contributive justice ...... 23 3.7 Summary – What the account contributes...... 26 4. Theoretical framework ...... 27 4.1 Preliminary notes on the taxonomic tree of justice ...... 27 4.2 The scope, ground, site, and currency of justice ...... 29 4.3 Outcome-based and procedure-focused theories of justice ...... 31 4.4 Comparative and non-comparative justice ...... 34 4.5 What does it mean for justice to require something? ...... 36 4.6 Summary – How the account conceives of justice ...... 39 5. Methodological framework ...... 43 5.1 The pro tanto nature of the duty ...... 46 5.2 Pluralism and the metatheoretical disagreement between Rawls and Cohen ...... 47 5.3 Summary – How the account is developed and defended...... 50

Chapter 2 – Who should contribute? The division of labour and individual duties of justice ...... 53 1. The division of labour and the primacy thesis...... 55 1.1 A preliminary argument for the non-division thesis ...... 60 2. Three kinds of primacy ...... 61 3. Causal primacy ...... 63 3.1 The profundity-of-effects argument...... 64 3.2 The injustice caused by gender roles and aggregated market behaviour ...... 65 3.3 The collapse reply and the qualification reply from proponents of a division of labour ..... 68 3.4 The capacity argument and background justice ...... 72 4. Moral primacy ...... 75

5. Conclusions ...... 79 Chapter 3 – Why contribute? Cohen and the equality-based account ...... 83 1. Cohen’s egalitarianism, the Indifference Challenge, and Cohen’s dilemma ...... 87 2. How justice requires equality ...... 92 3. The productivist egalitarian duty: local or global? ...... 95 4. Overcoming indifference by embracing maximisation ...... 99 4.1 Justice as equality and efficiency ...... 99 4.2 Equality and human flourishing ...... 101 5. Evaluating the solution ...... 104 6. Conclusions ...... 107

Chapter 4 – Do your bit, claim your share: Reciprocity, burden-sharing, and the hybrid account ...... 110 1. The social product, the social surplus, and socially necessary labour – Some conceptual groundwork ...... 112 2. Reciprocity-based accounts ...... 115 3. Limitations of reciprocity-based accounts ...... 119 3.1 Absolute vs. relative output and the problem of unequal ability to contribute ...... 119 3.2 Opting out, underproduction, and the limitations of procedure-focused accounts...... 123 4. Burden-based accounts ...... 127 4.1 Limitations of burden-based accounts – mute on the social surplus ...... 133 5. The hybrid account ...... 135 5.1 Countering three objections to the hybrid account ...... 138 6. Conclusions ...... 142 Chapter 5 – What is a contribution? The limits of the market solution ...... 143 1. The market solution ...... 145 2. When market prices and social value come apart ...... 148 2.1 Questioning the efficiency aspect of markets ...... 148 2.2 Questioning the value feature of markets ...... 152 3. Implications for the market solution ...... 158 4. The market solution as the second best? ...... 164 5. Conclusions ...... 168

Chapter 6 – Tying ourselves to the mast or acting for the sake of justice? Ethos, internal motivation, and social sanctions ...... 169 1. Internal and external motivation accounts of ethos ...... 172 2. Internal motivation and the moral ethos as full compliance ...... 176 3. Tying ourselves to the mast – External motivation and the social ethos ...... 178 3.1. Norms and social sanctions ...... 179 4. The role of intentions and the dilemma of just citizens and just distribution ...... 182 5. Does the social ethos limit freedom? Decentralised and informal monitoring and sanctioning 187 5.1 The legitimacy of systems of social sanctions – Online public shaming and the Social Credit System ...... 190

6. Conclusions ...... 194 Chapter 7 – Conclusions ...... 196 1. A brief summary of the argument ...... 196 2. Responding to objections ...... 198 2.1 “The account demands the impossible” ...... 199 2.2 “The duty in the account is not a duty of justice” ...... 201 2.3 “The account demands too much and would have objectionable consequences”...... 203 2.4 “The account is too indeterminate to guide action” ...... 208 3. Implications of the account ...... 211 3.1 What the account says about real-world work requirements ...... 211 3.2 Opting out through philanthropy, retirement, and emigration ...... 212 3.3 Individual duties to combat climate change? ...... 216 4. Modest proposals for future research ...... 217 Bibliography ...... 219 Sammanfattning på svenska ...... 236

Acknowledgements

This dissertation is the result of long and arduous work, and I consider myself incredibly lucky to have had the privilege to undertake it. I have also had the great fortune to be surrounded by people who have helped me, both before and throughout this project. This is an attempt to thank as many of them as possible.

First of all, I wish to thank my supervisors Eva Erman and Simon Birn- baum. Everyone who knows Eva can attest to her rapid thinking and su- perhuman capacities. Having these put to work to improve my own writing and thinking has been indispensable, and I have found that her belief in my project has led me to aim higher, and to be confident that everything will fall into place. Similarly, everyone who knows Simon will agree that he is an incredibly reflective and thoughtful person. Every word of advice and critique he speaks is carefully considered, and firmly rooted in a sea of knowledge. Combined with his kindness, this means that I have left each supervision session with a rekindled interest in my own research, and a reasserted confidence in my abilities. Ever since we started discussing the issues addressed in this dissertation a decade ago, Simon has been a true mentor and friend.

Many other people at the Department of Political Science have been instrumental. Hans Agné, Magnus Reitberger, Maria Jansson, and Andreas Duit were vital during the first year of the doctoral programme. Emma Bergström, Lena Helldner, Schauki Karim, Sebastian Klarås, Anneli Lin- dén, Christian Möllerop, Pernilla Nordahl, Jonas Rådne, and Sofie Trosell have sorted out all kinds of administrative and teaching-related issues. Naima Chahboun, Viktor Elm-Schulin, Andreas Gottardis, Magnus Jedenheim, and Aaron Maltais have read and commented at different stages of the process, and Ludvig Beckman, Jouni Reinikainen, and Max Fonseca read a late draft very carefully and provided a final round of comments that helped me say what I want to say more clearly. Outside of the department, I have received useful feedback from Lars Lindblom, Jonas x Acknowledgements

Hultin-Rosenberg, Fredrik D. Hjorthen, Frej Klem Thomsen, Sune Lægaard, and Margaret Moore. Two of the chapters in this dissertation are revised versions of articles previously published in European Journal of Political Theory and Social Theory and Practice.1 Thanks to these journals for allowing me to use the texts, and to the editors and the anonymous reviewers whose comments helped improve them, and to Alexandra Seger- berg for providing extensive comments on a draft of the second one. Thanks also to Liz Sourbut, for copy editing the whole manuscript. Need- less to say, no one above is responsible for the mistakes and flaws that remain in the dissertation. Ronny Ambjörnsson, Jens Ljunggren, Tommy Möller, as well as Lars Gogman and Erik Andersson at the Swedish Labour Movement’s Archive and Library, have all helped me research the slogan in the title of the dissertation. I have also benefitted from talking about my project, and political philosophy more generally, with Huub Brouwer, An- dreas Brøgger Albertsen, Ian Carter, Jens Damgaard Thaysen, Willem van der Deijl, Søren Flinch Midtgaard, Anca Gheaus, Kasper Lippert-Rasmus- sen, David Miller, Andrés Moles, Ulf Mörkenstam, Tom Parr, Adam Swift, Patrick Tomlin, Nicholas Vrousalis, and Pär Villner, as well as with participants in conferences in Aarhus, Copenhagen, Pavia, and Stock- holm.

The Ph. D. student collective at the department have been wonderful colleagues and friends. Thanks to Henrik Angerbrandt, Johanna von Bahr, Kalle Ekholm, Maria-Therese Gustafsson, Elín Hafsteínsdottir, Helena Hede Skagerlind, Tyra Hertz, Ian Higham, Livia Johannesson, Faradj Koliev, Cornelia Leander, Sanna Lundquist, Alba Mohedano Roldán, Sara Moritz, Tua Sandman, Eleonora Stolt, Per-Anders Svärd, Karin Sundström, Helena Tinnerholm Ljungberg, Carl Vikberg, and Ogi Zugic, and everyone else I have had the pleasure of talking to in the lunch room on floor five, and who have put up with my endless urge to let you know about whatever I have just learned from a podcast. Special thanks to the small but critical group of recent and current Ph. D. students in political philosophy. My understanding of the discipline has been shaped by all the exciting conversations with Naima Chahboun, Viktor Elm-Schulin, Max Fonseca, Carolina Janson, Jasmina Nedevska, and Martin Westergren.

1 Chapter 3 is a revised version of Furendal, “Rescuing Justice from Indifference: Equality, Pareto, and Cohen’s Ethos”, and chapter 5 is a revised version of Furendal, “Defining the Duty to Con- tribute: Against the Market Solution”, and a few passages from the articles have been moved to other chapters.

xi Acknowledgements

Special gratitude also goes to the others in my cohort. I have enjoyed talking and thinking with Ragnhild Nilsson and Magnus Christiansson, whenever we have been in the same place. I value the personal and intellectual discussions with Tarek Oraby, and fondly remember our walks around Norra Djurgården. Thanks to my inspiring roommate for several years, Karim Zakhour, whose prima facie cynicism about life never stands in the way of seeking out and taking on new adventures. And thanks to Hedvig Ördén, for finding humour in all our shared trials, and for being so fun to be around.

I have also had the great opportunity to spend time away from Stockholm during the work on this dissertation. Thanks to E & H Rhodins stiftelse, S:a Ragnhilds Gille, Gålöstiftelsen, Widar Bagge & Signe Bagges stiftelse, and Stiftelsen Siamon for generously funding these visits. Zosia Stemplow- ska made sure I got the most out of visiting Oxford University in 2017, and discussions with her helped shape central building blocks in the dissertation. Cécile Fabre and Jonathan Wolff were generous with their time and helped me to sort out and understand essential questions, and so was David Leopold, who also kindly let me audit his course on Hegel and Marx. I also appreciated staying in Rosamund Bartlett’s lovely house during this visit. My visit to Harvard University’s Philosophy department in 2018 would not have happened without Lucas Stanczyk, who was excep- tionally generous with his time during my time in Cambridge. Our discussions helped me figure out how to make my disparate lines of interest converge, and were crucial in finding the final shape and theme of the dissertation. Similarly, Gina Schouten and Brian Berkey listened to me trying to formulate my ideas, and provided invaluable feedback and en- couragement. I also wish to thank Nyasha K. Bovell for helping to sort out administrative issues, and Judy and Steve Leff for accommodating my wife and me, and our not-always-quietly-playing children.

Thanks to my social science teacher Steven Dahl, for being the first person to point out that there was such a job as being a researcher, and that I might find it worth trying to become one. Endless thanks to my late grand- father Allan Furendal, for kindling my sense of curiosity as a child, and for all the long conversations where I did not only learn things, but fell in love with learning things. Thanks to his son, my father Tomas, for showing me how exhilarating it can be to think hard about difficult questions. Thanks also to my grandmother Eva, aunt Ulla, mother Karin, siblings David and

xii Acknowledgements

Hanna, and my parents-in-law Ingegerd and Rolf, for being a wonderfully kind and loving family.

Although I am happy to have turned out to be enough of a researcher to have produced this dissertation, I am infinitely more grateful for the chance to be Lilly and Henning’s father. Apart from the way you balance me every day when I am with you, the two periods of parental leave we got to spend together were wonderful ways of corroborating my conviction that an individual is not simply reducible to one aspect of what they do. I know that you have a vague notion that “dad is writing a book at work”. If you ever read this, please know that I love you, and that I could not have done this without you.

Finally, none of this would have happened, and I would not have a reason to thank any of those mentioned above, were it not for the incredible stroke of luck of meeting my wife, Lovisa Furendal Berndt. There are no words to express my appreciation for all the love and support you have given me during the almost 15 years we have had each other. I really mean this: there are no words that can describe how grateful I am. You are wonderful, being around you makes me better, and always remember that “I love you more today than yesterday, but not as much as tomorrow”.

Stockholm 2 October, 2020

xiii

Introduction. An account of contributive justice

Chapter 1 – Introduction. An account of contributive justice

The pursuit of justice has become doubly individualised in recent times. New technologies allow individuals to identify perceived transgressions of norms of social justice, and to publicly call out the individuals who have committed them. While much of the historical struggle for justice called for the reform or abolition of unjust laws, the goal now seems to be to transform, not institutions or legal frameworks, but rather people’s moral character and the values and principles that they find acceptable and act on in their daily lives. Contemporary political philosophy is poorly situated to evaluate and guide this practice, however, since the discipline generally conceives of justice as a virtue of institutions rather than of individuals. In light of this, this dissertation explores how individual action influences justice, and how principles of justice should influence individual action. This helps to further our understanding of how individuals’ daily choices steer society towards, or away from, an ideal of justice, and the way in which informal and decentralised sanctions can influence these choices. By developing and defending an account of what justice requires of individuals, and why, the dissertation tries to provide a comprehensive argument for the conclusion that individuals have a duty to contribute towards the furthering of a just society. While it is beyond the scope of this dissertation to specify what this duty demands of us in all situations, I suggest that it will often be substantial and demanding, even though it does not crowd out all other values. The dissertation also defends the idea that individuals should respond to and uphold a decentralised system of social sanctions that helps to monitor and enforce adherence to this duty. The arguments developed thus provide support for the idea that achieving a just society is not simply a question of setting up the right kind of institutions and legal frameworks, but that it requires all of us to help promote justice in our day-to-day lives. The label “contributive justice” is meant to signal that our understanding of justice should not be limited to how in-

1 Chapter 1 stitutions distribute the benefits of social cooperation, but should also address the related problems of determining what this requires from individuals, and what constitutes a fair contribution to the burdens involved in striving towards a just society. In a word, the dissertation provides an account of why you ought to do your bit. These first few pages summarise the arguments for this view.

1. Summarising the account and the political and philosophical context of the inquiry The idea of an individual duty to contribute is philosophically underthe- orised. Although the question of what justice asks of individuals is clearly as old as political thought1, most contemporary theorising tends to focus on the justice of institutions. This is probably due to the enduring influence of John Rawls’s theory of justice, and the broadly Rawlsian view stating that as long as individuals support justice indirectly through sustaining just institutions, and interact in just ways within them, they are free to pursue other values. This mainstream view states, somewhat crudely, that while justice might require that we tax people and redistribute resources, it leaves the same people free to choose whether, with what, and how much to work, and to spend their net income as they wish.2 The dominance of this view is also due to its inherent attractiveness. Faced with the potentially endless demands of justice, where one’s interests risk going unrecognised among every other person’s interests, this kind of division of labour offers us a sensible reprieve; a way to balance impartial and partial concerns.3 The idea of a duty to contribute is nevertheless politically prevalent, in the sense that political institutions are often set up to induce individuals to perform or seek paid work. The last few decades have seen a general

1 Even though it is often interpreted as being concerned with the nature of a just society, Plato’s Republic is purportedly also about the just individual. Plato, The Republic, l. 368 c-369 a. 2 Note that I will refer to Rawls’s A Theory of Justice as TJ, throughout. Rawls, TJ, 295. 3 The distinction I am alluding to above is common but has many names. Nagel, Equality and Partiality, 3 f. distinguishes between the personal and impersonal standpoint, Parfit, Reasons and Persons discusses agent-relative and agent-neutral values, and Barry, Justice as Impartiality discusses partiality and impartiality. Reconciling the two is clearly one of the most fundamental problems in moral theory generally, and has been discussed extensively by, for instance Williams, Moral Luck, chap. 1; Barry, Justice as Impartiality, and Keller, Partiality.

2 Introduction. An account of contributive justice trend towards making welfare state services conditional, increasingly requiring individuals who claim them to work, study or seek employment. This essentially constitutes a legal duty to contribute, and is often motivated through rhetoric reminiscent of Lenin, and the apostle Paul, who stated that “he who does not work, neither shall he eat”.4 At the same time, however, those who are lucky enough not to rely on welfare state services can avoid the duty altogether, gaining their income from whatever their highly valued talents happen to fetch in the labour market. This political practice of institutions only coercing some individuals to contribute productively, combined with the philosophical position that individuals are only required to respect just institutions, seem to suggest that those who most need support can be rightly forced to work, while those who are fortunate enough to be self-sufficient are free to opt out from contributing. I believe that this is flawed political practice, based on flawed philosophical reasoning.5 The account offered in this dissertation differs both from political practice and the philosophical mainstream. I reject the conventional institutional focus and defend the view that there are at least three justice-related grounds for why individuals have a duty to contribute. One is based on equality and states, roughly, that individuals have a duty to contribute to bringing about just states of affairs, which includes there being an equal distribution of benefits and burdens in society. A second is based on reciprocity and states, roughly, that individuals who benefit from the contributions of others have a duty to reciprocate by contributing themselves. A third is based on a form of fair burden-sharing, and states, roughly, that realising an ideal of distributive justice requires that which is to be distributed fairly to be produced to begin with, and that individuals have a duty to do their part of this work. What I will call the weaker thesis of this dissertation is that each of these three aspects of justice can explain a corresponding duty to contribute to justice, and roughly what it consists of. That is, if we accept that one out of equality, reciprocity, or the fair sharing of burdens constitutes an important aspect of justice, then we should also accept that there is a corresponding duty for individuals to contribute, based on that aspect. I am also defending a stronger thesis, however, to wit; that all of these three

4 Lenin, “On the Famine: A Letter to the Workers of Petrograd,” 391.; 2 Thessalonians 3:10-12. See section 3.5 below. 5 I spell out what this statement means in section 3.1 of chapter 7. My analysis here echoes the lucid diagnosis offered by Stanczyk, From Each.

3 Chapter 1 aspects are indeed important parts of justice. This thesis says that equality, reciprocity, and fair burden-sharing combine into a hybrid account, which is more attractive than accounts grounded in just one of them. Indeed, it avoids crucial shortcomings that each of the accounts face when taken on their own. The point of distinguishing the weaker from the stronger thesis is that, even if some may not be convinced that all three aspects actually are part of justice, few people would wish to claim that none of the aspects is relevant to justice. Hence, even those who reject my stronger thesis should accept the weaker thesis that there is a duty to contribute to justice.6 The fully developed version of the duty to contribute that I defend could be summed up as saying that firstly, everyone has a duty to contribute towards making sure that everyone receives what they are due as a matter of justice. This duty is unconditional and equal for all: Everyone must make an equally good effort, in relation to their ability, to contribute the socially necessary labour needed to realise just states of affairs, even if working harder does not make them better off than others. Secondly, if and when this level is reached, everyone has a conditional obligation to further benefit others, if they benefit from the additional work of others. This part is conditional, and leaves you free to opt out from contributing if you reject the benefits of others’ contributions. Everyone is required, then, to do their bit by contributing, but they also get to claim their share of what they are due as a matter of justice.7

6 The weaker thesis is hence weak in the sense that it is easier to accept, but for that same reason it is also less interesting. The stronger thesis is stronger, then, because more argumentative work is necessary to make the case that we should accept it, but the consequences are more interesting if we do. My point in separating the two is to show that even if the reader ultimately only accepts the weaker thesis, the dissertation has at least shown that the idea of contributive justice is not a fringe idea. That is, it shows that concerns regarding equality explain a duty to contribute based on equality, concerns regarding reciprocity explain a duty to contribute based on reciprocity, and that concerns regarding fairly sharing burdens explain a duty to contribute based on fairly sharing burdens. The three concerns thus produce three different duties to contribute. Alternatively, as the stronger thesis suggests, they combine to produce a single hybrid duty. 7 I have translated the slogan “Gör din plikt, kräv din rätt” as “Do your bit, claim your share”, although a more literal translation would perhaps be “Perform your duty, claim your right”. Despite some research, I have not been able to determine the origins of this slogan. The Swedish labour movement of the early 20th century used it, but it is difficult to tell to what extent, and how it was interpreted by contemporaries. It is clear, however, that there is sufficient vagueness in the words “duty” and “right” to enable the slogan to be used to make radically different points. For instance, in a poster from 1918, which calls for workers to attend a labour union meeting, the duty in question seems to consist of joining a union and helping to organise the political struggle which will secure the right to a share of the fruits of production. Today, however, the slogan is sometimes appealed to in order to make the point that unless you discharge your duty to produce – for instance by taking up paid employment – you will not qualify for certain rights, such as unemployment

4 Introduction. An account of contributive justice

The hybrid nature of this account, combining equality, reciprocity, and burden-sharing, distinguishes it from related positions that have been defended in the philosophical literature, and allows it to avoid some implausible and unattractive shortcomings that I will argue the others face. Im- portantly, it also differs in several ways from actual policies designed to induce people to work, and can avoid many of the objections faced by the latter. Firstly, my notion of contribution is wider than that of paid work, and recognises that people can make contributions in a broader range of activities than those that are commonly rewarded by the market. Secondly, the account is sensitive to the difficulty of implementing work requirements, and would neither make access to goods and services fully conditional upon working, nor be upheld by a centralised and formal system of sanctions or threats. Furthermore, it is a non-perfectionist account, in the sense that it does not rest on the assumptions that work is good for us as individuals, or that leisure is pernicious to our character – I only claim that it is unjust to refuse to contribute to furthering justice. Finally, at the core of my account of contributive justice is the insight, formulated by Karl Marx and many others since, that how much you can contribute is to a large extent beyond your control and that what you receive back thus must reflect not only this but also other considerations.8 Consequently, if any group is singled out as non-contributors in my account, it is not those who object to toiling in low-paid and dreary jobs but those who, thanks to the high market demand for their arbitrarily acquired talents, are able to work relatively few hours but still fetch a high reward, and employ it in the pursuit of their own self-interest.

insurance. This interpretation surely goes against the traditional one, since those who embrace the Marxian idea that workers – unlike capitalists – produce value, would not question whether the working class contributes to the social product, nor doubt their willingness to make a contribution if they can. The next note develops this point. Notwithstanding these different interpretations, the point of using the slogan as the title of this dissertation is that it rejects the current and inversed interpretation in favour of the older one I have outlined above. It also neatly captures the gist of the account of contributive justice I defend: everyone should do their bit by discharging the duty to contribute, but everyone should also claim their share of what they are due as a matter of justice. Importantly, as chapter 4 explains, the two parts are distinct, in the sense that what you are due is not wholly dependent on what you contribute. 8 See Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Programme,” 321, in which he famously defends the principle ”From each according to abilities, to each according to need”. I will not discuss Marx’s ideas about this in detail, other than to note that my account, just like Marx’s, recognises the need to answer both the contributive and the distributive questions that make up the two parts of the slogan, avoids giving the same answer to both questions, i.e. rejects the idea that distribution should merely mirror contribution, and describes a kind of ideal that it might not be possible to implement in either the short or medium term.

5 Chapter 1

I will generally keep the discussion of the implications of my account relatively abstract, and refrain from formulating anything like a specific work requirement. Two points are important to stress, however. Firstly, the conclusions I reach are circumscribed by the limitations of the study, and specifically the fact that the duty I defend must be weighed against considerations that I am unable to address in this inquiry. As I explain in section 5, below, I adopt a form of pluralism about values and characterise the duty to contribute as having a pro tanto nature. This means, roughly, that justice is not the only thing that matters, and that what individuals ultimately ought to do depends on how we weigh the duty against additional values and concerns. This dissertation hence does not provide an answer to what individuals ought to do all-things-considered, but rather develops and defends an account of one of the things we need to consider when pondering this complex question. In practice, this means that, notwithstanding my characterisation of individuals as having a duty to contribute, they may in some circumstances be excused for not discharging it, for instance, when it is difficult to tell exactly how to do so, or when doing so would be too costly. Secondly, I should stress that I do not claim that individual efforts to promote justice either should or can replace institutional efforts. The account does not, for instance, prescribe widespread philanthropy, or that individuals or private organisations should start providing justice-promoting services that are currently provided by welfare states. The point is rather that individuals have a duty not only to support such institutional arrangements, but to supplement them where they cannot reach, and to enhance them by acting in ways that make them more effective.9 Individuals could support just institutions by, for instance, voting for justice-promoting representatives to public office, or perhaps by reasoning with their peers and trying to convince them to do so as well. But they can go further, and supplement institutions by taking concerns about justice into consideration when making daily choices, such as with what, and how much, to work. I will argue that shouldering our share of the work that is needed to reproduce society and justice is the just thing to do, and that opting out is unjust. Similarly, returning benefits received by producing goods and services that others value or need is the just thing to do, and free-riding on others is unjust. Finally, individuals can enhance the efforts of institutions by acting in justice-promoting ways in spheres that are not

9 The distinction between supplementing and enhancing institutional efforts is offered by Cohen, RJE, 374–77. I will use the abbreviation RJE to refer to Cohen’s Rescuing Justice and Equality.

6 Introduction. An account of contributive justice directly regulated by laws or institutions, or where they work imperfectly. For instance, even though it might be perfectly legal for individuals to intentionally avoid or evade taxes, my account is able to explain why it is unjust to do so, and why the duty to contribute requires us to respect not only the letter of the law but also its spirit.10 The account also explains why people ought to refrain from upholding norms and social practices that reinforce injustices in a wider sense. 11 In sum, since my account calls for individuals to not only support but also supplement and enhance institutional efforts, it is clearly more demanding than the common view that individuals only have to support justice indirectly. This suggests that if people acted on this duty, it would enable a closer approximation to ideals of justice than is currently the case in real societies.12 I do not believe, however, that it will be objectionably demanding. This is because I do not claim that the promotion of justice is the only value that matters when deciding what individuals should do, and even if it were, the hybrid account I defend does not require endless sacrifice regardless of the circumstances. The metatheoretical assumptions that

10 Some estimate that multinational companies hide up to 40 % of their profits in tax havens each year. Tørsløv, Wier, and Zucman, “The Missing Profits of Nations.” See also Alstadsæter, Johan- nesen, and Zucman, “Tax Evasion and Inequality.” In the language used in this dissertation, a burden-based argument against this practice would stress that, assuming that tax revenue is used to make sure that each person gets what they are due, individuals and companies who hide their wealth are acting unfairly towards both those who fare worse because of this, and those who have to shoulder an extra burden. Furthermore, the reciprocity-based part of my account prescribes that we should return the benefits received, but companies and individuals that actively use strategies to minimise their tax bill in the country providing public goods – a labour force educated in free or subsidised public education, relying on public health care, commuting using public infrastructure, and staying safe thanks to functioning property laws, for instance – fail to reciprocate to the system that enabled them to thrive in the first place. Senator Elizabeth Warren made this argument in her 2020 presidential campaign. “Senator Elizabeth Warren Speech in Washington Square Park.” The problem of tax evasion and some possible solutions are also discussed by Brock and McMaster, “Global Taxation and Accounting Arrangements: Some Normatively Desirable and Feasible Policy Recommendations.” 11 As I will discuss in chapter 2, the duty to contribute to realising the ideal of justice also means that we must treat each other respectfully in our daily lives, and avoid letting prejudices affect who we decide to interact with and how. Similarly, not only what we produce but what we consume has a bearing on the degree of justice, and a full account of a duty to contribute must surely recognise the way in which choosing to consume some products but not others eventually affect how just a society is. While recognising this point, this dissertation does not primarily focus on these ways of contributing. 12 Readers who are familiar with G. A. Cohen’s claim that an egalitarian ethos is required to realise a just society might notice the similarities with my account. For reasons that will become clear, I focus on a duty to contribute rather than an egalitarian ethos. I introduce Cohen’s view in section 3.1, below.

7 Chapter 1 explain this are introduced in section 5, below, and I return to this issue in section 2 of chapter 7.

2. Guiding questions and the structure of the inquiry The overarching questions this dissertation tries to answer are “What does justice require of individuals, and why?” In answering these questions, the dissertation aims to provide an account of contributive justice.13 There are a number of desiderata that such an account should fulfil in order to be as clear and convincing as possible. Although potentially endless, the most comprehensive list of desiderata that is consistent with the limitations of time and resources that a dissertation entails, is the following sequence of questions, which forms the organising structure for this inquiry:

I Who should contribute? II Why should they contribute? III What is a contribution? IV How should the duty to contribute be enforced?

Chapter 2 answers question I and says, roughly, that both institutions and individuals are bound by principles of justice and should contribute in suitable ways. Chapters 3 and 4 answer question II by considering and critiquing the three prominent answers appealing to equality, reciprocity, and fairly sharing burdens, and defending the hybrid that I have summarised above. Chapters 4 and 5 answer question III, by explaining that to contribute something is to provide a good or service that others value or need, and by criticising the commonly used market-based solution to the problem of deciding the value of contributions.14 Chapter 6 then answers question IV, by arguing that the nature of the duty to contribute entails that it should be promoted through a decentralised and informal system of social sanctions and by encouraging people to internalise and act upon

13 As I elaborate in sections 3.6 and 4.1 below, one way to define contributive justice is to say that, while distributive justice takes what is produced as a given and asks how principles of justice suggest it should be distributed, contributive justice takes principles of distributive justice as a given and asks who should contribute what in order to best satisfy them. I qualify this view below. 14 Some might suggest that the third question comes prior to the first and second questions, since we presumably need to know what a contribution is before we can tell who should contribute and why. As I see it, however, we need to know which aspects of justice explain a duty to contribute before we can tell what a contribution is. As I explain in chapter 5, we need to know, as it were, what the point or goal of justice is before we can decide which particular acts contribute to it.

8 Introduction. An account of contributive justice principles of justice. Chapter 7 briefly summarises the dissertation, responds to a number of anticipated objections, and considers the implications of the account and what further desiderata future research should aim to satisfy. This introductory chapter sets the stage for the inquiry that follows. The next section reviews the existing literature pertaining to the four guiding questions and explains the background to and contributions of the inquiry. Sections 4 and 5 complement the body of the dissertation by specifying as clearly as possible the theoretical framework driving the analysis, and the methodological framework that I employ when pursuing the aim.

3. Theoretical background and the contributions of the inquiry This section aims to introduce some of the existing debates and lines of inquiry in political philosophy that my account draws upon and can be contrasted against. I will introduce the main tenets of Rawls’s influential theory of justice and Cohen’s critique of it, and then outline some of the central argumentative points that have been made in relation to each of my guiding questions. Importantly, section 3.6 then relates my account of contributive justice to two similar contemporary projects. Hence, this section anticipates and summarises some of the arguments made in the body of the dissertation. The point is to help elucidate the main characteristics of my account by directing attention to what it contributes in relation to existing debates around the central ideas.

3.1 Rawls’s theory of justice and Cohen’s critique Much of my account draws upon and expands the debate initiated by philosopher G. A. Cohen’s critique of John Rawls’s influential theory of justice. Due to its enduring importance as a point of reference, I will often follow the practice of setting one’s own position into relief against Rawls’s.15 And due to the force and intellectual rigour of Cohen’s comprehensive critique, there are often similarities between my account and Co- hen’s. Yet, it is important to stress that this dissertation is not primarily an immanent critique of either Rawls or Cohen. Unlike Cohen, I am trying

15 A (somewhat outdated) review of the reception of Rawls is offered by Laden, “The House That Jack Built: Thirty Years of Reading Rawls.”

9 Chapter 1 neither to derive a duty to contribute from Rawls’s theory, nor to attack it for neglecting contributive issues. And although I draw on Cohen’s work, my account is importantly different from his. The primary aim is not to study their writings and draw out what they “should” say about individual duties, or to show that a duty to contribute follows from either account. I do not attempt to justify or defend my account by appealing to the way in which it fits with either. That said, my analysis does indeed have bearing on these questions, and I believe that parts of my account are compatible with how Rawls and Cohen each think about justice, although I ultimately defend the alternative hybrid duty that I believe yields a more convincing account of contributive justice. The centrality of Rawls and Cohen in this dissertation nevertheless motivates the following short summary of the main tenets of their positions. Rawls’s A Theory of Justice, first published in 1971, offers a comprehensive defence of a particular conception of what a just society would be like, continuing the social contract tradition in political thought that includes Thomas Hobbes and Jean Jacques Rousseau. In short, Rawls offers a procedure for determining principles of justice that should guide society, in the form of a thought experiment that, very roughly, asks people to agree on principles of justice, while lacking access to knowledge about which position they will occupy in the society governed by these principles. If we do not know whether we would be benefited or disadvantaged by any particular principle, we are more likely to reach a fair outcome, or so Rawls suggests. He thus imagines that the hypothetical deliberating parties’ knowledge about who they are is concealed by a “veil of ignorance”, in an effort to induce them – and by extension, us – to be more impartial than they or we would otherwise be. The outcome, according to Rawls, would be that the parties would rationally agree to one principle dictating equal basic liberties16, and to a second principle requiring that

[s]ocial and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, […] and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.17

16 The first principle is lexically prior to the second principle, such that “…the basic liberties can be restricted only for the sake of liberty”. Fully spelled out, it says that ”Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all” Rawls, TJ, 266. 17 Rawls, 266.

10 Introduction. An account of contributive justice

It is primarily the first part of this second principle, the so-called difference principle, that has become central to contemporary theorising on justice. Importantly, the principle means that Rawls is proposing that we should not aim for strict equality, since some inequalities may possibly enable everyone to become better off. It is commonly assumed, for instance, that the difference principle could justify paying economic incentives to people who would otherwise withhold their productive efforts, since everyone gains from this (although not equally much). While Rawls restricts the impact of this assumption by endless philosophical qualifications, it is reminiscent of the idea of trickle-down economics, and the thought that inequality-inducing incentives would be justified if they were to the benefit of the worst off.18 Over the course of several decades, Cohen developed a critique of Rawls and those following him, thereby indirectly defending an alternative view similar to the one developed in this dissertation. The critique begins by noting that economic incentives are superfluous since, arguably, individuals could simply choose to contribute their labour even if they would not get higher compensation: At the very least, it is not impossible for them to work harder, and their unwillingness to do so should not be accepted at face value, Cohen suggests. A duty to contribute at the equality-preserving level of compensation could thus allow us to reconcile equality and efficiency, at least if we reject the notion of a “division of labour” between institutions and individuals.19 Cohen believes that a just society would not only have just institutions, but that “…social justice requires a social ethos that inspires uncoerced equality supporting choice…”20, and that with such an ethos in place, people would willingly make productive decisions that further justice even if they were not compensated for them by equality-upsetting economic incentives.21

18 As an illustration, the Swedish government has motivated income tax cuts by arguing that they function as incentives to participate in the labour force, and to start working full time. Proposition 2020/21:1, 34; 321. 19 Cohen, RJE, pt. 1. The papers that make up this part of Cohen’s magnum opus, Rescuing Justice and Equality, published in 2008, are Cohen, “Incentives, Inequality, and Community”; Cohen, “The Pareto Argument for Inequality”, and Cohen, “Where the Action Is: On the Site of Distrib- utive Justice.” 20 Cohen, RJE, 127. 21 Cohen, 181. As chapter 6 will make clear, I believe that the role of the ethos is often misinter- preted. What matters is that people act in line with principles of justice, in accordance with a duty to contribute. On my interpretation, the ethos is that which encourages them to do so, and it is not the same thing as the duty.

11 Chapter 1

Cohen’s critique is often recognised as one of the more forceful and important challenges to the Rawlsian approach to justice, and even those who believe that Rawls’s theory could ultimately avoid it usually recognise its relevance.22 His observations have provoked a wide range of reactions – some offering interpretations of Rawls that supposedly avoid Cohen’s critique, others offering interpretations of Cohen’s critique that supposedly reduce its force23 – and it is within this debate, broadly conceived, that this dissertation is situated. I should note, at this stage, that some might wish to reiterate one of the objections Cohen has faced and direct it against my position. Specifically, both Cohen and I could be accused of marginalising the role of Rawls’s first principle, and the prioritised position that it gives to our basic liberties. In fact, this principle seems to explain why Rawls does not ultimately endorse an individual duty of the kind defended in this dissertation, but rather the position that “[w]hat kind of work people do, and how hard they do it, is up to them to decide in light of the various incentives society offers”.24 Given the dominance of the Rawlsian view, and its assumption that liberty is an integral part of justice, sceptics might claim that it is, in fact, misleading to characterise the duty I defend as a duty of justice. In reply, I must stress again that, whenever I use this phrase, it refers to a kind of pro tanto duty that can be outweighed by further factors relevant to the process of applying the duty to a particular situation, including the value of individual freedom. Anticipating the discussion in sections 4 and 5, below, I should note, moreover, that the way I use “justice” is closer to Cohen’s than to Rawls’s usage: while Rawls’s principles are the outcome of a process where he has tried to take all, or at least many, relevant considerations into account, the duty I defend is the outcome of a less comprehensive process.25 More modestly, my account can serve as an input into a further process of balancing competing demands, in order to determine what individuals ultimately ought to do. This is a complex is-

22 See, for instance, Titelbaum, “What Would a Rawlsian Ethos of Justice Look Like?,” 315. 23 For instance, Freeman, Rawls, 120–25 exemplifies the former strategy and Thomas, “Cohen’s Critique of Rawls: A Double Counting Objection” contains much of the latter strategy. Estlund, “Debate: Liberalism, Equality, and Fraternity in Cohen’s Critique of Rawls” arguably relies on both. 24 Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 64. 25 One reason for this is, as I explain in sections 4.3 and 4.6 below, and in chapter 4, that I believe the procedure-focused character of Rawls’s theory ultimately fails to explain central intuitions about justice.

12 Introduction. An account of contributive justice sue, though, which quickly raises fundamental questions of how to conceive of justice, and I will explain and defend my use of these concepts in section 5, below. Now, although I generally share Cohen’s central intuitions and what I believe were his driving motivations, I also think that his account is critically underdeveloped. In one sense, then, this dissertation picks up where Cohen, who passed away in 2009, left these issues, and tries to provide a more coherent account than the one he offered. In some places this involves a more exegetical approach: Much of chapter 3, for instance, critically examines whether a duty to contribute can be derived from Cohen’s position, and I claim that his strong commitment to a narrow view of equality constituting the whole of justice means that his duty is much more limited than commonly thought, unless qualified in the ways I suggest there. In other places I diverge from his views and investigate what follows if we share the impetus of Cohen’s project, but revise whatever is necessary to circumvent the problems faced by his, and similar accounts. Chapter 6, for instance, provides a unique development of Cohen’s idea of an egalitarian ethos that can potentially clear up what I perceive as misunderstandings around this idea in the literature. One of the contributions of this dissertation is thus that it addresses the blind spots and shortcomings of the existing debate around justice and individuals, and tries to provide better alternatives. Specifically, the hybrid account that I defend is, I believe, a superior way of understanding what justice requires of individuals compared to Cohen’s equality-based conception and other relevant views in the literature.

3.2 Literature about who should contribute Chapter 2 begins by asking who should contribute; that is, to whom the duty to contribute applies. I start here because some have argued that the very idea of individual duties of justice is misguided. This view is often expressed using Rawlsian terms, claiming that principles of justice are not all-encompassing moral principles that cover all of human interaction but, rather, are specific to “…the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation.”26 If Rawls is correct that the “primary

26 Rawls, TJ, 6.

13 Chapter 1 subject” of justice is the basic structure of society – roughly, the major political and economic institutions27 – then principles of justice do not apply directly or in the same way to individuals. So, should we agree with this suggestion to divide the labour between institutions and individuals, and abandon the project pursued here? One reason to believe so is that institutions appears to have deeper effects and wider capacities compared to individuals. Rawls famously states that the basic structure is primary “…because its effects are so profound and present from the start.”28 Since individual behaviour is not consequential in the same sense, there are good reasons to think that principles of justice do not apply in the same way to both the basic structure and individuals.29 In reply, others have pointed out that aggregated individual be- haviours can indeed come to have similarly profound effects, and have insisted that they can be sources of injustice.30 The examples I discuss in chapter 2, for instance, are how aggregated individual behaviour can make up market forces and systems of social norms that fundamentally shape our lives. A second reason to support a division of labour has to do with the great costs and threats to freedom that an individual duty may entail. As I mentioned in the last section, this also finds support in Rawls, and specifically his principle of basic liberties, and the way in which his account, unlike mine, gives these a prioritised place. Demanding that individuals contribute to promoting justice directly would seemingly violate the freedom of occupational choice that many believe is a central part of liberal egalitarianism. Furthermore, individuals have to be attentive to a broad range of values, including those arising from special commitments and relations to,

27 Rawls, 6. 28 Rawls, 7. 29 See, for instance Scheffler, “Is the Basic Structure Basic?”; Freeman, “The Basic Structure of Society as the Primary Subject of Justice”; Nagel, Equality and Partiality; Estlund, “Debate: Liber- alism, Equality, and Fraternity in Cohen’s Critique of Rawls”, and Joshua Cohen, “Taking People as They Are?” For an argument that individuals cannot live up to Rawls’s demand that justice should not only be done but be seen to be done, see Williams, “Incentives, Inequality, and Public- ity”; Williams, “Justice, Incentives and Constructivism”, and for replies, see Cohen, RJE, chap. 8, as well as Matthew, “Purview and Permissibility”; Gosseries and Parr, “Publicity,” sec. 3, and Lip- pert-Rasmussen, “Publicity and Egalitarian Justice.” 30 See, for instance Berkey, “Against Rawlsian Institutionalism about Justice”; Berkey, “Obligations of Productive Justice: Individual or Institutional?”; Matthew, “Purview and Permissibility”, and Porter, “The Division of Moral Labour and the Basic Structure Restriction.”

14 Introduction. An account of contributive justice for instance, their family. Institutions, on the other hand “…don’t have their own lives to lead.”31 In reply, proponents of individual duties often stress that they are defending moral demands which cannot straightforwardly be assumed to limit individual freedom in the way that legal obligations do.32 Some have also tried to reduce the distance between the two views by questioning whether there is any real occupational choice in market-based systems where one’s survival depends upon getting a job.33 My systematic answer to this so-called demandingness objection can be found throughout the dissertation but is summarised here, and in section 2 of chapter 7. Firstly, my duty is not based on maximalist principles that constantly demand more: Once you have done your share of the socially necessary labour, you can opt out from further production and be absolved from the reciprocity- based part of the duty. Secondly, as section 5 of this chapter describes, the duty is just one of many things that matter when deciding what individuals should ultimately do, and should always be weighed against other relevant factors. So, although the objection raises an important point, which should inform all accounts of contributive justice, I do not think it can establish that there are no substantial duties of justice for individuals. Chapter 2 is an extended discussion of versions of these criticisms and replies. It is perhaps the least original chapter, since it primarily relies on previously voiced arguments against the division of labour like the ones I have summarised here. An important difference compared to many earlier replies to this objection, however, is that I try to be clear about what, more precisely, the division of labour view says. I believe a charitable interpretation suggests that its proponents do not claim that justice is restricted to institutions, but that it primarily applies to them. This allows them to concede many of the critical points that have been levied at them. Recog- nising this distinction, and calibrating my argument against the division

31 Nagel, Equality and Partiality, 59, 85 f. For versions of this view, see Smith, “Incentives and Justice: G. A. Cohen’s Egalitarian Critique of Rawls”; Estlund, “Debate: Liberalism, Equality, and Fraternity in Cohen’s Critique of Rawls”; Pogge, “On the Site of Distributive Justice”; Joshua Co- hen, “Taking People as They Are?”; Tan, “Justice and Personal Pursuits”; Farrelly, “Dualism, In- centives and the Demands of Rawlsian Justice”; Scheffler, “Egalitarian Liberalism as Moral Plural- ism”; Otsuka, “Prerogative to Depart from Equality”; Casal, “Occupational Choice and the Egali- tarian Ethos”; Lang, “Rawlsian Incentives and the Freedom Objection”, and Frye, “Incentives, Of- fers, and Community.” 32 Cohen, RJE, 191 ff; Carens, “An Interpretation...,” 164 f. Note that I will use this abbreviated title for Carens’s article instead of the full title “An Interpretation and Defense of the Socialist Principle of Distribution”. 33 Stanczyk, From Each.

15 Chapter 1 of labour accordingly in order to provide a stronger rejection of it, is what constitutes my contribution compared to the existing literature.

3.3 Literature about why contributing is a duty Even if we reject the division of labour, as I argue we should, we need further arguments to show why justice might require individuals to contribute. As I have indicated, chapter 3 will examine Cohen’s equality-based argument, and chapter 4 will focus on arguments drawing on reciprocity and fairly sharing burdens. I have already mentioned Cohen’s account, which explains the duty with reference to the way in which it would help to promote the value of equality. An important influence on Cohen’s thinking about what a society with such a duty could be like is the work of Joseph Carens.34 In his book “Equality, Moral Incentives, and the Market”, Carens describes a society where income tax is 100% and everything that is produced is redistributed to satisfy some principle of justice. This society would be possible, Carens believes, if we replaced the motivating function of market prices for labour, but retained their coordinating function. If people were motivated not by the opportunity for personal reward but because they were convinced they had a duty to contribute, they would willingly contribute even if they did not receive the full proceeds of their labour. And because price signals would be created by how people decided to spend the income they eventually received, people could continue to be guided by market considerations when deciding how to contribute. In sum, Carens suggests that the duty for individuals is to “…earn as much pre-tax net income as they are capable of earning.”35 and describes this as “…a version of the socialist ideal ‘from each according to his abilities.’”36 Carens later recognised that the maximalist assumption that individuals should earn as much pre-tax income as possible is likely to have a negative impact upon many other personal values, and is a poor emulation of how people act today, when they do get to keep their income. An alternative formulation has been offered by Martin Wilkinson, who suggests that individuals ought to act on a “counterfactual duty”, asking you to “…respond to market prices in the egalitarian system as though you were getting

34 Cohen, RJE, 189 f. 35 Carens, Equality, Moral Incentives, and the Market, 25. 36 Carens, “Rights and Duties in an Egalitarian Society,” 33; Carens, Equality, Moral Incentives, and the Market. Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, 264 suggests that Carens’s account is “the Platonic ideal of market socialism”.

16 Introduction. An account of contributive justice the money for your own personal consumption.”,37 allowing you to factor in other values when deciding how much to work. Similarly, Carens now defends a duty for individuals to “…make good use of their talents, not to maximize their productive output.”38 Both formulations thus try to accommodate the tendency of people not to focus only on maximising their income, they both rely on the idea that market mechanisms can indicate the value of one’s contribution, and they endorse the duty to contribute as an equality-respecting alternative to economic incentives.39 Although chapter 5 addresses the reliance on market mechanisms, I do not discuss Carens’s and Wilkinson’s alternative views at length, but focus instead, in chapter 3, on developing an argument about the problems inherent in Cohen’s equality-based answer to the question of why we should contribute. In chapter 4, I then focus on what I call reciprocity-based accounts and burden-based accounts. The former base the duty to contribute in the idea that society is a form of social cooperation and argue that it is a duty to reciprocate benefits received. If, and because, one benefits from the contributions made by others, one has an obligation to contribute in ways that benefit them. The best illustration of this view is perhaps the account developed and defended by Stuart White, which conceives of reciprocity as necessary to realise an attractive form of democratic mutual regard between citizens, a kind of relation that lacks both servile and aristocratic attitudes.40 Burden-based accounts, however, focus on the fact that there is a set of goods and services that need to be reproduced in order for society to survive over time and to ensure that people have what they are due. Justice requires individuals to contribute because failing to do so risks leading to this socially necessary labour not being undertaken, and because others would have to shoulder a larger burden if one person opted out. One illustration of such a view is the account defended by Cécile Fabre, who argues that we all have a duty to ensure that everyone in society have

37 Wilkinson, Freedom, Efficiency and Equality, 136. 38 Carens, “The Egalitarian Ethos as a Social Mechanism,” 71. 39 If we follow Samuel Bowles, The Moral Economy, 47 in defining incentives as “…an intervention that affects the expected material costs and benefits associated with an action.”, then we can even think of the duty to contribute as a kind of moral incentive. This is, indeed, how Carens argues in Carens, Equality, Moral Incentives, and the Market. I regret that I will be unable to discuss the similar account of “Kantian optimization” offered by John E. Roemer, How We Coop- erate. 40 White, The Civic Minimum, 68. Besides White, I ascribe versions of this view to Becker, Reci- procity; Lister, “Justice as Fairness and Reciprocity”; Smith, “The Social Construction of Talent: A Defence of Justice as Reciprocity”, and Aas, “You Didn’t Build That: Equality and Productivity in a Complex Society.”

17 Chapter 1 access to leading a decent life, including having certain basic needs satisfied. This leads her to defend systems of mandatory civilian service, and potentially also more controversial suggestions.41 Chapter 4 critically assesses these existing accounts and evaluates their potential and limitations. I believe that an essential contribution of this dissertation is the way in which the hybrid account I defend captures the central intuitions that make these accounts attractive, while also avoiding their shortcomings. A significant amount of analytical work is done in chapters 3 and 4 to achieve this hybrid account, and although it draws on existing views, I believe the investigation offered is a valuable contribution to the existing debate. Before turning to discuss suggestions about what a contribution is, I should explain why I will not discuss an influential contemporary tradition promoting a duty to contribute. Independently of the debate just summarised, recent years have seen a rapidly growing interest in what is known as Effective Altruism, inspired by philosopher Peter Singer’s famous argument that we should give more money – most of it, in fact – to relieve suffering and death, not because it would be charitable or good, but because it is our duty.42 Effective Altruism is not so much a distinct philosophical position as an umbrella term collecting those who are moved by Singer’s original idea and who believe we should not only make financial donations, but that we should do so as efficiently as possible. If we decide to promote the good, they suggest, we should employ the best available empirical research to distinguish efficient charity organisations from wasteful ones. Some effective altruists go further, and decide on career paths that allow them to earn as much as possible, thus enabling them to donate more money than they would be able to if they chose a more stim- ulating career – an individual who goes into finance instead of academia, for instance, is “earning to give”.43 It is unclear what, more exactly, grounds this duty to do good. This is partly because, from what I gather, Effective Altruism is not a philosophical view but a social movement that for ecumenical reasons prefers to include people with different motivations – some proponents even wish to describe it as completely non-normative.44 Furthermore, the movement

41 Apart from Fabre, I ascribe versions of this view to Stanczyk, From Each; Ramsay, “Just Contri- bution”; Marshall, “Citizenship and Social Class”, and Govier, “The Right to Eat and the Duty to Work.” 42 Singer, “Famine, Affluence and Morality.” 43 Singer, The Most Good You Can Do, chap. 4; MacAskill, Doing Good Better. 44 MacAskill, “The Definition of Effective Altruism,” 14. See also Berkey, “The Philosophical Core of Effective Altruism.”

18 Introduction. An account of contributive justice has been criticised for relying on an atomistic understanding of morality whereby acting morally is to act individually rather than with others, and that a side effect of maximising the good one does is to reinforce the economic system that is the root cause of the badness.45 Effective Altruism seems, for instance, to share Carens’s idea that we should gladly part with our income, but to disregard his suggestion that this should happen through a democratically controlled redistributive tax system.46 So, despite the fact that it has led more and more people to freely, and out of moral commitment, decide to shape their lives so as to promote moral values, I will not focus on Effective Altruism in my account of contributive justice. This is because I interpret it as a moral rather than a political project, in the sense that Effective Altruism is not concerned with justice but with making the world “better”, and also that its proponents seem to avoid making normative claims that one should contribute, in favour of helping people to contribute as effectively as possible, if they decide to do so.47

3.4 Literature about what a contribution is I argue in chapter 4 that to contribute something is to provide a good or service that others value or need. Yet, this is only a helpful guide to action if we have a way of knowing what others value or need and how to produce it. That is, if we accept that we, as individuals, ought to contribute, and have a sense of why, we also need some kind of decision-making procedure for knowing when we have done our part. Perhaps due to the strong influence of Carens’s work on the market socialist utopia described above, this is a curiously neglected question. Many theorists seem to straightforwardly assume that the market prices of labour can function as suitable guides to direct people towards professions where they can contribute the

45 The so-called “institutional” critique of Effective Altruism has been forcefully expressed by, for instance, Srinivasan, “Stop the Robot Apocalypse”, and a review and reply is offered by Berkey, “The Institutional Critique of Effective Altruism.” It might seem that a similar institutional critique could be raised against my account. Two characteristics suggest that my account can deflect some of its force, however. Firstly, I specifically argue that individuals should support, supplement and enhance institutional efforts, not merely that they should maximise their donations. Secondly, my account is less fetishistic than effective altruism, which seems to focus on the good that earned income can do, but to overlook how it was earned. I resist the one-sided focus on income, for reasons explained in the next subsection and chapter 5. 46 Peter Singer, The Life You Can Save, 164 f., for instance, draws up a table with income brackets specifying how large proportion each income group could be expected to give away, but says nothing about why this is preferable to an equivalent system of progressive income tax. 47 Nevertheless, on my analysis it seems as though one reason, among many, to become an Effective Altruist is the justice-based arguments provided in this dissertation.

19 Chapter 1 greatest social value.48 Similarly, some have argued that market prices indicate desert, which in turn should provide the grounds for just distribution.49 I question this assumption in chapter 5, however, by systematically arguing that markets have shortcomings that would produce misleading action-guiding prescriptions for individuals. One important example is that the market solution overlooks the myriad ways in which people can contribute outside of paid labour and market relations. Feminist philosophers have long argued both that care work is important in its own right, and that care work and domestic work – such as the domestic work the woman on the cover of this book is performing – are necessary conditions for re- munerated work.50 Others have criticised the centrality of work as such, or suggested that contributions to other valuable human activities are equally important.51 I try to address the blind spot in the market-focused perspective by bringing in some of these insights. The upshot is that we cannot decide what the value of a contribution is without appealing to the account of justice that grounds it. Contributive justice depends, as it were, on distributive justice. I do not, however, set out an alternative solution that avoids markets completely. The main contribution with regard to the existing literature is primarily the critical assessment of its underlying assumptions, and how this explicates the limits of relying on markets and helps to reveal the unavoidable uncertainties of deciding what constitutes a valuable contribution.

48 I suggest that the underlying assumption here is that the value of the consumption and production of resources are what they are worth to others, i.e. their opportunity costs, and that market prices track opportunity costs and are therefore essential to specifying the metric of egalitarian justice. Apart from those who accept this idea more or less explicitly, like Carens, Cohen, Wilkinson, and White, chapter 5 also describes how the assumption is prevalent in distributive justice literature more generally, such as in Miller, Market, State, and Community; Steiner, “Capitalism, Justice and Equal Starts”; van Parijs, Real Freedom for All: What (If Anything) Can Justify Capitalism? and Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue. 49 Miller, Market, State, and Community; Miller, “Our Unfinished Debate about Market Social- ism.” See also Becker’s reciprocity-based account of an obligation to work, which does not involve markets but suggests that “…the good returned will have to be good for the recipient, and (eventually) perceived by the recipient both as a good and as a return”. Becker, Reciprocity, 107. 50 See, for instance, Kittay, Love’s Labor; Sainsbury, “Gender, Care, and Welfare”, and Folbre, “‘Holding Hands at Midnight’: The Paradox of Caring Labor.” 51 Weeks, The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imagi- naries. Kimberly Brownlee, “The Lonely Heart Breaks: On the Right to Be a Social Contributor,” 28 suggests that “…to be human is to have a deep wish, indeed need, to contribute to other people’s survival and well-being.”

20 Introduction. An account of contributive justice

3.5 Literature about enforcing the duty to contribute Finally, once we know who should contribute what and why, we need to answer the motivational question of how people should be encouraged – or perhaps coerced – to contribute. I mentioned at the outset that one politically influential strategy, with some philosophical support, is through state interventions and conditionality, such as workfare programmes or other ways of making people’s subsistence depend on earning a wage.52 Such policies are sometimes defended with reference to the idea that work is intrinsically valuable or instrumental in reaching other values. Contrib- uting productively can be thought of as intrinsically valuable because it allows us to develop and exercise abilities everyone ought to aim for excellence in; and instrumentally valuable since it allows us to earn esteem for the value we can create with these abilities, or makes us more virtuous.53 Work policies are also motivated instrumentally with reference to their positive effects on total output: If what one is due as a matter of justice depends on what one has contributed, this creates incentives enticing people to contribute more. This simple idea finds support in the notion of reciprocity, which I discuss extensively in chapter 4, and it is in effect the guiding principle for many actual societies, such as when welfare services or health insurance coverage are restricted to those who work, or apply for

52 The political shift toward making eligibility conditional on work requirements is often said to have started with the elections of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, but Junestav, Arbetslinjer i Svensk Socialpolitisk Debatt Och Lagstiftning 1930-2001 traces the idea of a “work strategy” (“arbetslinje”) in Swedish politics back to at least the 1930’s. See also Young, Responsibility for Justice, chap. 1, who discusses the intellectual development of the idea, Mead, The New Politics of Poverty, who defends the idea, and Bou-Habib and Olsaretti, “Liberal Egalitarianism and Work- fare”; White, “What’s Wrong with Workfare?” and Watts and Fitzpatrick, Welfare Conditionality, who critically discuss it. Note that an important limitation in my account is that I will abstract from the issue of unemployment. That is, I will not address the problem of making a contribution when there are not enough jobs for everyone, or the problem of how a duty to contribute could influence how many jobs there are. 53 Junestav, Arbetslinjer i Svensk Socialpolitisk Debatt Och Lagstiftning 1930-2001, 237 shows that three primary justificatory strategies have been employed in defending the ”work strategy” in Swedish politics: the idea of a right to work, the idea of disciplining workers into taking responsibility for their situation, and the idea of helping people become independent and self-sufficient. I believe the idea that work can have certain intrinsic or instrumental value for the worker is a common idea in the literature on meaningful work. See, for instance Schwartz, “Meaningful Work”; Arneson, “Meaningful Work and Market Socialism”; Yeoman, “Conceptualising Meaningful Work as a Fundamental Human Need”, and Gheaus and Herzog, “The Goods of Work (Other than Money!).” As I will explain below, it is also a central assumption in the conception of contributive justice developed by Paul Gomberg, How to Make Opportunity Equal: Race and Contributive Justice.

21 Chapter 1 work.54 My hybrid account does not rest, however, on any paternalistic or perfectionist idea that working is good and being lazy is bad for us as individuals, but rather on the idea that justice requires everyone to do their part. And my answer to how this duty should be enforced is similar to an idea first suggested by Cohen; namely, that a just society would be characterised by an egalitarian ethos. The concept of ethos often refers to the characteristic spirit of a group, and Cohen and others seem to assume that the ethos can somehow influence people to act in accordance with principles of justice.55 How this is supposed to happen is critically undertheo- rised, however, and chapter 6 aims to resolve this.56 I suggest that there are in fact two possible interpretations of what an ethos is, and that both are at play in Cohen’s and others’ writings. The first describes how people internalise and act from particular principles, and the second describes how they may rather respond to an external system of social sanctions. The distinction is well-known in moral theory but has not been applied to the concept of ethos before. On this view, I suggest that a moral ethos is akin to Rawls’s notion of a sense of justice and in fact reduces the distance between his theory and Cohen’s critique. Such an ethos exists when people have internalised a principle and follow it because it is the right or just thing to do. I also develop the second understanding, which has been explored by Carens57, by drawing on social philosophy and psychological research about norms, and suggest that a social ethos is a decentralised and informal system of social sanctions.58 I argue in chapter

54 In a debate on the SNAP (formerly Food Stamps) programme, one member of the U. S. House of Representatives recently alluded to the principle I mentioned initially, espoused by Lenin and the apostle Paul, and suggested that “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat”. Dewey, “GOP Lawmaker: The Bible Says ‘If a Man Will Not Work, He Shall Not Eat.’” 55 This interpretation is defended in chapter 6. 56 Joshua Cohen, “Taking People as They Are?” 376 suggests the ethos consists of “…preferences and attitudes…”, and Kenneth Baynes, “Ethos and Institution: On the Site of Distributive Justice,” 183 that it is the “…motivations and attitudes of individuals…”. Many primarily describe the ethos by reference to its function of making a more equal distribution possible, as when Richard Arneson, “Egalitarianism” writes that Cohen’s ethos “…instructs individuals that each should do her bit towards sustaining equality by her everyday choices.”; when Liam Murphy, “Institutions and the Demands of Justice,” 265 writes that it “…will lead people to choose to work hard even in the absence of inequality-creating incentives.”; or when Nicholas Vrousalis, “G. A. Cohen’s Vision of Socialism,” 210 suggests that ”…as far as justice is concerned, the ethos is a mere causal vehicle to the achievement of just distribution. That is, the ethos in itself serves nothing other than the realisation of justice.” My aim in chapter 6 is to go further than simply noting this, and to try to develop and assess a coherent answer to how the ethos could influence individual behaviour. 57 Carens, “The Egalitarian Ethos as a Social Mechanism.” See also Vandenbroucke, Social Justice and Individual Ethics in an Open Society. 58 Bicchieri, Norms in the Wild; Brennan et al., Explaining Norms; Bowles, The Moral Economy.

22 Introduction. An account of contributive justice

6 that in order to successfully enforce the duty to contribute we will have to rely on both a moral and a social ethos. This part of the account of contributive justice is perhaps particularly important, for three reasons. Firstly, it constitutes a crucial contribution to the literature to which my dissertation speaks, being the first comprehensive and systematic development of the idea of ethos, and of the tension between the two strategies for enforcing the duty to contribute.59 Secondly, it addresses the problem that I mentioned initially, about political philosophy being ill-equipped to evaluate and guide the practice of assessing and sanctioning individuals from the point of view of justice. Thirdly, the attention these questions receive is an important part of the answer to what makes this a dissertation in political philosophy, as opposed to ethics or moral philosophy more generally. Although I am personally inclined to the view that much of what humans do to each other is political, whether it is mediated through the state or not, I suspect that far from all readers share this view. Those who do not might accuse this inquiry of being too lax about disciplinary boundaries, and claim that the focus on interpersonal relations and the individual level undermines its relevance to politics. My reply is to point out that I do not stop after having answered who, why, and what to contribute, but also answer the final question of how to uphold the duty, in chapter six. This question (“How should the duty to contribute be enforced?”) is a political question, and the social ethos I consider is a political phenomenon, involving central political concepts such as power and coercion.60

3.6 Distributive, productive, and contributive justice Finally, although section 4.1 will expand upon how different notions of distributive, productive, and contributive justice relate to each other, I want to remark on how my account of contributive justice relates to similar existing projects. Roughly speaking, the term contributive justice is a neologism that is intended to capture issues to do with how to fairly organise and divide the labour involved in achieving distributive justice. It is

59 I should stress, however, that Carens, “The Egalitarian Ethos as a Social Mechanism” is an important prior contribution to developing the notion of a social ethos. 60 I am not engaging with the perhaps even more explicitly political question of why individuals have a duty to obey the law, however, or the relation between justice and the legitimacy of coercive institutions. See, for instance, Klosko, “Political Obligation and the Natural Duties of Justice.” See also note 20 in chapter 4, below.

23 Chapter 1 different from the existing and rich literature discussing justice in production, since the latter primarily addresses what makes the productive process and the organisation of work just or unjust. Normative reasoning around worker participation and control, economic democracy, and the possibility of non-alienated meaningful work can be located within this tradition.61 Surprisingly, what justice says about who should contribute what and why is a much less-studied issue. Two important exceptions are the conception of contributive justice developed by Paul Gomberg, and the account of productive justice currently being developed by Lucas Stanczyk, both of which systematically aim to fulfil a similar set of desiderata as I do.62 As I understand it, a central claim in Gomberg’s account is that a society in which rewards reflect contributions cannot be just unless there is an equal opportunity to contribute. His main focus is thus how to achieve this.63 Interestingly, he suggests that a just society with a fairly distributed opportunity to contribute would have a system for sharing routine labour, such that all people have access to challenging and complex labour and no one has to spend all their time in deadening jobs. The idea of a duty to contribute in his account is quite similar to my hybrid account, in that it seems to be based on some notion of reciprocity, and of doing one’s share of the necessary labour.64 Importantly, however, Gomberg explicitly em- braces the seemingly perfectionist claim that contributing is good for us. Tracing the roots of this idea to Plato, Aristotle, and Marx, Gomberg assumes that the fundamental concern is to ensure equal access to the opportunity to contribute. Since contributing would be desirable in itself, Gomberg assumes, the duty to contribute is only a kind of backup to ensure fair contributions when, for one reason or another, people are not internally motivated by the opportunity to contribute.65 This is in a sense analogous to what I say about the idea of an ethos in chapter 6.

61 A good overview of these issues is provided by Hsieh, “Survey Article: Justice in Production.” For writings on workplace democracy and similar issues, see for instance Landemore and Ferreras, “In Defense of Workplace Democracy: Towards a Justification of the Firm–State Analogy” and Schweickart, After Capitalism. See also the recent attempt to revive Marx’s concept of unalienated labour provided by Kandiyali, “The Importance of Others.” 62Another related account is Chuang, “An Account of Contributive Justice”, although she is concerned with a much narrower topic than mine, namely issues relating to fairness in taxation, as conceived in Murphy and Nagel, The Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice. 63 Gomberg, How to Make Opportunity Equal: Race and Contributive Justice, 15. 64 Gomberg, 152; Gomberg, “Work,” 524 f. 65 “In a society where labor is shared people would be bound by norms of contributive justice: each has an opportunity (and a duty—to cover the days one may not be feeling so great) to contribute both simple and complex abilities to society…” Gomberg, “Work,” 527, emphasis added. See also Gomberg, “Why Distributive Justice Is Impossible but Contributive Justice Would Work,” 48,

24 Introduction. An account of contributive justice

Lucas Stanczyk, on the other hand, suggests that a theory of productive justice should offer an integrated response to questions around what citizens are owed and what can be expected from them. Focusing on what grounds there are for asking citizens to make productive contributions and for structuring social institutions to ensure this, Stanczyk develops what I categorise as primarily a burden-based account: everyone can be expected to contribute to ensuring the central claims of free and equal citizenship.66 Since we cannot guarantee that this happens by simply relying on incentives and market mechanisms to induce people to take the relevant jobs, this is a rather radical thesis, which Stanczyk believes might justify certain institutional restrictions on the freedom of occupational choice.67 I believe that I share much of the general motivation behind Gomberg’s and Stanczyk’s accounts, and I am indebted to Stanczyk especially; for instance, when it comes to how to understand the basic questions addressed. Yet, there are also important differences that distinguish my account. The main dividing line between me and Gomberg is that I try to avoid making perfectionist assumptions when explaining why we ought to contribute. As I indicated initially, I do not claim that contributing is either instrumentally or intrinsically good for us. Rather, my case rather rests solely on the assumption that contributions are needed in order to realise ideals of justice.68 Moreover, I believe that the largest difference between Stanczyk’s and my account is that his primary focus is “…what a society’s institutions should be structured to require from persons…”69, while I focus directly on principles of justice and the individual duty. That is, Stanczyk’s aim is to offer a theory focusing on something like the basic structure of society,

where he notes that “…sometimes we just may not feel like getting up and doing our share of the necessary labor; we may feel like doing something else. So we need to recognize contribution as a duty even if it is a great good.” 66 Stanczyk, From Each. Note that my characterisation of Stanczyk’s account might be misleading, given that it is partly based on excerpts from a typescript version of a book that is unpublished at the time of this writing. 67 Stanczyk, “Productive Justice.” 68 One reason to resist Gomberg’s perfectionism is that it requires controversial assumptions about what routine labour is, and which tasks people ought to be freed from. For example, if parenting is viewed as a burden, a duty to share the (socially necessary) burdens of child-rearing is justified by the claim that no one should be denied the chance to do other work as well. Conversely, if parenting is considered as intrinsically valuable, the duty to share parental work could be justified by the claim that no one should be denied to take part in it because of other work. Either way, we take on board controversial assumptions that I believe are unnecessary for my inquiry. 69 Stanczyk, From Each, sec. Synopsis. Central to his theory is the question of “…what the state may do to summon individual contributions, not merely in emergencies such as wartime but in the all-too-common event of a critical labor shortage.” Stanczyk, “Productive Justice,” 145.

25 Chapter 1 and how it may legitimately induce people to make productive contributions. On my account this is secondary, because I primarily focus on what justice requires of individuals, and why. That said, as I see it, the three approaches are not incompatible, but rather different ways of addressing a similar set of basic concerns.70 Note, finally, that my account should be understood as independent of Gomberg’s, even though we use the same label of contributive justice. The reason why I write of “contributive” rather than “productive” justice is because it signals that valuable contributions from individuals include, but extend beyond, contributions made in production as traditionally conceived. Stanczyk also affirms this, but I believe the term contributive justice makes it more apparent.

3.7 Summary – What the account contributes There are, in sum, two kinds of contributions made by this inquiry. One is negative, and consists of the numerous ways in which my critical analysis reveals the blind spots, shortcomings and limitations of existing political- philosophical work on the idea of a duty to contribute, including the idea of a division of labour, equality-, reciprocity-, and burden-based accounts, the market solution, and the idea of an ethos. The serious philosophical and interpretative work that is conducted in the dissertation helps us to assess these ideas, and goes some way towards demonstrating some of the deficiencies of current political practices encouraging individuals to work. Another kind of contribution is positive, however, and consists of the defence of the hybrid account and the idea of an ethos as a way to uphold commitment to a duty to contribute. As I explained above, I believe that the hybrid account is the best way to capture the central intuitions around what justice requires of individuals and why, and that the combination of the different aspects allows us to cancel out some of their shortcomings. As I indicate in the final chapter, this can go some way towards showing what can be expected of individuals as we strive realise a just society.

70 Stanczyk and I seem to agree that a full theory addressing these questions should, ideally, contain both an institutional and an individual focus. Private communication, November 2018.

26 Introduction. An account of contributive justice

4. Theoretical framework A crucial assumption in this inquiry is that justice requires something. Since most of the dissertation will proceed through detailed discussions of what this rather opaque assumption entails, rather than the assumption itself, it is necessary to devote parts of this introduction to stating clearly what is encapsulated in it.71 Therefore, sections 4.1–4.4 clarify how justice can be conceived, and introduces distinctions that will be central to the analysis in the body of the dissertation. Section 4.5 then explains the ways in which justice can be thought to require something, and the way in which I will use this phrase in the dissertation. Section 5, finally, explains how I conceive of political philosophical research, and how the dissertation will answer its guiding questions.

4.1 Preliminary notes on the taxonomic tree of justice If there is any assumption that unites the elaborate and complex theories of justice debated by political philosophers, it is perhaps that justice has to do with each getting what they are due. This captures a fundamental assumption of equality, reflecting that most modern and broadly speaking liberal theories of justice see people as equals in some sense: everyone counts, and each is due something.72 It is also abstract enough to enable the concept of justice to be used within both legal and political philosophy. Specifically, I have in mind how we often speak of corrective or retributive justice as the principles or ideals addressing wrongs that arise from what we ordinarily think of as criminal behaviour: the punishment due to thieves, and the compensation due to their victims, for instance. I will not address issues relating to this branch of the taxonomic tree of justice, but instead focus on what is commonly called social or distributive justice. These terms are often, but not always, used synonymously, and they signal a concern with how benefits and burdens of social cooperation ought to be distributed so that each gets his or her due.73 We could, perhaps, distinguish them by saying that the latter has to do with dividing economic or

71 See, however, section 2 of chapter 3. 72 See, for instance, Miller, “Justice,” sec. 1; Cohen, RJE, 7; Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy, 3–5. 73 Tracing the conceptual history of social and distributive justice, Jackson, “The Conceptual His- tory of Social Justice” supports the claim that the terms have often been used synonymously, and suggests that it was not until the late eighteenth century that people started conceiving of them as virtues applying to society, rather than to persons. Similarly, that was the first time that people

27 Chapter 1 material goods, while the former is a wider concept, concerning the distribution of less tangible benefits and burdens of social cooperation as well. I will not make this distinction, however, but treat the two as synonymous. The analytical clarity we need can be achieved by further qualifications, to be introduced in the next section, rather than by defining these concepts narrowly.74 Importantly, however, the aim of this dissertation is to provide an account of what I have called contributive justice. As I mentioned above, I conceive of contributive justice as having to do with how to fairly organise and divide the labour involved in achieving distributive justice. One way of making the distinction is to say that, if distributive justice takes what is produced as a given and asks how principles of justice suggest it should be distributed, then contributive justice takes principles of distributive justice as a given and asks who should contribute what in order to best satisfy them. I will argue, however, that they are not rival but parallel and interdependent issues. Conceptions of distributive justice can be made more convincing by taking contributive issues seriously, and conceptions of contributive justice cannot overlook distributive issues. As I will explain in chapter 5, contributive justice depends on distributive justice in the sense that we cannot know what a contribution is unless we know why justice requires that we contribute, and what our contributions are for. Similarly, I argue in chapter 4 that focusing solely on how to fairly share the burden of producing what people are due as a matter of justice, means that we will overlook how to fairly distribute that which is produced over and above this. So, although I believe contributive issue is a neglected issue in much contemporary political theorising, I am not claiming that contributive justice replaces distributive justice or vice versa.75 Furthermore, I do not claim that it is impossible to subsume questions about contribution under the concept of distributive justice. That is, the concept of contributive justice would perhaps be superfluous if we defined distributive justice broadly enough, such that it included questions of how to distribute the burdens began recognising a justice-based call for reduced inequality as distinct from a similar demand based on charity. 74 That is, I prefer to distinguish varieties of distributive justice by their site, ground, scope, and currency rather than conceptually. See Olsaretti, “Introduction: The Idea of Distributive Justice” for an overview of some of the distinct ways of defining these concepts in the contemporary literature, and an alternative way of distinguishing between different theories of distributive justice. 75 Note that Rawls, TJ, 76 f. distinguishes between distributive and allocative justice by suggesting that the latter takes a set of resources as given, while the former recognises prior claims and other issues that arise in the production process. I intend my use of distributive justice above to do so as well.

28 Introduction. An account of contributive justice of ensuring a just distribution. The main reason why I maintain the distinction is simply that I believe it helps to stress the importance of engaging with an overlooked issue. Note, finally, that phrasing the central question of the dissertation as asking, simply, what “justice” requires of individuals, risks leading to some confusion. The way I conceive it, however, “justice” is a broader concept than distributive justice. Anticipating the discussion in section 4.5, below, and in section 4 of chapter 6, we could describe this in terms of necessary but not sufficient conditions: Contributive justice is needed for there to be distributive justice, and distributive justice is needed for there to be justice, broadly speaking. But justice could very well also require other things, to which individuals can, or cannot, contribute. When I say that justice requires individuals to contribute, I thus mean that unless they do so, there cannot be distributive justice, and by extension, justice. But there might be other necessary conditions for there to be justice. My answer to the central question of what justice requires of individuals is hence not exhaustive.

4.2 The scope, ground, site, and currency of justice Instead of specifying the character of a given conception of justice defini- tionally, I believe a better way is to identify what it says about the proper scope, ground, site, and currency of justice.76 Questions about the scope of justice, on this view, deal with among whom principles of justice apply, such as within or across countries, or within or across generations. Ques- tions about the ground of justice have to do with the reasons for why justice matters, such as whether it is intrinsically or instrumentally valuable. Questions about the site of justice are concerned with where principles of justice apply, and specifically whether they are limited to guiding the actions of the state, or if they also extend to individual behaviour. Finally, questions about the currency of justice are concerned with what it is that is to be distributed in accordance with justice, such as income or welfare. As I have indicated, my answers to who should contribute and why, developed in chapters 2 through 4, reject the conventional position that the site of justice is institutions, or the basic structure of society, and defend substantial individual duties of justice on the ground that individual

76 I adopt the three first terms from Kok-Chor Tan, Justice, Institutions, and Luck, who uses them to distinguish between conceptions of egalitarian distributive justice. The term “currency” is adopted from Cohen, “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice.”

29 Chapter 1 behaviour can and does affect how just a society is. In order to provide an extensive argument in favour of these specific answers to the site and ground questions, this dissertation is forced to abstract from the scope question and the issue of global justice.77 This is unfortunate but necessary, since it would be nearly impossible for one dissertation to develop an account that can apply both within and across countries. I nevertheless believe that the more complex issue of global justice is easier to approach once we have a satisfying account of the simpler case of considering one society, and will hence focus on the latter.78 If I were to speculate, I would say that the account offered will give seemingly conflicting advice if applied to the global level, because its different parts clearly pull in different directions: As the next sections will explain, the reciprocity-based parts of my account could be understood as attaching importance to social cooperation as a foundation for justice, while the burden-based and equality- based parts attach less significance to subjects interacting for justice to apply. The former suggests that the duty to contribute changes depending on its scope of application, and would require different things from com- patriots than it would from humans generally. The second part, however, suggests that there are some duties of justice that apply regardless of scope. I can only offer these silhouettes of thoughts, and note that working out the details must be left to future research projects.79

77 Note that I will use the verb ”abstract” in the technical sense discussed by O’Neill, Towards Justice and Virtue, 40 f., who suggests that “[a]bstraction, taken straightforwardly, is a matter of bracketing, but not of denying, predicates that are true of the matter under discussion. Abstraction in this strict sense is theoretically and practically unavoidable, and often ethically important. All uses of language must be more or less abstract; so must all reasoning.” On this view, a theory which abstracts from a phenomenon is simply silent about it. This is often contrasted with the practice of building theories upon idealised assumptions about how the world works. Even though it might be difficult to tell whether a particular assumption is an idealisation or abstraction, there are at least some cases, such as the one above, that are best categorised as the kind of bracketing I have in mind. Cf. List and Valentini, “The Methodology of Political Theory,” 544. 78 For what it is worth, Rawls, TJ, 7 shares this view, and tries to “…formulate a reasonable conception of justice for the basic structure of society conceived for the time being as a closed system isolated from other societies. […] With suitable modifications such a theory should provide the key for some of these other questions.” 79 Non-cosmopolitan views about global justice typically argue that there is something special about the relationships between people who share a culture, nation, or state, or who participate in the same scheme of social cooperation, that explains why the scope of egalitarian justice is indeed restricted. See, for instance, Rawls, The Law of Peoples; Nagel, “The Problem of Global Justice”, and Sangiovanni, “Global Justice, Reciprocity, and the State.” What I call outcome-based accounts in the next sub-section, on the other hand, care less about there being the right kind of relations for justice to apply. For instance, Richard Arneson describes the luck egalitarian view as an “asocial” account, although I believe “non-interactionist” is a more suitable term. Because it is only the facts that some are worse off than others and that this can be remedied that matter, he suggests that luck

30 Introduction. An account of contributive justice

Finally, another important characteristic of theories of distributive justice is what it is that ought to be distributed justly – what the so-called “currency” of distributive justice is. Although popular discussion and actual egalitarian policies often seem to regard income and wealth as that which is to be distributed equally, most theorists offer more complex suggestions. Rawls, for instance, focuses on so-called primary social goods, and Ronald Dworkin forcefully defends resources in a wider sense. In the ensuing debate, strong cases have also been made in defence of so-called capabilities, access to advantage, or simply welfare.80 I will not recapitulate this debate, since the account defended in this dissertation is generally not committed to any particular answer, and should be compatible with di- verging standpoints as to what it is that distributive justice distributes. In some places, I discuss a specific currency, such as “human flourishing”, but in general the reader should be free to insert their favoured currency of justice into my account.81

4.3 Outcome-based and procedure-focused theories of justice Importantly, much of my argument relies upon a further distinction, which is less widely recognised but arguably more fundamental than the questions above. It is somewhat similar to the well-known philosophical distinction between consequentialist and deontological moral theories, which identify the right- and wrong-making characteristics of an action either in what the action brings about or in the act itself. Correspondingly, I suggest that, when making judgements about what is just and unjust, some theories primarily assess states of affairs while others primarily look

egalitarianism “…contains nothing inside itself that provides a rationale for confining its scope.” Arneson, “Luck Egalitarianism: A Primer,” 46. Unlike reciprocity-based accounts, such outcome- based views thus seem to pull towards cosmopolitanism about global justice. 80 Rawls, TJ, xiii; 54; Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, chaps. 1–2; Sen, Inequality Reexamined; Cohen, “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice”; Arneson, “Equality and Equal Opportunity for Welfare.” 81 In chapter 4, I introduce and discuss the assumption that to contribute is to provide a good or service that others value or need. At first glance, it might seem that this understanding of what a contribution is might gear my account towards some, but not other, currencies. Yet, it is important to point out that contributions need not necessarily be “in” the relevant currency of distributive justice, but that they are means towards an end. Welfarists, for instance, do not have to claim that we have an individual duty to contribute welfare, whatever that would mean. Rather, they would say that we should make contributions that lead to welfare. The same point applies, I believe, regardless of the currency we ultimately prefer.

31 Chapter 1 at procedures. Roughly, they focus either on the outcome of a process or on the process itself.82 The former view captures important intuitions and is characteristic of views like responsibility-sensitive egalitarianism. This family of theories, to which the much-discussed view called luck egalitarianism belongs, assumes a baseline of equality and holds that it is morally bad – unjust or unfair – if some are worse off than others through no fault or choice of their own.83 This reflects that the object of analysis is the distribution itself: What is just or unjust is ultimately the state of affairs being assessed, and the procedures that govern social interaction are only important in the instrumental sense that they help shape a more or less just outcome. Even though these theories are not necessarily committed to equality of outcome rather than, say, equality of opportunity, I will refer to them with the potentially misleading term “outcome-based”. This name is supposed to reflect that it is states of affairs – or outcomes of procedures – that are the primary subject of justice assessments. The point is that on this view, individuals can act unjustly, for instance by upsetting a just distribution or, as I claim in this dissertation, by failing to contribute to a just distribution. Justice as a virtue of individuals is derived from it being a virtue of states of affairs: an individual obligation to contribute to justice is grounded in having the capacity to help bring about a more just state of affairs.84

82 As I indicate in the text, this is not a typical distinction in the literature on justice. To avoid misunderstandings, note that it is not identical to the similar and well-known distinction between end-state and historical principles of justice, and between patterned and non-patterned principles, set out in Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 153–60. Nozick famously defended an entitlement theory that is historical and non-patterned, arguing that we should accept any distribution of holdings that follows from a procedure based on his principles of just acquisition and just transfer. In light of what I say below, superimposing my distinction on Nozick’s shows that all outcome- based theories are patterned, since they prescribe distribution according to some independent standard, but only some are historical, since not all of them hold that this standard depends on what people have done. Justice as strict equality, for instance, is patterned but not historical; it does not matter how strict equality has come about, only that it exists. Luck egalitarianism as conceived by, for instance Temkin, “Justice, Equality, Fairness, Desert, Rights, Free Will, Responsibility, and Luck,” 61–69, is both patterned and historical, since some inequalities are just depending on whether people are responsible for them or not. On a more general note, van der Veen and van Parijs, “Entitlement Theories of Justice,” 71 f., point out that, although Nozick’s theory is indeed historical and non-patterned regarding distribution of income, his assertion that self-ownership should be equal, means that it is at least partly an end-state and patterned theory. 83 Temkin, Inequality, 13; Cohen, RJE, 7. See also Lippert-Rasmussen, Luck Egalitarianism, 1. 84 Cf. Arneson, “Luck Egalitarianism: A Primer,” 44, who writes that ”[f]rom a luck egalitarian standpoint, what generates distributive justice obligations is the sheer fact that some people are leading avoidably bad lives, or anyway lives whose quality is not high as measured by an appropriate standard, and other people are better off and able to help”. See also Vallentyne, “Justice, Interper- sonal Morality, and Luck Egalitarianism.”

32 Introduction. An account of contributive justice

Contrast this with what I will call procedure-focused theories of justice, of which Rawls’s theory is perhaps the primary example. Rawls famously suggests that “Justice is the first virtue of social institutions…”85 and that principles of social justice “…provide a way of assigning rights and duties in the basic institutions of society and they define the appropriate distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation.”86 For Rawls, the procedure to which principles of justice apply is society itself, conceived as a fair system of cooperation over time – it is the cooperation as such that is more or less just.87 Now, although Rawls’s difference principle has been adopted in the wider debate as a possible standard to assess the justice of a distribution – only admitting inequalities that are to the benefit of the worst off – it is merely one part of the greater Rawlsian project, in which distributions matter only insofar as they affect individuals’ status as free and equal citizens.88 Thus, Rawlsians claim that properly interpreted, the difference principle cannot judge a distribution as just or unjust on its own. Rawls’s theory is rather about a kind of procedural justice, in which “…the correctness of the distribution is founded on the justice of the scheme of cooperation from which it arises and on answering the claims of individuals engaged in it”.89 Justice as a virtue of individuals, on this view, is a function of their respecting the regulations of this social cooperation: an individual obligation to contribute to justice is grounded in one having to do one’s part in just procedures.90

85 TJ 3. 86 TJ 4. 87 Rawls, Political Liberalism, 15 ff; Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 5 f; Rawls, TJ, 29. 88 This line of reasoning can be exemplified by Rawls’s notion of ”background justice”, discussed in chapter 2 below, which suggests Rawls thinks that distribution can be ”…left to take care of itself in accordance with pure procedural justice regulated by just background institutions…” Rawls, TJ, 478. 89 Rawls, 76. Examples of such a Rawlsian reading is Freeman, Rawls, 125 ff., and Anderson’s position summarised in the next footnote. 90 Rawls specifically includes “natural duties of justice” for individuals in his account, although they are limited to individuals having to facilitate just institutions and should be seen as less demanding than the account I defend. I discuss this further in chapter 2. Importantly, Elizabeth S. Anderson has famously attacked the luck egalitarian view (she even coined the name), partly because she disagrees with its focus on states of affairs instead of procedures. In the wake of her influential critique, so-called relational egalitarians have argued that a just society is not characterised by everyone getting the right amount of something, but rather that they can function as democratic citizens, and relate to each other as equals rather than in hierarchies. This, it is assumed, does not require, and can even be prevented by, insisting that just distributions are responsibility sensitive. Anderson, “What Is the Point of Equality?”; Anderson, “The Fundamental Disagreement between Luck Egalitarians and Relational Egalitarians”; Scheffler, “What Is Egalitarianism?”; Wolff, “Social Equality and Social Inequality. Furthermore, Anderson, “The Fundamental Disagreement between

33 Chapter 1

While theoretically useful, I recognise that the distinction between procedure-focused and outcome-based theories of justice might be difficult to maintain in practice. Few theorists in either camp would, I believe, occupy the extreme position and deny that the other aspect matters. Luck egalitarianism, after all, decides what a fair outcome is with reference to how it has come about. This is the function of the “through no fault or choice of their own” clause. Similarly, procedure-focused theories like Rawls’s arguably assume that fair processes presuppose minimally fair background conditions. Hence, many would probably embrace a flexibility with regard to what to emphasise in different situations. When distributing indivisible and extremely scarce goods, for instance, even outcome-based theorists might agree that the procedure of a fair coin toss is the best way to allocate resources. Even if the distinction partly collapses, this is no embarrassment for my argument, however, but quite the opposite: just as it is implausible to insist that either procedures or outcomes are the only relevant focus, it is implausible to refer to just one of them as the ground for a duty to contribute to justice. Since distributive justice contains aspects of both, the duty to contribute should as well. So, although I will not defend this distinction by discussing all possible implications, I believe it is justified by the way in which it will, together with the final distinction introduced below, help explain the shortcomings of accounts that attempt to ground a duty to contribute by appealing to one of equality, reciprocity, or fairly sharing burdens.

4.4 Comparative and non-comparative justice I noted initially that what characterises theories of justice is that they are concerned with each person getting what they are due. The final distinction discussed here relates to how to spell out what this means. I will not offer a full theory of who is due what and why, since that would require a dissertation of its own and would prevent us from ever getting to the questions I want to pursue here. In order to structure the discussion, and to

Luck Egalitarians and Relational Egalitarians,” 19 claims Rawls for her camp and argues that we simply cannot decide what justice requires independently of what can be required by individuals. Although I think relational egalitarians make many important observations about the shortcomings of outcome-based egalitarianism, I will not address their objections explicitly, even though I par- tially adopt an outcome-based approach in working out my account. This is partly because I believe they are not rival but, in fact, compatible and complementary accounts of what justice requires, a reply that has been defended in, for instance, Lippert-Rasmussen, Relational Egalitarianism. A duty to contribute to relational egalitarianism might nevertheless require very different things from individuals than the kind of duty I discuss does, but I am unable to pursue this further here.

34 Introduction. An account of contributive justice enable the analysis below, however, I will employ a distinction between different kinds of answers to these questions. The philosopher Joel Fein- berg famously argued that there is a difference between comparative and non-comparative justice, reflecting different ways of deciding what each is due. Comparative views assume that it matters how individuals fare relative to each other, such that what you are due depends in part on what others are due. Non-comparative views maintain that information about what others get does not matter for how much you should get. Feinberg illustrates the comparative view with the example of a prize in a competi- tion, which clearly should be awarded to the person who is better than everyone else. What matters is not your absolute performance, but whether you perform better than all your rivals. The non-comparative view, on the other hand, is best illustrated by grades, which should be set only with regard to how well a particular student lives up to the external standard of grading criteria.91 It does not matter how other students do on a test, since the only relevant comparison is between your performance and the grading criteria. Egalitarian theories such as luck egalitarianism are essentially comparative views of justice, because they hold that the central question when evaluating a distribution is whether there is equality between people, and comparing what one person has with what others have is necessary to answer this.92 Conversely, non-comparative theories of justice assume that what matters is how people fare in absolute terms. Following Feinberg, much of the discussion around this issue has primarily focused on desert as a non- comparative basis for what people are due. Roughly, desert-based conceptions of justice hold that what each is due depends on how deserving they are, according to the standard presented in the particular account. Within a certain form of procedure-focused and desert-based theory of justice, people earning high salaries could be thought to deserve it, for instance because the work they do is difficult or dangerous, or because their talents are in high demand in the market.93 I will employ the notion of non-comparative justice in a broader sense, however, assuming that there are other non-comparative bases for what people are due. So-called sufficientarianism, for instance, holds that justice is about making sure that everyone has

91 Feinberg, “Noncomparative Justice,” 299. 92 Lippert-Rasmussen, Luck Egalitarianism, 5. 93 Miller, Market, State, and Community defends something like this view of the market, while Olsaretti, Liberty, Desert and the Market: A Philosophical Study and my chapter 5, below, question it.

35 Chapter 1 enough. Being essentially outcome-focused, it holds that we should ensure that no one is badly off, or that people’s basic needs or rights are satisfied, but it denies that it matters whether the surplus above this minimum is distributed more or less equally. What each is non-comparatively due is to be brought up to the sufficiency level, and consequently it does not matter to justice whether some are worse off than others above this level.94 On my interpretation, all theories specifying that there are some things people are due regardless of what others get have non-comparative elements. For what it is worth, I do not believe that we need to assume that all of our intuitions about justice should be covered by either comparative or non-comparative principles. On the contrary, I believe, and I suspect that many agree, that justice has both comparative and non-comparative aspects, such that it matters how well people fare in both absolute and relative terms.95 Just as I trust that the distinction between outcome-based and procedure-focused views is defended by the analytical work it does in my argument, I will not substantially defend the view that justice has both comparative and non-comparative elements here. This is both because there is a limit to how deep any dissertation can go into fundamental questions about justice without losing focus on its aim, and because I believe the assumption gains support from the way in which it helps to reveal shortcomings in the three alternative ways of grounding a duty to contribute discussed in the dissertation. We will consequently return to these distinctions in chapters 3 and 4.

4.5 What does it mean for justice to require something? A straightforward way of spelling out what it means to say that a principle or ideal like justice requires individuals to do certain things, is that the performance of those things is a necessary condition for justice to be realised. Just as there must be heat, fuel, and an oxidising agent present for

94 The paradigmatic example of this view is stated in Frankfurt, “Equality as a Moral Ideal.” Simi- larly, Anderson, “What Is the Point of Equality?” argues that people should be able to function as equal members of a democratic society, but that inequalities above this level are insignificant to justice. See also Brock, “Sufficiency and Needs-Based Approaches.” Note that, although it is not common, sufficientarian positions can be comparative as well; for instance, if they define the level of sufficiency relative to the average. For a discussion, see Lippert-Rasmussen, Luck Egalitarianism, 28 f. And they could be conceived of as procedure-focused if, for instance, they decide who is due the minimum on the basis of whether or not they are part of the relevant procedures. 95 I believe this is a fairly common view. See, for instance Miller, “Justice,” sec. 2.4. Furthermore, I argue in chapter 4 that the unattractive implications just described are avoided when we relax reciprocity-based accounts by introducing non-comparative aspects.

36 Introduction. An account of contributive justice there to be a fire, we could say that there must be a certain state of affairs, or procedures, that have come about in the right way for there to be justice. So, just as the promotion of fidelity requires that people generally keep their promises, the promotion of justice requires that individuals generally discharge certain individual duties of justice, such as to support and further just institutions or to make a productive contribution to society. This simple understanding faces two immediate objections. Firstly, taken on its own, it means that the individual duty to promote justice is conditional upon justice being worthy of promotion. Knowing what fire requires is not a reason for us to start a fire, and knowing what justice requires individuals to do is not a reason for them to do it. We need some notion of normativity to explain why justice is valuable in order to get this view off the ground. Secondly, some might object that the view entails that there might be actions needed for there to be justice which no one is capable of performing. And if no individual is capable of doing what is needed for there to be justice, they might continue, then no individual can have a duty to bring about justice. Now, although this dissertation cannot venture into philosophical debates around normativity, the way in which these objections are countered indicates a commitment to certain ways of understanding justice, and I shall state these as clearly as possible for the sake of transparency. One way of responding begins by noting that, whereas one school of thought believes that principles of justice should always be able to guide our action, I subscribe to an alternative view which distinguishes between what justice is, and how and if it is achievable or feasible. That is, I will assume that an evaluative standard of justice can be justified independently of whether it also works as a prescriptive standard for agents. This means that our answer to what a perfectly just society would be like is not necessarily limited by whether such a society is achievable. Philosopher Anca Gheaus provides a lucid defence of this view, by enquiring why we ask whether an unachievable standard of justice really is a principle of justice, given that “[w]e do not even ask whether unattainable standards of beauty are still about the beautiful [or] whether unknowable truths are true…”96 Gheaus continues, and suggests that claiming that justice requires x, y, and z is analogous to claiming that, firstly, in order for a state of affairs to be just it has to fulfil criteria x, y, and z and, secondly, that someone ought to

96 Gheaus, “The Feasibility Constraint on the Concept of Justice,” 447.

37 Chapter 1 bring that state about.97 I share Gheaus’s view, and will conceive of justice as an evaluative standard – describing what justice is – that generates prescriptive demands – what should be done. In response to the first objection above, a central assumption in this dissertation is thus that declaring something to be an ideal or a value entails that, ceteris paribus, it ought to be promoted. And in response to the second objection, the distinction between evaluative and prescriptive standards means that individuals might have a duty to contribute towards realising justice, even if it is not possible for them to fully succeed in bringing about justice.98 One way of illustrating this is to look at what I believe is an analogous, although not identical, case in a related literature. There is an extensive debate about the duty to rescue, often exemplified by the case of a child drowning in a body of water and a passer-by who could easily rescue the child. Considering this case, many believe it is obvious that the passer-by is required to help the child, even at some cost. The main disagreement is rather around what the nature and limits of this duty are.99 Now, in explaining who is bound by such a duty, it is fairly plausible to think that whoever hears the appeal and is in a position to help has a reason to do so – the duty attaches, as it were, to any relevantly situated agent.100 Notwithstanding the possible differences between a duty of rescue and a duty of justice, I believe they share this feature. Just as an agent who is in a position to bring about the good outcome of saving the child is required to do so, an agent who is in a position to bring about a just outcome is required to do so.101 If correct, this view answers the first objection above

97 Gheaus, 457. See also Temkin, “Justice, Equality, Fairness, Desert, Rights, Free Will, Responsi- bility, and Luck,” 60, and Vallentyne, “Justice, Interpersonal Morality, and Luck Egalitarianism.” I expand on this interpretation in chapters 3 and 7. Note that this kind of view is controversial, and has been met with criticism in, for instance List and Valentini, “The Methodology of Political Theory,” 535 f; Valentini, “Ideal vs. Non-Ideal Theory: A Conceptual Map,” 657, and Wiens, “‘Going Evaluative’ to Save Justice from Feasibility—a Pyrrhic Victory.” 98 Some might object to this view by claiming that it is somehow bad for individuals to constantly fail to act justly. In response, it seems to me that we constantly fail to live up to the moral or other ideals we aspire to in our daily lives, without necessarily crumbling under cognitive dissonance. 99 Singer, “Famine, Affluence and Morality”; Temkin, “Being Good in a World of Need: Some Empirical Worries and an Uncomfortable Philosophical Possibility”; Miller, “The Nature and Lim- its of the Duty of Rescue.” 100 The points of contention will of course be what a “relevantly situated agent”, who “is in a position to help” means, but we can abstract from this complication here. 101 To be specific, the agent is plausibly understood as being required to make a fair attempt to do so. Somewhat more complicated, if there are several agents nearby who hear the child, not all of them have to save the child and they might decide among themselves who should ultimately do it, as long as time and epistemic constraints allow. An able-bodied trained lifeguard might, for in-

38 Introduction. An account of contributive justice by connecting the prescriptive demands of justice to the evaluative standard. And it answers the second objection by showing that the question of whether justice can be brought about, and whether asking individuals to work towards it is reasonable or too costly is secondary. Hoping that these answers are sufficient for now, I continue the discussion of this way of understanding the demands of justice in chapter 2, and offer an extended reply to these and similar objections in chapter 7. Note, finally, that this way of understanding what it means for justice to require something speaks against the view that some agents are bound by its requirements while others are not. Anyone who hears the call is, I believe, required to respond, albeit in a suitable way. An underlying assumption throughout this dissertation will thus be that the ideal of justice calls out, as it were, an imperative to become realised, and whoever hears it and can act upon it is bound to do so, institutions and individuals alike. Chapter 2 develops this idea, and specifically argues against the view that principles of justice applies primarily to institutions and in favour of the view that they rather apply to any agent capable of acting on them. That is, the same reasons why institutions ought to promote justice also constitute reasons for individuals to promote justice. Hence, the very fact that justice could be promoted is a reason for agents who can do something about it to do so; they ought to bring it about.

4.6 Summary – How the account conceives of justice Section 4 has introduced and discussed a number of central distinctions that will form part of the theoretical and analytical framework that drives the argument in this dissertation. The following matrix helps to summarise the discussion up to this point, and includes illustrations of how the positions can be combined. It is clear that what justice requires of individuals depends upon which cell we occupy and how we spell out further details.

stance, be better suited to help the child than an elderly and frail person; the person who is responsible for the child ending up in the pond might be obligated in a different sense than a person who just happens to be passing by. Similarly, if no individual agent has the capacity to save the child alone the individuals might be required to undertake joint action or create a group agent capable of doing so. Perhaps a single rescuer would be swept away by strong currents, while several rescuers working together could avoid this by, for instance, holding hands to form a human chain. Both of these last claims are, of course, points of contention, especially in the literature on global justice. For arguments in favour of the last point, see Schwenkenbecher, “Joint Duties and Global Moral Obligations” and Gilabert, “Debate: Feasibility and Socialism.”

39 Chapter 1

Note, however, that these illustrations are not the only possible examples of each combination.102

Table 1: Justice, non-comparative/comparative & procedure-focused/outcome-based Procedure-focused Outcome-based Non-com- Market-based desertist Burden-based accounts parative accounts

Compara- Reciprocity-based Luck egalitarianism tive accounts

Assume, for instance, a theory in the top-left cell which holds that markets track desert, and that the currency of justice is market income. On this view, many of the inequalities typically produced in a market-based economy are not unjust but are in fact prescribed by justice, since the procedure of market mechanisms is assumed both to decide what people deserve, and to distribute accordingly.103 An outcome-based and comparative view, such as the luck egalitarianism in the bottom-right cell, on the other hand, would instead say that what matters is that the outcome is comparatively fair. Hence, procedures only matter to the extent that they produce such outcomes. The analysis in chapter 4 shows that pure reciprocity-based accounts can be characterised as procedure-focused and comparative, while pure burden-based accounts are outcome-based and non-comparative. It also suggests that this explains their respective shortcomings. By contrast, this section, together with the actual analysis in the body of the dissertation, suggests that the most promising way forward is to strive for a way to combine procedure-focused and outcome-based views, and non-comparative and comparative concerns. This is what leads us towards the hybrid account eventually defended, which reflects the values of equality, reciprocity, and the fair sharing of burdens. The focus on equality is motivated by the fact that many would unde- niably agree that equality is a central aspect of justice, perhaps especially

102 Note, further, that the top-left and bottom-right examples concern distribution, while the other two concern contribution. 103 I discuss procedure-focused market-centred theories, such as Ronald Dworkin’s, in chapter 5. Note, however, that Dworkin has a much more complex and nuanced view than the one just mentioned.

40 Introduction. An account of contributive justice so in outcome-based theories.104 It is, for instance, the central value in Co- hen’s influential account of a duty to contribute, discussed in chapter 3, specifying that individuals ought to contribute to bring about equality to the extent that they reasonably can. The main argument in that chapter, however, is that an account that only relies on equality is ultimately inadequate, because it is wholly comparative: While an equality-based view like Cohen’s can indeed require that individuals must not demand equality- upsetting incentives if they decide to work harder, the lack of a non-comparative aspect means that his view could only require them to work harder in cases where doing so was necessary to bring up the worst off to a level of equality. To avoid this problem, I argue, his view must be complemented by a non-comparative principle, dictating what people are due regardless of what others get. The focus on reciprocity is motivated by the consideration that it is similarly heralded as a central value of justice, perhaps especially so in procedure-focused theories.105 Nevertheless, I claim in chapter 4 that just like Cohen’s purely equality-based account, reciprocity-based accounts of a duty to contribute have similar shortcomings. This is because reciprocity- based accounts are procedure-focused, claiming that the obligation to contribute is rooted in the fact that one has benefitted from the contributions of others, and that the right to take part of those benefits is conditional upon making a contribution. While the comparative and procedure-focused nature of this view can specify that individuals who have benefited from others’ contributions have an obligation to contribute something that benefits them, the lack of a non-comparative, outcome-based aspect means it cannot explain plausible intuitions about why those who happen to lack the ability to contribute should still be granted access to the social

104 This is reflected, for instance, in the dictum that like cases should be treated alike. At the very least, it seems as though the absence of the right kind of equality is a sufficient condition for a distribution to be unjust. See Lippert-Rasmussen, Luck Egalitarianism, 3. 105 Stuart White reviews the place of reciprocity in theories of justice and offers a substantial theory with reciprocity at its core, in White, “The Left and Reciprocity” and White, The Civic Minimum, chap. 3. Rawls notes that the difference principles includes a form of reciprocity, since “…the better endowed (who have a more fortunate place in the distribution of native endowments they do not morally deserve) are encouraged to acquire still further benefits […] on condition that they train their native endowments and use them in ways that contribute to the good of the less endowed (whose less fortunate place in the distribution they also do not morally deserve). Reciprocity is a moral idea situated between impartiality, which is altruistic, on the one side and mutual advantage on the other.” Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 76 f.

41 Chapter 1 product, and that it is indifferent between reciprocal cooperation producing more rather than fewer goods and services. Avoiding these problems requires such theories to include non-comparative considerations. Finally, the focus on fairly sharing burdens is motivated by the fact that few, if any, views are in fact purely based on equality or reciprocity. Any reciprocity-based view that adopts outcome-focused or non-comparative aspects to avoid shortcomings like the one I have just illustrated, essentially makes the claim that there are certain goods and resources that people are due as a matter of justice, regardless of whether they have contributed or not. These accounts thus have to answer questions about how to distribute the burden of satisfying the non-comparative standard, and I will argue that a plausible answer is that individuals ought to contribute to the socially necessary labour needed to ensure that people receive what they are due as a matter of justice. Section 1 declared that this dissertation defends a weaker and a stronger thesis. The weaker thesis states that each of these three aspects of justice can explain a corresponding duty to contribute to justice, while the stronger thesis states that all of these aspects are important parts of justice and that a hybrid account is the more attractive way of grounding a duty to contribute. It is hopefully clear by now that the weaker thesis should be accepted even by those who disagree with the understanding of justice that grounds the stronger thesis. Regardless of which cell in the matrix that we occupy – that is, as long as one accepts that justice is either outcome-based or procedure-focused, and that it has either comparative or non-comparative element – we should recognise that there are reasons to think that justice requires people to contribute. This dissertation argues, further, that the hybrid account is ultimately more attractive, because it incorporates both outcome- and procedure-focused aspects, and assumes that justice has both comparative and non-comparative elements. Consequently, the hybrid account cannot be placed in any of the cells in the matrix a few pages above. Yet, even if one is not ultimately convinced that my hybrid account is the best way to ground a duty to contribute, it is difficult to deny that some form of a duty to contribute follows from each of equality, reciprocity, and the idea of fairly sharing burdens.106

106 We might ask, at this point, why the inquiry only includes these aspects. Might there be additional parts of justice beyond these three? Apart from the common reply of pointing out that every study is necessarily limited by time and resources, the main reason for restricting the inquiry to these aspects is that the question pursued is what justice requires from individuals, and why. That is, I am interested in what justice-based grounds there are for a duty to contribute, in particular. Section 4.1, above, stated that I see “justice” as a broader concept than both “distributive justice”

42 Introduction. An account of contributive justice

5. Methodological framework Finally, before the project of developing and defending an account of contributive justice can truly begin, we need to understand what it means to develop and defend claims in political philosophy. This in turn depends upon how we conceive of the purpose or aim of the discipline. There are at least two common views on this. One says, roughly, that political philosophy should help us to understand what to think about political questions. Another says, roughly, that it should ultimately help us to understand how to act, or to make political decisions. On the former understanding, an account of contributive justice is successful if it convincingly shows us the best way to think about what justice demands of individuals, regardless of whether or not it is possible to apply. Call this the theoretical goal. On the second understanding, however, the account would be fatally flawed unless it also gave us some indication of how to translate this into some form of political practice. Call this the practical goal.107 Now, most political philosophers arguably see both of these goals as desirable, although there is plenty of disagreement regarding whether they are co-achievable, and which theoretical and methodological assumptions promote one or the other, or both.108 This dissertation does not have to take a certain position within these debates. I will nevertheless note that I agree that a theory or account is better, ceteris paribus, if it both correctly identifies the best way to think about an issue and gives guidance about how to act in light of this. Yet, as I indicated in section 4.5, I do not believe and “contributive justice”. So, even though there might be additional aspects to the concept of justice, I believe these three are the most relevant and promising grounds for justifying an individual duty to contribute to justice. The next section expands the limitations inquiries such as this face, and see also note 127, below. 107 Note the similarities between the practical and theoretical goals, and the evaluative and prescriptive standards discussed in section 4.5 above. Variants of a similar distinction have been suggested by, for instance, Stemplowska and Swift, “Ideal and Nonideal Theory,” 374; Robeyns, “Ideal The- ory in Theory and Practice,” 343, and Stemplowska, “What’s Ideal About Ideal Theory?,” 329 f. Timmons, Moral Theory: An Introduction, chap. 1 suggests that a similar distinction describes moral theory in general. 108 One aspect of this is whether a theory must be realistic, or feasible, and another aspect is whether ideal theory or non-ideal theory is the best way forward. The literature on these issues is too vast to summarise here, but see Valentini, “Ideal vs. Non-Ideal Theory: A Conceptual Map” for an influential overview. Very roughly, Cohen, RJE, 268 and Estlund, Utopophobia could be said to rep- resent the former view on both issues, while Farrelly, “Justice in Ideal Theory” and Mills, “‘Ideal Theory’ as Ideology” offer influential critical accounts. It is also possible to believe in a form of division of labour, allowing political philosophers to be “democratic underlabourers” who provide one of the multiple inputs into politics. See Swift and White, “Political Theory, Social Science, and Real Politics,” 54.

43 Chapter 1 that a failure to achieve the practical goal necessarily undermines or deval- ues the theoretical goal. This becomes apparent in chapter 5, for instance, where I suggest that, even if we cannot decide how best to act on a duty to contribute, this does not mean that the very idea of such a duty should be discarded. So, how will the inquiry proceed, more specifically, in order to develop and defend an account that strives towards the evaluative and practical goals? First of all, one should not overlook the importance of utilising the methods upon which philosophy and other scholarly disciplines rely, even though they might seem trivial at first glance. This dissertation hence em- ploys language analysis, argument analysis, formalisation, and idealisation. These are crucial tools when seeking clarity and rigour, which in turn are characteristics that allow for the argument to be transparent and available for critical scrutiny by others.109 Secondly, even though moral issues seem rife with disagreement and conflicting intuitions, many philosophers op- timistically believe that careful and systematic reasoning can clear up much of this. Apart from his substantive theory, a lasting legacy of John Rawls is the justificatory mechanisms that he proposed we can employ in political philosophy. Central among these is the coherentist approach to producing moral justification that he calls reflective equilibrium.110 The process of reflective equilibrium consists of trying to achieve coherence between our considered judgements about particular cases and the principles that we believe can explain these judgements. When there is dissonance, such as where a principle we hold would yield unacceptable conclusions about a particular case, we should move back and forth between our principles and considered judgements, revising both until they are in better harmony. Importantly, neither our intuitions about specific cases nor the principles we affirm are exempt from this process, everything is open for revision. Ideally, by honestly employing this approach, we will come closer to the state of reflective equilibrium, where the coherence and mutual support of many considerations provide the justification for our considered judgements.111

109 Hansson, Verktygslära för Filosofer. 110 Rawls, TJ, 18; 30–46. To be clear, Rawls justified his theory through further means as well, including the ideas of the original position and public reason. See Scanlon, “Rawls on Justification,” 153–67. 111 Scanlon, “Rawls on Justification,” 140–53; Daniels, “Reflective Equilibrium.” Note that it is far from certain whether we can reach a state of reflective equilibrium, and moral beliefs are thus best understood as more or less – rather than absolutely – justified or unjustified. See Tersman, Reflec- tive Equilibrium, 123.

44 Introduction. An account of contributive justice

Importantly, Norman Daniels has developed this idea by distinguishing between what he calls narrow and wide reflective equilibrium. In part as a response to the charge that relying on our judgements can bias the approach towards the status quo, Daniels emphasises that it is not enough to merely seek coherence between our existing judgements and principles. Finding principles that support one’s pre-theoretical convictions only puts one in a state of narrow reflective equilibrium. If we, instead, also consider what competing principles would say, and what follows if employ different moral and empirical “background theories”, we will ideally reach a wide reflective equilibrium, providing a firmer justification of our position.112 Now, this distinction can hardly be seen as binary, and it seems clear to me that the width of a reflective equilibrium must be a question of degree. In order to reach the widest possible reflective equilibrium, we would have to perform the herculean task of considering the fit between all conceivable principles and all conceivable background theories regarding morality, its role in society, the nature of persons, and so on. This is clearly beyond not only the scope of a dissertation, but also the lifetime of a political philosopher. Indeed, even Rawls limits the justification of his theory of justice by considering only a few other moral theories, most notably contrasting it with utilitarianism.113 As I see it, then, wide reflective equilibrium is best understood as an ideal to strive towards, and all political philosophical projects – including this dissertation – will be more or less wide or narrow. The notion of reflective equilibrium is nevertheless a common way of thinking about how to do political philosophy, as well as how to justify particular claims. This might be because it is indeed difficult to think of radically different approaches that are plausible.114 Consequently, it captures important parts of how I will develop and defend my account. An illustration of this is the fact that the hybrid account I defend is motivated by arguments about what alternative accounts seem to get right and where they fail. The accounts based on just one of the three aspects of equality, reciprocity, or burden-sharing seem to yield counter-intuitive implications

112 Daniels, “Wide Reflective Equilibrium and Theory Acceptance in Ethics,” 256–59. The criticism that reflective equilibrium risks justifying existing prejudices has recently been recast in the more sophisticated form of evolutionary debunking arguments, pointing to the fact that our moral convictions are ours simply because they have promoted fitness in the evolutionary process and, hence, that they are unreliable as input into the process of reflective equilibrium. See Tersman, “Recent Work on Reflective Equilibrium and Method in Ethics,” 3–5. 113 Arras, “The Way We Reason Now,” 55 f; Rawls, TJ, 20. 114 An alternative approach would hold that some principles or intuitions can serve as a form of foundation for others. For an illuminating discussion of the relation between intuitions, coherent- ism, and foundationalism, see McMahan, “Moral Intuition.”

45 Chapter 1 when applied to particular cases and when their unattractive properties are exposed. The hybrid account does better at explaining and matching our considered judgements, and it is precisely because it partly resolves or avoids such dissonance that I believe it is justified. In this sense, at least, my account relies on something akin to Rawls’s process of reflective equilibrium, and I will return to consider how wide and narrow it is in the summarising section 5.3, below. On the other hand, some of the dissertation’s central assumptions complicates this straightforward picture, in the ways that are explained in the next sub-sections.

5.1 The pro tanto nature of the duty First of all, because a dissertation with a plausibly constrained scope cannot be justified by the widest possible reflective equilibrium, the inquiry settles for the less ambitious goal of developing an account, rather than a theory, of contributive justice. Since there is no widely recognised definition of either in political philosophy, I should stress that the distinction is simply meant to signal that the defended view is not a fully-developed theory, but rather a provisional step towards such a theory.115 One aspect of this is that – as I indicated at the outset – I do not aim to produce conclusions that fully live up to what I have described as the practical goal of political philosophy. That is, even if my account helps us to understand how to think about what justice demands of individuals, and why, it will not yield readily applicable policy recommendations or rules for individual conduct. Ra- ther, my account will conceive of an individual duty to contribute to the realisation of justice as a mere pro tanto duty. This term is intended to reflect the tradition following philosopher W. D. Ross, and specifically the idea that pro tanto can be used to qualify other moral concepts: a pro tanto principle, duty, reason, etc., has some weight, but can be trumped by other considerations of the same pro tanto kind.116 We might, for instance, hold

115 On this distinction, Rawls’s theory is precisely a theory, in part because of its systematic architecture and the way in which all of its parts interrelate in a coherent way that supports the principles at its core. My point in calling my contribution an account is to be upfront about the many ways in which it is less developed and more crude. For one attempt at defining “theory”, see List and Valentini, “The Methodology of Political Theory,” 536 ff. 116 Ross, The Right and the Good. Importantly, and somewhat confusingly, contemporary literature often uses the term pro tanto where Ross used the term prima facie principles for the same idea. Prima facie, today, has come to indicate something that appears to be a reason at first sight, pending further investigation. Shelly Kagan, The Limits of Morality, 17 summarises the contemporary convention that I follow: “A pro tanto reason has genuine weight, but nonetheless may be outweighed by other considerations. Thus, calling a reason a pro tanto reason is to be distinguished

46 Introduction. An account of contributive justice that lying is pro tanto wrong, but that its wrongness can be outweighed by the value of avoiding great harm, or that an unequal distribution is pro tanto unfair but can be justified all-things-considered if everyone is better off compared to a strictly equal distribution. This also enables us to say that outweighing does not remove the pro tanto injustice or wrongness. Consequently, although my account states that individuals have a duty of justice to contribute, this duty is not the only thing that matters, and it has to be weighed against other morally valuable actions. Importantly, any unqualified use of the term duty throughout the dissertation refers to this kind of pro tanto duty, and whenever I intend the alternative all-things- considered duty, this is explicitly stated.117 This is important for two reasons: Firstly, it constitutes a clear departure from the Rawlsian terminology of justice discussed in section 3.1, above, in ways that the next subsection will explain. Secondly, it also means that the conclusions of the study are slightly less audacious than they would be if I claimed that the duty to contribute finds support in the widest possible reflective equilibrium. Yet, if the metatheoretical assumptions to be introduced next are correct, then this is indeed all we could hope for.

5.2 Pluralism and the metatheoretical disagreement between Rawls and Cohen I believe that the very possibility of speaking of pro tanto duties presupposes a commitment to a certain form of pluralism about morality, and that this ties my account closer to Cohen’s position than to Rawls’s. Those who are familiar with the metatheoretical and methodological assumptions at the core of Cohen’s critique might hence reasonably wonder at this point what my commitment to pluralism entails. So, despite this inquiry not being an immanent critique of either thinker, or an analysis of their disagreement with regard to how to do political philosophy, it is necessary to summarise some of the central issues involved, and indicate how this dissertation relates to them. The labels pluralism and monism, confusingly, are often used differently in different debates. Two versions of the distinction are relevant for

from calling it a prima facie reason, which I take to involve an epistemological qualification: a prima facie reason appears to be a reason, but may actually not be a reason at all". 117 Note, also, that although I share Ross’s pluralism, my position does not depend on further commitments to his ethical intuitionism, such as the notion that basic principles are self-evident non-natural moral facts.

47 Chapter 1 our purposes.118 The first and perhaps most common way of understanding the distinction regards pluralism or monism about moral values: whether there are several – or just one – fundamental value. As I interpret it, pluralists like Ross, Cohen, and me, hold that there are several distinct moral values, and that we ultimately cannot resolve all moral issues by simply translating the values at stake into a single value that ought to be maximised.119 Conversely, monist theories such as utilitarianism assume that only one value, such as welfare, matters. All apparent value conflicts can be solved in principle, by translating what seems like different values into this common currency.120 This difference means that a monist utilitarian can say, for instance, that lying is right through and through – there is nothing wrong with it – if it maximises welfare, while a pluralist might say that lying might be pro tanto wrong but all- things-considered the right thing to do. The weight metaphor captures this: Adding something heavy to one side of a pair of scales might cause the object on the other side to move up, but it does not affect the absolute weight of that object. On the pluralist view, outweighing thus does not remove – it only compensates for – the pro tanto badness that the decrease in another value constitutes.121 Complicating this picture, I suggest that it is possible to be a pluralist about moral values in general, but a monist when thinking of particular values, such as justice. This allows for an additional interpretation of the distinction, which better captures the core of Rawls’s and Cohen’s disagreement. 122 Pluralism about justice is the narrower view that the particular

118 The unfortunate recycling of the dualism/monism terminology is noted by Thomas, “Cohen’s Critique of Rawls: A Double Counting Objection,” 1118, n. 33. Note that Rawls also writes about pluralism when he discusses the fact that in any society there will be a plurality of conceptions of the nature of the human good. Since that is not a thesis about the nature of morality I will leave it unaddressed here. See, for instance, Rawls, Political Liberalism, xix ff. 119 The influential pluralist Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” 172 f., for instance, defends liberty by claiming that “[e]verything is what it is: liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or culture, or human happiness or a quiet conscience.” 120 In theorising about justice, Ronald Dworkin is perhaps the most well-known proponent of something like this view, defending a kind of “unity of value” that rejects the pluralism just described. See, for instance, Dworkin, Justice for Hedgehogs.. 121 For more on value pluralism, see Timmons, Moral Theory: An Introduction, chap. 12. 122 There is a third possible interpretation of the distinction, where Cohen is arguably a monist about the application of principle(s) of justice, while Rawls is a pluralist. As chapter 2 discusses, Rawls clearly holds the view that there are different principles of justice, regulating different aspects of social life. On this distinction, Cohen appears to be a monist because he rejects a number of answers to why the same principle should not extend beyond state behaviour to include individual behaviour. This kind of monism is defended by Murphy, “Institutions and the Demands of Jus- tice,” 254, but note that Cohen, RJE, 397 expressly rejects it as a general and principled position.

48 Introduction. An account of contributive justice value of justice is a composite concept, while monism about justice holds that it is a simple, basic value. I believe that the disagreement between Rawls and Cohen does not revolve around pluralism about moral values, but that their contention is about whether the particular value of justice is pluralistic or monistic, and the prospects of finding principled ways of sys- tematising the plurality of values more generally.123 Cohen famously defends a kind of monism about justice in particular against Rawls’s so-called constructivist approach. As will be extensively discussed in chapter 3, Co- hen believes that justice simply is equality. Even if both Cohen and Rawls agree that other values than equality – including liberty and efficiency – matter when deciding what we should do all-things-considered, Rawls believes that justice is a pluralistic notion reflecting the relative weight of each, while Cohen sees it as a monistic value, not yet weighed against the others.124 Cohen’s diagnosis, then, is that Rawls’s theory mistakenly thinks of justice as an output of a procedure that tries to reach principles of justice, rather than an input into a procedure that tries to find so-called “rules of regulation” – that is, practically useful and action-guiding directives.125

123 This is a novel conclusion about which some might be sceptical. But the conclusion that Rawls is a pluralist about moral values is clearly supported by, for instance, Rawls, TJ, sec. 83. See also Scheffler, “Rawls and Utilitarianism,” 439 f. It is less controversial to claim that Cohen embraced this position. Cohen, RJE, 7 for instance, suggests that “…an unequal distribution whose inequality cannot be vindicated by some choice or fault or desert on the part of (some of) the relevant affected agents is unfair, and therefore, pro tanto, unjust, and […] nothing can remove that particular injustice”. Yet, applying the label to Cohen could also be questioned in light of what he writes about the relation between equality and “communal reciprocity” in Cohen, Why Not Socialism?, and between fairness, legitimacy and justice in Cohen, “Fairness and Legitimacy in Justice, and: Does Option Luck Ever Preserve Justice?” For an extended discussion of the pluralist view and justice, see Johannsen, A Conceptual Investigation of Justice. 124 This disagreement, in turn, is arguably rooted in Cohen’s rather controversial thesis that so- called fact-sensitive principles are always supported by more fundamental and fact-independent principles. Very roughly, Cohen suggests that even though we often believe principles to have normative powers partly in virtue of certain empirical facts, interrogating them further will always reveal that they are ultimately rooted in a fundamental principle which has normative powers regardless of facts. This reasoning leads Cohen, RJE, 267 to the conclusion that “…facts cast normative light only by reflecting the light that fact-free first principles shine on them.” I will not dwell on this particular disagreement, since even though Cohen’s thesis is connected to the rest of his critique of Rawls, I believe my account can be justified regardless of where we stand on this. For a critical response to Cohen, see Miller, “Political Philosophy for Earthlings” and for a reply to Miller in defence of Cohen’s thesis, see Lippert-Rasmussen, “What Mr. Spock Told the Earthlings.” See also the analysis of Cohen’s and Rawls’s disagreement offered by Scanlon, “Justice, Responsibility, and the Demands of Equality” 85 ff., which Cohen, RJE, 302, n. 35 cites approvingly, and Jo- hannsen, A Conceptual Investigation of Justice, 31 suggests shows that Cohen thinks of justice as a defeasible value. 125 Cohen, RJE, 30, n. 7; 265 suggests that a rule of regulation is a form of intelligent policy or social instrument, which weighs all relevant aspects, “...which we adopt or not, in the light of an

49 Chapter 1

I will occupy a middle ground in this disagreement, by affirming pluralism about moral values – as both Rawls and Cohen do – but also a kind of pluralism about justice which differs from both Rawls’s pluralism and Cohen’s monism. Only the former kind of pluralism is necessary to be able to speak of pro tanto duties, and it is crucial in my defence against the charge that my account demands too much of individuals.126 By endorsing a form of pluralism about justice, however, I depart from Cohen’s strict view that justice is equality and nothing else. As I indicated above, I believe that not only equality but also reciprocity and some non-comparative element are relevant aspects of justice, and that they combine into a hybrid account, which is more attractive than accounts grounded in just one of them. The upshot, then, is that, although I do not share Cohen’s monism about justice, our shared pluralism about moral values allows both of us to claim that a duty to contribute has to be weighed against a number of other important moral values before we can decide what it actually requires of individuals.127 I fear that this might leave everyone dissatisfied: Rawlsians might object that the duty I defend is not a duty of justice, since it overlooks central parts of what they believe justice is. Cohenites, on the other hand, might claim that I compromise the value of justice by incorporating other aspects than merely equality. Yet, unless we bracket these fundamental questions at some point, this inquiry will never be able to turn to its central question. I am thus forced to leave some of these issues unresolved, and hope that the philosophical analysis in the body of the dissertation will help make the case for the approach I have described in this section.

5.3 Summary – How the account is developed and defended In sum, this dissertation applies the process of reflective equilibrium, broadly understood, when evaluating and arguing for specific principles evaluation, precisely, of its likely effects”. Rawls, on the other hand, identifies justice with whatever “…the original-position machine produces” Cohen, 5. 126 To be precise, even monists about values could characterise a duty as pro tanto, but it would be a different kind of pro tanto than what I have in mind, for instance because it would not allow for different values to outweigh each other. 127 An important difference between Rawls and me, for instance, is that I follow Cohen, RJE, chap. 8 in assuming that the value of publicity is not a restriction of what justice is, but at most a desideratum which it would be good if principles of justice fulfilled. Note, however, that I do not defend the view that equality, reciprocity, and some non-comparative element necessarily exhaust justice. Properly interpreted, my weaker and stronger theses are about what justice requires from individuals, and why, and not about what justice, in its broadest interpretation, is. See also note 106 above.

50 Introduction. An account of contributive justice and conclusions. Yet, the underlying pluralism about moral values means that the conclusions will have a pro tanto status, rather than being the outcome of a systematic or hierarchical ordering producing all-things-considered prescriptions. Although this inquiry does not attempt to engage in such a trade-off in a systematic way, I believe that some form of reflective equilibrium process would be the proper way of doing so, and I offer a few remarks on how to go about it, in section 3.2 of chapter 7. Similar to Cohen, however, I am somewhat sceptical of the possibilities that this can yield a neat and systematic answer. Unlike Rawls, Cohen seems to assume that pluralism entails that we can neither realise all values simultaneously, nor systematically combine them.128 On this interpretation, reflective equilibrium cannot resolve all tensions, and even risks moving some of the inevitable trade-offs “backstage”.129 I share this worry, and it helps to explain why I do not offer a systematic solution to the problem of prioritising the duty against all other relevant considerations. If this account indeed receives justification from a state of reflective equilibrium, then, is it best described as narrow or wide? Firstly, recall that I insisted that the distinction is one of degree, and that reaching the widest possible reflective equilibrium is beyond the scope of a dissertation. Sec- ondly, I believe that a fair assessment would recognise that the justification

128 Cohen, 4 concludes that, although he wishes things were different, “[d]iscursively indefensible trade-offs are our fate.” Yet, he also argues that the resulting vagueness of moral demands are not always problematic, by pointing out that we rarely demand the same degree of specificity when we make non-moral decisions in other parts of life. For instance, “…people jib against the vagueness of injunctions of duty, such as ‘do your bit,’ which are no vaguer than calls for enjoyment whose vagueness deters no one from observing them, such as ‘let’s go have a good time.’” Cohen, 6. 129 Cohen, RJE, 5. No one has studied the relation between Cohen’s embrace of so-called intuitionism and Rawls’s reflective equilibrium, although Nicholas Vrousalis, The Political Philosophy of G. A. Cohen: Back to Socialist Basics, 8 poignantly notes that it is not Cohen’s pluralism that explains his intuitionism, but the other way around. The main difference thus seems to be that Cohen assumes that certain principles are privileged and not open to revision. For instance, his favoured method “… investigates the shape of, and, consequently, the logical implications of, our deepest normative convictions.” Cohen, RJE, 7. These convictions (Cohen, 4) are somewhat pre- theoretical and not justified through reflective equilibrium, and “…difficult to defend (except against attack).” On the other hand, Rawls also notes that some of our considered convictions – regarding the injustice of religious intolerance, racial discrimination, and slavery, for instance – are so deep that they can serve as a similar kind of fixed points. See Rawls, TJ, 17; Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 29. In sum, I thus suggest that the difference is not as stark as it first appears. Just consider the striking similarity between Cohen’s approach and reflective equilibrium, up until the final clause, when Cohen describes his method as “…we determine the principles that we are willing to endorse through an investigation of our individual normative judgments on particular cases, and while we allow that principles that are extensively supported by a wide range of individual judgments can override outlier judgments that contradict those principles, individual judgments retain a certain sovereignty.” Cohen, RJE, 4.

51 Chapter 1 of my account nevertheless contains aspects that make it both wider and narrower. For instance, I consider equality, reciprocity, and fairly sharing burdens as central aspects of justice. This is wider than Cohen’s approach, which focuses wholly on equality, but narrower than Rawls’s approach, which also considers liberty, and other aspects. Further, the fact that I do not provide a full theory of persons or the place of morality in society makes my account narrower than Rawls’s. Yet, the central role played by economic and philosophical theories about market mechanisms and systems of social sanctions in chapters 5 and 6, means that the inquiry does not merely seek coherence between considered judgements and principles, but that a certain set of background theories also matter. Notwithstanding this, I nevertheless concede that the conclusions of this study are circumscribed by the fact that there are further considerations against which we must weigh the pro tanto duty I defend here, before we can determine what it demands of an individual in a particular situation. Yet, I do not believe this limitation constitutes a fatal defect in my account: Firstly, although chapters 5 through 7 do pursue questions related to the practical goal, I also believe that pursuing the theoretical goal of political philosophy is valuable in itself, independently of how much it can influence actual politics. Secondly, it would be a mistake to assume that concrete implications are the only way in which political philosophy can be of value to practical politics. I conjecture that much of the work done by academic political philosophers never reaches beyond a small cir- cle of similarly academic readers. Perhaps one or two books per generation gain notoriety outside of academia and come to influence politics, in the sense that their analyses of problems or suggested solutions become implemented by politicians or shape how voters understand social dynamics. Such influential works are generally characterised by the way in which they synthesise a number of political-philosophical tendencies and resonate with their political moment, and while I am under no illusion that this inquiry has that character, my modest hope is that it is part of a general and growing collection of political philosophical works that investigate the normative questions relating to what a just distribution and contribution is; that it can be one of many tributaries to a general stream of thought that will somehow and somewhere influence how we act politically regarding these issues.

52 Who should contribute? The division of labour and individual duties of justice

Chapter 2 – Who should contribute? The division of labour and individual duties of justice

Some people might reject the very idea of an individual duty to contribute to justice by arguing that, as long as individuals accept that their income is taxed and redistributed, they should be free to choose whether, with what, and how much to work, and to spend their net income freely. This view receives support from much of contemporary political theorising on justice, and the assumption that striving towards the ideal of justice is characterised by a division of labour, absolving individuals from endless sacrifice, and assigning the task to primarily be pursued by institutions and the state. As long as individuals support justice indirectly through sustaining these institutions, and interact in just ways within them, this view suggests, they are free to pursue other values. This idea is central in John Rawls’s influential theory of justice, which holds that the primary subjects of justice are the institutions that make up the basic structure of society. Alt- hough individuals are required to support and further arrangements that satisfy the principles of justice, they are not under a duty to promote justice directly in their daily lives.1 The dominance of this view is due not only to Rawls’s influence on political philosophy, but also because it is undoubtedly an attractive position: it supposedly allows us to externalise the demands of justice and promises to carve out a niche for our individual projects.2 Yet, if we accept this view, all further speculation about an individual duty to contribute would seem to be misguided. As Rawls notes, however, “…any ethical theory recognizes the importance of the basic structure as a subject of justice, but not all theories regard its importance in the same way.”3 Against the division of labour view, this chapter instead claims that the basic structure is merely one

1 Rawls, TJ, 295. The coming sections explain what Rawls means by the basic structure and what institutions could be taken to mean. 2 Nagel, Equality and Partiality, 5. 3 Rawls, TJ, 73.

53 Chapter 2 among several sources of justice and injustice, and criticises the division view for arbitrarily drawing a line that frustrates the ideal of justice. It often seems, after all, that agents other than the basic structure could work to promote a more just distribution. Individuals could, it seems, contribute to making an unjust society more just by, for instance, relieving poverty by donating to charity, volunteering in non-profit organisations that provide basic services to groups that need but do not receive them, or by choosing particular careers where they make good use of their talents and produce more value to society.4 There is almost always a possibility of achieving more distributive justice if individuals not only support but also supplement and enhance institutional efforts, so why should we categorically assume that principles of justice do not apply to individuals’ daily choices? My analysis in this chapter is that the most prominent responses in defence of the division of labour fail to answer this convincingly because, as I argued in section 4.5 of the introductory chapter, the same reason we have for applying principles of justice to the basic structure is a reason to apply them to individuals.5 The claim that substantial demands of justice reach into the daily lives of individuals is hence defended by criticising the best possible case for the division of labour view that denies this. Although a negative strategy does not, strictly speaking, establish my positive claim, it does justify pursuing a project that aims to do so, and the later chapters offer more clearly positive arguments for why and what individuals should contribute, and how the duty can be enforced. Unlike many previous contributions to this debate, it starts in section 1 by carefully distinguishing between two versions of the division view, and proceeds by criticising the more reasonable so- called primacy thesis. This view does not deny outright that principles of justice apply to individuals, but claims that they primarily apply directly to institutions, and only secondarily to individuals.6 Sections 2 and 3 consider and reject the common assumption that the basic structure is primary

4 Singer, The Life You Can Save; MacAskill, Doing Good Better; Cordelli, “The Institutional Di- vision of Labor and the Egalitarian Obligations of Nonprofits”; Cordelli, “Justice below the State: Civil Society as a Site of Justice”; Weinberg, “Norms and the Agency of Justice.” See also the works by Carens, Wilkinson, and Cohen, discussed in section 3.3 of the introductory chapter. 5 One way of arguing for an expanded site of justice maintains the assumption that the basic structure is the primary subject of justice, but includes more entities in the basic structure. See, for instance, Syme, “The Pervasive Structure of Society.” The way this chapter proceeds, however, is to instead expand the understanding of “primacy”, such that principles of justice apply to more entities, without them necessarily being part of the basic structure. See also notes 28 and 49, below. 6 The next section introduces the primacy thesis about the site of justice. This should not be con- fused with another way in which Rawls, TJ, 3 speaks of primacy, to wit, the famous claim that

54 Who should contribute? The division of labour and individual duties of justice since it has greater causal influence – more profound effects or greater capacities – than individuals. Firstly, I argue that the effects of gender norms and aggregated market behaviour are clear examples of other entities with similarly profound effects that should, on pain of consistency, be recognised as primary. Secondly, although so-called background justice cannot be maintained without the coordinating function of the basic structure, I argue that this does not entail that individual behaviour cannot contribute to or detract from this goal. The causal primacy view can thus only establish a just basic structure as a necessary condition for justice, but not a sufficient condition. Section 4 then considers a version of the primacy thesis which assumes that the basic structure has moral primacy, in the sense that the division of labour should ensure that institutions pursue justice so as to leave individuals free to pursue personal values, ultimately enabling the more efficient production of each set of values. Comparing this view to a form of rule-consequentialism, I discuss cases in which individuals can contribute to justice at no cost to their personal projects, and claim that this view hence fails to answer why we should insist on a division of labour in such cases. I do recognise the importance of values other than justice, however. Foreshadowing the longer discussion in chapter 7 of how my account deals with the question of demandingness, the concluding section 5 discusses how the pro tanto nature of the duty I defend is explicitly intended to accommodate this. I end by noting that, although the argument of this chapter entails that the duty to contribute to justice expresses itself in a number of ways in our daily lives, including how we support or undermine social norms, and how we act as consumers, the rest of the dissertation will focus on the idea of a duty to contribute in production, by providing a good or service that others value or need.

1. The division of labour and the primacy thesis A key feature of how productive beings organise work is the division of labour, the breaking up of work processes into different tasks each performed by different individuals or groups. In the production of goods, for instance, skilled craft workers capable of doing all tasks can often be re-

“Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought.” Apart from note 27 below, I say nothing about this second, distinct, form of justice-related primacy.

55 Chapter 2 placed by workers specialised in each specific task, thereby increasing overall productivity. The adoption of the image of a division of labour from political economy to political philosophy retains this central aspect, to wit, that this way of organising the pursuit of values is superior to the alternative, where each person is involved in all of it. The most famous and well-developed version of the idea of a division of labour is no doubt the Rawlsian focus on the basic structure, that is, “…the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation.”7Although we might be tempted to apply Rawls’s suggested principles to everything that affects the distribution of benefits and burdens, he is adamant that they might not work for, or elucidate, the fairness of private associations, less comprehensive social groups, or voluntary cooperative arrangements, and might be “…irrelevant for the various informal conventions and customs of everyday life…”.8 While Rawls’s difference principle should influence the design of a system of taxation, which is part of the basic structure, he stresses that it is a macro rather than a micro principle, and that assessing things like how a doctor should treat his or her patients, or how a university should treat its students, would be to stretch it beyond its realm of application.9 Rawls suggests that what we should look for, instead, is:

…an institutional division of labor between the basic structure and the rules applying directly to individuals and associations and to be followed by them in particular transactions. If this division of labor can be established, individuals and associations are then left free to advance their ends more effectively within the framework of the basic structure, secure in the knowledge that elsewhere in the social system the necessary corrections to preserve background justice are being made.10

7 Rawls, 6. Examples of such institutions that Rawls mentions are “…the political constitution and the principal economic and social arrangements […] [including] the legal protection of freedom of thought and liberty of conscience, competitive markets, private property in the means of production, and the monogamous family…” Rawls, 6. See also Rawls, Political Liberalism, 261 f.; Rawls, Collected Papers, 226. 8 Rawls, TJ, 7. 9 Rawls, Collected Papers, 226, quoted by Freeman, “G. A. Cohen’s Critique of Rawls’s Difference Principle,” 26; 44, n. 9, who claims that Rawls is thinking of the difference principle, in spite of writing about the maximin criterion. 10 Rawls, Political Liberalism, 268 f.

56 Who should contribute? The division of labour and individual duties of justice

Being “left free to advance their ends” could easily be taken to mean that individuals’ behaviour is beyond any considerations of justice. Many critics of the division of labour thus interpret Rawls’s position as defending what I will call the restriction thesis:

The restriction thesis: Principles of justice apply to institutions but not to individuals. 11

I believe that few, if any, defenders of the division of labour would agree with this reconstruction, however. If we instead take seriously Rawls’s description of the basic structure as the primary, but not necessarily only, subject of justice, the division view’s proponents can claim that principles apply to individuals in a secondary or derivative sense, rather than not at all.12 Unlike many other contributions, the target of my critique will thus not be the restriction thesis but the most charitable interpretation of the division view – what I will call the primacy thesis:

The primacy thesis: Principles of justice primarily apply directly to institutions, and only secondarily to individuals.

11 The division view’s critic par excellence, G. A. Cohen, seems to attack the restriction thesis in discussing the Rawlsian “basic structure objection”, and Rawlsians have subsequently defended themselves by arguing that his is not an accurate description of Rawls. Adopting Cohen’s language thus leads some theorists to attack the restriction thesis or to defend it. Examples include the critics Porter, “The Division of Moral Labour and the Basic Structure Restriction”; Berkey, “Against Rawlsian Institutionalism about Justice” and Matthew, “Purview and Permissibility”, and the defenders Hodgson, “Why the Basic Structure?” and Baynes, “Ethos and Institution: On the Site of Distributive Justice.” The defence offered by Scheffler, and Melenovsky, “The Basic Structure as a System of Social Practices” avoids this narrow understanding, however. 12 Rawls, TJ, 7. The distinction between the restriction thesis and the primacy thesis is inspired by Scheffler’s criticism of Murphy for wrongly assuming that Rawls wants “...’to take the business of securing justice off people’s plate’ so that they can ‘devote most of their concerns to their own affairs’, thus leading ‘freer and better lives’” Scheffler, “Is the Basic Structure Basic?,” 108, citing Murphy, “Institutions and the Demands of Justice,” 258. Similarly, Scheffler, “Is the Basic Struc- ture Basic?” 112 f., criticises Cohen for assuming that the point of restricting justice to the basic structure is to allow “unlimited self-seekingness”, and instead claims that “…just institutions will shape people’s motives so as to discourage individual conduct that is incompatible with justice.” Scheffler, “Egalitarian Liberalism as Moral Pluralism,” 248. See also Freeman, “G. A. Cohen’s Cri- tique of Rawls’s Difference Principle” 40, who points out that “The basic structure is said to be the ‘first subject’ of justice, not the only subject.”

57 Chapter 2

Clearly, a lot depends on what is meant by “primarily” here, but it is evident that the primacy thesis is compatible with non-trivial duties for individuals: Rawls, for instance, explicitly defends a fundamental natural duty of justice that requires us to “…support and to comply with just institutions that exist and apply to us […] [and] to further just arrangements not yet established, at least when this can be done without too much cost to ourselves.”13 This is not a duty to act on the difference principle, and it does not require individuals to support and further justice directly, but rather to “…support and further the arrangements that satisfy these principles…”14 Individuals are also expected to further just arrangements when they are not yet established. Depending on the empirical circumstances in which we find ourselves, it seems that this rather modest principle can turn out to be very demanding.15 Similarly, some have pointed out that, even if the principles for the basic structure do not also apply to individuals, they are the source of a variety of rules for individuals, which regulate social interaction in a just society. While Rawls’s natural duty of justice gives individuals reasons to follow institutional rules and legal regulations, the principles for the basic structure provide the content of these rules, and individuals always act against the backdrop of a basic structure framework. So, although individuals are not obliged to give some of their income to charity, their life plans have to accommodate the existence of a just system of taxation. The same holds

13 Rawls, TJ, 99. 14 Rawls, 295. Rawls mentions additional natural duties, such as the duty of mutual respect, which is discharged when we are willing to give reasons for our actions and see a situation from another person’s point of view, or to do small favours or courtesies as a sign of our recognising others as moral beings. He also describes a duty of mutual aid requiring us to help others, whose main value is not necessarily the amount of help we actually receive, but rather its effect of ensuring that our society is such that others would come to our assistance if necessary. Rawls, 297 f. The introductory example illustrates that, although the duty asks individuals to promote difference principle justice by supporting and complying with a system of taxation that promotes such a distribution, it does not require further efforts, such as donating additional income to difference principle promoting charities. 15 Valentini, “The Natural Duty of Justice in Non-Ideal Circumstances: On the Moral Demands of Institution Building and Reform”; Berkey, “The Demandingness of Morality.” See also the similar position developed by Brian Barry, who suggests that justice is impartial in a second-order sense, requiring us to accept impartial principles as the basis for living together, but not in the first-order sense of requiring us to treat everyone alike, regardless of our relationship to them. Barry, Justice as Impartiality, 11.

58 Who should contribute? The division of labour and individual duties of justice for laws regulating contracts, property, and many other features of individuals’ daily interactions.16 This indicates that Rawls’s theory can be characterised as what I called a procedure-focused theory in section 4.3 of the introductory chapter. Since Rawls’s theory primarily assesses the justice of a procedure, to wit, society conceived as an ongoing system of cooperation, individual duties of justice consist of respecting and supporting the framework which is supposed to produce justice. In having to comply with such a system, and take it into account, the principles for the basic structure could thus be thought to apply indirectly to individuals.17 We can draw two important lessons from the discussion above. The first is that the primacy thesis is clearly a more plausible interpretation of the division of labour view than the restriction thesis, and there is less of a distance between my view and the primacy thesis than there is between my view and the more commonly discussed but implausible restriction thesis. This is important, because even proponents of the division view will usually accept that individuals are sometimes required to promote justice, albeit in an indirect way. The second lesson is that the remaining distance between the positions might disappear if the best arguments for the division view fail to establish it, since this would mean that there are more substantial individual duties of justice as well. The main focus for the rest of this chapter is thus directed towards assessing whether the primacy thesis really can establish that individuals are not also required to act directly on principles of justice. I will suggest that it fails to do so, and that proponents of the division view should instead join me in affirming the alternative non-division thesis:

The non-division thesis: Principles of justice apply directly both to institutions and to individuals.18

16 Freeman, “The Basic Structure of Society as the Primary Subject of Justice,” 91 f; Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 51 f. 17 Hodgson, “Why the Basic Structure?,” 10 stresses the fact that certain structures and institutions “…set rules and constraints through which the person has to act to exercise her capacity for a conception of the good.” Cf. Thomas, “Cohen’s Critique of Rawls: A Double Counting Objection” who argues that Cohen’s critique, introduced below, in effect applies Rawls’s principle to individuals twice: first through institutions, and then again directly to their behaviour. See also Berkey, “Double Counting, Moral Rigorism, and Cohen’s Critique of Rawls: A Response to Alan Thomas”; Thomas, “Prerogatives, Incentives, and Institutionalism: A Reply to Brian Berkey.” 18 Note that the non-division thesis does not deny that principles of justice can apply indirectly to individuals as well.

59 Chapter 2

1.1 A preliminary argument for the non-division thesis My case for the non-division thesis proceeds mostly by criticising objections to it, so, in anticipation of the positive arguments for why individuals ought to contribute offered in the coming chapters, I will note why I believe the non-division thesis should be the default position and why the primacy thesis bears the burden of proof. Section 4.5 of the introductory chapter defended the assumption that the duty to contribute attaches to relevantly situated agents with the relevant capacity. My claim in this chapter, then, is that it does not matter whether the agent is an institution in the basic structure, or an individual acting outside of it – what matters is the capacity to bring about justice. The reason why proponents of the division view should be understood as bearing the burden of proof is that they need to deny this intuitively plausible claim in order to defend the primacy thesis. They need to explain, as it were, what the relevant basis is for making distinctions between different kinds of agents and marking one of them as primary. One way to illustrate the intuitive support for the non-division view is to return to the analogy with rescue cases. Although a duty of contributive justice and a duty to rescue are not identical, this analogy helps us to see how odd it is to insist that individuals are not required to bring about justice directly but only indirectly, by supporting just institutions. Em- ploying a division of labour view in rescue cases suggests that the duty to save a drowning child primarily applies to the institution of lifeguards. Even if an individual is at the beach, in a position to help a child who is drowning right now, her relevant duty would nevertheless be to help establish such an institution.19 We can recognise the absurdity of this position, even if we agree that the best long-term solution to the problem of drowning children might be to establish an institution of professional lifeguards. I believe it is clear that, even if such an institution would be good, it does not refute the view that whoever is in a position to help is required to do so, or the proposition that individuals are required to both work towards establishing a system of lifeguards and rescue drowning children when they are able to do so.20 Returning to justice, I believe it is highly doubtful that a categorical division of labour can be defended, given that individuals often can contribute to the same goal as institutions do,

19 Berkey, “Against Rawlsian Institutionalism about Justice,” 722 f. gives this example to illustrate the absurdity of the background justice argument to be discussed below, although seemingly inter- preting the division view as defending the restriction rather than the primacy thesis. 20 Perhaps not at any conceivable risk or cost to themselves, however.

60 Who should contribute? The division of labour and individual duties of justice thereby producing even more of that which the division of labour is thought to help institutions do. Different things can, of course, be demanded from different agents of justice, and my view is compatible with the general idea behind the division of labour, which states that specialisa- tion might increase the efficiency, so to speak. I nevertheless take the observation made above and in the introductory chapter to support my claim that the default assumption should be that individuals are bound by justice for the same reasons that other agents of justice are, and that it is up to proponents of the division view to argue for why we should abandon or modify this assumption. As I will argue, starting in the next section, if the basic structure is primary, it is hence a watered-down form of primacy, which fails to establish a categorical distinction between the basic structure and individual behaviour, or to rule out substantial duties of justice for individuals.

2. Three kinds of primacy What do defenders of the division of labour view mean when they appeal to the primacy of the basic structure? 21 I suggest that there are three possible interpretations. Firstly, they might be thinking of a kind of methodological primacy, whereby the content of principles that apply to individuals is dependent on and secondary to the content of principles that apply to the basic structure. Rawls seems to endorse this view when he writes that the principles for the basic structure are to be agreed upon first, before the principles for individuals, since the latter presuppose the former.22 What the natural duties ask of individuals depends, it is assumed, on what justice asks of institutions. For instance, Rawls’s natural duty to support and further just institutions can perhaps only be specified after we know what just institutions are and how successful they are in delivering distributive justice.23

21 Whenever I talk of primacy, I mean the idea of being the primary subject of justice. 22 Rawls, TJ, 93 f. The argument seems analogous with the way in which Rawls, 8 argues that ideal theory, and specifically the assumption of full compliance, allows us to set out the content of the principles before we ask what justice requires in non-ideal circumstances. 23 This view is expressed by Freeman, “G. A. Cohen’s Critique of Rawls’s Difference Principle” 40 when he cites Rawls, Political Liberalism, 259–62 to show that Rawls does not “…say the justice of the basic structure is morally more important than local or global justice. Its priority is not moral, but methodological [reference omitted] in that full determination of the requirements of local and global justice presupposes principles for the basic structure of society”. Note that this is a different use of “local” and “global” justice than the one employed in this dissertation. Freeman makes a

61 Chapter 2

Secondly, they could be thinking of a kind of causal primacy, whereby the influence that the basic structure has on the degree of justice in a society is the feature explaining its primacy. This, in turn, can be spelled out in two ways. The first idea is that our primary focus should be directed towards that which has the largest impact on people’s lives. The second idea is that primacy is motivated by the ability to do something about injustice. In many people’s minds, these factors come together in the basic structure, since it is both most consequential in terms of its effects, and has the greatest capacity to make sure these effects are distributed fairly.24 The basic structure is primary because it is, as it were, both the cause of and remedy for injustice. The final interpretation is one of moral primacy, which holds that principles of justice apply primarily to the basic structure for reasons to do with the structure of morality discussed in section 5 in the introductory chapter. Recall the distinction between pluralism and monism about moral values introduced there. Monist accounts like utilitarianism – against which Rawls contrasts his justice as fairness – assume that there is a single good to promote, and that this should be the aim for both institutions and individuals.25 Rawls instead rejects the idea that there is a dominant end or a homogeneous good for all humans and endorses a pluralist conception instead.26 Defenders of this interpretation, including Samuel Scheffler, argue that this explains why Rawls is so careful to stress that his principles of distributive justice may not work for or be relevant when assessing other things than the basic structure, and his claim that the principles are not suitable for a general moral theory.27 Establishing a fair framework and just similar point in Freeman, “The Basic Structure of Society as the Primary Subject of Justice.” Porter, “The Division of Moral Labour and the Basic Structure Restriction,” 191 f. also briefly discusses this point. 24 At least in the case of non-global distributive justice. 25 Rawls, Political Liberalism, 260 f; Scheffler, “Rawls and Utilitarianism,” 437 ff. Rawls, TJ, 484. notes that monism means that there is always a dominant end towards one ought to aim, although the limits of our epistemic or computational abilities might prevent us from knowing what is required in a particular situation. 26 Scheffler, “Rawls and Utilitarianism,” 438, citing Rawls, TJ, 486. In light of section 5.2 in the introductory chapter, this could be described as a form of pluralism about moral values. 27 Rawls, TJ, 7; Rawls, Political Liberalism, 261. On this reasoning, for example, although the actions and policies of a university have an influence on the justice of a society, its primary goal is not to promote justice – just like individuals, the university is left free to fulfil its aims without worrying about justice. The first virtue of the institutions of the basic structure, however, is justice – whatever else they do, they must do so in a just way. It also means that there is a kind of restriction, because principles for the basic structure only apply to the basic structure, while principles for individuals only apply to individuals, although both are part of what Rawls, TJ, 93 calls a full conception of right.

62 Who should contribute? The division of labour and individual duties of justice procedures enables individuals to pursue their own particular goals and aspirations. This suggests, then, that duties of justice primarily apply to institutions, while – and because – duties derived from other values primarily apply to individuals. There is a clear tendency among both defenders and critics of the idea of a division of labour to run these ideas together. Yet, they seem to be distinct, in the sense that we can affirm or reject one without affirming or rejecting the others. I will therefore discuss and evaluate them separately. The assessment will focus on causal primacy and moral primacy, however, since methodological primacy is less promising as a way to establish the division view: Firstly, the observation that duties for one set of agents depend upon what duties another set of agents have does not tell us which to take as fixed when deciding the other. We might in principle also proceed in the opposite direction, and first decide what individuals are capable of and bound to do before deciding what institutions ought to do in light of this, or suppose that both are interdependent. And even if we believe that there are good pragmatic reasons to start with the basic structure, this claim cannot establish that principles of justice apply to individuals only in the indirect and secondary way that the primacy thesis assumes. In order to properly discuss the other two interpretations of primacy, I hence dismiss the first kind rather quickly.

3. Causal primacy The simple argument underlying the causal primacy thesis states that there is some characteristic that is special, awarding primacy to whatever entity displays it. The basic structure is then said to display this characteristic and the conclusion is that the basic structure is primary. This section discusses two proposed primacy-conferring characteristics that defenders of causal primacy assume are unique to the basic structure: its effects on how just a society is, and its capacity to do something about injustice in society. I will argue that it is nevertheless clear that many other phenomena or entities in societies have similar effects and should thus, on pain of consistency, also be seen as primary in this sense.28 Causal primacy can thus, at most,

28 The most abstract way of formulating the argument of the division view’s proponents is thus (1) All As (entities displaying characteristic X) are Bs (entities with primacy) (2) Entity Y (e.g. the basic structure) is A (3) Conclusion: Entity Y is B.

63 Chapter 2 show that a just basic structure is a necessary condition for justice, but not a sufficient condition.

3.1 The profundity-of-effects argument I concede that the focus on individuals’ duty to contribute to a just society might seem misguided, since the way in which the basic structure treats people and distributes the currency of justice generally seems much more impactful than decisions made by individuals in their daily lives. This fact is emphasised in the remainder of Rawls’s canonical claim that the primary subject of justice is the basic structure, namely “…because its effects are so profound and present from the start.”29 Given that the social positions into which people are born are so consequential for their prospects in life, it is especially important that the basic structure deals with them in accordance with principles of justice. Furthermore, Rawls presents an observation which is “…perfectly obvious, and [has] always been recognized”; namely, that the basic structure is not only a device for satisfying the wants and needs that people have now, but that it also shapes their future wants and desires and thereby society in a more fundamental way.30 Given this, he believes, a theory of justice must not award any special status to current wants and desires, and institutions should not only be just, but also “…framed so as to encourage the virtue of justice in those who take part in them.”31 The basic structure has effects that are profound in this additional sense, then, and is thought to be primary because it not only distributes existing burdens and benefits but is also instrumental in shaping future ones. Although this reasoning is undoubtedly convincing and gives us reasons to think of the basic structure as significant, it is a weak argument for the primacy thesis. This is because it only demonstrates the importance of principles of justice applying to the basic structure. It does not, however, establish that the basic structure is the only primary subject of justice. I

My objection is that we can add to the second premise more entities that are As, and hence conclude that they are also Bs. 29 Rawls, TJ, 7; Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 55. Rawls stresses the point that what is just and unjust is not the natural lottery’s distribution of talents, but “…the way that institutions deal with these facts.” Rawls, TJ, 87. 30 Rawls, TJ, 229, cited by Scheffler, “Is the Basic Structure Basic?,” 104. 31 Rawls, TJ, 231. Scheffler, “Is the Basic Structure Basic?,” 105 cites the original, somewhat differently worded passage.

64 Who should contribute? The division of labour and individual duties of justice follow other critics of the division of labour in the strategy of simply showing that other phenomena or entities have similarly profound effects, and claim that it is not only arbitrary but also inconsistent not to apply principles of justice to agents that share the primacy-conferring characteristic.32 Throughout the rest of this chapter, I will discuss two generalised cases of these examples. The first is gender roles and the second is aggregated market behaviour.33

3.2 The injustice caused by gender roles and aggregated market behaviour The concept of gender roles, here, refers to the cluster of social norms regarding how people categorised as belonging to different genders ought to behave, dress, and, by extension what life projects and social positions are considered appropriate for them. Gender roles are social in at least two senses. Firstly, a common view is that gender identity, in contrast to sex, depends on social structures, such that it is primarily or only a learned behaviour.34 Secondly, as chapter 6 will explain, social norms can be conceived of as rules of behaviour to which we prefer to conform, given that we think most people in our reference network conform and expect us to conform. Adherence to norms are thus ensured primarily through a decentralised social system of positive and negative social sanctions, expressed

32 Note that on this reconstruction, the causal primacy argument can be understood as outcome- based rather than procedure-focused, since its defenders point to the effects the basic structure ultimately has on the distribution within a society, and its critics point to other entities with similar effects. For instance, Cohen, RJE, 138 asks “…why should we care so disproportionately about the coercive basic structure, when the major reason for caring about it, its impact on people’s lives, is also a reason for caring about informal structure and patterns of personal choice?” Indeed, the basic structure only matters instrumentally because of its effects on what is of fundamental concern, to wit, “…justice (and its lack) in the distribution of benefits and burdens to individuals.” Cohen, 126. Similarly, Liam B. Murphy notes that “…once we accept that the principles that govern the design of ideal institutions essentially describe the means to an end, the oddness of thinking that justice is concerned with some means to that end but not others becomes rather evident.” Murphy, “Institutions and the Demands of Justice,” 282. See also Vandenbroucke, Social Justice and Indi- vidual Ethics in an Open Society, chap. 7. Contrast this with the capacity argument considered in section 3.4 below, which is better described as procedure-focused. 33 The following paragraphs draw primarily on Cohen, RJE, chap. 3 but aim to generalise Cohen’s examples. Although the Cohenite roots of the examples means that they implicitly rely on an outcome-based understanding of justice, I believe this is only proper, given that the causal primacy arguments currently discussed also seem to do so. 34 Satz, “Gender,” 356 ff.

65 Chapter 2 and upheld by small and quotidian acts.35 Now, there are many examples illustrating that the gender roles of a society have the same kind of profound effects, shaping people’s life prospects from the start, as the basic structure does. Some of this is or has been legally sanctioned and would thus be included in the basic structure, such as the fact that the family has historically been viewed as a private non-political sphere where abuse or sexual assault has not been criminalised. More relevant for our purposes, however, is the norm-governed behaviour that is separate from but consistent with a non-sexist basic structure and legal framework. For instance, norm-transgressing behaviour by individuals who feel others wrongly assign them a particular gender is often quickly sanctioned in ways that carry significant costs and limit their opportunities, and a variety of conceptions of justice would consequently recognise these sanctions as producing injustice. Similarly, decisions made by members of families, and the opportunities thus available to particular individuals, are often profoundly shaped by expectations bound up with gender. The gendered division of unpaid domestic labour, or the favouring of sons over daughters when providing education, clearly influence women’s and men’s opportunities to pursue careers and offices, all the while being consistent with a fully just basic structure.36 Additionally, these norms should be recognised as shaping future wants and desires, perhaps even more so than the basic structure does. Individuals who uphold such norms could thus be said to increase or maintain injustice, while individuals who work to undermine or reform them can be said to contribute to a more just society. The second example concerns how personal decisions about what to buy aggregate into an impersonal force that profoundly shapes our lives. Any economy that relies upon market mechanisms for the allocation of scarce goods and services – that is, practically all economies – leaves this fundamentally important aspect of social life to an entity consisting of, but

35 This account of norms is developed in chapter 6 and is based on Bicchieri, Norms in the Wild and Brennan et al., Explaining Norms. 36 The examples draw upon Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family, who offers a comprehensive treatment of how “the personal is political” and what this means for theories of justice. Okin notes that “… the gendered family, and female parenting in particular, are clearly critical determinants in the different ways the two sexes are socialized—how men and women ‘get to be what they are.’” Okin, 9., citing Rawls, “The Basic Structure As Subject” 160. See also Cohen, RJE, 116 ff., 137, who also stresses that justice applies to choices, and Syme, “The Pervasive Struc- ture of Society”, who provides a more nuanced discussion of the effects of norms than it is possible to give here. Finally, Zheng, “What Is My Role in Changing the System?” provides an interesting account of how we are all responsible for structural injustice, in virtue of us occupying certain social roles, such as being a parent, employer, or citizen.

66 Who should contribute? The division of labour and individual duties of justice beyond the immediate control of, human decisions. As elaborated in chapter 5, for instance, when consumer demand is the ultimate arbiter of what counts as a talent, people have different economic opportunities and viable career choices depending upon their endowments. We are all subordinated to these impersonal forces, which form an inescapable framework within which we have to live, deciding what jobs we can get and what salary we can earn, which in turn decides what we can consume. Market demand might, for instance, lead me to curb my desire to manufacture furs, realising that they are out of commercial and ethical fashion, and redirect my wish to work in artisanal production to something commercially viable, such as brewing craft beers. Once the market demand shifts again, I must shift my occupational preferences again or risk economic consequences. Of course, no particular individual’s part in market demand forces me to do this, just as no particular individual’s part in upholding a particular basic structure forces me to shape my wants and desires in light of it. It is nevertheless obvious that my wants and desires are not formed independently of the aggregated preferences of others. This point is even more valid when there is a marketing and advertising industry which does not merely convey information about a product’s price and characteristics, but whose function is also to create and maintain a desire for products.37 Finally, as chapter 3 discusses at length, people’s motivations when interacting on the market impact upon the level of justice a society can approximate. A recurring example throughout the dissertation is that, if people are the kind of self-interested maximisers that economic theory often assumes, there might be pragmatic reasons to accommodate their preference for high income or other perks, even when this upsets equality. De- spite introducing inequality, this potentially makes the worst off better off. If people were instead motivated in part by a duty to contribute and would work productively even in the absence of economic incentives, however, it seems that the trade-off between equality and efficiency dissolves.38 Con- versely, if people always considered how their consumption decisions are part of an intricate web that ultimately forms the opportunities available to producers, it could potentially considerably improve the circumstances

37 It is even common, I believe, for people to recognise the alien nature of their desires for some products and to express a preference for having other preferences. See George, Preference Pollution. 38 An interesting extension of this view which has been noted by Lippert-Rasmussen, “Publicity and Egalitarian Justice” is that if everyone consumed goods produced by people who do not need incentives to work hard, those producers’ talents would be more highly valued than those of incentive-demanding producers. This would, ultimately, enable a more equal distribution.

67 Chapter 2 of many of the badly off workers in our actual, non-ideal world.39 For now, it is enough to note that this observation suggests that whether individual daily choice outside of the basic structure live up to principles of justice or not will have deep and profound effects on the distribution in a society.40

3.3 The collapse reply and the qualification reply from proponents of a division of labour Recognising the force of these examples, defenders of the division of labour have nonetheless adopted a number of defensive strategies to accommodate them. What I call the collapse reply claims that the profound effects in the examples above are generated by entities that, in fact, belong to the basic structure. Indeed, Rawls explicitly mentions both competitive markets and the monogamous family as part of the basic structure.41 Samuel Freeman, for instance, believes that the family is a “poor choice” to illustrate an entity outside the basic structure with profound effects. This is because the institution of the family is indeed characterised by well-defined rules, regulating the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of parents, children, and guardians.42 Samuel Scheffler makes a similar point, adding that many countries regulate marriage, adoption, child support and custody, and so forth. Even if, he continues, some aspects of the family lie outside the traditionally conceived basic structure, its legal aspects are included and the family thus fails as an example.43

39 Research on “political consumerism” such as boycotts and buycotts conceive of consumers as having political agency and describe how people try to increase justice by shopping “consciously”. Micheletti, Political Virtue and Shopping. The moral case for doing so can be grounded in, for instance, Iris Marion Young’s innovative “social connection model” for assigning responsibility even in cases where we cannot trace the cause of injustice. Her theory assigns forward-looking responsibility to do something about injustice in, for instance, sweatshop labour conditions, since “…all those who contribute by their actions to structural processes with some unjust outcomes share responsibility for the injustice.” Young, Responsibility for Justice, 96. I believe that Young’s carefully defended theory is attractive, although I do not agree with her (Young, 66 f.) that we should ultimately maintain a division of labour. 40 Cohen, RJE, 27–86. 41 Rawls, TJ, 6. 42 Freeman, “G. A. Cohen’s Critique of Rawls’s Difference Principle,” 37. 43 Scheffler, “Is the Basic Structure Basic?” 121–24. We should note that Rawls’s position on the status and role of the family changed throughout his writings, but that his considered yet fairly undeveloped view is that “the nature of the family” is part of the basic structure. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 258. For a brief overview of Rawls’s statements on the family, see Nussbaum, “Rawls and Feminism,” 499–507.

68 Who should contribute? The division of labour and individual duties of justice

This reply is insufficient for a defence of the division of labour, however, since it is far from clear that it is merely the legally regulated aspect of the family that exerts the profound influence at the heart of the question. Even if a generous and gender-neutral parental leave scheme is part of the basic structure, for instance, how people decide to use it will usually reflect and reinforce the gendered division of labour in child-rearing. The pervasive expectations and norms that explain why parents divide their paid leave differently, and the consequences this has for equality of opportunity, economic status in the long term, and so forth, are not part of the family as legally defined and remains outside of the basic structure.44 Scheffler’s and Freeman’s replies do nothing to address these kinds of profound effects. And since the general charge here is not that Rawls fails to include any aspect of the family, but rather that he does not include all aspects of the family – as well as gender roles more generally – with profound effects, Scheffler’s and Freeman’s employment of the collapse reply ultimately falls short of its aim. It even seems counterproductive, since it helps to expose the inadequacy of relying on the legally regulated aspects of the family.45 Perhaps the collapse reply is more successful in refuting the market example. Rawls does, after all, mention competitive markets as part of the basic structure, and market interactions in a just society would perhaps be governed by certain rules that ensured a just outcome. I do not think this is what Rawls has in mind, however, and the prospects for succeeding are nonetheless bleak. The very point of relying on the kind of decentralised decision-making exemplified by markets is to grant a certain degree of discretion to individuals, and Rawls endorses markets in part for the sensible reason that they are a way to decentralise the exercise of economic power.46 So, even if a just basic structure contains safeguards intended to steer markets towards justice-promoting outcomes, individuals will always be given discretion to make more or less justice-promoting choices. I am not suggesting that we remove this freedom, but merely that people’s choices

44 The influence of gender equality-promoting policies and norms are studied by Bertrand, “Coase Lecture - The Glass Ceiling.” 45 Tan also notes that some aspects of the family are part of the basic structure, and some are not, but reaches a conclusion opposite to the above: this allegedly shows that Rawls’s basic structure is not “fatally ambiguous” or ill-defined. Tan, “Justice and Personal Pursuits,” 346, n. 29. I believe Tan fails to recognise what the general charge is, as stated in the paragraph to which this is a note. 46 Rawls, TJ, 241. I call this the value feature of markets in chapter 5, below. See Rawls, sec. 43. for a lucid discussion of how the basic structure must be set up to counter the inadequacies of markets. I nevertheless maintain that the point above is valid, since individual behaviour is an additional factor that plays a role here.

69 Chapter 2 ought to be guided by principles of justice. Given that most agree that the failures and shortcomings of markets should be counteracted and compensated for, it seems justified to judge not only the institutional set-up but also the disaggregated individual behaviour that is the foundation of market forces at the bar of justice.47 An alternative formulation of the collapse reply could perhaps claim that the focus on individual acts is mistaken, since individuals act in the way that they do because of individually reinforced and pervasive structures.48 These structures should be thought of, they might continue, as part of the basic structure and it is wiser to focus on them rather than on individual decision-making. In reply, this would not establish the primacy thesis, however, but would only reinforce the non-division view, by including more things in the basic structure as opposed to my strategy of including more things as primary subjects of justice. If everything collapses into the basic structure, then the conclusion is the same as mine, since both views suggest that individuals have an obligation to promote justice in their everyday lives.49 At this point, Rawlsians might be tempted to instead offer the qualification reply, which expands the collapse reply by questioning whether individual behaviour really would upset justice if circumstances were more ideal. For instance, the unequal use of parental leave schemes only occurs due to actual gender roles. Scheffler points out, however, that if a just basic structure were in place, such that “…family law were thoroughly egalitarian, and if norms of gender equality pervaded other areas of the law that have served to enforce gender differences, it is far from obvious to me that the egregious sexist patterns […] could indeed survive and flourish.”50 Sim- ilarly, he suggests that unlimited self-seekingness in market behaviour

47 The centrality of individual discretion has become apparent to me in discussions with Lucas Stanczyk, who suggests that if there is injustice in a situation where institutions are just it must stem from the choices that people are free, and should be left free, to make. Personal communication, November 2018. On my interpretation, the point is that the insufficiency of focusing on the basic structure is obvious once we recognise that there might be, and indeed are, instances where there is no other source or remedy for the injustice than how people make their free decisions. This is similar to the profound insight expressed in the paragraph in Cohen, RJE, 123, which begins with Cohen noting that “…the justice of a society is not exclusively a function of its legislative structure, of its legally imperative rules, but also of the choices people make within those rules.” 48 For instance, along the lines of Giddens, The Constitution of Society. 49 Syme, “The Pervasive Structure of Society,” 891 has pursued this strategy, and suggests that “[f]or the purposes of thinking about justice, there is only one institution; a single, enormous, complex, interdependent system of social rules of many different kinds. Its various component parts, such as politics, the economy and the family, work together to shape peoples’ lives.” 50 Scheffler, “Is the Basic Structure Basic?,” 126.

70 Who should contribute? The division of labour and individual duties of justice would in fact be barred by Rawls’s assumption that citizens display a sense of justice, “…an effective desire to comply with the existing rules and to give one another that to which they are entitled.”51 This Rawlsian strategy also seems insufficient and counterproductive, however. Firstly, it seems ad hoc and inconsistent to initially claim that it does not matter from the point of view of justice whether there are profound effects on people’s life prospects stemming from other sources than the basic structure and then, when pressed, to insist that we need not worry about such effects anyway, since they will not exist in a society with a just basic structure.52 Secondly, if the sense of justice is necessary to curtail individual behaviour, this only strengthens my point that other things, specifically the moral commitment and actions of individuals outside the basic structure, matter for the level of justice in a society, and this reduces the distance between the primacy thesis and the non-division thesis. As I will discuss in chapter 6, even if just institutions might be crucial to the formation of just citizens, it is also true that just citizens are necessary for just institutions.53 We can thus conclude that defenders of the division of labour must turn to arguments that do not hinge on the profundity of effects as a primacy-conferring feature.

51 Scheffler, 112 f., citing Rawls, TJ, 274 f. and Cohen, RJE, 130. Others have argued that there is a protection against very large inequalities embedded in Rawls’s first principle of justice, the principle of equal basic liberties, which among other things require that “…everyone has a fair opportunity to hold public office and to influence the outcome of political decisions.” Rawls, Political Liberalism, 227; Estlund, “Debate: Liberalism, Equality, and Fraternity in Cohen’s Critique of Rawls,” 110, and Tan, “Justice and Personal Pursuits,” sec. II. Chapter 6 will go on to argue that there are many similarities between the Rawlsian notion of a sense of justice, and the social ethos Cohen has argued justice requires. 52 While this is perhaps a valid critique of the restriction thesis, a charitable interpretation should lead us to see that the primacy thesis might answer this question: proponents of the primacy thesis never have to say that non-basic structure effects do not matter from the point of view of justice, and could consistently defend the primacy of the basic structure by stressing that the best way to change injustice-creating behaviour is through the basic structure, rather than postulating a duty for individuals. In light of my discussion of this idea in the next section, I think the best way is to do both. See Porter, “The Division of Moral Labour and the Basic Structure Restriction,” 191. 53 I believe that short reply in effect undermines the common Rawlsian claim that just institutions “…would support the development of aspirations and traits of character that would limit the extent of personal acquisitiveness among citizens.” Scheffler, “Egalitarian Liberalism as Moral Pluralism,” 253. This claim has also been offered as a reply by Joshua Cohen, “Taking People as They Are?”, and similar points have been made by van Parijs, “Difference Principles,” 230, who notes that “…the motivation guiding individual conduct cannot be assumed to be given exogenously, independently of institutions.”, and by Baynes, “Ethos and Institution: On the Site of Distributive Justice,” 192, who argues that “…in a society whose institutions are just, individuals will simply be less likely to exhibit the more extreme forms of self-interested motivation and conduct that Cohen criticizes.” See also the preceding note.

71 Chapter 2

3.4 The capacity argument and background justice A more promising version of the causal primacy view is to qualify the profundity-of-effects argument by adding that the basic structure is primary because it also has capacities that other entities lack. An individual can, after all, only do so much about the profound effects of aggregated norm- governed or market behaviour. The basic structure, on the other hand, is thought to be unique in possessing the capacity to do something about injustice. This line of thinking is more widely discussed in the literature on global justice, where there is disagreement about the existence of and need for an agent capable of alleviating global inequality and injustice. There is, after all, only so much an individual can do. Rawls makes a similar point in the case of domestic justice, arguing that individuals are unable to establish the kind of background justice – the conditions that enable individuals to reach free and fair agreements with others – while institutions can do so. The basic structure is thus primary because of its ability to counteract the concentration of property or wealth, and to ensure that the cooperative system remains just over time.54 This suggests that the capacity argument is partly procedure-focused, in the sense described in section 4.3 of the introductory chapter and that I expand on in chapter 4, since it confers primacy to the basic structure on the basis of it having the capacity to set up and protect just procedures. Rawls emphasises, for instance, that because society is a scheme of co-operation, what the legitimate claims to the outcome are depends upon the public system of rules for the co-operation. Hence, our judgements of the resulting distributions must not overlook the expectations and claims that individuals in this co-operation reasonably have.55 Note, however, that in contrast to other procedure-focused theories, such as the libertarian theory developed by Robert Nozick, Rawls states (and I agree) that we cannot simply start with an initially just situation and assume that it will always remain the case that what comes out of just transactions between individuals is also just. We should be alert to the fact that whatever conditions made the initial situation just tends to erode over time. Even when people

54 Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 50–55. Scheffler, “Egalitarian Liberalism as Moral Pluralism,” 244 notes that “…it is simply beyond [individuals’] capacity to do so.” See Ronzoni, “The Global Or- der: A Case of Background Injustice? A Practice-Dependent Account” for an adaptation of this concept to the global justice debate. 55 To do so would be to mistake distributive justice for allocative justice, that is, the question of how to distribute a set of goods to among individuals who have no prior claim to them. Rawls, TJ, 76 f. suggests that this is one of the mistakes of relying on utilitarianism as a theory of distributive justice.

72 Who should contribute? The division of labour and individual duties of justice do not act deceptively or unfairly, and even when they try to promote justice, it is simply impossible to process all information necessary to decide whether a particular decision upholds or chips away at background justice. Parents cannot, for instance, adjust what they bequeath to their children in light of what everyone else in their generation is leaving to their children. This is why we need the basic structure to contain institutions such as income and inheritance taxation. On this view, the impossibility of devising “…feasible and practicable rules…” for individuals, and the possibility of doing so for institutions, is hence another reason for assuming that the basic structure is primary.56 It is precisely the capacity to create and maintain background justice, uniquely held by the basic structure, that is underlined as a reason for its primacy in this argument. In reply, it is certainly important to recognise the tendency towards the erosion of background justice, and that this should be checked by institutions explicitly designed to counteract it. While this demonstrates that a just basic structure is necessary to achieve background justice, it does not, however, establish that it is sufficient. We only learn that justice cannot be secured and maintained only by individual behaviour, but that we need institutions as well. This does not refute the claim that justice can be even more fully secured and maintained through institutions and individual behaviour that supplements and enhances those institutions.57 Here, there is an obvious parallel with the discussion about duties to mitigate climate change. Even those who claim that individuals, and not only institutions, have a duty to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases will admit that institutions have an important co-ordinating role and can legislate in ways that are much more consequential to the outcome than individuals can hope to achieve. But it is not difficult, as an individual, to analyse one’s routines and lifestyle to see what one can change, in order to

56 Rawls, Political Liberalism, 267, 265–69; Scheffler, “Is the Basic Structure Basic?”; Scheffler, “Egalitarian Liberalism as Moral Pluralism,” 238 f; Freeman, “The Basic Structure of Society as the Primary Subject of Justice,” 99–102. Chapter 4 returns to this Rawlsian view of justice as the outcome of a just procedure, which ensures that “…when everyone follows the publicly recognized rules of cooperation, the particular distribution that results is acceptable as just whatever that distribution turns out to be.” Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 54; Scheffler, “Distributive Justice, the Basic Structure and the Place of Private Law,” 5. 57 The defenders of the division of labour might respond that this claim presupposes an outcome- based view of justice in a way that seems to beg the question. In response, I believe it is indeed a legitimate argumentative move, since the currently discussed argument concerns not only what affects the level of background justice in society, but also the deeper question of whether to conceive of justice as outcome-based or procedure-focused. I believe the flaws in the capacity argument currently being interrogated not only undermine its support of the primacy thesis, but also suggest that justice is indeed partly outcome-based.

73 Chapter 2 at least make a marginal contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gases, and many people are currently doing so voluntarily. The same is true, I think, for how our actions affect the level of background justice in a society. Although it might be impossible to rank our options on a fine-grained scale, some actions are obviously more justice-promoting than others, although both lie in the range of permissible options that one is ostensibly free to pursue when a just basic structure is in place.58 If I am much better off than most others and have been able to provide my children with educational and social goods that are valued in our society, I might decide not to leave them any inheritance. If I donated a large amount of my remaining fortune to justice-promoting causes, I would probably promote background justice more than if I left it to my children, and certainly compared to spending it on luxury consumer goods and the pursuit of hedonistic pleasure. In such cases, estimating how my actions affect the justice of society is not hindered by having to keep track of the relative positions of particular individuals; it might be a difficult and costly task, but not one which I am in principle incapable of discharging.59 The examples discussed above thus apply, mutatis mutandis, here as well.60

58 Whenever we assign moral relevance to the consequences of an action, we face the problem that intended, foreseeable and actual consequences rarely coincide. I believe that I can be excused for abstracting from these complications here. 59 Pace Scheffler, “Is the Basic Structure Basic?,” 107. For reflections on the duties of individuals in non-ideal and unjust societies, see Cohen, If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re so Rich?, chap. 10. 60 There are two additional lines of defence of a qualified capacity-based causal primacy view that I will not discuss. Firstly, some have argued that individual duties cannot be sufficiently public to qualify as duties of justice: we can neither know what is required of individuals, nor whether they fail or succeed in doing it. See Williams, “Incentives, Inequality, and Publicity,” 233; 243 f., citing Rawls, Political Liberalism, 35–40, 65–71, 140–44. I do not address this defence because I believe that Cohen, RJE, chap. 8 offers a convincing reply, showing that Williams’s publicity criterion is either too strong to be a criterion of what justice may demand, or that, if it is interpreted as weaker, then the extension of justice to individual behaviour indeed fulfils it. See also Matthew, “Purview and Permissibility”, and Gosseries and Parr, “Publicity,” sec. 3. Secondly, some might argue that coercion is prior to justice, and that only the coercive effects of the basic structure, but not similar effects from aggregated individual behaviour, gives rise to claims of justice, because the former are legally enforced and cannot be altered simply by people changing their behaviour. See Scheffler, “Is the Basic Structure Basic?” 124 f., and the somewhat similar view expressed by Nagel, “The Prob- lem of Global Justice.” I do not address this objection, for two reasons. Firstly, although there might need to be coercion in order for people to discharge their duties of justice, I do not believe it is the need for coercion that makes them duties of justice, rather than of some other value. Cf. Cohen, RJE, 148. Secondly, I think all the examples discussed above can be properly described as in some sense coercive, and additionally that it is often more difficult to change non-legal sanctions. Incorporating something like Young’s social connection model, or Laura Valentini’s, “Coercion and (Global) Justice” account of systemic coercion could help make this case, if there were space to

74 Who should contribute? The division of labour and individual duties of justice

In sum, this section has argued that the causal primacy view fails to establish that the basic structure is both necessary and sufficient to realise justice. This suggests that the dissertation’s aim to provide an account of contributive justice is not defeated at the outset. In the remainder of this chapter, I turn to the more convincing moral primacy view which I will argue also fails to reject individual duties, although it provides valuable insights into their nature and scope.

4. Moral primacy Instead of focusing on the sufficiency of the basic structure, as the causal primacy view does, the moral primacy view objects to the high costs or demandingness entailed by placing justice on the shoulders of individuals. This view states that an individual duty is objectionable because it is very costly, in terms of what individuals have to give up to act on it, and difficult, in terms of the complex processing of information required, for individuals to act on it. Samuel Freeman expresses this view when he notes that

The institutional division of labor frees individuals from the enormous constraints of calculating the effects of their choices on distributions; it enables them to freely and effectively pursue their ends without being weighed down by moral constraints that are impossible to know or satisfy, or that would impose enormous burdens on the development and exercise of their rational and moral capacities and their freedom to pursue their good.61

There is an illustrative parallel here with a critique of moral consequentialism in general and so-called act utilitarianism in particular. If utilitarianism is correct and we interpret it as requiring us to constantly assess each set of decisions that we face and choose the action that leads to the best consequences, there is a risk that we will either become overburdened and paralysed, or even stop trying, thus utterly failing to act morally. Facing this objection, some utilitarians adopt a form of rule-utilitarianism, which states, roughly, that we should instead always follow rules of thumb that

do so (although Valentini, unlike me, seems to support the division of labour, given that she suggests that the function of principles of justice is to place limits on legitimate state coercion). 61 Freeman, “G. A. Cohen’s Critique of Rawls’s Difference Principle,” 42. See also Tan, “Justice and Personal Pursuits,” 333., who claims that “…justice aims to regulate social arrangements so as to protect equally individuals’ capacity to pursue their personal ends and commitments.”

75 Chapter 2 will in general lead to the best consequences.62 Analogously, this argument for the primacy view suggests that, instead of constantly trying to act justly, individuals are only asked to follow a set of rules, i.e. the principles of justice that apply secondarily or indirectly through a just basic structure. This seems to reduce both the complexity of decision-making and the cost of acting morally.63 Samuel Scheffler has provided the most sophisticated defence of this view. The point of the division, he stresses, is not to let individuals be free just for the sake of being free. Rather, the idea is that, through a division of labour, individuals acting within just institutions can legitimately pursue the plurality of values inherent in personal and interpersonal life.64 This enables each set of values to be promoted by specialised “producers”, thereby ultimately producing more of each set of values. While monist accounts like utilitarianism or libertarianism assume that the same set of values should guide both institutional and individual actions, thereby disregarding the differences between the two, Scheffler suggests that egalitarian liberalism follows naturally from this kind of pluralism, and can be interpreted as an attempt to recognise and promote both sets of values.65 Scheffler thus not only defends an institutional division of labour (based on the arguments I have criticised above) but also a moral division of labour which, if successful, offers a strategy for the “joint accommodation” of the two sets of values. It treats the two sets as neither derivable from each other, nor wholly irreconcilable.66 This in turn requires us to assign

62 Timmons, Moral Theory: An Introduction, chaps. 4, 5. See also Scheffler, The Rejection of Consequentialism, 15 f. 63 Note, however, that it also renders principles for individuals asymmetrically dependent on principles for the basic structure: Rawls doubts that a society where his principles guide institutions but utilitarian principles guide personal conduct would be stable. Indeed, the private morality of individuals cannot be inconsistent with the institutional principles of justice, and this suggests that the moral primacy of principles for the basic structure establishes some boundaries for principles for individuals. See Rawls, TJ, 294 f. I owe this point to Titelbaum, “What Would a Rawlsian Ethos of Justice Look Like?,” 297 f. Cf. Nagel, Equality and Partiality, 59. 64 Scheffler, “Egalitarian Liberalism as Moral Pluralism,” 250. This is because “…the principles for the basic structure do not supersede the complex and varied principles and values that apply to individuals”. Scheffler, “Is the Basic Structure Basic?,” 107. 65 Scheffler, “Egalitarian Liberalism as Moral Pluralism,” 235 f; Scheffler, “Is the Basic Structure Basic?,” 103. 66 Scheffler, “Egalitarian Liberalism as Moral Pluralism,” 252 f; Scheffler, “Is the Basic Structure Basic?,” 107. Due to the lack of specificity in Scheffler’s account, I will assume that “joint accommodation” requires not only that both sets of values receive some consideration, no matter how small, but that both are realised as far as possible, or at least receive consideration above some threshold.

76 Who should contribute? The division of labour and individual duties of justice the pursuit of some to institutions, and others to individuals, and to affirm the view that principles of justice primarily apply to the basic structure.67 If correctly reconstructed, this argument enables great insight, but is ultimately insufficiently strong to establish the primacy thesis. The problem is that there seems to be an unavoidable inconsistency at the core of both rule-utilitarianism and the moral division of labour view. Although both rule-following and the moral division of labour might frequently be plausible, there are surely cases where going against the rule, or making an individual contribution to justice, would indeed produce better or more just outcomes. The view thus fails to answer why we should insist on a division of labour in a case where abandoning it would produce more of that which the division is supposed to ensure.68 It is easy to think of plausible cases where individuals could perform an act that would promote justice more than it would decrease their personal values, if they are at all decreased. For instance, if two friends both care about justice, one might excuse the other for cancelling their planned night out in order to do vol- unteer work and, precisely because this is the reason, their friendship could remain as strong as before. Their friendship would perhaps wither if all their activities were constantly cancelled, but not if both of them do so only now and then. If they both recognise the duty to contribute as a valid requirement, this kind of division of labour could even be harmful in the same way as the economic division of labour is often accused of being: while the economic division of labour deprives individuals of the opportunity to cultivate their talents through non-alienating and diverse work,

67 Scheffler is surprisingly silent on which values belong to which realm. Some plausible candidates for values best promoted primarily by individuals could, however, be friendship, love, or the realisation of one’s capacities. The very same indifference to particularity that ensures institutions are suited to promoting justice means that they are ill-suited to promoting values of a more personal kind. Just imagine a government agency trying to promote the value of friendship. 68 The same objection was directed toward rule-utilitarianism by J. J. C. Smart, who noted that “…the rule-utilitarian presumably advocates his principle because he is ultimately concerned with human happiness: why then should he advocate abiding by a rule when he knows that it will not in the present case be most beneficial to abide by it? […] [T]o refuse to break a generally beneficial rule in those cases in which it is not most beneficial to obey it seems irrational and to be a case of rule worship.” Smart and Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against, 10. In the debate on the division of labour, the strategy has been employed by Porter, “The Division of Moral Labour and the Basic Structure Restriction”, who notes that a division of labour is only attractive if it is the case that justice cannot be promoted even better by asking individuals to also pursue it. The division view is thus not justified if non-division is more efficient. See also Murphy, “Institutions and the Demands of Justice,” 280 ff.

77 Chapter 2 the moral division of labour deprives them of the possibility to fully develop and express themselves as moral agents, capable of pursuing both personal and impersonal values.69 Scheffler’s argument carries deep insight by reminding us of the costs individuals face in choosing the justice-promoting line of action. Yet, it is too quick since it does not recognise that it is possible to take these costs into account without accepting something as categorical and rigid as the primacy thesis. The lesson should rather be that a plausible account of contributive justice should be able to make room for individuals to promote justice as well as other values. Although a full response to the kind of worry that Scheffler raises is presented in section 2 of chapter 7, we can already outline the ways in which my account deals with it. Firstly, exactly how costly and difficult70 individual duties are depends not only on the content of the principles from which they are derived, but also on the state of the world.71 Individuals in a radically unequal world face a more daunt- ing task than individuals in a post-productivist utopia of abundance, but we cannot a priori discard individual duties as too demanding. Secondly, the hybrid account I set out in chapter 4 incorporates this, by distinguishing between a duty to contribute to the socially necessary labour, and a further obligation to contribute to what I call the social surplus. The former part is unconditional, and failing to meet its requirements is a failure to act justly. But the second part allows individuals to opt out, and to be absolved from a duty to contribute at the cost of rejecting the benefits of others producing. In terminology introduced in the next chapter, this aspect of the duty supported by the hybrid account is locally productivist and does not constantly demand more contributions from everyone. Finally, as chapter 6 discusses, individuals who are motivated to do the just thing are likely to find it less demanding and more rewarding to promote justice than individuals who need to be coaxed into doing so. As the example of the two friends illustrates, believing in the cause one works for

69 Scheffler could perhaps reply, however, that justice-loving people are free to work selflessly to promote justice, and that his point is simply that other individuals cannot be expected to do so. 70 I adopt the distinction between cost (what one loses by doing something) and difficulty (how easy it is to do) from Cohen, If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re so Rich?, 171–74. Alter- natively, one theory is more demanding than another, Scheffler suggests, if it either leaves fewer permissible options to agents or because it is costly to satisfy its requirements. Scheffler, Human Morality, 98. I believe Cohen’s concept of “cost” better captures the salient aspects, for reasons discussed in section 2.3 of chapter 7. 71 This point echoes Berkey, “The Demandingness of Morality.”

78 Who should contribute? The division of labour and individual duties of justice arguably makes it less costly and demanding. Hence, theorising about justice should not merely take people’s dispositions as a given, since the extent to which individuals believe in justice and therefore also how well the two sets of values can be jointly accommodated depends upon such facts. Af- firming Scheffler’s argument would require us to take these contingent facts as fixed, rather than as part of what principles of justice should influence, and one of the attractive features of the non-division thesis is consequently that it does not.72 The more reasonable way to incorporate the problem noted by Scheffler is to acknowledge that, if we share his pluralist outlook, it enables us to say that individual obligations are best understood as a form of pro tanto duties rather than all-things-considered prescriptions. This further helps explain the relation between our conflicting obligations, and together with the first two responses, neutralises much of the force of Scheffler’s argument. Of course, a categorical division of labour is indeed attractive because it promises to, once and for all, determine the line between what justice requires of individuals and what we might call the personal sphere. Unfortunately, the pro tanto approach that I favour means that we have to be content with not being able to build our house on the rock. Rather, questions like how to balance demands of justice against obligations to loved ones, cannot be answered definitively.

5. Conclusions I noted initially that the idea of a duty to contribute can be rejected at the outset, if we believe that there is a division of labour such that principles of justice primarily apply to institutions and only secondarily to individuals. If so, there would be no point in developing and defending an account of contributive justice. In countering this objection and justifying the aim of this dissertation, I have employed an essentially negative strategy, assuming that those who affirm the primacy thesis bear the burden of proof, and critically assessing and rejecting the best possible objections to the non-division thesis I affirm. This involved reviewing and summarising the debate, and moving past the commonly discussed restriction thesis to instead focus on the more plausible primacy thesis. If successful, this strategy

72 Elsewhere, however, Scheffler recognises one of the main ideas driving the argument of this dissertation, namely that morality “…encourages decent human beings to contribute to the development of societies in which it may be easier for rational agents to be decent human beings.” Scheffler, Human Morality, 145.

79 Chapter 2 has shown that both the restriction thesis and the primacy thesis fail to provide a categorical justification of the view that the demands of justice do not extend to individuals. In sum, the claim of the non-division thesis that principles of justice apply directly both to institutions and to individuals is plausible because justice can be more fully achieved if both individuals and institutions try to further it directly. The chapter has also recognised the concerns about demandingness raised by the moral primacy view but, as we shall see in the coming chapters, my account can deal with them in a satisfying way because it is based on the pluralist idea that justice is not the only value individuals should promote, and that our all-things- considered judgments about what individuals ought to do hence must be sensitive to a range of considerations, including how costly their duties of justice are in terms of other values. We can conclude, then, that none of the arguments reviewed undermines my starting assumption, introduced in the first chapter, that there is a pro tanto duty for individuals to promote justice. Given that we understand justice as an ideal that relevantly situated agents ought to promote, this chapter thus supports the view that a duty to do so falls on any capable agent – institutions and individuals alike. It thereby fulfils the first desideratum for an account of contributive justice, by telling us who should contribute: institutions and individuals are both relevant agents of justice. What does this mean more specifically, and how can individuals be expected to contribute? The precise content of the duty to contribute depends on many further factors, including our answer to the question of why contributing is a duty, which the next two chapters answer. Before turning our attention to this, we should summarise what this chapter suggests, as well as an important delimitation in the continuing argument. Whereas the primacy thesis suggests that individuals contribute by, for instance, acting on Rawls’s natural duty to support, comply with, and further just institutions73, this chapter has suggested that there are also more substantive and direct individual duties of justice, of the relevant pro tanto nature. To say that they are direct means that they are discharged not by supporting just institutions, but by promoting justice in unmediated ways. To say that they are substantive means that they require more than mere compliance with just institutions and rules. So, even though accepting and

73 See section 1 above, citing Rawls, TJ, 99.

80 Who should contribute? The division of labour and individual duties of justice complying with a just basic structure can be seen as one way of contributing, I have a stronger sense of contribution in mind, which centres on individuals supplementing and enhancing institutions.74 In the widest sense, promoting justice requires us to take into consideration how we can either contribute to or undermine justice not only in relation to formal institutions within the basic structure, but also in relation to informal and decentralised social practices and norms. One implication of my argument, then, is that, even if the state makes certain behaviour, such as blatant discrimination, illegal, it is up to us as individuals to comply with the letter of the law even when there is no risk of getting caught, as well as to honour the spirit of the law even where it does not apply – justice requires us to uphold just social norms and to dismantle unjust ones. Furthermore, even if the state forbids certain commercial practices, and companies take on further voluntary restrictions as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility, it is ultimately up to us as consumers to take the effects on justice into account when making consumer decisions in the marketplace, even if that entails some cost to ourselves – justice should be a factor when deciding what and how we buy things. Finally, even where institutions within the basic structure – including a system of redistributive income tax – regulate the economic system of demand and supply that decides what we can earn in the market, it is up to us as individuals to produce in ways that further ideals of justice – justice requires us to take the effects on justice into account when deciding how to employ our productive abilities.75 These are three examples of how a substantive and direct pro tanto duty to contribute could express itself in daily life. Yet, even if we can contribute to more just societies in all of these ways and more, the rest of the dissertation will focus on the final example, developing an account of how the duty to contribute expresses itself in production. That is, I will focus on what justice requires of us in terms of what to produce and how, and will not say more about how we can contribute in other ways. Instead, I will focus on the specific form of contribution that one makes when one pro-

74 These terms were introduced in section 1 of the introductory chapter. 75 Note that in some circumstances where direct individual action is pointless or counterproductive, promoting institutions might indeed be the best way for individuals to contribute. This is fully compatible with the non-division thesis, and does not undermine my charge against those who reject it, which, after all, was that it is implausible to think that individuals should promote just institutions, even when there are better ways they can contribute. See Berkey, “Against Rawlsian Institutionalism about Justice,” 724.

81 Chapter 2 vides a good or service that others value or need. This constitutes a narrowing of focus from justice more generally to the issues of distributive and contributive justice, as these distinctions were described in the introductory chapter. Without denying that there are many ways in which we can contribute to justice, the rest of this dissertation will thus focus on this particular understanding of contributions, for the simple reason that the inquiry needs to be focused in order to be able to satisfyingly interrogate this complex issue. Having defended the viability of this dissertation against the threat posed by the division of labour, the next two chapters look at equality, reciprocity, and fairly sharing burdens as potential ways of explaining such a substantive individual duty of justice.

82 Why contribute? Cohen and the equality-based account

Chapter 3 – Why contribute? Cohen and the equality-based account

One influential way of explaining why individuals have a duty to contribute is to point to the value of equality, and argue that a duty to contribute could remove many of the injustices in distribution that characterise real- world economies. Specifically, such a duty could potentially allow us to avoid a perceived trade-off between equality and efficiency, which many believe prevents the simultaneous realisation of both values. To illustrate, imagine an economy with only one kind of occupation, making widgets, and two workers with different productive abilities. Betty can at most produce 25 widgets per hour while the more talented Abby can make up to 50. In virtue of her superior talent, which she just happens to possess, Abby would not toil harder than Betty even if she produced twice as many widgets as Betty. Now, Abby offers to raise her output from 25 to 50, but only if her pay is doubled. Should we accept her offer? Given that we care about equality, in this case requiring that Abby and Betty have equal income, we should not. Given that we care about Pareto efficiency, in this case meaning that Abby and possibly also Betty could be made better off if more widgets were produced, we should.1 It is often thought that Rawls’s difference principle would sanction Abby’s claim. In its canonical formulation, the principle states that “[s]ocial and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are […] to the greatest expected benefit of the least advantaged...”2 The inequality between Abby and Betty should thus be accepted, since more widgets will be produced and both may end up with more widgets than the benchmark of the initial equality.3 Therefore, even if we care about equality, we should

1 This is a slightly altered version of Cohen’s example in Cohen, RJE, 181 f. Pareto efficiency refers to the idea that a distribution, for instance, can be made more efficient if some could be made better off without anyone else becoming worse off. I will follow Cohen in the standard assumptions about and definitions of Pareto-related terms found in Cohen, 87 f, n. 4. 2 Rawls, TJ, 72. 3 Rawls, sec. 26. “May end up” because of the possibility of different interpretations of the Pareto principle inherent in the difference principle. For instance, must both Abby and Betty be better off

83 Chapter 3 count this kind of inequality as just. As we have seen in previous chapters, however, this view has been challenged by G. A. Cohen, who notes that Abby can demand a higher salary only because she happens to possess a talent for widget-making, and that it is unlikely that potential high-contributors like her are unable – rather than unwilling – to contribute more even without inequality-generating economic incentives. That is, if Abby decided to act differently, because she believes that justice requires it, then she could make 50 widgets an hour despite not receiving double the income. Justice thus cannot be achieved unless Abby’s desire for incentives is replaced by the internalisation of something like a duty to contribute. Cohen argues that if Abby were “morally inspired”4 and truly committed to egalitarian justice, she would agree to produce 50 widgets an hour at the equality-preserving lower salary, and that if she refuses, “…she strikes a posture that sets her against just egalitarian principle.”5 The way in which Cohen defends a duty to contribute is thus based on the assumptions that justice requires individuals to promote equality, and that such a duty promises to dissolve the trade-off between equality and efficiency. He also concedes that, in lieu of such an internalised duty, the best policy may ultimately be to raise Abby’s salary. He adds, however, that since the pro tanto injustice of the inequality never washes off, we should not follow Rawlsians in making the mistake of calling the resulting inequality just.6 Cohen instead insists that justice is equality, and not the product of a process of weighing different values against each other in order to reach decisions about what to do.7 or is it enough if only Abby is better off? See Cohen, RJE, 29 f, n. 6, and Parfit, Equality or Priority?, 35–39. 4 Cohen does not use “morally inspired” to describe Abby in this case but in the doctor-gardener case introduced below, see Cohen, RJE, 193. 5 Cohen, 181. Since Abby is more talented, this would not leave her worse off than Betty, but if we give in to her demands we get a distribution within which some are worse off than others through no fault or choice or desert of their own. To be precise, Cohen writes that the injustice is due to the “relational inequality”. Since he wrote this before Anderson’s influential article on relational egalitarianism, which was discussed in note 90 in the introductory chapter, it is important to stress that Cohen has in mind the notion of comparative justice introduced in section 4.4 of that chapter. 6 Cohen, 7. Cohen writes that “Of course there is a case for equality. But of course there is also a case for departures from equality that benefit all, for no matter what […] reason.” Cohen, 168, emphasis in original. Tolerating such inequalities while recognising that they are unfair is what ”…sensible folk, like me…” will do, says Cohen, 168, and eliminating them is the way of ”fairness fanatics”. A longer discussion of these ideas can be found in section 5.2 of the introductory chapter. 7 I will not devote much space to establishing that Cohen actually held the view that justice is equality, since it is clearly indicated by his claim that “…distributive justice is (some kind of) equality…” Cohen, RJE, 30, n. 7, that “…the Pareto principle might trump justice, which is equality…” Cohen, 320, n. 67, and that “…justice requires equality, where that means for there to be justice,

84 Why contribute? Cohen and the equality-based account

This chapter argues that this is an inadequate way of answering the question of why individuals ought to contribute. I suggest that, since equality is a comparative notion which only judges how people fare in relation to each other, an account like Cohen’s, which refers only to equality, will inevitably face the following puzzle: How can it follow from the view that inequalities are unjust, albeit sometimes tolerable, that talented individuals have a duty to contribute at a more productive level? How can a commitment to egalitarianism, the view that a more equal distribution is better, lead to productivism, the view that a higher level of production is better? For Cohen, whose conviction that “equality constitutes distributive justice”8 underlines his whole critique of Rawls, this puzzle generates a dilemma that seemingly strips his view of either its attractiveness or its dis- tinctiveness compared with the views he criticises. If justice is equality, and there are substantial individual duties of justice, talented individuals like Abby have a duty not to bargain their way to inequality-generating in- comes. But since this means that the Pareto principle is not part of justice, it seems as though they cannot have a duty of justice to use their talents at a more productive level, whether they receive extra compensation or not. In order to reach the second and stronger position, Cohen must state that the Pareto principle is part of justice, something he expressly rejects. But then he must be wrong in claiming that justice requires talented individuals to provide their talents, and he can only make the weaker claim that if they decide to work productively, they cannot demand inequality-generating incentives for doing so. This point generalises, and shows that an appeal to equality alone cannot serve as satisfying grounds for a duty to contribute. This critique draws upon an observation that has been well recognised at least since Derek Parfit noted that a principle of equality (depending on how it is formulated), on its own, cannot tell us that it is better that all are equally well off than that they are equally badly off.9 I believe that Cohen, in his attempts to show sceptics that equality and efficiency are co-achievable, loses sight of the fact that people being equally well off and people being better rather than worse off are two different desiderata. Cohen drops Pareto from justice because he wants to be able to call moves from there must be equality…” Cohen, 188, n. 10. Patrick Tomlin dispels any reason to doubt this interpretation in Tomlin, “Internal Doubts about Cohen’s Rescue of Justice,” 233, n. 22. See also Arneson, “Justice Is Not Equality.” 8 Cohen, “Rescuing Justice from Constructivism and Equality from the Basic Structure Re- striction,” 252. 9 Parfit, Equality or Priority?, 4.

85 Chapter 3 an equal state of affairs to an unequal state of affairs in which some or all are better off unjust. In the process, however, he loses the necessary ground for claiming that an equal state where all are better off is preferable to an equal state where all are worse off. Cohen’s conception of egalitarian justice is forced to be indifferent between the two, and thus risks losing its appeal as an alternative to the Rawlsian position, and fails to provide a satisfying account of a duty to contribute.10 While others have noted this tension in Cohen’s egalitarianism11, this chapter goes further by suggesting and assessing viable routes to avoid it. I argue that the only way to avoid the puzzle that is consistent with Cohen’s general approach is to add a maximising principle to his conception of justice, stating that it is better if there is more rather than less of that which is to be distributed equally. Specifically, I will suggest that a concern for human flourishing can be drawn from Cohen’s writings and is consistent with his pluralism about moral values, and his monism about the value of justice: This is not a revision of Cohen’s concept of justice as equality, but rather an appeal to a different moral principle. It also means that the most plausible interpretation of Cohen’s answer to the question of why individuals should contribute is a form of the burden-based account that I investigate further in the next chapter: Cohen must say that it is not only for the sake of equality, but also for the sake of ensuring that people can flourish, that individuals are required to contribute. The next section sets out Cohen’s conception of egalitarian justice and the dilemma he faces, which forces him to give up either what makes his view distinct or what makes his view attractive. Sections 2 and 3 consider two replies to the dilemma, both of which I argue ultimately fall short: Firstly, that the dilemma is irrelevant to Cohen’s view of justice since his

10 Section 3 of the introductory chapter summarised Joseph Carens’s utopian market socialist account of a duty to contribute. Interestingly, the problem does not affect Carens, because he grounds his duty in the Pareto-sensitive difference principle rather than Cohen’s Pareto-insensitive concept of justice. Carens, “The Egalitarian Ethos as a Social Mechanism,” 55. 11 The observation has been discussed by Meckled-Garcia, “Why Work Harder? Equality, Social Duty and the Market”; Scheffler, “Is the Basic Structure Basic?”; Tomlin, “Internal Doubts about Cohen’s Rescue of Justice”; Quong, “Justice Beyond Equality” and Arneson, “Why Not Capital- ism?”, but, strangely, it has not become standard in debates on Cohen’s work. I cannot, for instance, find it in the otherwise carefully argued Vrousalis, The Political Philosophy of G. A. Cohen: Back to Socialist Basics, and it is bracketed by Olson, “Solving Which Trilemma? The Many Interpreta- tions of Equality, Pareto, and Freedom of Occupational Choice.” This chapter differs from earlier treatments of the question by explaining more thoroughly what the problem is and, especially, how it could be avoided.

86 Why contribute? Cohen and the equality-based account view is not intended to have practical implications to begin with, and, secondly, that Cohen’s egalitarianism would actually require certain productive decisions in particular circumstances of inequality. Section 4 describes how Cohen’s egalitarian principle must be complemented by a maximising principle and proposes one according to which it is in itself better if people flourish. To make his claims about the duties of individuals, Cohen must hence refer to both principles. Section 5 discusses the upshot of this for Cohen’s view of justice and his notion of an egalitarian ethos. Section 6 concludes.

1. Cohen’s egalitarianism, the Indifference Challenge, and Cohen’s dilemma Cohen’s egalitarian campaign can be reconstructed as a triad of related claims, which together make up what I will refer to as Cohen’s conception of egalitarian justice.12 Firstly, pace Rawls, not only the basic structure of society but also the day-to-day behaviour of individuals, like Abby’s wage negotiation, has a bearing on the justice of society.13 Secondly, the difference principle is not a fundamental principle of justice but at best a principle of intelligent policy, or what Cohen calls a “rule of regulation”.14 Thirdly, and the primary focus of this chapter: contrary to what the difference principle states, Pareto efficiency is not part of justice. Instead, Co- hen suggests that “…distributive justice is (some kind of) equality…”, although he immediately qualifies this by adding that “…the Pareto principle, and also that constrained Pareto principle that is the difference principle, often trump justice.”15 In line with his pluralism about moral values, Cohen thus distinguishes distributive, or egalitarian, justice from Pareto

12 A less detailed summary of Cohen’s position was provided in section 3.1 of the introductory chapter. 13 Cohen suggests that what justice requires of individuals is, however, constrained by a legitimate personal prerogative that allows some individual pursuits. See Cohen, RJE, chaps. 3, 5. The idea of a personal prerogative is borrowed from Scheffler, The Rejection of Consequentialism., and “…grants each person the right to be something other than an engine for the welfare of other people: we are not nothing but slaves to social justice.” Cohen, RJE, 10. 14 Cohen, RJE, 3; 30, n. 7. This distinction was discussed in section 5 of the introductory chapter 15 Cohen, 30, n. 7, emphasis in original. In what follows, I will sometimes simplify this to “justice- as-equality”.

87 Chapter 3 efficiency and criticises Rawlsians for failing to do so, while allowing considerations of efficiency to enter the all-things-considered analysis of what we should do. Now, the metatheoretical disagreement between Rawls and Cohen was discussed in section 5.2 of the introductory chapter, and I indicated that this dissertation occupies a middle ground in between their views of justice, and whether it is a pluralist or monist ideal. Most of the critique in this chapter does not depend on how we answer these questions, however, since it focuses on what kind of individual duty can be justified by an appeal to equality. Although my assumption that justice is a pluralist value does play a role in this dissertation it does not ground the critique against Cohen in this chapter. A more accurate description is to say that my pluralism about justice follows from the critique of Cohen’s monist understanding: because Cohen’s equality-based duty fails to cohere with certain considered judgments about what justice should ask from individuals, it indicates that his position should be revised. Furthermore, Cohen’s view about the site of justice is one that I do share, and chapter 2 above drew upon and expanded Cohen’s argument around this, and strengthened his rejection of the division of labour between institutions and individuals. This claim entails that a just society would be characterised by an egalitarian ethos, the effect of which is that people would be motivated to do what justice requires. For equality, and hence justice, to hold, an ethos must govern daily choices and, to the extent that societies are unjust, Cohen believes “… a change in social ethos, a change in the attitudes people sustain toward each other in the thick of daily life, is necessary for producing equality.”16 Little effort has been expended towards examining what, more precisely, an ethos is and what Co- hen’s proposal actually entails. This chapter goes some way towards clarifying this, and chapter 6 is devoted to developing the idea further. For now, it is sufficient to note that Cohen assumes that the existence of an egalitarian ethos will motivate, in one causal way or another, people like Abby to act in the way that justice requires. When Cohen claims that “…social justice requires a social ethos that inspires uncoerced equality supporting choice…”17, this should hence be interpreted as saying that an

16 Cohen, If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re so Rich?, 3. See also Cohen, RJE, 123; 132. 17 Cohen, RJE, 127. Note that, unlike many other participants in this debate, including (at times) Cohen himself, I distinguish in chapter 6 between the ethos as a motivating force and the moral principles upon which it is based. On this interpretation, it is not Cohen’s ethos but the principle upon which it is based that require individuals to act in certain ways.

88 Why contribute? Cohen and the equality-based account egalitarian ethos would encourage people to act on a principle of equality. Concretely, Cohen’s egalitarianism purportedly requires that Abby not only make certain reward decisions, such as accepting an equality-preserving wage no matter what she works with, but also certain occupational decisions, such as preferring a more productive job to a less productive one.18 What we will call the ethical solution to the problem of trading off equality against efficiency, then, is the claim that there would, in fact, be no trade-off if people were moved by an ethos to follow a principle of justice that influenced both their reward- and their productive decisions.19 A duty to contribute based on Cohen’s egalitarianism thus asks an individual like Abby to “…provide greater product than others at the ordinary rate, because she’s more able than others and will consequently be as well off as they are (even) if she does so”.20 To understand the dilemma Cohen faces, we need to look at his primary example of how the presence of an ethos enables the ethical solution. Alt- hough highly abstract, such stylised thought experiments allow us to distil the important differences between the kinds of considerations that could motivate people to work productively. Here, Abby chooses between becoming a doctor or a gardener, and although both alternatives would leave her better off than others in terms of job satisfaction, she loves gardening so much that she prefers it to doctoring. 21 Cohen also stipulates, without expanding on why, that it would be better for the worst off if she instead became a doctor. As in the widget case, Abby can choose to work either as a gardener or a doctor at the equality-preserving income of £20,000, but if she offers her services as a doctor she could also choose to bargain her way into the inequality-generating £50,000 income. If she does so, we find ourselves facing a choice between equality, which requires that we do not

18 I use the terminology of Fabre, “Distributive Justice and Freedom: Cohen on Money and La- bour.” Titelbaum, “What Would a Rawlsian Ethos of Justice Look Like?,” 290, notes that the productive decisions a person makes also include “...whether he works, at what kind of job he works, in what geographic area he works, at what age he retires, and so on.” Cf. Tomlin, “Internal Doubts about Cohen’s Rescue of Justice,” 234, n. 30. 19 Cohen’s ethical solution is originally supposed to dissolve trade-offs between equality, efficiency and freedom of occupational choice. Note that, unless Cohen requires productive contributions, however, the debate on whether the solution achieves this is irrelevant. I will thus prioritise the former question. Regarding the second question, see Cohen, RJE, chap. 5. 20 Cohen, 182. Recall my description of luck egalitarianism as outcome-based in section 4.3 of the introductory chapter. In line with this, Cohen’s answer to why individuals ought to contribute is simply that they can help remedy the injustice of an unequal distribution. 21 Although there is now an abundance of variants of this case in the literature, I will concentrate on Cohen’s original example, although Cohen’s individual “A” is renamed “Abby”.

89 Chapter 3 give Abby more than what others get, stipulated to be £20,000, and efficiency, which is assumed to require Abby to be a doctor.22 Abby would most of all like to work as a doctor at £50,000, but if equality concerns rule that out, she prefers gardening at £20,000 to doctoring at £20,000. The community she lives in would most of all like her to work as a doctor at £20,000, but if she refuses, they are willing to compromise equality by offering her £50,000. Cohen suggests, however, that just as in the widget case there is a possible ethical solution to the trade-off. If Abby does care about equality and the worst off, through some ethos-induced combination of “…principled commitment and fellow-feeling…”, then she will genuinely prefer doctoring to gardening at £20,000. If she really were committed to egalitarian justice, her aims and preferences would align with the community’s and the dilemma would dissolve.23 We can now restate the puzzle under investigation in this chapter in terms of the doctor-gardener case: While Cohen is right that Abby would clearly strike a posture that sets her against just egalitarian principle if she demands £50,000 for being a doctor, it is not equality that suffers if she prefers gardening to doctoring at £20,000. A just egalitarian principle may allow us to follow Cohen in ruling out the former since that upsets equality. But if Cohen is serious about denying that Pareto concerns are part of justice, a just egalitarian principle taken on its own must be indifferent between her gardening and her doctoring, if neither upsets equality. The community would prefer her doctoring to gardening at £20,000 since it presumably cares about equality and Pareto, but anyone committed to Co- hen’s conception of egalitarian justice cannot. They cannot say that there is a reason of justice to prefer equality at a higher level to equality at a lower level. Call this The Indifference Challenge. The Indifference Challenge arises because Cohen’s egalitarianism is wholly comparative, in the technical sense discussed in section 4.4 of the introductory chapter – it assesses justice and injustice only with regard to

22 Cohen holds that the currency of egalitarian justice must consist of both welfare and resources, and that what should be equal is not only income but also the burdens and frustrations of a job and the opportunities for the realisation and exercise of one’s creative capacities therein. Cohen, If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re so Rich?, 177; Cohen, “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice”; Cohen, RJE, 106; 368. This means that egalitarian justice requires that “…job-and-income packages should, other things equal, be comparable in welfare terms.” and that “…no one should seek such compensation as makes him all things considered (far) better off than anyone else.“ Cohen, 370. This must mean that the £20,000 Abby can earn as a gardener is less than what others in her society earn, since her job satisfaction is higher than theirs. 23 Cohen, RJE, 189. This example implicitly relies on what I call a moral ethos in chapter 6, that is, individuals internalising and acting from particular principles.

90 Why contribute? Cohen and the equality-based account how people fare relative to each other. As I will go on to discuss, the appeal to equality can indeed explain why individuals might have a duty to remove the kind of comparative injustice that Cohen argues incentives introduce. Since it lacks non-comparative aspects dictating that there is something each is due regardless of what others get, it cannot recognise any injustice in everyone being equally badly off, however. Consequently, Cohen’s view cannot explain why individuals might have a duty to contribute to an effort to bootstrap themselves out of such circumstances.24 Note, further, that this means the Indifference Challenge is a close relative of the general levelling down objection to certain kinds of egalitarianism. This objection states, roughly, that it is absurd to think that removing inequality by making the better off as badly off as the worst off is good in any way. Yet, the objection continues, it seems that certain kinds of egalitarian views entail that we should level down, despite nobody being made better off by such an intervention.25 In an analogous fashion, the Indiffer- ence Challenge gains its force from the intuitive implausibility of egalitarianism’s ranking of different states. And, as we shall see in section 3, the inability of Cohen’s egalitarianism to rule out levelling down as a way to achieve equality means that one of the most plausible answers to the In- difference Challenge ultimately fails.26 The Indifference Challenge gives rise to a dilemma for Cohen. I noted above that what distinguishes his conception of egalitarian justice from the Rawlsian constructivist approach he criticises is that Cohen believes that the site of justice extends beyond the basic structure to include individuals’ actions, that we should separate fundamental principles of justice from rules of regulation, and that distributive justice is equality. And what makes Cohen’s position attractive is that it enables an ethical solution to the problem of realising both efficiency and equality, and by effectively dissolving any need for trade-offs through its defence of a duty to contribute that requires people to work productively without equality-upsetting incentives. The discussion so far, however, shows that Cohen appears to face a dilemma:

24 To be fair, other writings suggest that Cohen seem to embrace both comparative and non-comparative aspects of justice, at least regarding the issue of desert. See his remarks in the unpublished typescript Cohen, “David Miller on Market Socialism and Distributive Justice,” 14–18. 25 Temkin, “Equality, Priority, and the Levelling Down Objection,” 130–33. 26 As I will go on to explain, Cohen relies on his pluralism about moral values to neutralise the force of the levelling-down objection, as does Temkin, and this is also the most promising way out of the Indifference Challenge.

91 Chapter 3

Cohen’s dilemma

1) Cohen could maintain that “distributive justice is (some kind of) equality”. But then he faces the Indifference Challenge, which shows the ethical solution is unavailable, thus removing what is attractive about Cohen’s position. or

2) Cohen could respond to the Indifference Challenge by modifying his view of what justice is, by rejecting that “distributive justice is (some kind of) equality”. But that removes what is distinct about Cohen’s position.

Confronted with this dilemma, Cohen and those sympathetic to his egalitarianism may either deny that he faces the Indifference Challenge, or agree that he does but dispute that either or both of 1) and 2) are unattractive ways out of the predicament. The next two sections discuss replies of the first kind, and the two sections after that consider replies of the second kind.

2. How justice requires equality One reply to the dilemma is to argue that, in fact, Cohen does not defend the ethical solution as a duty for individuals and that the Indifference Challenge therefore lacks practical relevance for what we ought to do. This reply assumes that it is a mistake to believe that Cohen’s conception of justice is supposed to have normative implications to begin with, and suggests that his aim is rather to describe what a just society would be like. In the terms used in the introductory chapter, he only pursues the theoretical and not the practical goal of political philosophy, and since his project specifies what a just society would be like, rather than what individuals are required to do, it is unscathed by the objection raised by the dilemma. Although this is less of a reply to than a rejection of the significance of the questions pursued in this chapter, this suggestion could strike a chord among those who believe that Rawls and Cohen are not only giving different answers to the same questions about justice, but are in fact engaged

92 Why contribute? Cohen and the equality-based account in different kinds of projects. They could claim that, while Rawlsians primarily seek to answer questions about what justice requires us to do, Co- hen is primarily engaged in exposing and refining what justice is, a project that could at most yield standards against which we evaluate different states of affairs to see which one is more just.27 These critics could draw on the idea voiced in the introductory chapter that knowing what is required in order to realise justice is not a reason for individuals to do so. Recall the discussion in section 4.5 of that chapter, and specifically that what it means for justice to require something can be interpreted in two different ways. When Cohen states that “[e]galitarian justice requires people to have some regard to equality not only when negotiating for rewards but also when making career choices…”,28 we could, first, assume that people’s regard for equality, and the presence of an egalitarian ethos, are best understood as necessary conditions for justice to hold, just as Rawls claims that the basic structure must have certain characteristics for justice to hold. By pointing out that “[i]n the absence of such an ethos, inequalities will obtain that are not necessary to enhance the condition of the worst off…”,29 Cohen adds the ethos as a necessary condition, as it were, to Rawls’s conception of justice. That individuals “…would in general take jobs for modest post-tax salaries…”30 is thus rather a description of the type of individual behaviour that is required for justice to hold, rather than a demand that they actually behave in such a way. The point is merely that, if justice is to hold, that is what individuals would have to do: individual duties of justice are conditional upon justice being worthy of promotion.31

27 The diagnosis of Cohen’s and Rawls’s disagreement has been suggested by Laura Valentini, “Ideal vs. Non-Ideal Theory: A Conceptual Map,” 657. and Tomlin, “Can I Be a Luck Egalitarian and a Rawlsian?,” 377 f; 383 ff., and may be supported by passages such as “…the question for political philosophy is not what we should do but what we should think, even when what we should think makes no practical difference.” Cohen, RJE, 268. 28 Cohen, RJE, 370. Emphasis added. 29 Cohen, 123. 30 Cohen, 71, n. 41. 31 This interpretation gains some credence from Cohen, 71, n. 41. where he states that he is not asking what the moral obligations of individuals who believe in Rawlsian justice are, but rather “...what would a society that is just by the lights of the difference principle be like? How, among other things, would talented people in general behave in such society?” Emphasis in original. Inter- estingly, some critics have suggested that Cohen does not himself endorse that justice requires an ethos, but only that Rawlsians must admit that it does. I think this is simply wrong. Cohen often developed his own views by criticising others, a strategy that, as Nicholas Vrousalis, “G. A. Cohen’s Vision of Socialism,” 187 puts it, “…sometimes conceals positive commitment behind polemical fog.” The textual support dutifully collected by Tomlin, “Internal Doubts about Cohen’s Rescue of Justice,” 235 ff. in response to a reviewer establishes that Cohen clearly defended the idea in its own right, and on his own terms.

93 Chapter 3

The first understanding of “require” hence suggests that Cohen’s claims regarding the ethos describe how individuals would act in a just society, and not normative requirements that they ought to act in a specific way.32 I believe, however, that the above is simply a mistaken interpretation of Cohen’s project. It is clear that Cohen also has a second and more practical understanding of “require” in mind when writing about justice: in line with Anca Gheaus’s view, summarised in the introductory chapter, the phrase “Justice requires x, y, and z” consists of both a statement about what is required for a state of affairs to be just, and an assertion that someone ought to bring that state of affairs about, to the extent that they can.33 Indeed, when Cohen in one place equivocates principles and duties and says that “[t]he real question is whether a duty not to take advantage of one’s superior talent is among the principles of a just society.”,34 he seems to be assuming that we are required by justice to act on such a duty; we ought to bring just states of affairs about.35 To the extent that Cohen em- braces equality as a requirement for justice to hold, it is thus plausible to assume that he would also accept the following principle for individuals36:

The principle of equality Individuals ought to contribute to bring about equality to the extent that they reasonably can.

We are thus justified in rejecting the suggestion that Cohen’s view of justice as partly a standard for evaluating states of affairs means that no prescriptions for individuals can be drawn from his view. I will proceed

32 I fail to see, however, how denying that Cohen’s ethical solution is supposed to have a practical upshot could be a way of rescuing it, since the Indifference Challenge applies with equal force to his egalitarianism understood as an evaluative standard: we still cannot say that a society with equality at a higher level is more just than one with equality at a lower level. 33 Gheaus, “The Feasibility Constraint on the Concept of Justice,” 456 f. 34 Cohen, RJE, 193, n. 15. 35 Cohen also writes that “I say that the doctor who is willing to be one at ordinary pay because she believes that justice requires that choice is not thereby doctoring in response to pressure and she is therefore not unfree because she is pressured.” Cohen, 193, first emphasis added. “Egalitarian justice therefore demands […] that he be a doctor” Cohen, 370, first emphasis added. “Egalitarian justice requires people to have some regard to equality not only when negotiating for rewards but also when making career choices…” Cohen, 370, emphasis added. See also Cohen’s, 270 claim that normative questions are not sensitive to any facts. 36 I draw upon Cohen’s characterisation of normative principles as “…a general directive that tells agents what (they ought, or ought not) to do…” Cohen, RJE, 229 and the analysis offered by Pablo Gilabert, “Debate: Feasibility and Socialism,” 57, regarding how normative or prescriptive claims could be generated from evaluative principles.

94 Why contribute? Cohen and the equality-based account throughout the chapter to assume that justice requires something of us, and that Cohen’s conception of justice yields a principle like the principle of equality above. The problem, however, is that this principle, alone, cannot require that people work more productively and so the Indifference Challenge remains strong.

3. The productivist egalitarian duty: local or global? A promising strategy at this point is to deny that Cohen faces the Indiffer- ence Challenge, since the principle of equality would in fact govern occupational decisions in circumstances where a particular decision is required to bring about equality. Consider, for instance, a case where Abby and Betty are unequally well off and the only way to bring Betty up to Abby’s level is for Abby to become a doctor. If Abby is better off through no fault or choice of either, and if becoming a doctor at £20,000, unlike becoming a gardener at the same pay, could make Betty as well off as Abby is, then Abby has a duty to become a doctor, for the sake of equality. This strategy assumes that it is not, in fact, necessary to introduce non-comparative aspects dictating that everyone is due something as a matter of justice, regardless of what others get. It seems quite enough to make the comparative point that, when someone is worse off than you are and your contribution can help amend this, you have an equality-based duty to do so. Philosopher Cécile Fabre’s own (burden-based) account of a duty to contribute is discussed more extensively in the next chapter, but she has also defended an interpretation of Cohen similar to the one above. The following reconstruction of her position sets out its three main claims, which I have labelled [a]–[c].

The Fabrean duty

[a] Cohen’s account of egalitarian justice stipulates that individuals should have equal access to desirable conditions of life. [b] This in turn imposes on others an obligation to help secure such access, [c] by refusing to live a life that is more rewarding, all things considered, than the lives of other individuals, within the constraints of a legitimate personal prerogative.37

37 Note that apart from the clarifying bracketed letters, this is a quote from Fabre, “Distributive Justice and Freedom: Cohen on Money and Labour,” 398. Note also that it is rather similar to her burden-based account of a duty to contribute, which assumes that everyone has a fundamental right to live a minimally flourishing life, and that this entails that others have a duty to contribute to this

95 Chapter 3

Claim [b] states there is a duty requiring individuals to secure what is set out in [a], to wit, all individuals’ equal access to desirable conditions of life.38 Fabre’s point is that if, for instance, this requires equal access to health care, then Abby could discharge her duty either by paying taxes that fund health care or by herself becoming a doctor. Since both one’s work effort and one’s income could help to secure such access, both one’s work and one’s income are subject to the requirements of justice. If for some reason Abby’s taxes could not fund enough health care, equality would require her to become a doctor.39 I believe that Fabre offers as good a reconstruction of Cohen’s position as is possible. The Fabrean duty nevertheless suffers from two important limitations. Firstly, it seems to be consistent with levelling down and thus cannot avoid the Indifference Challenge. This is indicated most clearly by claim [c], which suggests that individuals can help the worst off by refusing to live a more rewarding life. Giving up what makes one’s life rewarding is unlikely, however, to make others’ lives more rewarding, although equality would be achieved. It is clear that Fabre does not intend [c] to be the means by which to achieve the distribution set out in [a], however, but rather a justified side effect of the duty set out in [b] – it is not because individuals give up a rewarding life that the worst off become better off, but making the worst off better off might impinge upon an individual’s chance to live a rewarding life. We should hence reformulate [c] as “[c’] even if this means that one cannot live a life that is more rewarding, all things considered, than the lives of other individuals, within the constraints of a legitimate personal prerogative.”40 Furthermore, it seems necessary to add to clause [a] some non-comparative account of what people are due, if the Fabrean duty is to avoid the Indifference Challenge. For instance, adding a requirement of sufficiency gives us: “[a’] Cohen’s account of egalitarian justice stipulates that individuals should have equal and sufficient access to desirable conditions of life.” This assumption would rule out at least some levelling down scenarios. It cannot be supported by Cohen’s egalitarianism, however. As long as his view only attaches significance to how well people fare in comparison to others, and not in absolute terms, it can

goal. See Fabre, Whose Body Is It Anyway? Justice and the Integrity of the Person and section 4 of chapter 4, below. 38 Fabre’s reference to “desirable conditions of life” draws on Cohen, RJE, 181. 39 Fabre, “Distributive Justice and Freedom: Cohen on Money and Labour,” 398. 40 Fabre reports that the alternative formulation might be a better specification of what she intends. Private communication, March 2017.

96 Why contribute? Cohen and the equality-based account provide no basis for this assumption. I will nevertheless adopt the assumption for the sake of argument, and return to its lack of foundation below. Even in this revised form, there is a second limitation to the Fabrean duty, which renders it inadequate as a fundamental reply to the Indiffer- ence Challenge. The duty would, in fact, only require further contributions for the sake of equality when applied to circumstances of inequality. Hence, it is still vulnerable to the Indifference Challenge, since it would not always require equality at a higher rather than a lower level. To illustrate, let us assume that both Abby and Betty are above the sufficiency line but in unequal DI, in the following set of distributions of access to the desirable conditions of life.

Table 2: Incremental equality/inequality DI DII DIII DIV Abby 5 5 6 6 Betty 4 5 5 6

If we start in DI, Abby is required by this duty to work more productively, until Betty is brought up to 5 in DII. But DII is a steady-state of equality, and there is no reason to work towards either of the Pareto-superior DIII or DIV. Paradoxically, however, if we decided to temporarily allow inequalities so that Abby could enrich herself and we thereby moved to DIII, the duty would be triggered again and Abby would be required to work until Betty was brought up to 6 in DIV. Cohen would arguably wish to be able to declare DIV the optimal distribution, and this version of the duty does allow him to explain why we should prefer it to the unequal DIII and indirectly also to the Pareto-inferior but equal DII. But it seems to me that the explanation in the latter case is completely spurious, since it depends on the intervening DIII. If we never moved to DIII, the duty would not avoid the Indifference Challenge because we would be unable to choose between equality in DII and DIV. The general problem is that this formulation of the duty would not require people to choose more productive lines of work in a just society, but only in circumstances of inequality. The Fabrean duty is hence a locally productivist duty, which only requires productive contributions in particular circumstances, namely those of inequality. Contrast this with an alternative

97 Chapter 3 globally productivist duty which would require productive contributions regardless of the circumstances. 41 Defenders of the duty that Fabre has helped to articulate might deny that this distinction matters practically, however. They could say that, although the duty only requires Abby to work for the sake of equality to bring Betty up to the equal distribution DII, it would in all likelihood find broad application in real-world societies, since no society today is even close to realising anything like equal and sufficient access to advantage. This reply attempts to trivialise and thereby defuse the problems raised by the Indif- ference Challenge, since it says that, although Cohen’s conception of equality cannot claim that DIV is preferable to DII, it can handle the more pressing issue of bringing people from DI to DII. A particular observation about inequality in societies further supports this defence: A general trend is that, although inequalities have not completely disappeared, the absolute number of people with access to desirable conditions of life has increased over time. Although distribution is still unequal, most or all people in contemporary Britain, for instance, are now at a much higher absolute level than in the 19th century. Reminiscent of Zeno’s paradox of Achilles and the tortoise, we could thus say that, while no society has so far moved all the way from DI to DII, by the time it has approximated DII, its distribution is more like the unequal DIII than DI, with everyone being better off although inequalities remain. Since we never reach DII, Abby’s duty is never satisfied and she will instead be required to work towards realising DIV. And once we approximate DIV, a new distribution DVI will be the goal, and so forth. While locally productivist in principle, this duty would thus behave like a globally productivist duty in real-world circumstances. This way out of the dilemma strikes me as quite attractive. If we accepted this solution, we would not have to modify Cohen’s view of justice- as-equality but may still end up with a duty that imposes the same prescriptions in most circumstances as a globally productivist duty would give us. The difference is, of course, that the latter would enable equality at a higher level than the locally productivist duty would, if it turned out that the account of the development towards equality offered above is false. This means that the locally productivist duty only reconciles equality and efficiency in particular empirical circumstances and not in principle. Nevertheless, although the Fabrean version of Cohen’s duty to contribute that we are currently considering is indeed attractive, I believe that it

41 The terms local and global are borrowed from the language of mathematical analysis, and do not refer to the kind of domestic or global justice discussed in section 4.2 of the introductory chapter.

98 Why contribute? Cohen and the equality-based account fails both to avoid the Indifference Challenge, and to find support in Co- hen’s egalitarianism. This is because most of the discussion in this section has presupposed a proviso against levelling down, grounded in a non-comparative assumption that strictly speaking cannot be derived from Cohen’s conception of justice as equality. While this might be the best attempt to escape the dilemma, it cannot be seen as a fundamental reply to the Indif- ference Challenge, and it cannot ultimately be said to be grounded in Co- hen’s view of egalitarian justice. The rest of this chapter will hence investigate the nature of a duty that is rooted in Cohen’s view and that can avoid the limitations just discussed.

4. Overcoming indifference by embracing maximisation It is clear, by now, that what is needed to allow Cohen’s duty to avoid the limitations just discussed is an additional non-comparative principle of maximisation, stating that it is better if there is more, rather than less, of that which is to be distributed equally. When discussing the levelling down objection, Parfit mentions such a principle, which holds that it is in itself better if people are better off, and he notes that pluralist egalitarians may give weight to both this principle and the principle of equality when evaluating states of affairs.42 The rest of this chapter argues that the only way for Cohen to avoid the Indifference Challenge is by adding a principle analogous to Parfit’s maximising principle. This could be done in two different ways. Cohen could either accept the dilemma’s second horn and revise his concept of justice to include some kind of maximising principle, or he could maintain his concept of justice and instead add an external maximising moral principle, which is not grounded in justice as such. I discuss each proposal in turn.

4.1 Justice as equality and efficiency If following the first strategy, Cohen could clarify that the clause specifying distributive justice as some kind of equality allows him to say that it is Pareto-efficient equality. What is to be promoted is thus not equality as such, but the maximally efficient level of equality.43 This requires that a

42 Parfit, Equality or Priority?, 4. 43 Thanks to Ian Carter for raising this point.

99 Chapter 3 maximising principle is part of what justice is. An example of this approach is Thomas Christiano’s account of egalitarian justice, which holds that not only equality but also the currency of equality is valuable in itself, and that both should be maximised. The very reason why we care about goods being equally distributed is that we want more rather than less of them, argues Christiano, who suggests that this view allows egalitarians to avoid the levelling down objection. 44 It could, by extension, perhaps also allow Cohen to avoid the Indifference Challenge. Patrick Tomlin considers a similar solution after presenting his insight- ful critique of Cohen’s position. He notes that, in one place, for the sake of argument, Cohen asks whether justice might incorporate Pareto concerns, so that a failure to bring about an equality-preserving Pareto im- provement would constitute an injustice.45 Pareto might, for instance, be an additional but lexically inferior principle of justice, or justice might be a label that we apply to whatever is the correct balance between the two values. Tomlin accurately identifies a reason for Cohen’s unwillingness to take this route as the worry that it would somehow diminish or remove our ability to recognise the injustice in a trade-off in which equality has been sacrificed for Pareto. And Tomlin tries to dispel this worry by pointing out that such a revised view of justice would still allow us to recognise that, although “…it may be true that you should kill one to save nine, you shouldn’t jump for joy at having made the right choice—you should weep for the one.”46 In reply, we might be sceptical of Tomlin’s optimism and argue that it would indeed be easier to compromise the ideal of equality in real-world politics if it were conflated with Pareto efficiency. Criticising policies that lead to Pareto improvements and decreased equality arguably serves the purpose of reminding people of the value of equality, even if they are, ultimately, the best policies. It would perhaps be more difficult to do this and to champion equality if we thought of the policies as through-and- through just.47 This point, which I believe reflects Cohen’s position with

44 Christiano, “A Foundation for Egalitarianism,” 72 ff. 45 Cohen, RJE, 322. The imagined rationale would be that justice “…compares not only what a person gets with what another gets, but also what a person gets with what she might otherwise have got”. Cohen, 322. Quong, “Justice Beyond Equality,” 331 ff. argues that this enables Cohen to say that it is unjust not to make others better off through one’s occupational choices, but Quong goes on to dismiss the position as inconsistent with a desideratum of freedom of occupational choice. See note 11 in chapter 7, below. 46 Tomlin, “Internal Doubts about Cohen’s Rescue of Justice,” 243. 47 Recall the discussion around pluralism and monism about morality and justice in section 5 of the introductory chapter.

100 Why contribute? Cohen and the equality-based account regard to this issue, is developed in the next section. Secondly, this solution accepts the dilemma’s second horn and removes the monism about the value of justice that makes Cohen’s position distinct. Accepting Tomlin’s suggestion would thus constitute a major revision of Cohen’s conception of egalitarian justice. While constructivism makes trade-offs between different values and calls the output justice, Cohen defends the pluralist claim that justice is just one of the values that we trade off to reach the rules of regulation that ultimately guide our social affairs.48 Following Tomlin’s advice would thus risk collapsing Cohen’s view into the constructivism he attacks. In order not to overlook other possibilities of overcoming the In- difference Challenge without revising Cohen’s concept of justice, I will consider what I believe to be the most plausible answer that is consistent with Cohen’s monism about the value of justice.

4.2 Equality and human flourishing This alternative strategy is to refute the first horn of the dilemma, by keeping the comparative view that justice is equality and instead adding an appeal to a non-comparative maximising principle that is distinct from the principle of equality. If we could find an additional principle that dictates that whatever is to be distributed equally is to be produced in greater rather than smaller quantities, Cohen’s ethical solution would work. The aim of this section is thus to find a solution, compatible with Cohen’s philosophical corpus, that enables him to defend a duty to contribute. Whether that is the best way to ground a duty to contribute is a separate question, which I address in the final section below, and in the next chapter. A charitable reading of Cohen’s body of work indicates that he would undoubtedly agree that it is in itself better if people are better off. Still, it is difficult to find places where he explicitly explains and defends this view. There is textual support for the claim that Cohen thinks that part of the reason why the talented should take productive jobs is that there are badly off – and not merely worse off – people who would benefit. Still, he offers no principled discussion of how this relates to the appeal to equality, or of which observation is supposed to provide the argumentative force.49 An- other alternative is the principle of human flourishing, which comes up

48 Cohen, RJE, chap. 7. 49 Cohen, 30–34; 71 f; 184; Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, chap. 4; Cohen, If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re so Rich?, 215, n. 19. An example of the lack of principled discussion is that, when presenting “the incentives argument”, Cohen first describes what it says about the worst off, but then, on the very next page, he suddenly writes about what it says about

101 Chapter 3 when Cohen discusses how egalitarians might avoid the levelling down objection. While noting that Christiano’s egalitarianism allows him to avoid the objection, Cohen prefers a pluralist answer to the problem. As I discussed in section 5 of the introductory chapter, pluralists about moral values of Cohen’s kind assume that equality is just one of many values that might be worthy of promotion. They can thus recognise that an unequal Pareto-superior distribution contains an injustice, without necessarily believing we should, all-things-considered, use state power to level down the better off.50 Cohen’s luck egalitarian view that there is an unfairness in some being better off than others through no fault or choice or merit of either is thus not best seen as a complete theory of justice but, as Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen notes, merely a sufficient condition for a distribution to be unjust.51 So, while at the level of principles there is an injustice in a Pareto-superior but unequal distribution, Cohen rejects “justice fetishism” at the level of implementation.52 In deciding upon a policy response, Co- hen states, “[j]ustice doesn’t follow Pareto optimality, and [a Pareto-superior, unequal distribution] is not just, but it’s preferable on grounds of human flourishing and might therefore reasonably be chosen.”53 I suggest that this could be generalised into a principle stating that: “It is in itself better if people flourish” and, similar to the principle of equality stated in section 2, that we could make the following formulation of what this requires of individuals:

The Principle of Human Flourishing Individuals ought to bring about human flourishing to the extent that they reasonably can.

The appeal to this principle does not come up in any other of Cohen’s writings on egalitarianism, and we cannot here conclusively determine its

the badly off. Cohen, RJE, 34 f. This distinction matters, because those who are worst off need not, of course, be badly off. This is true of a millionaire in a society of billionaires. Neither must all those who are badly off be worst off, since there might be degrees of misfortune and some may be less fortunate than others. 50 Cohen, RJE, 316 ff; Cohen, “How to Do Political Philosophy,” 227–31; 233. 51 Lippert-Rasmussen, Luck Egalitarianism, 3. Larry Temkin, “Equality, Priority, and the Levelling Down Objection,” 155, notes that “The main lesson of the Levelling Down Objection is that we should be pluralists about morality. Egalitarians have long recognized, and accepted, this lesson. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for their opponents.” 52 Cohen, RJE, 269; 319. 53 Cohen, 319, emphasis added.

102 Why contribute? Cohen and the equality-based account relation and value vis-à-vis justice and Pareto.54 Still, it is plausible to assume that Cohen was far from opposed to Pareto concerns coming into considerations about what we should do. Indeed, human flourishing (or access to it) seems in a sense to be the normative foundation for the Pareto principle. Why care about making Pareto improvements when feasible, if not precisely because we care about something more fundamental, such as human flourishing? Most importantly, however, this principle is distinct from a principle of equality, and to be consistent Cohen would have to maintain that not only are concerns about human flourishing not concerns of justice, they also sometimes trump and thereby contradict justice.55 Returning to the incremental equality/inequality example discussed in section 3, we can note that these two principles enable the ethical solution and avoid the Indifference Challenge, since they would require a move from distribution DI directly to DIV, without having to go through DII or DIII. The principle of human flourishing requires Abby to become a doctor, since that would increase the amount of human flourishing in society, and the principle of equality requires her to do it at a level of compensation that does not upset equality. Yielding a globally productivist duty, the principles would require additional contributions even in a just society where equality holds. This route out of Cohen’s dilemma rejects the first horn, by claiming that he can maintain that justice is equality, while also enabling the ethical solution and avoiding the Indifference Challenge. Yet, what makes the combination of principles globally productivist and thus distinguishes them from the earlier formulation is clearly the second principle, which is one of maximisation, not of equality. The final two sections ask how this should influence our assessment of the solution.56

54 Similarly, we need not specify what human flourishing is, since the point here is not to defend a particular ideal of human flourishing but rather to illustrate how appeal to a maximising principle could help Cohen avoid the dilemma. 55 Being a fundamental principle reflecting other values than justice, it would occupy the lower left corner of the matrix in Cohen, RJE, 278. See also Cohen, 30, n. 7; 277; 315; 320; 67. 56 Note that the rest of this chapter differs somewhat from its previously published version, chiefly by incorporating the claims into the argumentative arc of the dissertation, but also by making different claims about the issue of pluralism about morality and justice.

103 Chapter 3

5. Evaluating the solution My analysis of Cohen’s account of why individuals have a duty to contribute to justice has shown that it revolves around the assumption that such a duty would dissolve the trade-off between equality and efficiency. The ethical solution to this trade-off only works if it asks individuals like Abby to make both reward decisions and occupational decisions that are in line with what justice requires. This chapter has argued, however, that Cohen is wrong to claim that “...egalitarian justice [...] is hostile not only to greed but also to shirking.”,57 and that Cohen’s principle can, at most, guide Abby’s reward decision; tempering her greed but not her shirking. It has also argued that the best, and most charitable, interpretation of Cohen is to add a concern for the principle of human flourishing alongside a concern for equality, and that a defence of what we have called a globally productivist duty must be based on both principles. This section expands upon whether this is indeed a successful way of avoiding the dilemma, whether it is an attractive way of grounding the duty to contribute, and what it entails for Cohen’s conception of justice. The aspect of Cohen’s conception of egalitarian justice that has reso- nated most strongly in contemporary political philosophy is arguably the idea that the site of justice extends to people’s daily choices.58 Even those who reject Cohen’s more controversial claims regarding the fact-independence of fundamental principles and the view that justice is equality might have intuitions in line with the non-division view defended in the previous chapter of this dissertation, and believe there is something to the claim that “…social justice requires a social ethos that inspires uncoerced equality supporting choice…”59. Yet, despite its centrality, Cohen has not developed a satisfying account of what he means by this. What seems clear is that the term is supposed to capture something like the moral climate of a society, and that Cohen thinks of it as something that makes people adhere to particular moral principles.60 Drawing upon, and going beyond, what Cohen might have in mind I argue in chapter 6 that this could be because they either internalise principles, or because they respond to and uphold a decentralised system of informal social sanctions.

57 Cohen, RJE, 370. 58 The distinction between the site, scope, and ground of justice is explained in section 4.2 of the introductory chapter. 59 Cohen, RJE, 127. Wolff, “G. A. Cohen: A Memoir,” 341. 60 Cohen, RJE, 70; 73.

104 Why contribute? Cohen and the equality-based account

The claim defended in this chapter, unrecognised by Cohen himself and many commentators, is that the duty Cohen’s egalitarian ethos is intended to promote cannot resolve the trade-off between equality and efficiency. Yet, there is no reason to think that an ethos can only promote adherence to one principle. If Cohen wants to say that Abby ought to choose doctoring over gardening, then he should not defend a duty based on the single principle of equality, but must rather defend a duty based on the principles of both equality and human flourishing. But this also means that it is only when Abby and Betty find themselves in an unequal distribution that Abby have a duty to produce for the sake of equality. The duty to continue producing, which enables a move from one equal distribution to an equal distribution where both are better off, is not. For those who are growing weary of discussing the nature of the concept of justice, as opposed to practical and institutional proposals derived from it, this conclusion could perhaps serve as support for their call to shift the attention of political philosophers away from what seem to be merely verbal disputes. We might think that it matters little, in the end, whether Abby is primarily thinking of justice or human flourishing when she decides to work for the sake of others and not merely for herself. This is especially so because it is already a somewhat utopian scenario to imagine an ethos influencing people in this way.61 Still, there is something to be said for caring about the label of justice, and distinguishing it from other principles and ideals.62 What drives much of Cohen’s critique of Rawls is the assumption that the concept of justice has a special normative weight that differentiates it from other moral concepts. Rawls’s theory is, after all, a theory of justice and Cohen’s dissatis- faction with it is rooted in the conviction that the search for what justice is might be seen as more fundamental, and thus more important, than the search for rules of regulation that approximate justice.63 On the other hand, emphasising the importance of the label “justice” casts doubt on the response to Cohen’s dilemma suggested in this chapter, because while it is surely possible to defend a duty to contribute by reference to human flourishing, this defence might not be as persuasive as one based on justice. We could, for instance, say that the good, as opposed to just, society requires

61 Johannsen, A Conceptual Investigation of Justice argues, however, that the dispute is not merely verbal but reflects a deeper disagreement. 62 Thanks to two anonymous reviewers of Social Theory and Practice for pressing me to address this point more clearly, although the section has been somewhat revised compared to the previously published version. 63 Cohen, RJE, 304. Many, of course, claim that the urgency of the two aims is completely opposite.

105 Chapter 3 the pluralist ethos of both equality and human flourishing. Or, we could follow Cohen’s lead in his last book and say that socialism requires such an ethos.64 But neither alternative seems to match the normative weight of the concept of justice, and both carry controversial connotations that are likely to dampen rallying cries towards their realisation. The proposed solution for Cohen – maintaining the strict monist view of justice as equality while relying on pluralism about moral values in order to avoid the Indif- ference Challenge – might thus be a Pyrrhic victory, since it removes some of the force that the concept of justice can lend to the duty he wants to defend. Only some of the force, however, since an individual duty based on the principle of equality, if applied in the contemporary unequal world, would in fact often require people to make occupational and reward decisions for the sake of equality until everyone was equally well off. Section 3 showed that the difference between the locally and the globally productivist duty is that only the latter demands increased effort in circumstances of equality, but in circumstances of inequality both would work the same way. Faced with an inequality between herself and Betty, Abby would know that the principle of equality requires her to either level down or work harder to bring Betty up to her level. The principle of human flourishing rules out the former, but it does not provide the primary motivation when Abby then carries out her duty and does her part in bringing about equality: it is a concern for equality, encouraged by an egalitarian ethos, that does this. In this sense, and in those circumstances, a commitment to Co- hen’s principle of equality does in fact require her to avoid shirking, since only then does she fully contribute towards the eradication of inequality. In sum, although it is the principle of human flourishing that saves Cohen from the dilemma, there might be real-world circumstances where the principle of equality and its corresponding ethos entice people to work harder. I ultimately believe, however, that it is better to give up monism about justice and admit some non-comparative standard into the concept of justice itself. The principle of human flourishing is one example of such a standard but, as the next chapter’s discussion of burden-based duties

64 Cohen, Why Not Socialism? also claims that a principle of community is needed to counteract certain inequalities permitted by his luck egalitarian principle of justice. See Albertsen, “Markets, Distributive Justice and Community” for an effort at developing this thought. See also my brief discussion of Effective Altruism in section 3.3 of the introductory chapter.

106 Why contribute? Cohen and the equality-based account shows, it is not the only one. Many of the problems discussed in this chapter are resolved if we accept not only pluralism about moral values in general but the pluralism about justice in particular that I set out in section 5 of the introductory chapter. Moreover, this move does not necessarily commit us to accepting that Pareto efficiency in particular is part of justice rather than a separate value. Given this, it seems unnecessary and simplistic to continue insisting that justice is wholly comparative and not recognise that there is something that each is due, and a corresponding individual duty to contribute to its production.

6. Conclusions This chapter has considered Cohen’s answer to the question of why individuals should contribute to justice, and found it wanting. Specifically, I argued that, as long as his reply appeals only to a principle of equality, the duty could not require people to work towards equality at a higher rather than a lower level. One possible way to avoid this is to note that Cohen’s duty could be conceived of as locally productivist, demanding contributions that are necessary to bring everyone up to a level of equality, although this presupposes a proviso against levelling down. Another possible way I have suggested is that Cohen’s general philosophical position could support adding an additional concern for human flourishing alongside his concern for equality. If individuals are required to contribute to human flourishing, and justice-as-equality requires them to do so in ways that do not upset equality, then Cohen’s qualified duty to contribute would become globally productivist, and correspond with the view typically ascribed to him in the literature. It is important to note that the equality-based part of Cohen’s account does indeed support an individual duty to contribute. It specifies a just outcome – a distribution free from certain kinds of inequality – and suggests that there is a pro tanto duty of justice to bring this about. This conclusion in turn supports the weaker thesis that I defend in this dissertation: Recall my claim in section 1 of the introductory chapter that equality, reciprocity, and fairly sharing burdens can each explain corresponding duties to contribute to justice. This chapter has illustrated that there are equality- based reasons to accept the claim that justice requires individuals to contribute, independently of whether the hybrid account I defend in the next

107 Chapter 3 chapter is convincing. Going forward, I suggest that we can refer to a version of the principle of equality to capture this idea.

The equality-based duty to contribute: Individuals ought to contribute to bring about equality to the extent that they reasonably can.

In light of this, why is it necessary, in the next chapter, to continue the search for a way to ground the duty to contribute? Why not be satisfied with Cohen’s duty? One reason is that it is limited by its essentially comparative nature. Just consider that both routes out of the dilemma presented in this chapter – both the proviso against levelling-down and the principle of human flourishing – appeal to considerations that are strictly speaking non-comparative, insofar as they assume that it matters how well off people are in absolute terms and not just in relation to each other.65 This anticipates the general point of the next chapter, where I argue that accounts based on the notion of reciprocity face a similar indifference challenge, since they make a similarly comparative assumption, to wit, that what people are due as a matter of justice depends only on what others have or how they have benefitted others. Pure reciprocity-based accounts hence cannot account for what is owed between contributors and non-contributors.66 A second shortcoming of Cohen’s equality-based account is that it is too local, in the sense that it is unable to explain how we should think about the contribution to, and distribution of, whatever social surplus might arise after the egalitarian outcome has been achieved. This is best illustrated by the account’s inability to motivate a move from DII to DIV. Yet, if we try to avoid this by relying on Cohen’s qualified account, which is based on both equality and human flourishing, the duty arguably becomes too global. There would be no limit inherent in such a duty that can explain when individuals have done enough, and it seems as though this would leave no legitimate space for individuals to pursue other goals without forsaking this demand. In contrast, a locally productivist duty includes some mechanism for judging when one has done enough or when

65 As I have reconstructed Cohen’s view, these considerations are not elements of justice, however. 66 With the terminology introduced in the next chapter, it seems as though Cohen’s view is more akin to the burden-based accounts than the reciprocity-based accounts. That is, if Cohen believes that equality and human flourishing ought to be promoted, then the duty to contribute could be conceived of as a way to divide the burden of doing so fairly.

108 Why contribute? Cohen and the equality-based account the duty ceases to apply. Such a principle will not demand the same things from all individuals regardless of the circumstances, and may only apply under specific conditions.67 While Cohen’s response to the so-called demandingness objection centres around the under-theorised notion of personal prerogatives, my defence, which is presented in section 2 of chapter 7, is that the hybrid account I defend strikes the right balance between local and global productivism and is more attractive, all things considered, than Cohen’s account, which seems to demand either too little or too much. 68 So, in sum, we have seen that while equality supports one version of the duty to contribute, it has shortcomings that could be avoided by relying on other principles. Moreover, we have seen that such a hybrid should be neither too local nor too global, but strive to find the right balance between these characteristics. The next chapter continues the argument showing that my hybrid account achieves this.

67 An illustration of the former is Carens’s duty to maximise one’s pre-tax income, discussed in section 3.3 of the introductory chapter, which Carens later revised precisely because of its maximalist character. An illustration of the latter, then, could for instance be a duty to eradicate a dangerous virus. Although it might be difficult to discharge it, once we have succeeded, the duty stops being demanding altogether since it lacks application – it is only “triggered” in a world where the virus still poses a risk to humans. 68 Cohen’s discussions about prerogatives shows that he was clearly concerned with limiting the demands of the duty, and the clause about “…to the extent they reasonably can” could, perhaps, be said to ensure this. Still, I believe the analysis above is warranted, in light of the fact that how, more precisely, this is supposed to happen is left relatively undeveloped in Rescuing Justice and Equality.

109 Chapter 4

Chapter 4 – Do your bit, claim your share: Reciprocity, burden-sharing, and the hybrid account

This chapter suggests that there are two reasons for why you ought to contribute to justice. Firstly, because not doing so constitutes a failure to reciprocate to others, whose contributions have benefited you. Secondly, because there is a set of goods and services that each is due as a matter of justice, and failing to contribute to their production leaves others with an unfair burden of ensuring this, and might leave people deprived of access to them. My claim is that, although it is insufficient to ground the duty to contribute only on the first, reciprocity-based account, or only on the second, burden-based account, we should treat the two rationales as complementary and draw upon both, interpreted from an egalitarian point of view. This chapter provides the necessary support for the stronger thesis defended in this dissertation. That is, together with a concern for equality, appeals to reciprocity and fairly sharing burdens combine into an attractive hybrid account that grounds the relevant pro tanto duty for individuals. The problem with the first account, I argue, is that, if reciprocity is all that matters, only members of a cooperative scheme have the right to a share, and that share is decided by whatever the scheme happens to produce. Implausibly, those who cannot contribute are unfairly excluded, and those who opt out by rejecting their share are not acting unjustly, even if this leads to an underproduction of crucial goods and services, or entails that others have to pick up their productive burden. The problem with the second account, however, is that, if fairly dividing the burdens of production is all that matters, we still need a distributive principle for the surplus of goods and services produced after the socially necessary labour has been performed. My proposed hybrid account solves the burden-based accounts’ problem of distributing surplus value, without committing to reciprocity-based accounts’ tying of distribution to production. It states that everyone has a duty to contribute towards making sure that everyone receives what they

110 Do your bit, claim your share: Reciprocity, burden-sharing, and the hybrid account are due as a matter of justice, regardless of their productive efforts. If and when this has been satisfied, there is only a conditional obligation to contribute further to the social product: You only have to contribute if you want to take part of the social surplus, and the surplus is distributed in a way that reflects people’s different decisions about this. This two-part hybrid account thus states that everyone is due something as a matter of justice, which is unconditional upon whether or not they contribute. Then, the reciprocity-based part is triggered, and gives everyone the right to a share of the surplus, conditional upon them contributing.1 I ended chapter 3 by noting that Cohen’s account can justify an equality-based duty to contribute. This chapter proceeds to systematically discuss the strengths and weaknesses of burden-based and reciprocity-based accounts. My argument supports the weaker thesis defended in this dissertation, that is, that each can justify a corresponding pro tanto duty to contribute. The chapter also supports my stronger thesis, however, by illustrating that combining these rationales into a hybrid produces a superior account. I will take some steps towards drawing out the real-world implications of the pro tanto duty, by considering how a few different empirical and theoretical assumptions affect this. I make no claims here, however, about how or when a duty to contribute should be assumed to bind individuals in actual practical circumstances. 2 We need to maintain an abstract perspective in order to be able to discuss the duty in mostly theoretical terms, since this is a precursor to discussing specific and concrete practical implications. I will return to this point in the concluding section below. After some conceptual groundwork in the next section, sections 2 and 3 consider the nature, benefits, and problems of reciprocity-based accounts, and section 4 does the same for burden-based accounts. My hybrid account is introduced and defended against objections in section 5 and I summarise the discussion in section 6.

1 On the distinction between duties and obligations, note that I follow Rawls, TJ, 96 ff. (and common practice) in assuming that obligations are acquired but duties are not. See also Rawls, 303. 2 Section 3.2 of chapter 7 goes further, by considering three ways of opting out. Another example of how the duty could be translated into policy was discussed in section 3.3 of the introductory chapter, where Carens, “An Interpretation...,” 154 and Wilkinson, Freedom, Efficiency and Equal- ity, 136 were described as suggesting that the duty to contribute means we ought to take a full-time job and make good use of our talents, accepting a 100 % income tax. For a lucid discussion of the problems of instantiating these kinds of taxes, see Olson, “The Endowment Tax Puzzle.”

111 Chapter 4

1. The social product, the social surplus, and socially necessary labour – Some conceptual groundwork A key to explaining why individuals should contribute is to be clear about what a contribution is, as well as to what it is that individuals are to contribute. Chapter 2 discussed multiple ways in which individuals could be said to contribute to justice, but ended by singling out the question of what justice requires of us in terms of what to produce, and how. This section picks up this question and outlines a much-simplified conception of society and production, which will be used throughout the discussion below. Together with the next chapter, it answers the third guiding question mentioned in the introductory chapter, that of deciding what a contribution is. In a general sense, to contribute something is to provide a good or service that others value or need.3 When aggregated, all contributions could be conceived of as making up the social product. We might think of the social product as the value of whatever final goods and services are produced in a society during a particular time period, measured in some appropriate way. This is essentially what is meant by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), an allegedly morally neutral way of assessing the size of an economy: we simply add the market value of whatever is produced without making assumptions about its ethical significance. Health care services are counted in the same way as revenue from online advertising is, although we could essentially manage well without the latter but not the former. As the next chapter will argue, however, the apparent neutrality of markets is a mirage, since we must inadvertently rely on non-market considerations to properly compensate for market shortcomings and blind spots. Not even the GDP takes all production into account. It excludes, for instance, the production of illegal goods and services by piggy-backing on the moral considerations upon which the legal code rests. The GDP does not, for example, count health care services on the same scale as dealing in illicit drugs or contract killings, on grounds that include non-trivial moral assumptions. It is clear that a conception of social value, and by extension what it means to contribute something, must therefore explicitly bring in external moral standards to distinguish between different kinds of

3 Note that I do not assume it must be done for altruistic as opposed to self-interested reasons for it to constitute a contribution. Furthermore, I bracket the problem of deciding what your contribution is and whether it is distinguishable from the contributions of others.

112 Do your bit, claim your share: Reciprocity, burden-sharing, and the hybrid account production. And once we have brought in moral standards to do so, I suggest it is also fruitful to rely on similar standards to divide the social product into what is necessary to achieve a non-comparative standard of justice and what could be seen as a surplus over and above this level. While we in many modern societies could do without some of what is produced, there is also a part of the economy that is in some sense essential: socially necessary labour refers to the work that has to be done for a society to continue to exist over time, or to achieve some other aim. What counts as necessary clearly depends upon and varies according to which normative standard we draw upon, and I do not defend a particular answer. As an illustration, however, assume that citizens agree on the rather modest ambition of reproducing society over time. Even this low aim of not letting the inevitability of death lead to the disappearance of society means that significant contributions must be made to the task of bringing about, caring for, and raising the next generation of citizens. More ambitiously, perhaps, citizens might also agree that coming generations should have access to a similar level of welfare, public goods, and opportunities as the current generation of adults have, meaning that more effort must be put into reproducing whatever is necessary to secure this. Assuming that a well-functioning modern economy could reach this required level of production, the rest of the social product can be viewed as a kind of surplus that is not necessary in the same sense.4 There might be situations where no surplus is produced; for instance, if productivity is too low, or if more demanding goals of a maximalist nature are set. If we aim for continuous growth, providing current and future generations with more welfare, public goods, and opportunities to live flourishing lives than we currently have access to, then all of the social product would be necessary in this sense.5 The point, however, is that, regardless of the exact content of the external normative standard we employ, it allows us to theoretically separate one part of the

4 Rawls deals with this issue when he discusses the principle of just savings, which he says “…can be regarded as an understanding between generations to carry their fair share of the burden of realizing and preserving a just society.”. See Rawls, TJ, 257 and, more generally, Rawls, sec. 44. Relatedly, Anthony B. Atkinson, Inequality, 172 f. points out that, although we typically focus on whether we should pass on national debt and budget deficits to future generations, we should not forget that we also leave them substantial assets, such as infrastructure. 5 Analysing the Fabrean duty and Cohen’s pluralist duty, which I discussed in the last chapter, in light of this is illuminating: The Fabrean duty with a non-levelling down proviso would say that any work required to bring about equality, e.g. the move from DI to DII, is socially necessary labour, and that equality-respecting further production, like the move from DII to DIV, is social surplus. Unless restricted, Cohen’s pluralist duty based on the principles of equality and of human flourishing would say that all labour that increases human flourishing is socially necessary.

113 Chapter 4 social product that is strictly speaking necessary to realise that standard, and another part consisting of whatever is produced over and above what is necessary. This distinction between what I will call the productive minimum and the social surplus is central to the discussion below.6 This conception immediately faces several problems. Firstly, although there are clear examples of more or less socially necessary jobs – nurses or school teachers seem essential in a way that so-called “bullshit jobs” like box-ticking do not7 – it is impossible to clearly distinguish between the two categories in a given economy or to provide exhaustive lists of each kind of work. Similarly, it is difficult to tell when one’s contribution is socially necessary and when it is a kind of surplus. I return to these problems in section 5.1, below. A second problem is that it is indeed difficult to even distinguish between work and other activities, like playing, or dil- igently pursuing a hobby. I suggested above that what one has created is not a contribution unless others value or need it. This aims to capture the social nature of a duty to contribute and to allow us to exclude wholly individualistic projects that might share similarities with work but do not constitute contributions to the social product.8 Yet, as I argue at length in the next chapter, the salary attached to a job is an unreliable indicator of its social value. Care work is an obvious example, since some is unpaid while some is marketised in the professional care of elders or children. Apart from the problems of regressive care chains and “crises of reproduction”9 potentially created by some of these policies, this demonstrates how arbitrary it seems to exclude care work from the social product when it is not done for monetary compensation, but to include it when it is remu- nerated. Strictly speaking, what is valuable is the service provided, and not the money changing hands. Additionally, without this kind of contribution, marketised work could not be performed to begin with. Although it

6 These examples might suggest that my account is dynamic and has a bearing on questions of intergenerational justice. This is not my main focus, however, and I abstract from the many complexities raised in that debate. 7 Graeber, Bullshit Jobs, 9 f. defines these jobs as “…a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case.” 8 One plausible candidate that captures many of the examples discussed above is the definition of work as “sustained, purposeful productive effort” offered by Becker, “The Obligation to Work,” 44. Becker immediately recognises the shortcomings of this definition, one of them being that it would count making a peanut butter sandwich as work. Becker, 47 ultimately concludes that, since it is difficult to find a satisfying way to distinguish work from non-work, the concept is not just fuzzy around the edges, but fuzzy through and through. 9 Hochschild, “The Nanny Chain”; Fraser, “Contradictions of Capital and Care.”

114 Do your bit, claim your share: Reciprocity, burden-sharing, and the hybrid account is difficult to draw an exact line between such reproductive work and activities that do not directly enable productive work as conventionally conceived, the undeniable importance of such work speaks in favour of relying upon a broadened conception of work and of what constitutes a contribution.10 This is true, I think, even if this means that we lack a way to systematically measure and compare contributions. In sum, even though we probably cannot sort all human activities into the categories discussed, it is sufficient for our purposes to proceed on the assumption that one contributes when one provides a good or service that others value or need. These contributions are then aggregated into the social product, consisting of the productive minimum and the social surplus. In the discussion below, socially necessary labour refers to the contributions needed to reach the productive minimum.11

2. Reciprocity-based accounts The basic idea in reciprocity-based accounts of a duty to contribute is that, if an individual has taken part of the benefits produced by others, it is plausible to think that he or she has a moral obligation to return the favour by producing something valuable in return. This is a politically widespread idea, and failure to reciprocate – free-riding – is almost universally looked down upon. 12 Yet, reciprocity is not only used to justify an obligation to repay benefits, but also as what I will call a conditional triggering principle, deciding who has the right to access benefits in the first place. A reciprocity-based duty to contribute only applies to us when others contribute, and only those who contribute get to share the benefits that social cooperation produces.13 Historically, a formal working requirement, based on the prin-

10 Stuart White first seems to equivocate “the social product” with GDP when he defines it as “…the flow of goods and services intentionally generated by the combined industry of the members of a society” White, The Civic Minimum, 51. However, his careful discussion of what constitutes “civic labour” throughout White, chap. 5. shows that he has a more sophisticated understanding, to which I am indebted. We do not seem to agree on the final point, however, since he resists including the housework that is necessary to enable paid work as civic labour. White, 113. 11 Lucas Stanczyk’s closely related concept of burdens of social cooperation is introduced in section 4, below. 12 Reciprocity arguably also plays a role in maintaining the relationships between members of society, as discussed in sociological works like Mauss, The Gift. Similarly, although reciprocity figures in Cohen’s analysis of exploitation in Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, I will not revise the diagnosis of his account of the duty to contribute as being equality-based. 13 Lister, “Justice as Fairness and Reciprocity,” 104.

115 Chapter 4 ciple that “He who does not work shall not eat”, was part of the constitutions of the Soviet Union and other self-proclaimed socialist or communist countries.14 Since the fall of these states, the same idea has become increasingly common in capitalist welfare states. As I briefly discussed in section 3.5 in the introductory chapter, the move from a more unconditional welfare provision to “workfare” and policies that make eligibility for benefits conditional upon working or trying to find a job, is often justified along the same lines.15 It is plausible to assume that the content of reciprocal obligations is sensitive to the nature of the reciprocal relation one has to others. In a sense, since one’s very existence is a burden on others – occupying space and consuming resources that others could have used, and creating pollution and waste that others have to take care of – we seem inescapably bound to compensate them.16 Likewise, the fact that we are born helpless, requiring endless time, energy, and resources before we are able to function as autonomous adults, seems to create reciprocal obligations towards those who expended this effort, or perhaps to “pass it on” by caring for coming generations.17 And the fact that people generally comply with the property systems and basic social institutions that enable cooperative production can be seen as grounds for the right to a fair share of what is produced.18 Some object to this inevitability, however, and claim that since our being born and growing up are not voluntary actions in any meaningful way, it seems strange to incur debt through choices where one could hardly have

14 Becker reviews constitutional regulations of a work requirement. For instance, Soviet law declared that “Work in the U.S.S.R. is a duty and a matter of honour for every able-bodied citizen, in accordance with the principle: 'He who does not work, neither shall he eat.'” Constitution (Fundamental law) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, art. 12., cited by Becker, “The Ob- ligation to Work,” 36, n. 2. Becker found similar explicit working requirements in constitutions written in the 1960’s and 1970’s in China, Albania, North Korea, Cuba, and Poland. 15 Junestav, Arbetslinjer i Svensk Socialpolitisk Debatt Och Lagstiftning 1930-2001, 209 suggests that “activation policies” like these were central in the Swedish debate on social insurance during the transformative years of crisis during the 1990’s. It is arguably still a dominant idea, as evidenced by the fact that 10 U.S. states have recently made Medicaid coverage conditional on studying, working or volunteering, in order to help people “rise out of poverty and government dependence.” Goodnough, “Appeals Court Rejects Trump Medicaid Work Requirements in Arkansas.” To be fair, however, I should note that just like my hybrid account, most welfare states make at least some part of the safety net unconditional. 16 Becker, “The Obligation to Work,” 42. 17 In some countries, so-called filial support laws provide legal resources for parents to seek financial aid from their children, under threat of fines or even imprisonment. Harrison and Jack, “‘I Sued My Child for Money to Survive.’” For a discussion of reciprocity as a basis for obligations between generations, see Gosseries, “Three Models of Intergenerational Reciprocity.” 18 Aas, “You Didn’t Build That: Equality and Productivity in a Complex Society.”

116 Do your bit, claim your share: Reciprocity, burden-sharing, and the hybrid account decided differently.19 It is not obvious, they could continue, why respecting institutions should give one a claim to the social product, rather than a claim that others also respect institutions.20 Reciprocity-based accounts of a duty to contribute do not have to rely upon the notion of original sin in this sense, however. A more promising strategy seems to be to focus on how cooperation is necessary in order to produce public goods or the services provided by a welfare state. An additional benefit is that this leaves a theoretical possibility of opting out that, I think, many believe makes the view more attractive. On this account, then, enjoying the benefits of others’ contributions or claiming a part of the social product creates an obligation to contribute to its reproduction, at least in cases where one would not rather prefer to opt out.21 Note that, although this makes it more accurate to speak of an obligation rather than a duty to contribute, I will continue to speak of a duty in order to keep the terminology simple. An influential account along these lines has been developed by Law- rence Becker, who argues that we are under a general requirement to work sufficiently much at a socially beneficial job to satisfy a moral demand to return good with good. This general and equal work requirement is sensitive to the fact that different people have different levels of competence, ability, and benefits, and that the quantity and quality of work required

19 Robert Nozick has famously criticised the notion that reciprocal, enforceable obligations can be produced by accepting benefits that we cannot refuse even if we would like to. Just as it is objectionable to force a book on someone and then demand to be paid, “[s]o the fact that […] we benefit from current patterns and forms created by the multitudinous actions of a long string of long- forgotten people, […] does not create in us a general floating debt which the current society can collect and use as it will.” Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 95. Nozick obviously has a point here, since it would be bizarre to think that the state could enforce obligations arising from certain kinds of relationships. Still, even if we ultimately reject filial support laws and the idea that the state should force people to take care of their elderly parents, for instance, it does not seem odd to suggest that they have moral obligations to somehow reciprocate the care they have received, and could be criticised by others if they failed to do so. A preliminary answer thus states that while they may not be enforceable by the state in the way we typically associate with enforcement, there are other ways that obligations and norms can be upheld. I will expand on this thought in the extended discussion on social sanctions in chapter 6. 20 The question of how to reciprocate others’ compliance with the law has recently been discussed by Brown, “Reciprocity Without Compliance”, who argues that this might happen through making productive contributions. Specifically, she suggests individuals might perform “civic work”, a concept which seems to overlap with how I conceive of what constitutes a contribution. I regret not having had time to study Brown’s view and relate it to my account, due to its being published just as I had to submit this dissertation. 21 Trifan, “What Makes Free Riding Wrongful?” has recently suggested that such attention to preferences explains why free-riding is wrong in some cases but not in others.

117 Chapter 4 may thus vary from one person to the next.22 Drawing on Becker’s account, Stuart White has carefully developed a similar argument, stating that individuals who claim their share of the social product face potentially enforceable obligations to reciprocate to others. This is because the social product is akin to a public, or at least shared, good. Hence, free-riding by benefiting from but not contributing to the collective pot is to disrespect those who do contribute. According to White, a willing claimant of the social product “…must make a reasonable effort, given his or her endowment of productive capacities, to ensure that other members of the community also benefit from and (the flip side of this) are not burdened by his or her membership of this scheme.”23 This is done by contributing sufficiently much “civic labour” to the social product. 24 The way in which pure reciprocity-based accounts theorise and put the ideal into political practice trades on the assumption that it purportedly explains two things at the same time: Not only when and why one must make a productive contribution, but also when and why one has the right to benefit from others’ productive contributions. Stating these two parts as clearly as possible thus gives us:

The reciprocity principle:

i) If one has benefited from others’ contributions, one has an obligation to contribute something that benefits them.

ii) The right to benefit from others’ contributions is conditional upon one’s own contribution benefitting them.

This dual account, specifying both what one owes others and what one is due, might seem tautological at first. Consider, however, a case in which you are not already a part of a reciprocal scheme, such as when you consider joining a club. On this view, you have no right to take part of the benefits awarded to club members unless you put something in, but you are also free to stay out of it by declining the offered benefits, and thereby be absolved from any requirement to reciprocate. On a pure reciprocity-

22 Becker, “The Obligation to Work,” 39–43. To be clear, Becker, Reciprocity, 268 conceives of reciprocity as a moral virtue more fundamental than justice. Still, Becker defends a general and equal work requirement, which is sensitive to the problems I raise above. Becker, “The Obligation to Work,” 45 f. 23 White, The Civic Minimum, 63. 24 White, chap. 5. See note 10 above.

118 Do your bit, claim your share: Reciprocity, burden-sharing, and the hybrid account based account, justice does not require you to contribute if you opt out, but if you do accept benefits you act unjustly if you fail to reciprocate. The second clause above is thus the conditional triggering principle, specifying when and why someone has a right to benefit from others. The first clause is the obligation proper, specifying when and why one is required to contribute for the sake of others. Both aspects are inextricably linked, both in the philosophical positions and the real-world policies discussed above, and I will turn to criticising them presently.

3. Limitations of reciprocity-based accounts The reciprocity principle is a plausible contender to explain important intuitions about justice in distribution and production and, in accordance with my weaker thesis, I think it is clear that it supports one form of a duty to contribute. I believe, however, that precisely those factors that give it strength also build in weaknesses that render it insufficient as the only basis for such a duty. Specifically, while the double conditionality is plausible in a scenario involving equally talented cooperating individuals who can be held morally responsible for choices about varying output, this conditionality becomes strange under two other sets of circumstances. One problem arises when the productive minimum is produced but some people are excluded from taking part of it because they cannot contribute, or do not contribute enough. A second problem arises when the productive minimum is not produced, because those who could contribute more opt out of the socially necessary labour. The next two subsections discuss these problems, respectively.

3.1 Absolute vs. relative output and the problem of unequal ability to contribute The first limitation is rendered visible by the basic assumption in much contemporary political philosophy that talents, skills, and abilities are to a large extent arbitrary from a moral point of view.25 If we accept this, then we must also admit that how much you can put into a cooperative venture is beyond your control. To distribute goods and services in strict proportion to the production of each would thus reflect an unfair distribution of

25 See, for instance, Rawls, TJ, 63 ff; Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy, chap. 3. Recall, also, the examples of Abby and Betty in chapter 3.

119 Chapter 4 the ability to contribute: If you and I work at harvesting apples and I am so tall that I can easily reach them while you have to jump under each tree and can still only reach the lowest-hanging fruits, I can easily pick more apples with less effort than you before the end of the day. It seems that you would have a legitimate objection to a principle that distributes benefits proportional to how much one produces, measuring production in absolute terms, enabling me to claim more apples than you.26 Yet, not only are talents and abilities arbitrarily distributed, but what is seen as a valuable talent or trait depends to a large extent on the situation and productive environment in which we find ourselves. Rapid technological development means, for instance, that the relative values of manual dexterity or physical strength compared to cognitive abilities have shifted in ways difficult to imagine just a few decades ago, and the ongoing technology-driven automation of tasks means that we cannot predict what will be a valuable talent in the future. The fact that even good-faith efforts to increase one’s productive ability and refine one’s talents might fail makes it less convincing that the value of people’s contributions can be traced back to their choices in any meaningful sense. Recognising this suggests that where we find ourselves on the continuum of productive abilities should not be the only thing that decides how much we get, and that proportionality is a suspect ground for reciprocity-based accounts of an obligation to contribute.27 The most pressing instance of this problem is the marginal case where a person has no productive abilities whatsoever. In an influential contribution to the discussion of such cases, Allen Buchanan notes that “[t]he implications of the reciprocity thesis for the treatment of severely disabled persons are as disturbing as they are obvious.”28 Prima facie, the principle favours the able-bodied, talented persons whose productive abilities enable them to be high-value contributors. Even more counterintuitively, the conditionality of the second part of the reciprocity principle suggests that people who cannot contribute, due to disability, their lack of marketable talents, or other obstacles, have no claim on the fruits of social cooperation.

26 As we will go on to discuss, however, distribution must not necessarily be related to contribution in a proportional way. 27 This is, of course, far from a novel observation. For instance, it is how Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Programme,” 319 criticises the Gotha programme’s suggested strict reciprocity principle, where “[t]he same amount of labour which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.” 28 Buchanan, “Justice as Reciprocity versus Subject-Centered Justice,” 230.

120 Do your bit, claim your share: Reciprocity, burden-sharing, and the hybrid account

Depending on the currency of justice employed, however, they might require more than others to reach a level that is equivalent to what others have.29 The upshot of this is that, in order to avoid these counterintuitive conclusions, any plausible formulation of a duty to contribute must not focus on people’s absolute output but rather assess their output in relation to their potential output, that is, whether they are making a good effort and the same marginal sacrifice.30 This is true not only for the reciprocity- based accounts but also for the burden-based accounts considered below. On the same reasoning, one way of dealing with the limit case of a person with no productive ability is to emphasise what one would contribute under a different scheme. If a person is willing but unable to contribute, the proper response should be to try and change the circumstances to enable him or her to contribute, and to broaden the concept of contribution.31 You might, for instance, pick many more apples if you had a ladder to climb, or if apple trees had been bred to grow differently. This is similar to the suggestion of activists and theorists in the disability rights movement as to how we should revise our understanding of disability: If we stop seeing medical conditions as the cause of disabilities and instead focus on how the surrounding society decides whether a functional limitation entails a loss of opportunities to participate and contribute, the problem shifts. From this alternative perspective, some people simply lack the opportunity to reciprocate, and they should be seen as potential reciprocators until society changes in ways that enable them to make actual contributions.32 The qualifications just discussed have two important implications for reciprocity-based accounts. The first is that philosophical reciprocity-

29 This problem is widely discussed, for instance by Buchanan, 231; Becker, “Reciprocity, Justice, and Disability”; Aas, “You Didn’t Build That: Equality and Productivity in a Complex Society,” 18, and Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, 224 ff. Hartley, “Two Conceptions of Justice as Reciprocity,” 412. notes that Rawls, “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,” 332. abstracts from this fact. In a short and rarely cited paper, Cohen analyses the inability of Rawls’s contractualism to cover “…radically unproductive people who make no contribution to the social product.”, and speculates that “I am sure that Rawls the person favours their sustenance as a matter of right, but no such favour is justified in A Theory of Justice.” Cohen, “The Limits of Contractual Equality,” 86 f. 30 Becker, “Reciprocity, Justice, and Disability,” 27 endorses this marginal view, on which we are required to “…make a return that is proportional to the sacrifice made by the givers rather than proportional to the benefit we have received”. Similarly, White, The Civic Minimum, 50–63 distinguishes between a strict-proportionality and a fair-dues conception of reciprocity, and defends the latter through the same reasoning as in the text to this footnote. 31 This is a main point in Becker, “Reciprocity, Justice, and Disability.” 32 Smith, “The Social Construction of Talent: A Defence of Justice as Reciprocity.”

121 Chapter 4 based accounts of a duty to contribute are importantly different from policies like workfare in both the way in which they assume the duty applies and how it should be enforced. Given that socially useful work is difficult or impossible to define, Becker argues that work requirements cannot be directly legally enforced as they were under the Soviet Union’s “parasite laws”, since that fails to live up to the requirements of certainty and advance notice that are necessary for justifying enforcement of the law.33 My arguments in chapters 5 and 6 strengthen this conclusion further. Simi- larly, White qualifies his view by stating that a reciprocity-based duty to contribute is not activated unless the existing society is sufficiently just and existing jobs are minimally acceptable.34 It is questionable whether this is always the case. Michael Cholbi has recently argued that many actual jobs do not produce net benefits for either the workers themselves or the social scheme as such.35 Similarly, in response to the reciprocity-based rhetoric of actual work requirements, Tommie Shelby has argued that denizens of poor ghettos in the USA have not received sufficient benefits from social cooperation, and can justifiably refuse to take up many of the jobs available to them.36 This seems to allow these accounts, unlike many actual policies, to claim that a duty to contribute does not necessarily apply to the most vulnerable, and depending on what reciprocal relations actually exist, implementing this view could very well exempt worse-off people while yielding politically transformative demands on well-off people who currently live off their wealth or receive astronomical wages.37

33 Becker, “The Obligation to Work,” 46 f. 34 White, The Civic Minimum, 91. 35 Cholbi, “The Duty to Work.” 36 Shelby, “Justice, Work, and the Ghetto Poor.” See also Jenkins, “Denying Reciprocity.” Maskiv- ker, Self-Realization and Justice makes the more general point that the market fails to distribute opportunities for self-realisation, and presents a perfectionist account of why this requires society to provide people with the opportunity to engage in non-productive but valuable activities. This is, in a sense, the kind of opting out that I criticise below, although Maskivker, 6 qualifies it by noting that the relevant material conditions must be fulfilled for this opportunity to be open. 37 As I indicate, this depends on empirical circumstances, such as whether the worse off have received their end of the bargain and whether the wealthiest have actually made sufficient contributions. Lucas Stanczyk offers a non-reciprocity-based account that condemns the asymmetry of current policies to induce work in Stanczyk, From Each, chap. 2., and argues that people with pleasant, high-paying jobs and people living off capital investments could be subject to work obligations like the rest. The debate is similar to the old discussion among Marxists and non-Marxists about whether capitalists contribute something to the productive process, or if (the proletariat’s) labour is the only source of value. See, for instance, Arnold, “Capitalists and the Ethics of Contribution.”, as well as early social democratic theorists such as Hobson, Hobhouse, and Tawney, discussed in White, The Civic Minimum, chap. 3, and note 7 in the introductory chapter, above.

122 Do your bit, claim your share: Reciprocity, burden-sharing, and the hybrid account

The second implication, however, is that, although the qualifications enable reciprocity-based accounts to accommodate the problem raised by the unequal ability to contribute, I believe they are a sleight of hand that sneaks in other normative considerations, which cannot be derived from the reciprocity principle itself. On my reconstruction above, the conditional triggering aspect of reciprocity, which stated that the right to benefit from others’ contributions is conditional upon one’s own contribution benefitting them, is central to reciprocity-based accounts. Yet, the ability to recognise that what one is due should not always be strictly proportional to what one has contributed presupposes that we sometimes suspend this conditionality. As long as reciprocity is the only thing that should guide distribution, however, it is impossible to even detect a possible mismatch between effort and reward, or the need to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to contribute. The qualifications that allow the reciprocity principle to avoid these problems are thus in direct conflict with the conditionality. And if the qualifications cannot be grounded in reciprocity, they must find support from some other assumption about what people are due as a matter of justice, regardless of their contributions.38 Respond- ing to the limitations of the reciprocity principle thus makes the accounts less firmly based on reciprocity. I will return to this analysis and expand upon it in the next section.

3.2 Opting out, underproduction, and the limitations of procedure- focused accounts The second problem for a reciprocity-based obligation to contribute has to do with the reciprocity principle’s first part, the idea that the obligation to benefit others arises only if one has benefited from their work. At first glance, this is an attractive feature since it provides people with the freedom to opt out from the obligation and indeed from society by not claiming their share of the social product. Prima facie, it leaves room for hermits and self-sufficient off-grid living.39 On the other hand, if the people who opt out are net contributors producing more than they consume, this will lead to a reduced social product, possibly dropping below the productive

38 Buchanan, “Justice as Reciprocity versus Subject-Centered Justice,” 233–36 calls such an alternative view “subject-centered justice” and mentions people’s inherent and equal value as persons, or their needs or rights, as possible sources of what they are due. 39 I return to this point in section 5.1, below.

123 Chapter 4 minimum. To avoid this, others will have to pick up the burdens of production that the defectors used to shoulder. As long as there are enough fallen apples for you to survive regardless of how much I work, it seems unproblematic for me to take a day off to do something else. But if there were no fallen fruit and you would suffer unless I shared my harvest each day, it is much less obvious that I have an unbridled right to kick back and do something else. To see why this is a more fundamental problem for reciprocity-based accounts, we need to return to the distinction between outcome-based and procedure-focused theories of justice, initially introduced in section 4.3 of the introductory chapter. I suggest that a characteristic feature of theories putting reciprocity at their core is that they conceive of society as some form of cooperative endeavour, and that principles of justice are primarily about regulating people’s interactions. Some philosophers, like Thomas Hobbes and David Gauthier, take mutual advantage to be the very basis of society or morality, assuming that, because we are better off cooperating with others, it is rational to enter into agreements about this.40 Contractar- ian views of this kind have been extensively criticised for not correcting for arbitrary differences in bargaining strength and for lacking internal consistency – Rawls notes that “…to each according to his threat advantage is not a principle of justice.”41 and Brian Barry argues that such theories are unable to explain why individuals should not break rules whenever it benefits them more than respecting them.42 Still, the basic assumption that society is a form of cooperative effort for mutual advantage is arguably shared by theories stressing the centrality of reciprocity. One example is how Rawls’s theory conceives of society as a fair system of cooperation over time, regulated by the principles chosen in the original position, and includes the idea that “…all citizens are to do their part in society’s cooperative work.”43 Rawls aims to correct for the shortcomings of other contract-based approaches by relying on the veil of ignorance and the original position to achieve a form of procedural justice: In a well- known distinction, Rawls suggests that making the person cutting a cake be the last to choose a piece is an instance of perfect procedural justice, while a criminal trial trying to reach the right verdict is an instance of imperfect procedural justice. In both cases, we assume there is a just outcome,

40 Hobbes, Leviathan; Gauthier, Morals by Agreement. 41 Rawls, TJ, 122. 42 Barry, Justice as Impartiality, 46–51. 43 Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 179.

124 Do your bit, claim your share: Reciprocity, burden-sharing, and the hybrid account such as everyone getting an equal share of cake or the trial reaching a correct verdict, and we employ procedures that guarantee or make it likely that we will reach it. Rawls’s theory of justice, and similar theories, rather aim to produce a form of pure procedural justice, in which there is no independent standard to assess whether or not the outcome is correct or just. The justice of an outcome is a result of the procedure itself.44 I hence suggest that such theories view society as an ongoing scheme of cooperation, and that they assume that what justice evaluates is not how people fare absolutely or relative to one another without regard to this scheme of cooperation. Rather, what justice assesses and regulates is the fairness of this ongoing cooperation.45 Importantly for my argument, this means that pure reciprocity-based accounts – defined as accounts that assume reciprocity exhausts justice – cannot specify a minimum size of the social product: members of a cooperative scheme simply share the production made possible by that scheme, whatever it is. Such accounts merely describe a just procedure for dividing up the social product, regardless of its absolute size, and do not prescribe any specific level that everyone is owed. This has an important ramifica- tion: Although reciprocity may be able to explain and evaluate the maintenance of useful reciprocal relationships, it is doubtful whether it could explain their creation.46 If one only has to contribute in order to reciprocate benefits received, no one can be required to produce for the sake of someone else to begin with. There is nothing internal to the notion of reciprocity that can explain why anyone should be the first mover, as it were.47 And when there is no cooperation, the reciprocity principle suggests there is

44 Rawls, TJ, 73–78. Rawls explicitly describes the kind of “background justice” discussed in chapter 2 above in terms of pure procedural justice in Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 52. 45 This interpretation finds support in Rawls, Political Liberalism, 15 ff; Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 5 f. and Rawls, TJ, 29. See also Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 54, where he defends the division of labour and states that his conception is an instance of an “ideal social process view”, and that “…when everyone follows the publicly recognized rules of cooperation, the particular distribution that results is acceptable as just whatever that distribution turns out to be.” This interpretation is also supported by secondary literature, such as Freeman, “G. A. Cohen’s Critique of Rawls’s Dif- ference Principle,” 35 and Scheffler, “Distributive Justice, the Basic Structure and the Place of Private Law,” 2. Note also that Anderson, “The Fundamental Disagreement between Luck Egali- tarians and Relational Egalitarians,” 5. seizes on this point and explicitly rejects the claim that justice is about realising a just state of affairs, arguing instead that “[t]here is no route to a just state of affairs except through the concept of agents’ compliance with reasonable claims people may make on each other.” 46 See Putnam, “Review: Reciprocity and Virtue Ethics,” 384. 47 This language is reminiscent of game theory, where reciprocity is a central idea. See, for instance, Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation.

125 Chapter 4 neither a duty to reciprocate, nor anything that each is due as a matter of justice. An important observation is hence that pure reciprocity-based accounts are wholly comparative, since they assume that what you are due depends on what you have contributed. This is crucial, because it means they face the same kind of Indifference Challenge that chapter 3 argued to be a problem for Cohen’s wholly comparative, equality-based ground for a duty to contribute. Just as Cohen’s account is restricted to accepting whatever size the social product happens to have and to condemning failures to contribute only when they upset equality, reciprocity-based accounts are required to accept the size of the social product that happens to be produced, and can only condemn failures to contribute when they violate reciprocity. Neither account contains the resources needed to specify that a bigger social product is better, and both accounts need to rely upon something external to avoid this problem. Now, defenders of reciprocity might reject the practical relevance of this objection by pointing to the fact that new members are continually born into existing societies. Co-operation is already up and running, so to speak, and reciprocity is equipped to explain obligations between members, reducing my objection to a purely theoretical one, at best. And to rebut the theoretical objection, they can turn to the tradition of social contract-based political thought to find plenty of reasons for why hypothetical individuals should leave a state of nature and start to cooperate. As I mentioned above, for instance, both Hobbes and Gauthier argue that it is mutually beneficial and thus rational for each individual to cooperate with others. My claim is not that social contract theories lack argumentative tools to explain the creation of cooperation, however. My objection is rather that, whatever these tools are, they are not appeals to reciprocity. Chapter 3 showed that Cohen can only avoid the Indifference Challenge by appealing to some other value than justice-as-equality, such as the principle of human flourishing. Analogously, reciprocity theorists will have to appeal to something other than the reciprocity principle to motivate reciprocal cooperation to begin with, or to claim that the social product should be more or less extensive. This, in turn, means that reciprocity-based accounts are incapable of condoning opting out, since that presupposes that there are relations which are relevant to justice between those who opt out and those who are left behind. Yet, since opting out means, ex hypothesi, to end reciprocal obligations with others, the account cannot recognise any injustice in a decision to exit our apple-picking co-op, for instance, even if my refusal to share my harvest significantly affects you.

126 Do your bit, claim your share: Reciprocity, burden-sharing, and the hybrid account

Summing up the argument so far, my analysis of pure reciprocity-based accounts states that although they can avoid the problem of the unequal ability to contribute by relying on a marginal view of contribution, it is not clear that this move can be defended with reference to reciprocity itself. Similarly, without appealing to outcome-based reasoning, their procedure- focused nature means that they cannot state that justice requires any particular size of the social product.48 This suggests that the qualified version we have arrived at is not, in fact, a pure reciprocity-based account. As long as we appeal to reciprocity and nothing else, we can only say the following about individual duties and what justice requires of individuals: Clearly, individuals act unjustly when they free-ride on the effort of others without reciprocating, thereby leaving others worse off. This supports the weaker thesis, and demonstrates that appeals to reciprocity can ground a duty to contribute. Formulating this as a principle similar to the equality-based account at the end of the last chapter, I suggest that we get the following:

The reciprocity-based duty to contribute: Individuals who have benefited from others’ contributions ought to contribute something that benefits those others.

Individuals cannot, however, be said to act unjustly when they opt out by rejecting the benefits of the social product and the obligation to reciprocate, thereby leaving others worse off.49

4. Burden-based accounts Burden-based accounts do not focus on the need to reciprocate benefits received, but on the need to achieve just states of affairs. Instead of assuming an obligation to contribute, conditional on claiming a share of the social product, these accounts rather focus on the socially necessary labour – the burden of reproducing society and striving towards giving each what they are due as a matter of justice – and defend an unconditional duty to

48 Note, however, that my argument does not depend on whether Rawls’s theory in particular is the kind of purely reciprocity-based account I am currently investigating. I argue in the next section that Rawls in fact combines comparative concerns for reciprocity with a non-comparatively defended minimum. 49 I will return to what opting out means and whether it is possible in section 5.1 below.

127 Chapter 4 contribute by doing one’s fair share of this work.50 The two ways of defending a duty to contribute discussed in this chapter are thus independent, in the sense that, even if we rejected one, the other would still stand. Yet, as my hybrid account will make clear, the two accounts are better understood as complementary than rival views. The objections I have raised against reciprocity stem from the observation that it fails to explain important intuitions about what people are due as a matter of justice. Specifically, I objected to the notion that the duty to contribute only extends to fellow co-operators. I believe that our intuitions about justice are better reflected if we assume that there might be things people are due as a matter of justice regardless of what they have contributed. This might seem controversial, but it is surely no fringe view to assume that justice presupposes that certain goods and services are produced. Recall how the discussion of the social product suggested that even a min- imalist goal like the reproduction of society means that there will always be some things, like care work or the maintenance of public goods, that are properly described as socially necessary labour. I suspect that most plausible theories of justice will contain quite a few more tasks in this category, since such assumptions are necessary to avoid proclaiming just a society in which some lack access to even the most basic goods and services. It is hence obvious that a view like sufficientarianism can support a burden-based duty to contribute, but the same is arguably true for reciprocity- based accounts, since the provision of some basic minimum is necessary to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to contribute to reciprocal cooperation.51 Which goods and services would be part of this minimum? Plau- sible candidates might include healthcare and legal services, since without them not even the basic liberties of citizens can be secured. Further reflection might lead us to include access to education, since without it a society will almost certainly fail to provide a plausible form of equality of opportunity, let alone more demanding normative goals. Burden-based accounts thus seem to be able to provide a powerful defence of a duty to contribute, by drawing on widely held assumptions. Regardless of what, exactly, we categorise as socially necessary labour, the upshot is that any theory specifying that people are due some things as a matter of justice faces the question of how to ensure they get them. The core claim of burden-based accounts is thus that, if justice requires people have access to some kind of

50 I should stress that the label “unconditional” does not undermine the pro tanto nature of the duty, but serves to contrast this duty with the obligation described in the last section. 51 Sufficientarianism was introduced in section 4.4 of the introductory chapter.

128 Do your bit, claim your share: Reciprocity, burden-sharing, and the hybrid account minimum set of goods and services, then fairly dividing the burden of providing these effectively creates an individual duty to contribute.52 I will not defend a particular articulation of what, or how much, people are due. One way of structuring the discussion, however, is to return to the distinction between comparative and non-comparative justice that I introduced in section 4.4 of the introductory chapter and employed in the last chapter. Although I believe that justice contains both comparative and non-comparative aspects, all that is necessary for the current argument is that we recognise the non-comparative point that it matters how people fare in absolute terms. And this is precisely what the focus on outcomes in burden-based accounts introduces. There are several examples of views like this in the literature, and they often adopt a language of rights to formulate their claims. In one influential account, sociologist T. H. Marshall observed how, by the mid-19th century, citizenship had expanded to include not only civil and political but also social rights, including “…a universal right to real income which is not proportionate to the market value of the claimant.”, with a corresponding duty to work being “[o]f paramount importance…”.53 In the same vein, Maureen Ramsay suggests that “…there are positive rights to basic need provision and to the equal satisfaction of need and that we are obligated to provide and to produce to meet these needs.”54 Since everyone has a right to resources to meet their needs, and individuals can contribute to that goal over and above what institutions do to promote it, Ramsay argues there is an obligation on individuals to work towards that end.55 Similarly modest regarding what the minimum amounts to, Cécile Fabre has set out her own account of a duty to contribute, distinct from her interpretation of Cohen discussed in the last chapter. She starts with the assumption that everyone has a fundamental right to lead a minimally flourishing life, requiring that people are ensured, for instance, access to housing, a minimum income, and healthcare. Fabre goes on to suggest,

52 Note that the way I in which frame the problem in this paragraph is highly indebted to Stanczyk, “Productive Justice”, who argues that the plausible assumption that justice requires society to ensure more than merely liberties is inconsistent with widely held views about what justice asks of individuals. 53 Marshall, “Citizenship and Social Class,” 47, 78. 54 Ramsay, “Just Contribution,” 53. 55 Ramsay, 50. An early example of a similar view of the right to be supplied with basic necessities unconditional on contributing productively is Trudy Govier, “The Right to Eat and the Duty to Work.”

129 Chapter 4 however, that if we think satisfying this right justifies taxation and the redistribution of resources, we must also accept that it justifies the redistribution of personal services through Good Samaritan duties, an obligatory “civilian service”, and even the redistribution of body parts from the de- ceased and, in some cases, the living.56 This demonstrates that the demandingness of the burden-based duty to contribute is a function both of what the current state of affairs is like, where the minimum level is set, and how the requirement to ensure it is weighed against other interests. Section 3 argued that reciprocity-based accounts are forced to bring in non-reciprocity considerations in order to avoid objections. Similarly, I noted above that, despite its reciprocity-based foundation, Rawls’s theory in fact also contains outcome-based elements. This is partly for instrumental reasons: because people need certain things in order to function as reciprocating members of a social cooperation to begin with, Rawls explicitly endorses a social minimum, covering “…at least the basic needs essential to a decent life, and presumably more”.57 Rawls also notes, however, that a social minimum covering the basic needs that citizens require to be able to live a decent life is owed to people “…in virtue of their humanity”.58 This idea has been systematically developed in at least two directions: Firstly, proponents of a Universal Basic Income have discussed a number of ways in which justice might require an unconditional income intended to satisfy basic needs, although there has been less discussion regarding how to ensure that the production of this social minimum is just.59 Sec- ondly, a more systematic approach to this question specifically has recently been developed by Lucas Stanczyk. Stanczyk begins with the broadly Rawlsian point that some goods and services are needed in order to secure

56 Fabre, Whose Body Is It Anyway? Justice and the Integrity of the Person. Much of the force of Fabre’s account hinges on the initial assumption that people have a right to lead a minimally flourishing life. Her rationale for this is that “…if one believes that individuals’ fundamental interest in leading a minimally flourishing life is important enough to hold others under negative duties not to kill them, not to take their livelihood from them, etc., one must accept that it is important enough to hold them under positive duties to provide them with the resources they need in order to lead a minimally flourishing life.” Fabre, “Good Samaritanism,” 133. Arneson, “Property Rights In Persons”, pursues similar questions. 57 Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 130 also believes that providing a minimum increases the chance that people will take principles of justice to their hearts. 58 Rawls, 129; 47 f; 130. See also Rawls, Political Liberalism, 156 f. Importantly, Rawls stresses that over and above this minimum – described as a “constitutional essential” – the difference principle is more demanding. Rawls, 228. See also Rawls, 7. As the next section argues, this is wholly consistent with my case for the hybrid account. 59 A Rawlsian case for a Universal Basic Income that deals with both aspects has, however, been offered in Birnbaum, Basic Income Reconsidered.

130 Do your bit, claim your share: Reciprocity, burden-sharing, and the hybrid account the central claims of free and equal citizenship, including police protection, legal, educational, and medical services, and opportunities for leisure.60 Similar to the language employed in this chapter, the task of ensuring these goods and services, and of reproducing society over time, make up what Stanczyk calls the burdens of social cooperation, and he develops a framework for thinking about this kind of productive justice in a systematic way. In order to fairly share the burdens of social cooperation, Stanczyk suggests, we must rid ourselves of the current class-differentiated institutions through which vulnerable people can be made to work for just about any reason while wealthy people are free to avoid paid employment altogether and live off their assets.61 Sharing the burdens fairly instead requires everyone to contribute their time, ability, and effort to these tasks, proportional to their talent or ability to do so.62 Stanczyk believes that ensuring this might justify a number of policies and institutional arrangements that impinge upon the freedom of occupational choice, such as requirements on teachers and medical professionals to work in particular under-served areas63, policies to discourage the migration of medical professionals from poor countries64, or publicising the names and suspending the drivers’ licences of people who fail to comply with the general work requirement.65 Importantly, however, Stanczyk’s account focuses on individual actions only indirectly; his main focus is how the basic structure should be arranged so as to induce individuals to do their part. As specified in section 3.6 of the introductory chapter, and in line with my arguments in chapter 2, my account instead focuses directly on what justice requires of individuals.66

60 Stanczyk, From Each, 10. 61 Stanczyk, 12. 62 Stanczyk, 10–13. 63 Stanczyk, 3. 64 Stanczyk, “Productive Justice,” 159 f; Stanczyk, “Managing Skilled Migration.” 65 Stanczyk, From Each, 49. 66 I suspect that the difference is because Stanczyk follows a broadly Rawlsian focus on the basic structure. If so, his approach arguably comes at a cost: Brian Berkey argues that this means that Stanczyk’s account only states that, if you decide to become a doctor, you must accept certain limitations on your freedom to work wherever you want. Berkey worries, and I agree, that this might convince some individuals who would otherwise consider going to medical school to choose another occupation, thereby perpetuating the shortage of health professionals.. Berkey, “Obliga- tions of Productive Justice: Individual or Institutional?,” 735. Cohen, RJE, 218 f. points to the same counterproductive effect as a reason not to conscript people into particular professions. In- stead, Berkey suggests that we should drop the institutional emphasis and focus on individuals and the justice of their occupational choices. Knowing that one could become a doctor and make a significant contribution towards ensuring that people in under-served areas have access to

131 Chapter 4

As noted above, I will not attempt to give a specific account of what everyone is due as a matter of justice. One reason is that doing so properly would require a dissertation of its own. Another reason is that burden- based accounts only presuppose that we accept the more general point that any theory of justice which assumes that justice not only regulates society as a system of cooperation over time, but also requires certain states of affairs be brought about faces the question of how they should be brought about. One important part of the answer undoubtedly relates to institutions and the basic structure of society. On the view of justice outlined in section 4.5 of the introductory chapter and elaborated in chapter 2, however, this also creates a kind of pro tanto duty for agents who can contribute to bringing those states about.67 In line with my weaker thesis, a burden-based approach can hence clearly support a duty to contribute. Unlike a pure reciprocity-based account, this view allows us to condemn not only free-riding but also shirking and opting out as unjust. Not carrying one’s load is unfair, and therefore unjust, for two reasons: It is unjust if, and because, it contributes to leaving some people lacking what they are due. It is also unjust if, and because, increasing the burdens others have to carry shows the same kind of disregard as free-riding does on the reciprocity-based view. This is similar to how a parent who tries to resign his or her familial duties and abandon the rest of the family can be thought of as acting wrongly in two ways: Firstly, by failing to satisfy the child’s legitimate claim to a parent. Sec- ondly, by increasing the burden of parenting that the other parent now has to shoulder. Something similar happens when people opt out of a situation in which not all people receive what they are due as a matter of justice. The ability to recognise this injustice is thus the main benefit of the burden-based account over the reciprocity-based account. Formulated as a principle, we get the following:

healthcare provides a morally significant, albeit not overridingly strong, reason to become a doctor, suggests Berkey, “Obligations of Productive Justice: Individual or Institutional?,” 748. 67 In line with what I have assumed throughout, such duties can be outweighed once we consider their costs in terms of other values like freedom, or for practical reasons including lack of general compliance or assurance problems. We could add that if this is the case, then individuals might instead be required to work to create the circumstances in which these factors do not override their pro tanto duty. This point draws on the idea of “dynamic duties” sometimes discussed in the debate about justice and feasibility. See, for instance Gilabert, “Justice and Feasibility.”

132 Do your bit, claim your share: Reciprocity, burden-sharing, and the hybrid account

The burden-sharing duty to contribute: Individuals ought to contribute to the socially necessary labour needed to ensure that people receive what they are due as a matter of justice.68

This chapter does not, however, defend a duty to contribute grounded only in burden-based approaches, but a hybrid duty appealing to reciprocity and equality as well. To see why, we now need to briefly consider the shortcoming of such burden-based approaches.

4.1 Limitations of burden-based accounts – mute on the social surplus Just as with reciprocity-based accounts and Cohen’s equality-based account, it is possible to imagine empirical circumstances in which burden- based accounts would yield only weak or even no productive duties. There might be circumstances – happy circumstances – in which a non-comparatively just state of affairs is realised, and everyone has received what they are due. If the content of the minimum that everyone is owed were rather modest, perhaps many developed societies could be said to already produce enough or even more than enough. And if we are not there yet, countless thinkers have anticipated that increased productivity and technological development might one day ensure material abundance and free people from the necessity of labour.69 Conversely, the looming threat of climate change might be seen as a reason to question the idea of perpetual growth, and to

68 My description of the equality-based duties discussed in chapter 3 as a kind of burden-sharing duty warrants some clarification. Specifically, would Cohen’s equality-based duty ask the same from individuals as the burden-sharing duty? That depends on how we spell out what individuals are due as a matter of justice. If we accept Cohen’s view, and says that individuals are due equal amount of whatever everyone else get of the relevant currency, then the two duties would produce the same demands. However, in line with the claim in chapter 3, about comparative standards having to be complemented by a non-comparative standard of what people are due, the burden-sharing duty to contribute can, unlike Cohen’s purely equality-based duty, require individuals to contribute to satisfy more demanding standards as well. 69 In the early 20th century, utopian feminists such as Marie Stevens Howland and Alice Constance Austi envisaged cooperative housekeeping schemes freeing women from the burden of reproductive work. See Hayden, “Two Utopian Feminists and Their Campaigns for Kitchenless Houses.” A few decades later, Bertrand Russell, “In Praise of Idleness” and John Maynard Keynes, “Economic Pos- sibilities for Our Grandchildren”, expressed similar optimism. Today, some proponents of a Uni- versal Basic Income point to increases in productivity to suggest that we can work less. However, the category of socially necessary labour raises doubts about this simple view. Some services are not like goods that can be produced in one place and shipped to another, but require that producers and consumers actually meet, or even that they live in the same area.

133 Chapter 4 instead adapt our notion of what each is due in light of what is sustainable.70 The locally productivist nature of burden-based accounts suggests that, once the socially necessary labour has been performed, the duty to contribute would not be triggered, and no one would be required to work further so as to provide what people are owed. A similar scenario is that enough is produced but its unequal distribution frustrates justice. In that case, although some people get more than their fair share and others do not receive what they are due, this would only be a problem of distributive justice, and not of contributive justice. The remedy would not require people to work harder but only to willingly accept that the social product be redistributed. The problem with the burden-based account is that it is incapable of dealing with a situation like this, where people fairly share the burdens of socially necessary labour, but then go on to produce more than enough according to this standard. While neither reciprocity-based nor burden- based accounts would condemn opting out from the social surplus as unjust, the latter is also mute on how it should be distributed. The very same rejection of the conditional relation between contribution and distribution that makes the burden-based account attractive also means that it is ill- equipped to address questions of how to fairly divide the social surplus.71 For instance, many would view it as unfair if an individual contributed to the social surplus but received nothing in return. Moreover, it would be patently unjust in a comparative sense if this was because the individual’s share was appropriated by someone who had opted out from surplus production but continued to claim a share of it. So, even though we should recognise that there is something each is due, it is perfectly possible to hold that, once the socially necessary labour has been performed, there could be objectionable inequality in the distribution of the social surplus between contributors and free-riders. Yet, there is nothing inherent in burden- based accounts that can explain this intuition, since they are concerned with how to distribute the burden of production, rather than the product itself. In that sense, such accounts cannot dictate what should happen once the necessary labour has been performed. This illustrates why burden-

70 Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, chap. 5. See also Rose, “On the Value of Eco- nomic Growth.” 71 This problem does not affect burden-based accounts specifying that the social product should be maximised, but those accounts are problematic for other reasons, including their demandingness and their compatibility with a sustainable environment.

134 Do your bit, claim your share: Reciprocity, burden-sharing, and the hybrid account based approaches are also insufficient as the sole basis of a duty to contribute. It shows that we need a hybrid duty, whereby the duty to shoulder a fair share of the socially necessary labour is complemented with a way to fairly share the social surplus.72

5. The hybrid account Chapter 3 showed that equality captures important intuitions about what constitutes a just distribution and that, in line with the weaker thesis defended in this dissertation, it can ground an individual duty to contribute to bringing it about, stating that individuals ought to contribute to bring about equality to the extent that they reasonably can. This is clearly an instance of a burden-based claim for a duty to contribute: All work that is needed to fulfil the principle counts as socially necessary labour. I argued, however, that it is insufficient as the only ground for a duty to contribute, because it cannot require individuals to contribute to people being equally well off at a higher rather than a lower level, and that avoiding this problem requires appealing to considerations other than equality. The continued analysis in this chapter has shown that reciprocity captures important intuitions about the fairness of co-operative efforts. In line with my weaker thesis, appealing to reciprocity can hence ground a duty to contribute, explaining that individuals who have benefited from others’ contributions ought to contribute something that benefits those others. Yet, pure reciprocity-based accounts yield implausible conclusions about who has a duty to contribute, and what contributors and non-contributors are due as a matter of justice. Unless such accounts introduce appeals to some form of non-comparative, outcome-based element of justice, the unequal ability to contribute suggests that people who are unable to contribute are not due anything as a matter of justice, and the inability to specify a minimum size for the social product suggests that opting out can never be considered unjust. The problem, it seems, is that pure reciprocity-based accounts do not recognise the category of socially necessary labour. This category is, however, at the centre of burden-based accounts, which capture important intuitions about non-comparative conceptions of what people are due, and the need to fairly distribute the burden of

72 Note that this is an additional way in which questions of distributive and contributive justice relate.

135 Chapter 4 producing it. In line with my weaker thesis, they can justify why individuals ought to contribute to the socially necessary labour needed to ensure that people receive what they are due as a matter of justice. Yet, they are incapable of explaining how to deal with the category of social surplus. If it were employed as the only account of justice, it would hence also yield implausible conclusions, such as not being able to deem as unjust the act of claiming more than one’s fair share of the surplus. It is clear at this stage of the inquiry that there are strong reasons to accept the weaker thesis defended in this dissertation. That is, it is clear that, as long as we accept that any one of equality, reciprocity, or fairly sharing burdens form part of justice, we should recognise that there is a corresponding individual pro tanto duty to contribute, based on that aspect. The question now is whether we should accept the stronger thesis that all of these three aspects are indeed important parts of justice, and that the principles just summarised can be combined into a hybrid account, which is more attractive than accounts grounded in just one of them. I believe the strong thesis should be accepted. Doing so yields a hybrid account which cancels out the shortcomings just described, by applying the burden-based and reciprocity-based accounts to different parts of the social product, in a way that ultimately respects equality: It justifies the requirement to contribute to the socially necessary labour on burden-based grounds, while reciprocity-based grounds justify when and why contributions over and above this are required. The hybrid thus has a two-part structure, corresponding to the respective grounds discussed in this chapter. Firstly, everyone has a duty to contribute towards making sure that everyone receives what they are due as a matter of justice, regardless of their productive efforts. This duty is unconditional: Everyone must make an equally good effort, in relation to their ability, to contribute the socially necessary labour needed to realise a just state of affairs. Secondly, if and when this level is reached, everyone has a conditional obligation to further benefit others, if they benefit from the additional work of others. This means that after one has performed one’s part of the socially necessary labour, one only has to contribute if one wants to take part of the social surplus. The social surplus is thus distributed in a way that reflects productive decisions for which each is responsible.73 Phrased differently, this

73 I mostly abstract from the question of whether how much you should contribute to the social surplus should be proportional to how much you benefit from it. While the unequal ability to contribute makes that suggestion problematic for pure reciprocity-based accounts, it is not as objectionable if it only applies to the surplus. Furthermore, the opposite view, that those who benefit

136 Do your bit, claim your share: Reciprocity, burden-sharing, and the hybrid account two-part hybrid account entails that everyone is due something as a matter of justice, unconditional upon whether or not they contribute. The reciprocity-based part, in turn, states that everyone has a right to a share of the surplus, conditional upon them contributing. In both parts of the hybrid account, the prescription for individuals thus reflects the old workers’ movement slogan “Do your bit, claim your share.”74 Apart from being both reciprocity- and burden-based, this hybrid account should also be recognised as thoroughly egalitarian, since it prescribes that equality – in a qualified sense – is essential to judging the fairness of the distribution of what each is due, the burden of producing this, and the social surplus. Specifically, when considering what each is due we should recognise that equality in the relevant currency might entail inequality in other currencies. With regard to the burden of producing this, the fair way to share amounts to equality of effort, and not, for instance, equality of absolute contributions. And with regard to the distribution of the social surplus, justice requires equal compensation for equal work, understood in the same effort-focused sense.75 The positive reason for accepting the stronger thesis is that it avoids the shortcomings we have discussed above and in the last chapter. Firstly, while both equality and reciprocity face an Indifference Challenge reveal- ing their inability to state that there is something everyone is due as a matter of non-comparative justice, the incorporation of burden-based considerations allows the hybrid account to avoid this problem. Secondly, while burden-based accounts face the problem of never being able to condemn

a tiny amount from the social surplus is required to contribute to the same extent as those who are benefitted greatly, also seems mistaken. The plausible view appears to me to focus on relative effort or willingness to contribute to the social surplus. Yet, some would perhaps claim that it is difficult to untangle the knot of responsibility and distinguish what choices people are responsible for, in a meaningful way. Although this might be true, it does not necessarily undermine the hybrid account, for reasons I expand on in reply to objections in the next section. Additionally, even though the extensive discussion about responsibility and distributive justice of the last few decades have demon- strated the difficulty of making this distinction practically, it also shows that policies that do not adequately recognise the philosophical complexity around responsibility when moving to the level of application are fraught with insufficiencies and injustice. See Knight and Stemplowska, “Re- sponsibility and Distributive Justice: An Introduction,” 22. 74 That is, in the burden-based part, the duty is not optional and the share is not conditional on contributing. In the reciprocity-based part, however, the obligation is optional but the share is conditional upon contributing. See note 7 in the introductory chapter for some remarks on this slogan. 75 Note that it is hence not unjust if those who freely opt out have less of the relevant currency than those who contribute to the social surplus.

137 Chapter 4 as unjust the act of free-riders taking part of the social surplus, the incorporation of reciprocity-based considerations allows the hybrid account to do so. Finally, equality is central in spelling out what reciprocal contribution and fairly sharing burdens mean. Unlike Cohen, the hybrid account views equality not so much a justification of a duty to contribute, but more as a kind of constraint or qualifying principle, regulating the two principles that do explain why we ought to contribute.76 An additional positive reason to affirm the stronger thesis is that the locally productivist duty supported by the hybrid account demands neither too little nor too much from individuals. The unconditional, burden- based part is indeed demanding, but just how much so depends on further specification of the empirical circumstances and normative commitments deciding what is included in the socially necessary labour. The duty is not maximalist, however, because if and when the socially necessary labour has been performed people are free to opt out, thereby releasing themselves from further obligations to contribute. If it is viable, the hybrid account is hence clearly more attractive than either of the simple accounts we have considered so far. The case for the stronger thesis can be strengthened further, however, if we also defend the viability of the hybrid account against a few apparent objections to it.

5.1 Countering three objections to the hybrid account Some might worry that the hybrid account is flawed because it tries to combine what seem to be two inconsistent rationales. In line with my analysis, pure appeals to reciprocity appear to be fundamentally different from pure appeals to burden-sharing, since the former is comparative and procedure-focused while the latter is non-comparative and outcome-based.

76 Some might ask whether all three parts of the hybrid account really are necessary. For instance, if burdens should be shared fairly, is equality rendered superfluous? Or, inversely, if both reciprocity and fairness are spelled out as kind of equality, then the latter principle – properly qualified – might be the only value we need. Yet, as I indicate above, this would overlook that we are currently discussing a different understanding of equality than in chapter 3. While the equality-based duty to contribute is about achieving equal and hence just states of affairs, equality in the hybrid account is about achieving justice with regards to the distribution of what each is due, the burden of producing this, and the social surplus. The hybrid account is hence not simply an amalgam of Cohen’s duty and the duties discussed in this chapter. Rather, as I have tried to make clear in the text, it is a combination of reciprocity-based accounts and burden-based accounts, as interpreted from an egalitarian perspective. At the same time, I obviously share Cohen’s and Carens’s assumption that individuals are required to act on this duty even if they do not get inequality-generating economic incentives.

138 Do your bit, claim your share: Reciprocity, burden-sharing, and the hybrid account

These sceptics might claim that they are in fact so different that it is not possible to request people to affirm both rationales, as the hybrid account assumes. A firm belief in reciprocity seems at odds with a recognition of everyone being owed something as a matter of justice, and vice versa – making the hybrid inherently fragile. My response to this worry is simply to note that it overlooks the central distinction between socially necessary labour and the social surplus. I agree that, without this distinction – if we only considered the social product as a whole – there seems to be a tension between the impetus of each rationale. Once we recognise this distinction and apply the different rationales to the different parts of the social product, however, the tension is resolved. This distinction is hence a novel and attractive feature of the hybrid account. The centrality of this distinction could invite two additional objections, however. One claims that my account is flawed because the distinction is impossible to uphold in practice. The other argues that even if it were possible to uphold, both the distinction and the hybrid account it supports are superfluous. I will conclude the chapter by discussing these objections in turn. The first objection states that the hybrid account mistakenly assumes that it is possible to neatly categorise one’s contribution as going into the pool of socially necessary labour and social surplus, respectively.77 In practice, we cannot simply declare, for instance, the first half of each work day to be socially necessary and the other half to be a kind of surplus, or that three-quarters of our work during a year produces necessities while the rest produces surplus. Moreover, it seems as though some lines of work are much more socially valuable than others, suggesting that some people are always contributing to the socially necessary labour, while others never do so.78 Sceptics could ask how we can possibly make a practical and accurate distinction when this is the case. The hybrid account is flawed, they might conclude, since its dependence on this untenable distinction renders it incapable of being implemented in any meaningful way.

77 Thanks to Naima Chahboun for insisting that I clarify the implication of my view in light of this problem. 78 During the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, for instance, the category of “essential worker” was used to describe those whose work was needed to get through the extraordinary circumstances brought on by the crisis. Yet, even though some professions are clearly excluded, it seems as though this category will come to include a wide variety of jobs. Section 3.6 of the introductory chapter discusses a similar observation in Paul Gomberg’s alternative account of contributive justice.

139 Chapter 4

In response, I believe that this objection misunderstands the ultimate aim of this project. My main question is what justice requires of individuals, and why. The goal is not to offer the blueprints for a feasible institutional arrangement that achieves contributive justice. Indeed, it is possible that the philosophically best answer to the question cannot be translated into a politically satisfactory answer: in one sense, the hybrid account might be philosophically justified even if it builds on a theoretical distinction which is difficult or impossible to make in practice. On the other hand, I recognise that an account which says something about implications and application is, ceteris paribus, more interesting. The remaining chapters will consequently ask how we could determine the value of a contribution so as to guide individuals in their productive decisions, as well as how the duty to contribute could be upheld and enforced. Anticipating the main point of the coming two chapters, an additional answer to the current objection recognises that the pro tanto nature of the duty means that it is less clear what individuals ought to do, in part because it is indeed difficult to determine how much you or anyone else contributes. Perhaps we could speak metaphorically of everyone’s contributions going into the same pot, but this does not solve the problem. Yet, it is wrong to conclude that the hybrid account should be rejected because of this. We could instead deal with the problem by allowing for a discrepancy between what people would have a duty to do if they could distinguish between socially necessary labour and a social surplus, and what they might reasonably be expected to do in less idealised, real-world circumstances. The coming two chapters expand on this idea. The second objection, however, argues that the distinction is not only difficult to employ but is in fact superfluous, because a reciprocity-based account can avoid the shortcomings I have ascribed to it: Since societies are so fundamentally steeped in reciprocal cooperation, there is no need to appeal to the idea of socially necessary labour. The best possible version of this objection would arguably say that it is wrong to think, as I seem to do, that society is like a club from which you can opt out, and that, rather, we are all inevitably part of the same association. This can be illustrated by the difficulty of constructing an example of a self-sufficient hermit who does not or has not benefited in ways that ought to be reciprocated. Even if you live on your own, far away from everyone else, and without disturbing others, there is in fact no meaningful and practical way of rejecting all the benefits that human cooperation produces, and no way of achieving autonomy and adulthood without incurring huge debts to others. Your

140 Do your bit, claim your share: Reciprocity, burden-sharing, and the hybrid account isolation depends upon the maintenance of public goods such as a peaceful society and environmental protection, your survival depends on claiming a share of resources that could, perhaps, be conceived of as collectively owned, and much of the knowledge you need in order to be self-sufficient is arguably inherited from previous generations. This objection to my hybrid account thus suggests that, since appeals to reciprocity are sufficient to explain the unfairness of opting out and not returning the goods received, there is no need for alternative accounts. In response, I agree that the interdependencies we have with other people means that reciprocity-based accounts would probably be able to condemn many forms of dropping out of society completely.79 Yet, while cases like self-sufficient hermits are fascinating, they provide poor intuitions for more mundane forms of opting out. A more relevant case is arguably when people remain in modern economies but, thanks to the talents and resources they happen to command, they are able to reduce their contributions to, and dependency upon, the social product. Yet, since the ability to contribute is not distributed equally, neither is the access to this form of opting out. While those who opt out can employ their productive capacity for their own gain, separate from the rest of society, others will thus have to continue to produce socially necessary labour. A better club metaphor is hence perhaps that those who opt out from society’s general and public club are less like independent hermits, and more like members of an alternative private club, who only make contributions to that association.80 Since their leaving decreases the burden they impose on others, reciprocity-based accounts would not, and cannot, label them as doing something unjust. Still, my previous argument applies here as well, since even a partial opt-out leaves others with an increased burden of producing the socially necessary labour that the remaining people need. I hence maintain that a pure reciprocity-based account is insufficient, since it cannot recognise either the unfairness in the unevenly distributed opportunity to opt out in this manner, or the unfairness in leaving others to pick up the slack.

79 Even the most ardent modern-day hermits often fail to fully opt out, like Christopher Knight, who lived secretly and isolated in the woods of Maine for 27 years, but survived by burgling nearby homes for supplies and food, until he was arrested in 2013. Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods. 80 This metaphor seems apt to describe, for instance, the increasing reliance on private health insurance in a traditionally universal welfare state like Sweden. There is, I believe, an issue of justice when the unequal ability to contribute allows some people to become members of private clubs which compete for the same public resources as members of the public club. This happens, for instance, when private health insurance gives access to fast-track lanes to the publicly funded health care. Approximately 10 % of the working-age population in Sweden currently has such insurance. Lapidus, “Private Health Insurance in Sweden.”

141 Chapter 4

6. Conclusions At the end of this central and philosophically dense chapter, it is time to recapitulate what the dissertation has achieved so far. Chapter 2 answered the question of who should contribute, and claimed that justice requires both institutions and individuals to help further its realisation. Chapter 3 then reconstructed and assessed Cohen’s answer to the question of why we should contribute, and ended by considering a qualified version of his view, which could be seen as a form of burden-based account. This chapter has continued answering the question of why individuals should contribute by elaborating upon the burden-based and reciprocity-based accounts, and ultimately endorsing a hybrid account. There are, by now, sufficient grounds to accept the weaker thesis of the dissertation, which states that each of equality, reciprocity, and fairly sharing burdens are possible ways of grounding a pro tanto duty to contribute to justice. Section 5 of this chapter also provided the necessary support, in my view, to accept the stronger thesis; that is, that they can and should be combined into a hybrid account which is more attractive than each of them separately. Now, I will not offer a well-defined interpretation of what the hybrid account entails in the form of precise demands on individuals. The main reason for this is that specificity risks undermining ecumenical support, and one goal of this chapter is to bring to light the clear support for a duty to contribute that exists in both procedure-focused and outcome-based views of justice, in terms of the widely shared intuitions about the centrality of reciprocity and the undeniable fact that there will always be a set of socially necessary labour. This is the rationale for clearly distinguishing the weaker and the stronger theses: regardless of which view we find more attractive, there are argumentative paths leading us to the conclusion that justice requires individuals to contribute. In the broadest sense, the strength of this view is that it is compatible with a number of conceptions of distributive justice, and this speaks against narrowing its appeal by mar- rying it to further theoretical and empirical assumptions. Nevertheless, the final two substantial chapters turn to the somewhat less theoretical and more practical questions of how to decide the value of a contribution, and how to enforce the duty. The final chapter, then, will venture to say a few things about possible practical implications of the hybrid account.

142 What is a contribution? The limits of the market solution

Chapter 5 – What is a contribution? The limits of the market solution

If my account of contributive justice is sound, we are all pro tanto required to contribute something – to provide a good or service that others value or need – that helps to further justice. We should take this duty into account when making our productive decisions about whether, with what, and how much to work. Yet, if everyone is required to do their part, we need to be able to tell what their part is, and whether they do actually discharge their duty. More generally, we face the problem of what should count as making a socially valuable contribution. How could an individual with aesthetic talents, for instance, decide whether a career in architecture or cartoon drawing would be a better way to fulfil a duty to contribute? This chapter suggests that we should approach this question by conceiving of the hybrid account of contributive justice as analogous to an account of right-making characteristics in need of a decision-making procedure: Just as some consequentialist moral theories hold that an individual performs the right action if and only if there is no other available action that would have better consequences, we could correspondingly say that an individual fulfils a duty to contribute when he or she has produced something of sufficient value – regardless of whether or not we know what particular action fulfils this right-making criterion.1 For such an account to guide our action, however, we also need a decision-making procedure (or decision- procedure for short) to help us pick out the particular action that has the best possible consequences, or the particular contributions that are sufficiently valuable. This separates the theoretical goal of knowing what justice requires from individuals, and why, from the practical goal of knowing which particular actions fulfil the requirements of justice. In discussions concerning a duty to contribute, the most commonly suggested decision-procedure is the “market solution”, which holds that the social value of a contribution can be discerned by looking at the market

1 E.g. Bales, “Act-Utilitarianism: Account of Right-Making Characteristics or Decision-Making Procedure?”

143 Chapter 5 prices of labour. This view, ascribed below to thinkers like Joseph Carens, David Miller and Ronald Dworkin, holds that, at least in properly idealised circumstances, markets collect and convey information regarding what is highly valued by market actors and thereby specify what a larger rather than a smaller contribution is. It states that we fulfil our duty to contribute when our actual income is sufficiently high compared to our highest possible income. The individual choosing between architecture and cartoon drawing could thus solve the problem of valuing contributions by choosing the career that is likely to yield the highest income. This chapter sets out to critically assess the market solution as a decision-procedure by elucidating whether, and in what circumstances, it could yield successful action-guiding prescriptions, as well as when and why those prescriptions might fail to lead individuals towards the right- making characteristics of the duty to contribute. It thereby constitutes a valuable systematic assessment of the market solution and its applicability of a kind that, surprisingly, has not been provided before. It also helps developing my account of contributive justice, because I conclude that a severely circumscribed version of the market solution should be one part of the suboptimal decision-procedure for non-ideal circumstances that we will have to be content with. Section 1 begins by illustrating that the market solution rests on the assumption that, by working in the occupation in which one maximises one’s pre-tax income, one maximises one’s contribution. An argument for this assumption is then reconstructed, and I proceed in section 2 to make a critical point in relation to two of its premises: Firstly, one’s income is not only the outcome of market mechanisms, and, secondly, the market price of goods and services cannot always be seen as a reflection of their social value. In section 3, I consider what this implies for the market solution and draw two conclusions. Firstly, the market solution presupposes prior non-market considerations in the form of the understanding of justice from which the duty to contribute is derived. Secondly, the market solution’s inability to recognise the value of contributions which lack a market price – such as non-marketised care work – means that we should ultimately reject the claim that we can simply maximise our contribution by maximising our income. Section 4 addresses a possible reply from proponents of the market solution, who might concede the points presented here and insist that, although it is an imperfect and sometimes misleading decision-procedure, it is still the best available alternative. I conclude by partly accepting this objection, and explain how the specific nature of the

144 What is a contribution? The limits of the market solution duty to contribute that I defend means that it can avoid some of the problems I have discussed. Properly understood, some markets could thus form one part of a suboptimal decision-procedure.

1. The market solution Two assumed functions of prices in a market economy are of relevance for assessing the market solution. Firstly, prices are often said to coordinate productive decisions by indicating what the market values. A high price indicates that a good or service is in high demand and that market actors value it. Secondly, prices motivate productive decisions. Insofar as individuals are driven by a high salary, they will be directed towards more rather than less well-paid vocations.2 Individuals who try to contribute to justice would hence, it seems, do well to take jobs with higher rather than lower salaries. As discussed in section 3.3 of the introductory chapter, Joseph Carens has suggested that these functions can be separated, since non-pecuniary moral incentives might replace the motivating function of economic incentives. Individuals who believe in a duty to contribute would in effect, he argues, derive satisfaction from fulfilling it and would value the satisfaction in a way that is similar to how people value monetary income. Given this admittedly utopian assumption, we can set income tax at 100 % and distribute an equal post-tax income to all. How people then decide to spend their post-tax income will create market prices that indicate what is deemed valuable and important. Even though the duty to contribute would replace the motivating function of markets, pre-tax in- comes would thus need to remain unequal and correspond to the market prices of different jobs, in order to retain the coordinating functions of markets. It is because market prices indicate what is valuable that Carens believes the duty to contribute asks individuals to “earn as much pre-tax net income as they are capable of earning”3, a duty he describes as “a version of the socialist ideal ‘from each according to his abilities’”.4

2 Roemer, “Incentive Provision and Coordination as Market Functions.” 3 Carens, Equality, Moral Incentives, and the Market, 25. As discussed in the introductory chapter, Carens current position is that individuals ought to “…make good use of their talents, not to maximize their productive output.” Carens, “The Egalitarian Ethos as a Social Mechanism,” 71. He nevertheless still relies on market prices as guides. 4 Carens, “Rights and Duties in an Egalitarian Society,” 33.

145 Chapter 5

This principle, which Marx suggests would be inscribed on the banners in the “higher phase of communist society”5 essentially captures the central insight about the unequal ability to contribute discussed extensively in the last chapter. By noting that “…one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labour in the same time, or can labour for a longer time…”6, Marx recognises that the distribution of talents, and thereby people’s productive capacity, is the result of morally arbitrary factors. This insight was central to the critique of reciprocity-based accounts in section 2 of the last chapter. The Marxian principle’s focus on “ability” seems to cater to this, since it does not require everyone to make equal contributions in absolute terms, but rather that all make an equivalent contribution in relation to their own productive capacity.7 Since market mechanisms are usually assumed to reveal which goods and services people value or need, the market solution seems to be a promising decision-procedure for specifying the definition of contributing as providing a good or service that others value or need. For one thing, it reflects the common assumption that, if people are willing to pay for the goods and services you produce, then your abilities are being put to good use, and the corollary idea that if they are willing to pay a higher price or if more people are willing to pay you, you are putting your abilities to better use. As David Miller suggests, “[i]f customers will pay twice as much for a beaver as for a deer, this provides evidence that the activity of trapping a beaver is twice as valuable as that of hunting a deer.”8 Miller, Carens, and others who believe that market mechanisms are integral to justice are thus taking the standard economic assumptions about prices being the outcomes of supply and demand and assuming that it also holds for the price of people’s labour, and by extension their talents.9 What seems to follow is

5 Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Programme,” 320 f. 6 Marx, 320. 7 Pablo Gilabert, “The Socialist Principle ‘From Each According To Their Abilities, To Each Ac- cording To Their Needs’,” 199 goes so far as to say that Marx anticipated contemporary luck egalitarianism, but it seems that this would require that Marx to have distinguished, which he did not do, between factors for which the worker is not responsible and circumstances for which the worker arguably is responsible, such as those mentioned later in Marx’s analysis: “…one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth.” Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Programme,” 320. 8 Miller, Market, State, and Community, 160 f. Anticipating my critique below, we could note that rhinoceros’ horns are even more expensive, but we do not typically think that killing rhinos creates even higher value. 9 Note, however, that we thereby depart from the Marxian roots of the according-to-abilities principle, since Marx held that it was the amount of labour needed to produce a good that decided its value, and not the mechanisms of supply and demand.

146 What is a contribution? The limits of the market solution the central claim of the market solution: By working in the occupation in which one maximises one’s pre-tax income, one maximises one’s contribution. This conclusion cannot follow, however, from a single premise about market prices of labour being the outcomes of supply and demand. In addition, we would need to assume that social value is accurately reflected in market prices. We must therefore add a second premise, stating that market prices are measures of the social value of one’s contribution. The best reconstruction of an argument that would yield the central claim of the market solution as its conclusion is thus as follows:

The market argument10

1. The market price of an individual’s talents is decided by what other people pay (the demand) for, and the relative scar- city (the supply) of, the goods and services the person produces.11 2. The social value of a good or service is what other people pay for it.12 3. The market price of an individual’s talents corresponds to the social value of his or her contribution (from 1 and 2).13 ∴ By working in the occupation in which one maximises one’s pre-tax income, one maximises one’s contribution.14

I will go on in the next section to argue that premise 1 can only be true under highly idealised and special circumstances. This means that the market solution cannot be an adequate decision-procedure in other, less than ideal, circumstances. Although this is not a ground for rejecting the market

10 The market argument is reconstructed from passages cited in the following four notes, but note that, while Carens and White support both the ideas of a duty to contribute and a market-centred solution, Dworkin and Miller figure in the discussion as proponents only of the market solution to related issues in distributive justice. 11 Carens, “The Egalitarian Ethos as a Social Mechanism,” 69 ff; Roemer, “Incentive Provision and Coordination as Market Functions”; Nagel, Equality and Partiality, 93 f. See also Olsaretti, Liberty, Desert and the Market: A Philosophical Study, 68. 12 Carens, Equality, Moral Incentives, and the Market, 196 f; Dworkin, A Matter of Principle, 207; Dworkin, “Ronald Dworkin Replies,” 342; Nagel, Equality and Partiality, 93 f; Miller, Market, State, and Community, 160 f; White, The Civic Minimum, 100; Becker, “The Obligation to Work,” 46. 13 Carens, “An Interpretation...,” 156, n. 10. 14 Carens, “Rights and Duties in an Egalitarian Society,” 34; Miller, “Our Unfinished Debate about Market Socialism,” 126.

147 Chapter 5 solution, it does indicate that it has limited application. Additionally, however, I will argue that premise 2 is false, because market prices are often higher or lower than what we could call the social value of a good or service. This means that the market solution as reconstructed here fails in a more fundamental way, because it would be misleading even in idealised circumstances, and therefore individuals who rely on market prices to determine when they or others have discharged their duty to contribute risk being misled.

2. When market prices and social value come apart Having clearly set out the reasoning behind the market solution, we can now turn to consider the problems with the first two premises.

2.1 Questioning the efficiency aspect of markets The first premise of the market argument claims that the market mechanisms of supply and demand decide the market prices of goods and services and, by extension, the market price of individuals’ talents. If I am capable of drawing both cartoons and houses, and market demand drives up the salaries of architects, the duty to contribute to justice might thus require me to give up my dreams of cartoon drawing and become an architect instead. Historically, the efficiency aspect of markets has been invoked in comparisons with central planning solutions. The problem with central planning, this reasoning states, does not seem to be crunching the numbers but rather gathering them. All the necessary information regarding what is valued and in demand is dispersed among citizens and seemingly impossible to collect and organise, at least in ways that are not too invasive or demanding. On the other hand, the price mechanisms of markets are often praised as excellent tools for coordinating the behaviour of many different individuals, especially when the knowledge necessary for coordination cannot be gathered and processed by a single institution. Friedrich Hayek famously used the example of an increase in the price of tin and its effects on decisions made by producers and consumers of tin- based products, and its further effects on the supply and demand of substitute goods, to make the point that market actors do not need to know how the whole market reacts in order to decide how to react properly themselves. The fact that goods have prices and that these are intercon-

148 What is a contribution? The limits of the market solution nected is enough, argues Hayek, for all individuals to act as a whole, adapting supply and demand and reaching a solution that is preferable to anything the central planning solution could construct. The fact that prices convey very limited information is thus heralded as a virtue.15 Market socialists like Carens also esteem the efficiency and simplicity of markets compared to planning solutions. He notes that, even if we knew what the community wants done, if it were not for price signals we would be at a loss as to how to prioritise among several goals and calculate our possible contributions to them, respectively. Market prices are necessary because, when they exist:

The amount the individual can contribute to any particular activity will be reflected in the amount he can earn from engaging in that activity. Thus, the relative usefulness of an individual’s contributions to alternative tasks and the relative importance which society places on achieving various goals interact without planning in the market as supply and demand. And the individual can be confident that he will contribute the most he can to what the community wants done if he simply maximizes his pre-tax income.16

On the other hand, in real-world markets it is not likely that market prices for labour – wages and salaries17 – will always be accurate indicators of the value of one’s abilities. One reason for this is that market prices reflect not only willingness but also ability to pay, as illustrated by the well-known paradox in politico-economic thought that diamonds, a commodity with little practical use, fetch a higher market price than water, something we all need to survive. As long as some people are suffering and dying from lack of access to clean water, the suggestion that diamonds are more important therefore seems outrageous. And blindly following the market solution gives correspondingly counter-intuitive action-guiding prescriptions, because it suggests that if you have a knack for drilling, your duty is to drill for diamonds rather than water since that is a better use of your talents.18 No reasonable proponent of markets would want to support this conclusion, however, and there is a simple but important idealisation that

15 Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” 526. 16 Carens, Equality, Moral Incentives, and the Market, 196 f. 17 I will use these terms interchangeably. 18 The examples of water and diamonds perhaps make the case seem far-fetched, yet the phenomenon can be observed in actual cases. Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation has argued, for instance, that famines can occur when there is enough food but people are too poor to afford it because of rapidly increasing food prices.

149 Chapter 5 helps them to avoid it. A sensible market defender would say that only under conditions of equalised buying power19 would supply and demand mechanisms reveal people’s preferences. Ronald Dworkin, for instance, assumes that the participants in his hypothetical auction for resources all have equal buying power, so that the outcome of the auction will not weigh the preferences of some heavier than others.20 As discussed in chapter 4, Stuart White defends the idea that each citizen has an obligation to make a productive contribution to society, measured as the market price of their contribution, but only when class divisions, discrimination, market vulnerability, and brute luck poverty have been minimised and the chances of self-realisation in work are maximised.21 And Carens’s model rests on the assumption that the first part of the Marxist principle (From each according to abilities) only holds when the second part (To each according to needs) also holds.22 A central assumption in the previous chapter was that there is a difference between the reasons why we should contribute to the socially necessary labour and why we should contribute to the social surplus. Similarly, if the state provides the means necessary for satisfying everyone’s basic needs before giving citizens an equal share of the remaining social production, we have better reasons to assume that whatever demand arises from how they use this is a good ground for deciding what is valuable to people. Even with the idealisation of equal buying power in place, the first premise’s assumption that market prices are a result of supply and demand can be criticised, since the price of labour is almost always influenced by individual and collective wage negotiations and distorted by monopolies and oligopolies that depress or raise the price of goods and services, and thereby also wages, arbitrarily. Furthermore, market externalities mean that the cost of a productive activity does not reflect all of its consequences. Whenever production has negative non-market effects, neither producers

19 Note that we do not necessarily need the strong condition of equal buying power but that securing everyone’s sufficient buying power might be enough, as illustrated in the examples below. Whether this is achieved through redistribution or “predistribution” also does not matter. See Scanlon, Why Does Inequality Matter?, chap. 7 and O’Neill, “Power, Predistribution, and Social Justice.” 20 Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, 65–119. This thought experiment is described in the next section. Interestingly, Joseph Heath, “Dworkin’s Auction” argues that it is in fact the equal buying power and not the test of envy-freeness that produces the fairness of the auction. 21 White, The Civic Minimum, 90 f. 22 That is, a society where there is a social duty to make a sufficient contribution is also a society where goods are distributed along egalitarian lines, or according to equal satisfaction of needs, Carens is open to both. Carens, “An Interpretation...,” 146–49; 156, n. 10.

150 What is a contribution? The limits of the market solution nor consumers are paying the “true” price of the good or service, which by extension means that the contributions of those producing the good or service are over-valued.23 Furthermore, it is well known that markets have a tendency towards underproduction of public goods like clean air and national defence, a category of goods characterised by the fact that it is impossible or too costly to regulate access to them in proportion to the contribution to their costs. The problem of free-riding means that public goods will be underproduced both if we try to provide them in a collective effort and if we rely on markets, because firms have an interest in excluding people who do not pay from consuming their products. Therefore, the economists’ argument goes, there will be a mismatch between supply and demand. Their market price, we could clarify, will thus be lower than their social value. This means that, under circumstances like those with which we are familiar, the market prices of contributions usually are not, and often should not be, merely the outcome of market mechanisms. No serious defender of market mechanisms in this context would defend laissez-faire markets, however, but would most likely endorse market mechanisms that are complemented and assisted by whatever political institutions are necessary to ensure that they work well. For instance, Carens suggests that demand may be the result of both individual and government consumption, so that taxes, subsidies, and other government regulations can be used to adjust prices to make them reflect the real costs and benefits to society.24 Miller and White have both suggested that some goods should be provided by the public sector, at a level decided through some legitimate collective decision, and that people employed in the public sector could use their in- comes as indicators of the value of their contribution, at least in those circumstances.25

23 The classic example is factories gaining a competitive advantage by emitting polluted air. 24 Carens, Equality, Moral Incentives, and the Market, 188-195: 197 f; Carens, “The Egalitarian Ethos as a Social Mechanism,” 69 f. Similarly, Miller, Market, State, and Community, 174 f. believes that market economies can only achieve distributive justice when continuously monitored and regulated by politically controlled agencies. Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, 307–19, and Philippe van Parijs, “Egalitarian Justice, Left-Libertarianism and the Market,” 151, also stress that real markets must be made more like ideal markets. 25 White, The Civic Minimum, 101–8 suggests a hypothetical Dworkin-style auction as a method of discovering what level of public goods an average member of a community would choose to buy, and Miller, Principles of Social Justice, 197 believes that answers to questions about the provision of some public goods depend on answers to prior questions about what justice requires us to provide. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for European Journal of Political Theory for pressing me to clarify the claims in this paragraph.

151 Chapter 5

Although it is not grounds for a rejection, this qualifies the first premise of the market solution, by illustrating that, whenever the idealisations of equalised buying power and the perfect correction of externalities and public goods do not hold, which is the general condition in which we all live, the market solution is a misleading decision-procedure, since its prescriptions fail to direct individuals towards fulfilling their duty. This does not mean that the market solution fails as a decision-procedure in all possible circumstances, although it severely limits its applicability.26 Neither does it mean that it is not the best available decision-procedure under non-ideal circumstances. What is more problematic, however, is that, even if the idealisations introduced above save the first premise from counterexamples based on the flaws of real markets, the very fact that they are necessary gives us reasons to doubt the assumption made in the second premise: that the social value of a good or service is what other people pay for it. Our intuition that real markets will often yield distorted prices must come from somewhere, and I suggest that it derives from a more fundamental rift between market prices as a decision-procedure and the criterion of rightness that describes a valuable contribution. This point is developed by turning to some examples that challenge the second premise of the argument for the market solution.

2.2 Questioning the value feature of markets A second reason for preferring markets to a central planning solution is that, not only do markets communicate decentralised information, but they in effect also decentralise decision-making to individuals. Call this the value feature of markets, because it supports the second premise, which states that the social value of a good or service is what other people pay for it. In a market, all participants are part of the process that decides what will be produced and sold, unlike a central planning solution where decision-making is removed from individuals. An insight generally shared among supporters of a duty to contribute, which is captured by my definition of contributing as providing a good or service that others value or need, is that contributions are only contributions when – and because –

26 To the extent that this is a problem, it is because the market solution is problematically idealised at the levels of application and justification. See List and Valentini, “The Methodology of Political Theory,” 546 f.

152 What is a contribution? The limits of the market solution they satisfy a desire or preference held by individuals.27 A proponent of the market solution could thus defend the second premise by claiming that, not only is no one in a better position to assess the value of something to an individual than that individual, but the value of any good or service is simply its value to individuals, aggregated into a market price. The idea is that, since demand is the aggregation of decentralised private decisions about what people value, market prices function as grounds for action- guiding prescriptions for individuals who are motivated to discharge their duty to make a valuable contribution. David Miller’s example of beaver being twice as valuable as deer illustrates this position. The benefits of relying on market prices, argues Miller, are that value becomes empirically detectable and we get an acceptable and applicable public standard of value. On this view, the demand for a good or service, and how well a contribution responds to that demand, is thus the proper basis for valuing that contribution. A price “provides evidence” about relative value, and is superior to the “lofty vantage-point” we have to occupy in order to assign intrinsic non-market values.28 Another illustration, which also elaborates upon this idea, is Dworkin’s conception of equality of resources, which positions markets at the heart of distributive justice. Central to his account is a hypothetical auction, a procedure which he believes can ensure that everyone ends up with an equal share of resources. Imagining a number of people, shipwrecked on an island and facing the question of how to divide the island’s resources fairly, Dworkin suggests that they each get to bid for different bundles of resources in an auction. If your preferences lead you to wanting a particular bundle, you will bid for it and thereby give up claims on other bundles. When several bidders are interested in the same bundle, the auction reveals who wants it the most. Ideally, this procedure would eventually produce a fair outcome where no one prefers anyone else’s bundle – the distribution is envy- free. Any further inequalities would be acceptable, Dworkin believes, because they stem from how people decide to use the resources they divided

27 Becker, Reciprocity, 107; White, The Civic Minimum, 100. 28 Miller, Market, State, and Community, 160 ff. Miller, 162 continues by stating that “…it is a mistake to try to look behind consumers’ demands in an effort to discover their ‘real’ needs (by some criterion).”, and seems to stress that no other available standard is similarly public and feasibly applicable. Note, also, that Miller’s argument is that desert should be awarded in relation to the value of one’s contribution, and that market prices can be used as a measure of value. See Miller, “Our Unfinished Debate about Market Socialism,” 126 and Cohen, “David Miller on Market Socialism and Distributive Justice.”

153 Chapter 5 up during the auction.29 In this way, markets are central to Dworkin’s account, and he concludes that “…the true measure of the social resources devoted to the life of one person is fixed by asking how important, in fact, that resource is for others”.30 This reveals a commitment to something like a procedure-focused and non-comparative view of justice, as summarised in section 4.6 of the introductory chapter: An ideal market, it is assumed, is the only procedure through which we can access the value that people attach to resources, and hence also the skills and talents required to produce them. If real markets functioned as ideal markets, they would not only reveal but indeed define what an equal share of resources is.31 Alt- hough Dworkin does not endorse a duty to contribute, his market-based approach extends to the valuing of productive contributions, since the market prices of labour could tell individuals the value of their choice of work over leisure, and one career over another.32 It is important to note, however, that, even if the idealisations introduced to deal with objections to the first premise are in place, we would still be too quick if we concluded that the prices resulting from market mechanisms adequately rank contributions according to their value. A first reason is that satisfying some preferences seems to be undesirable, all things considered, and such preferences should therefore be ruled out before- hand. Although the market price of opiates, for instance, reflects the supply and demand for them, working as a heroin dealer, although highly lucrative, should arguably not count as either socially necessary or social surplus labour.33 Thus, if one considers whether to make a career in drug trafficking or in an alternative business, the duty to contribute should not gear one towards drug trafficking – even if that would indeed be the only way to make good use of one’s talents – since the market price of addictive goods is higher than their social value. A parallel case is that of offensive preferences, such as the preference of people who take pleasure in “…sub-

29 Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, 65–71. 30 Dworkin, 70. 31 Dworkin, A Matter of Principle, 207. 32 Dworkin, “Liberalism,” 130 ff. See also Dworkin’s discussion regarding underemployment, and “the slavery of the talented” in Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, 89–109. 33 This point is acknowledged by White, The Civic Minimum, 99 f. as well as Miller, Market, State, and Community, 138–41.

154 What is a contribution? The limits of the market solution jecting others to a lesser liberty as a means of enhancing their self-respect.”34 It is clear that, if there existed a market in a good or service that catered to some people’s offensive preferences, working in such a market and satisfying such preferences should not count as contributing anything of social value. Say, for instance, that in a society with equalised buying power and well-functioning markets, you and I both want a piece of land by the sea, but you want it in order to build a house with an ocean view, while I want it only to frustrate your preference, because I believe that people like you should not be allowed to own houses with an ocean view. And say that the satisfaction I gain from preventing you is greater than your preference for a beach house, so that I am willing to bid higher in an auction for the property; I am indeed willing to use almost all of my resources for this aim. Once I win the auction, I proceed to destroy the site’s natural beauty by turning it into a waste compound. We now have an envy-free distribution even though, upon reflection, it might seem that a different distribution would have greater social value. And, more importantly, the real estate agent and the people employed by me to destroy the site should not, upon reflection, be viewed as discharging their duty to contribute when generating their income, since they are catering to a demand that is based on an offensive preference.35 Now, say that citizens divide themselves into different ethnic groups and have weak preferences to be around people from the same ethnic group. It has been suggested in economic research that such preferences at the individual level may give rise to segregation at the macro level.36 As- suming that people want to ride on buses where their group is the majority, there might therefore be a sufficiently large customer base for me to start a company that runs a segregated bus route with different buses for each

34 Rawls, TJ, 27 f. Note that unlike most discussions regarding offensive preferences, we are not asking whether justice in distribution should be sensitive to offensive preferences (for such a discussion, see Cohen, “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice,” 9 f., but whether a contribution that satisfied such preferences should be said to have social value. 35 Dworkin could perhaps point out that my wish to prevent you from owning the land is a not a “personal” but a “political” preference, that is, a preference about how goods, resources and opportunities should be distributed. A bigot, for instance, should not be compensated if his political preference for an unequal distribution is frustrated, because political preferences are not only possible sources of fulfilment but a matter of justice. See Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, 23. Dworkin discusses this in relation to welfarism, however, and does not explicitly address the current question of whether jobs that satisfy others’ offensive preferences should count as having social value. Also, my next example cannot be said to feature political preferences, although a possible Dworkinian reply is suggested in section 3 below. 36 Schelling, “Dynamic Models of Segregation.”

155 Chapter 5 ethnic group. If my calculations were correct, perhaps I could make much more money as an owner and you as a bus driver in this company than we could in a regular, non-segregated bus company. Yet we would at the same time be contributing to a segregated society that most would find worth striving to avoid, on grounds of justice. Even when people’s preferences are not as unmistakably offensive as in the first example, there might thus be cases where catering to a demand, although lucrative, should not be counted as making a contribution, or at the very least that this social value is clearly outweighed by the social disvalue and injustice of segregation. In short, just as in the case of addictive goods, the market prices of occupa- tions catering to offensive preferences are higher than their social value. From a not-so-lofty vantage point outside of the market, we clearly see that market prices and social value come apart. The opposite holds for a kind of contribution to the socially necessary labour which is often abstracted from in theorising on justice. Although society requires and will continue to require that some people care for others, notably children and the elderly as well as people who, due to sickness, injury, or other circumstances, need much assistance, care work is typically an activity that we think of primarily in non-market terms and consequently it lacks a price set by market mechanisms. As long as we believe that non-professional care work has some positive social value – we need not make any strong assumptions that caring is one of the most important human activities – market prices fail to capture this, since the market price of such care work is zero. And so, although caring for others, including children, is a necessary task for ensuring the continuation of a society over time and for even approximating equality of opportunity, the market solution struggles to recognise non-marketised care as a contribution. Addi- tionally, since most people can be employed at some salary, this means that even very modest contributions to paid work will be valued more highly by the market than the decision to become an unpaid full-time or part- time carer for a family member or a friend. Indeed, the only way in which your work as a carer could even count is if it were converted into a market relationship, for example by letting the person hire you as a private nurse, or by giving children vouchers so they can employ you as a parent.37 It

37 For a similar argument, see McTernan, “The Inegalitarian Ethos.” Note, however, that McTer- nan’s argument is directed against the demandingness of Cohen’s egalitarian ethos. As I discuss in chapter 6, I believe that all such critique is in a sense misguided, since the egalitarian ethos as such demands nothing, but is rather the enforcement mechanism that ensures compliance with the duty to contribute corresponding to it. If anything is demanding, it is the duty or principle itself and not the ethos. Furthermore, I believe that the problem here is not the demandingness of the duty

156 What is a contribution? The limits of the market solution would still be unlikely that one’s set of talents were such that caring was one’s best way to contribute, however, and even where this is true, it is unlikely that caring for a particular loved one would be the best way to contribute, because someone else is probably worse off and has greater need of one’s caring. These attempts to turn caring relationships into market relationships arguably fail to capture a crucial aspect of care, however, namely that it matters who provides it. In cases where there are deep connections between two people and one needs care, it might therefore be all- things-considered better that one cares for the other even though his or her abilities could be put to a more productive use elsewhere.38 Similarly, to the extent that parents, for instance, identify their preference for parenting as part of providing a service to the person receiving the care and to the community, it appears to be a valid contribution to the socially necessary labour even though it is not paid work.39 The underlying problem is that the market solution can only solve the problem of valuing a contribution when there is, in fact, a market, and that creating markets might over- turn other kinds of social relations that we believe to be valuable. This is not an entirely uncontroversial view, since it entails that we should resist some processes of commodification and the spread of market reasoning into all parts of social life.40 Although some might insist that there is nothing wrong with allowing this, I believe the concerns just raised are at least sufficient to suggest that it is worth trying to find alternative ways of assessing the value of non-marketised contributions: Since care work is clearly a part of the socially necessary labour, and will continue to be required for the continuation of society and to ensure some level of equality of opportunity, and additionally because many people identify it as valuable, we should ensure that the duty to contribute is such that it revalues care work and brings it on par with other kinds of productive work. Fur- thermore, we should do so without reinforcing the gendered division of labour based on the traditional view of male breadwinners working in the “productive sphere” and female housewives working in the “reproductive to contribute, but rather the inability of the market solution to assign value to care work, and this chapter hence takes that as its primary focus. 38 This argument is made by Jenkins, “An Ethos for (In)Justice,” 193 f. Similarly, Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift have argued at length that parents have a duty of care towards their children, and that it is in most cases a good thing that children are brought up by their parents. Brighouse and Swift, Family Values: The Ethics of Parent-Child Relationships. 39 White, The Civic Minimum, 110 f. 40 Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy and Satz, Why Some Things Should Not Be For Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets are two influential contemporary accounts of “the moral limits of markets” that defend this conclusion.

157 Chapter 5 sphere”.41 Even where it lacks a market price, engaging in care work should thus be recognised as one possible way of making a valuable contribution.42 Moreover, even if we lack a scheme for measuring the exact value of care work, the fact that we do not want to deny that it has some positive value and that markets struggle to recognise this, demonstrates that there is nothing in prices themselves that tell us whether they should be accepted as good indicators of social value or whether we have reasons to think they are distorted in some way. This suggests that we should reject the unqualified premise 2, that the social value of a good or service is what people pay for it.

3. Implications for the market solution We can now summarise the three main claims of the critical discussion above and what they imply for the market solution to the problem of valuing contributions. The first claim was that a decision procedure grounded in the market solution will often be misleading, since market prices will not always reflect what people actually want produced. Doubt is cast on the first premise of the reconstructed argument and the efficiency feature of the market solution because public goods will be undervalued and goods with negative externalities will be overvalued. Additionally, unequal buying power will mean that prices primarily reflect the demands of the better off. This does not constitute grounds for rejecting the market solution wholesale, because no reasonable proponent could believe that it holds under other than idealised circumstances. The proper response is thus to advocate a market solution where markets approximate the ideal and buying power is equal. Nevertheless, the examples illustrate the very limited applicability of the

41 For a discussion, see White, The Civic Minimum, 109 f; Robeyns, “A Universal Duty to Care.” as well as Jenkins, “An Ethos for (In)Justice.” In line with Robeyns, an anonymous reviewer for European Journal of Political Theory suggests that there might be a duty to engage in care work that is separate from the general duty to contribute. This would not solve the problem of knowing when one outweighs the other, however. 42 This opens up the potential for a possible objection to my account, which claims that viewing care work as a contribution to justice also corrupts what should be a private relationship by turning it into a public service. In response, I believe there can be several reasons for engaging in care work: both because certain special obligations arise between individuals, such as parent and child, and because performing the work is a way to discharge an obligation to contribute to justice. The next chapter further explores the issue of multiple motivations to do what justice requires.

158 What is a contribution? The limits of the market solution market solution as a procedure for guiding individuals to fulfil a duty to contribute under less than such ideal conditions. The second, more challenging, claim was the critique of the second premise, and the assumption that the social value of a contribution is what other people pay for it. The examples of addictive goods and offensive preferences clearly show that social value and market prices are not the same thing. Even when buying power is equalised, production to satisfy market demand cannot be assumed to produce the greatest social value, since the satisfaction of some desires and preferences frustrate rather than advance justice. This means that, even under idealised circumstances, market prices cannot, on their own, ground a decision-procedure for people who are inspired to discharge their duty to contribute. An account of what makes a contribution valuable must rely on something thicker than market prices alone. The proper response to this problem is hence to advocate a market solution that is complemented by considerations of justice. I will suggest below that, by starting from prior theories and principles of justice, we could perhaps filter out preferences that are in tension with justice. Both of these responses fall short, however, because of the third claim, which is the most uncomfortable for proponents of the market solution: Even in the best of circumstances described above, the market solution is still insufficient, because it can only ever tell us the social value of a good or service with a market price. Unless we are willing to radically change the way in which we understand and organise care labour, the market solution will hence systematically and persistently mischaracterise contributions made through non-marketised care work as lacking social value. Even if markets worked ideally and demand was checked by principles of justice, the outcome of the market solution would still be misleading because non- marketised care labour is not easily compared with other ways to discharge one’s duty to contribute. What are the implications of these claims for the thinkers discussed above? They do not, after all, offer a dogmatic libertarian defence of markets but rather the more modest view that markets, given certain background conditions, have a fundamental role to play in specifying the demands of justice. To be fair, their general theories are equipped to, and actually do, address the first and second claims above. We saw, for instance, that no one defends a market solution where buying power is unequal. Furthermore, in reply to the example of offensive preferences, Dworkin could point to his principle of independence, which checks the outcomes of his auction

159 Chapter 5 so that bids made for reasons of contempt, dislike or prejudice are not allowed to shape its outcome. And he could repeat the view that, in a properly idealised world, efficient markets checked by this principle would indeed offer the very definition of equal shares of resources, including talents.43 Similarly, Miller shows that markets are unable to cater to non- commodity-based conceptions of the good, such as workplace democracy, since co-operatives will be discriminated against in market economies, including market socialist ones.44 In his discussion of public goods, he also notes that society might recognise everyone’s basic need for physical mo- bility and so decide to complement market mechanisms by providing subsidised public transport. Answering the worries of the second claim, the value of the contribution of Miller’s publicly employed bus driver is thus decided by our answer to a prior question of justice.45 Finally, although Carens admits that his discussion of whether market prices are reliable indicators of productive contributions is “very preliminary”,46 he notes that he is sketching an ideal system, with suitably regulated markets, where demand is originated by individuals or legitimate collective processes that may take into account broader conceptions of social good, and where distorted prices are corrected.47 By now, we can say that the central claim of the market solution – that by working in the occupation in which one maximises one’s pre-tax income, one maximises one’s contribution – should be, and often is, defended as true only when qualified and preceded by arrangements such as those described above. It is true that a contribution is only socially valuable if it is valued by someone, but what we have learned is that its value also depends on the conception of justice that is held to be the right one in a society, and, more specifically, what the point and purpose of justice generally – and the duty to contribute specifically – is thought to be. Contrib- utive justice hence depends on distributive justice: we cannot know what

43 Dworkin, A Matter of Principle, 207; Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, 161 f. 44 Miller, Market, State, and Community, 72–97. 45 Miller, Principles of Social Justice, 197. 46 Carens, “An Interpretation...,” 156, n. 10. 47 Carens, Equality, Moral Incentives, and the Market, 195; Carens, “Rights and Duties in an Egalitarian Society,” 33; Carens, “An Interpretation...,” 156, n. 10; Carens, “The Egalitarian Ethos as a Social Mechanism,” 70. Carens, Equality, Moral Incentives, and the Market, 189 f. adds that “If it were necessary to alter most prices, there would be no point in relying on the market mechanism to set them in the first place.” It is difficult to tell when or whether this would be the case, according to Carens, and what he thinks it would mean for the market solution.

160 What is a contribution? The limits of the market solution a contribution is unless we know why justice requires that we contribute, and what our contributions are for.48 To illustrate this point, note that an outcome-focused account of justice such as luck egalitarianism, for instance, would claim that the true measure of the social value of a contribution must include whether it frustrates or contributes to the realisation of a state in which no one is worse off through no fault or choice of their own.49 For procedure-focused, so-called relational egalitarians it is the absence of asymmetric social relationships – “hi- erarchy, snobbery, servility and oppression”50 – that is essential to justice. The true measure of the social value of a contribution must therefore depend on whether it prevents or contributes to citizens being social equals. Carens, on his part, seems to assume that economic equality is desirable because it is required for individuals to be equally free to pursue their life plans.51 The true measure of social value under his conception must therefore be whether it contributes to people’s chances of pursuing their life plans or whether it counteracts that aim.52 Consequently, the hybrid account defended in this dissertation appeals to equality, reciprocity, and the idea that there is something each is due in order to answer this question. An individual thus contributes to the socially necessary labour when he or she produces something that helps to ensure that everyone gets what they are due as a matter of justice. And a person contributes to the social surplus when he or she produces something that reciprocates benefits he or she has received from others’ surplus production. Contributions are valuable to the extent they help further these two aims, in a way that respects equality. A charitable interpretation of the theorists discussed here is hence that they are defending this kind of qualified understanding of the role of markets, and that they could to some extent avoid the critical edge of the first and second claims above. The deepest worry about the market solution,

48 Another way of expressing this point is to say that the account of right-making characteristics is closely tied to principles of justice, and that our evaluation of possible decision-procedures is about how well they help to approximate the former. 49 Temkin, Inequality, 13; Cohen, RJE, 7. 50 Wolff, “Social Equality and Social Inequality,” 216. Relational egalitarianism was introduced in note 90 in the introductory chapter. 51 Carens, “Rights and Duties in an Egalitarian Society,” 37. 52 The point is that what the duty to contribute is for depends on what conception of justice we begin with, not the context in which we find ourselves. This proposition is thus silent on the truth of but compatible with the ”practice-dependency” view in political philosophy, but also with the claims of ”fact-independent” political philosophy. See for instance Sangiovanni, “How Practices Matter” and Cohen, RJE, 229–73, respectively.

161 Chapter 5 however, is the one raised by the third claim. Just as our implicit commitment to prior, non-market moral principles tells us that buying power must be equalised, public goods should be provided, and offensive preferences should be disregarded, it also suggests that care work should be re- valued. Yet the very nature of the market solution renders it ill-equipped to do so. While Miller and Dworkin have not discussed care work, White offers an illuminating account, to which I am partly indebted, as to why care work should be recognised as valuable, although he does not discuss the market solution’s struggle to do so.53 Carens has brought up the problem, and notes that, in a society without the duty to contribute, “[i]f a parent wants to stay home to care for her children rather than work, that is her business. If she wants to work and make child-care arrangements, she is also free to do that.”54 In a society incorporating Carens’s duty to contribute, however, she ought to choose the second arrangement, and he concedes that “The principle of ‘from each according to abilities’ turns a stay-at-home mom (or dad) into a moral failure.”55. But Carens is obviously too quick here, since it is not the according-to-abilities principle itself that leads to the stated conclusion, but rather the market solution’s requirement that all contributions have a price. If another decision-procedure for valuing contributions were utilised, care work could very well be recognised as a valid way of discharging the duty to contribute, but the market solution cannot easily be revised to do so. Unlike the cases above, neither equalised buying power nor taxes and subsidies can be used to correct a misleading market price, since care work lacks such a price to begin with. And if we do not want to turn all personal caring relationships into paid market relationships, the most feasible method of giving its non-pecuniary value an artificial market price is arguably to rely on so-called satellite accounts, which are often based on time-study surveys that map how much unpaid work is done in an economy and who performs it. Apart from the difficulties in employing this strategy56, it cannot solve the problem on its own terms, however. Satellite accounts can at most estimate the total value of care work being performed within an economy, but not who performs it. But the market solution under scrutiny here is about determining how we as individuals can best contribute, and what the value of one contribution is relative to other possible uses for our talents.

53 White, The Civic Minimum, 109–14. 54 Carens, “An Interpretation...,” 163. 55 Carens, 163. 56 See Folbre, “Measuring Care: Gender, Empowerment, and the Care Economy.”

162 What is a contribution? The limits of the market solution

There are three possible solutions to the problem mentioned in Carens’s body of work on the topic. Firstly, we could hope that expanded child- care arrangements would resolve the tension.57 Likewise, all other kinds of non-professional care work would arguably need to be performed by professionals. Many probably find this unattractive for a range of reasons, and it does not really solve the problem since, in effect, it says that we should not even take on private caring relationships but leave them to a market actor, at least part of the time. Secondly, in a discussion on the work of artists and inventors engaged in projects that are not properly valued by their peers, Carens compares them to people engaging in civil disobedience against unjust laws, and states that “pioneers of genius” will eventually be recognised in the long run.58 But this is an unattractive solution, since parents and carers are not “pioneers of genius” and the value of their work is already recognised in at least informal currencies in many societies. Finally, parenting could be recognised as a full-time job that would count as a way to make a contribution for at least one adult per household, even though it lacks a market price.59 This is not so much a mechanism for valuing care work, however, as a recognition that care work is valuable, and it does not resolve the problems identified in the last paragraph, which require non- market considerations to be addressed. In sum, although the market solution is more attractive than a central planning solution because it does not emulate or guess what people want, it is just as incapable of estimating the value of what people want when what they want cannot be expressed in market prices. And this means that, as long as we do not want to deny that non-marketised care work is socially valuable, the market solution would yield misleading action-guiding prescriptions even in idealised circumstances where market shortcomings are corrected and nothing that is being demanded is incompatible with the conception of justice held in a society.

57 Carens, “An Interpretation...,” 163, n. 17. 58 Carens, Equality, Moral Incentives, and the Market, 202 f. 59 Carens, “An Interpretation...,” 163, n. 17.

163 Chapter 5

4. The market solution as the second best? This chapter60 has made it clear that whatever merit the market solution has is limited to special, idealised circumstances in which the imperfections of real markets have been corrected, and it is preceded by considerations based on principles of justice that have nothing to do with markets. The market solution as reconstructed above is thus a flawed solution, since it is misleading unless complemented by a market-independent standard that can be used to, as it were, “clean up” consumer demand by sorting out acceptable preferences from unacceptable ones. This means it also fails as a market solution. Not even idealised and regulated markets will produce the correct judgements that are necessary to achieve justice. Indeed, as Co- hen has noted elsewhere:

…markets can “produce” justice only in the Pickwickian sense that they do so when in some unattainable possible world they are so comprehensively rigged that they induce a distribution which qualifies as just for reasons which have nothing to do with how market prices form.61

Market proponents seem to put much faith in the apparently neutral process that markets employ, especially in light of the alternative “lofty vantage-points” outside the market. But this chapter shows that this is just a mirage, and that markets are just one of many components that must go into the messy decision-procedure we should employ when assessing what a contribution is. They should be recognised as imperfect, and our reliance upon them must always be conscious of this. It seems, then, that relying on markets would in many cases be misleading when employed in non-ideal circumstances, but that there are no better alternatives. This could lead us to two possible conclusions about the account of contributive justice. Some might wish to conclude that the whole notion of a duty to contribute is mistaken, because it can never be implemented. But this seems foolish, and suggests that we are more committed to the idea of markets than to the idea of a duty to contribute. Limiting our understanding of value to that which has a price would be like only looking for our lost keys near a streetlight because that is where

60 Sections 4 and 5 differ from the published version of this chapter by adding ideas that follow from the more fully developed account of contributive justice that is set out in the other chapters of this dissertation, but which had not been developed at the time of original publication. 61 Cohen, “Expensive Taste Rides Again,” 104. Note that Cohen is discussing the inability of markets to cater to the problem of “expensive tastes”, although his conclusion can be transferred to our current discussion.

164 What is a contribution? The limits of the market solution the light is. I instead reject this conclusion, in favour of the alternative view that we ought to try to honour a duty to contribute, even when we are unable to monitor and sanction behaviour, and indeed to know if we have acted justly ourselves. Returning to the distinction offered at the outset of this chapter, my point is that the lack of a decision-procedure does not disqualify the duty to contribute as an account of right-making characteristics. Even if we are primarily interested in knowing what the right action is, and not only what it is like, the lack of a decision-procedure simply does not entail that the account of right-making characteristics is false, as opposed to difficult or impossible to apply. Hence, the account of contributive justice presented in this dissertation might still accurately describe what justice requires of individuals, even though, all-things-considered, we should refrain from enforcing it.62 Still, the account of contributive justice would arguably be more convincing if we could at least partly flesh out the definition of a contribution offered in the last chapter, and go some way towards deciding what a valuable contribution is. In the same vein, the market solution’s proponents do not defend it merely as an intellectual exercise in ideal theory. Carens pursues a social mechanism that aims to clarify, and realise, egalitarian ideals, and Miller stresses that he is seeking a mechanism for valuing contributions that can be part of the basis of a social practice. 63 They are indeed suggesting a decision-procedure to direct us towards fulfilling certain criteria of rightness. Proponents of the market solution might thus reasonably point out that, just as we should not stop using a medical test because it sometimes generates false positives or false negatives, it is not a persuasive objection to point out that the market solution is a less than perfect decision-procedure. If there are no better options, it might well be our preferred basis for valuing contributions.64 Given the difficulty in coming up with mechanisms that do not involve some form of markets, I am cautiously optimistic about the thought of markets being one part of the decision-procedure we need in order to imperfectly solve the problem of valuing contributions. This optimism might seem strange in light of the critical discussion above, but can be explained

62 In the next chapter, I return to similar points when discussing possible problems in relying on a social ethos as an enforcement mechanism. 63 Carens, “The Egalitarian Ethos as a Social Mechanism,” 52; Miller, Market, State, and Commu- nity, 161 f. 64 This critical observation and example, which finds support in Carens, Equality, Moral Incentives, and the Market, 197 and Miller, Market, State, and Community, 161, were suggested to me by an anonymous reviewer for European Journal of Political Theory.

165 Chapter 5 by two mitigating aspects of the particular account of contributive justice I develop, factors that reduce the negative effects of market imperfections. A first, general, observation is that following an imperfect decision-procedure is only a wise strategy if we can be certain that the consequences of doing so are not objectionable on the grounds that we have to motivate the decision-procedure. If we want to save lives, we should think twice about making mandatory a medical test to discover a minor ailment if the test mostly works but is sometimes fatal. We should also be careful when adopting the second best, because it means that we risk adapting our preferences to the feasible set, thus lowering our aim too far. 65 The role of markets in the account of contributive justice set out here is very limited, however, and the potential bad effects of partly relying on them are thus similarly limited. Remember that, unlike Miller, I am not asking the broad question of whether markets accurately track reward and, by extension, should guide distribution. And, unlike many existing policies that encourage people to work, my hybrid account does not assume that what people are due simply depends on what they have contributed. The proper role of a decision-procedure’s function in the account of contributive justice developed here is rather to guide people in assessing their, and others’, productive decisions. But since my account rejects the idea of enforcing the duty to contribute by denying non-contributors access to the social minimum, this means that even if one is accidentally – or correctly – identified as not contributing, it does not follow that one will be cut off from taking part of the social product. Rather, the worst thing that can happen if we rely on a flawed decision-procedure is that people will make suboptimal productive decisions, and that some people will be incorrectly criticised or praised for contributing less or more than they actually do. This is nevertheless a problem, and a second aspect of the account of contributive justice is intended to address it. The dissertation follows Carens’s suggestion that the duty to contribute is a moral, and not a legal, duty.66 The next chapter in particular will explain how the vagueness of what a contribution is suggests that we should rely upon a decentralised and informal system of enforcement rather than the state coercing people to contribute. One reason for this is that unfounded social sanctions are

65 Cohen, in discussing Miller and market socialism in an unpublished typescript, suggests that “Where some semblance of distribution according to contribution is possible and distribution according to need is not, going for the latter, which is, I think, better from a socialist point of view, might mean that you achieve something less good than the former”. Cohen, “David Miller on Market Socialism and Distributive Justice,” 4. 66 Carens, “The Egalitarian Ethos as a Social Mechanism,” 54, 58–60.

166 What is a contribution? The limits of the market solution the lesser evil compared to unfounded legal sanctions, or so I will claim in the next chapter. A second reason is that the shortcomings of the market solution are checked to some extent by the similarly decentralised nature of the system of social sanctions I defend there. Just as productive decisions about what to contribute should be decentralised rather than centrally planned, the monitoring and sanctioning of people’s adherence to the duty to contribute should be performed by individuals, much as is already the case with social norms. It is plausible to assume that the semi-private information needed to determine whether you contribute “according to abilities” is more or less accessible to friends, family and others close to you, even though it is (and perhaps should remain) outside of the state’s reach. And, to the extent that your productive decisions are due to wholly private information that you could not be expected to share, your knowledge about this is likely to influence how you assess others in the same position, and suggests that we should judge them as we would like to be judged ourselves. What I suggest, then, is that the shortcomings of markets can to some extent be mitigated by the assumption that adherence to the duty to contribute should not be checked by a centralised agency summing up the market prices of what you have produced, but rather by the people close to you who can access a more nuanced picture of your circumstances and the effort you typically make, in both paid and unpaid areas of life. What one earns in the market could probably function as one kind of suboptimal proxy in such assessments, at least if individuals who make them take the market solution’s flaws into consideration, and try to account for them when weighing this factor against all the other relevant factors.67 But another important factor in the assessment is all the other ways in which one contributes, outside of the market. On my account, we can hence contribute directly – we might for instance believe that a doctor or nurse providing urgent medical care does this – as well as indirectly, such as when one individual provides care work which in turn allows another individual to contribute directly. There is no neat way of weighing and comparing these different kinds of contributions. We cannot expect to reach an aggregated “contribution score” for each individual. The best we can hope for is rather a complex and imperfect all-things-considered judgement.

67 Cf. Cohen, RJE, 353.

167 Chapter 5

5. Conclusions Together with the previous chapter, this chapter has provided an answer to the question of what a contribution is, focusing specifically on the problem of how to decide the value of a contribution. We have seen that the commonly adopted market solution, and its assumption that, by working in the occupation where one maximises one’s income, one maximises one’s contribution, is too simplistic an approach which faces severe problems. Explicating its shortcomings has helped us to clarify when and how it could be employed as part of a suboptimal proxy, and made clear in what sense our assumptions about distributive and contributive justice are related: Since the point of an individual duty to contribute is that it helps to realise an ideal of distributive justice, we discharge our duty to contribute when our actions fulfil an account of right-making characteristics that is derived from these prior principles of justice. The suboptimal decision-procedure that I suggest we will have to be content with is a decentralised and informal one, in which people try to take into account both direct and indirect, salaried and unpaid work. Since people’s decisions about whether, with what, and how much to work will continue to be complex and perhaps irredeemably opaque, we should be aware of this uncertainty when concluding who contributes more or less, or sufficiently. Similarly, the pro tanto nature of the duty also makes it possible that two seemingly similar individuals may not, ultimately, be required to contribute equally much. The fact that this decision-procedure has limited capacity does not render the account of right-making characteristics false, however. We should not conclude that the problems this chapter has brought up mean that the duty to contribute should be rejected. The strongest conclusion we can draw is rather that the existing systems that assume there is indeed an easily measured index, and rely upon it to induce people to act in certain ways – such as the workfare policies described above, or the Chinese Social Credit System discussed in the next chapter – are inescapably flawed. I now turn to developing what I believe is the best way to enforce a duty to contribute, in light of this.

168 Tying ourselves to the mast or acting for the sake of justice? Ethos, internal motivation, and social sanctions

Chapter 6 – Tying ourselves to the mast or acting for the sake of justice? Ethos, internal motivation, and social sanctions

If individuals are required to act on a duty to contribute, we need an account of how this could be encouraged, or perhaps enforced. This chapter develops and defends the view that an ethos of justice is essential in approaching this question. The concept of ethos usually refers to the characteristic spirit of an individual or a group, or the set of values that inform and guide their behaviour. Ethos is sometimes used to denote the core values and central guiding principles of a profession such as teaching, med- icine, or the civil service, or the character and attitudes of small groups or whole societies.1 We might, for instance, say that the Scandinavian countries have an egalitarian ethos, or that the ethos of capitalism is individualistic. This is a descriptive statement. But just as we often refer to the moral character of an individual to explain his or her actions – such as the “bad apple” disregarding moral standards or “the saint” going over and above what such standards demand – the ethos of a group is often invoked when explaining the actions of its individual members. We could say, for instance, that a Confucian ethos among nurses influences how they treat patients, or that Sweden’s more egalitarian ethos leads to a toleration of

1 Geertz, “Ethos, World-View and the Analysis of Sacred Symbols”; Howley et al., “Social Class, Amish Culture, and an Egalitarian Ethos: Case Study from a Rural School Serving Amish Chil- dren”; Lundquist, Demokratins Väktare: Ämbetsmännen Och Vårt Offentliga Etos; McClosky and Zaller, The American Ethos: Public Attitudes Toward Capitalism and Democracy; Williams, The Ethos of Europe: Values, Law and Justice in the EU. Jonathan Wolff, “Fairness, Respect, and the Egalitarian Ethos,” 105 suggests “…an ethos is a set of underlying values, which may be explicit or implicit, interpreted as a set of maxims, slogans, or principles, which are then applied in practice.” This interpretation mirrors the OED definition of ethos as “The characteristic spirit of a people, community, culture, or era as manifested in its attitudes and aspirations; the prevailing character of an institution or system.” “Ethos n.” The ancient Greek meaning of ethos (ἔθος) is habitat or dwelling place, or the site for social and political association, although it is more often associated with its use in rhetoric, referring to the credibility and character of a speaker. Hatzisavvidou, Ap- pearances of Ēthos in Political Thought: The Dimension of Practical Reason, 61; Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics.

169 Chapter 6 higher taxation than in countries with a different ethos.2 The concept of ethos is thus not merely a description of the principles and values that people espouse, but can possibly also help us to understand why they act as they do, as part of an explanatory statement.3 The assumption that an ethos can inspire citizens to act in particular ways in their daily lives is central to Cohen’s critique of Rawls.4 Still, there is no comprehensive treatment of the concept, elaborating upon how, more specifically, an ethos could be thought to influence individual action or be distinguished from closely related concepts.5 This chapter aims to do this. If successful, it will provide us with valuable tools for understanding moral motivation in general, and in particular how the duty to contribute should be enforced. I start in section 1 with the assumption that individual adherence to particular moral principles can be explained either because one believes the principles have normative force, or because one adapts to social sanctions approving of adherence and disapproving of non-compliance with the principles. Correspondingly, one way of understanding what I call a moral

2 Wang and Mentes, “Factors Determining Nurses’ Clinical Judgments about Hospitalized Elderly Patients with Acute Confusion”; Cohen, RJE, 375 f. This way of using the concept also enables the study of how a social ethos changes over time and as a result of particular events. Both Cohen, 381 and Roemer, “Ideology, Social Ethos, and the Financial Crisis” suggest, for instance, that right- wing politics and new economic theories have contributed to a more individualistic ethos since World War II. 3 This second interpretation mirrors the alternative OED definition of ethos as “The character of an individual as represented by his or her values and beliefs; the moral or practical code by which a person lives.” “Ethos n.” 4 Cohen, RJE, pt. 1. Summarising the dispute, Cohen, 2 states that “The Marx-inspired question is whether a society without an ethos in daily life that is informed by a broadly egalitarian principle for that reason fails to provide distributive justice. To that question, Rawls, being a liberal, says no: here is the deep dividing line between us.” Cohen describes an ethos of egalitarian justice as “…a moral climate…” Cohen, 70, “a structure of response lodged in the motivations that inform everyday life…”, Cohen, 123, and as something that makes “…people internalize, and – in the normal case – unreflectively live by, principles that restrain the pursuit of self-interest and whose point is that the less fortunate gain when conduct is directed by them.” Cohen, 73. Joshua Cohen, “Taking People as They Are?,” 376 states that an ethos consists of “preferences and attitudes”. Titelbaum, “What Would a Rawlsian Ethos of Justice Look Like?,” 303 suggests that it is “…a motive that drives the members of the just society to act on certain principles.” Birnbaum, “Should Surfers Be Ostracized? Basic Income, Liberal Neutrality, and the Work Ethos.” investigates the justification and nature of a strong work ethos “…given its obvious potential for boosting the volume of paid work at a given net wage and, thus, the level of the highest sustainable basic income.” See also White and Ypi, “Rethinking the Modern Prince,” 822, who suggest that a democratic ethos is “…a positive conviction among citizens of the worth of engaging with collective political agency so as to exercise the fundamental democratic principle of collective self-rule.” 5 An important exception, however, is Carens, “The Egalitarian Ethos as a Social Mechanism”, which I will cite throughout as an inspiration for my account.

170 Tying ourselves to the mast or acting for the sake of justice? Ethos, internal motivation, and social sanctions ethos states that a particular moral ethos exists in a group when its members internalise and act from a particular principle. Drawing on moral and political philosophy, section 2 claims that this is similar to the idealising assumption of full compliance often made in political philosophy, and in effect renders the concept of ethos functionally equivalent to the Rawlsian idea that citizens in a just society will display a sense of justice. Drawing on philosophical theories of social norms and psychological research, section 3 then suggests an alternative way of understanding what I call a social ethos, which states that a particular social ethos exists within a group when its members uphold a decentralised system of informal social sanctions that increases their compliance with a particular principle. This is similar to how social norms in general are ordinarily upheld. The distinction between a social and a moral ethos, and the connections made between the different strands of research, enables a significant im- provement in our understanding of both. I suggest that we should, and often do, rely on both accounts in a complementary way. Whenever a moral ethos is insufficient to induce the necessary actions, the social ethos can be an external mechanism we impose on ourselves to help us achieve our goal, as when Ulysses asks his crew to tie him to the mast. The analysis also reveals inherent tensions between the two accounts, which my distinction allows us to resolve: Section 4 considers how both Rawls and Cohen assume that it matters whether people do the just thing for the just reason, and a possible dilemma this poses. If justice requires not only just acts but also just intentions, attempts to boost individuals’ moral motivation by relying on the social ethos might increase the chance of achieving a just distribution, at the cost of crowding out the moral motivation needed for individuals to be just. My proposed answer is that what matters is that we are partly, but not necessarily only, moved by justice when acting. It is acceptable to comply with the duty to contribute because of the sanctions otherwise imposed, as long as one is committed – for justice-based reasons – to supporting the system of social sanctions as such. Section 5 considers the objection that a social ethos would threaten individual freedom. To flesh out the details of the idea, and to answer the objection, I first discuss the concern, inspired by John Stuart Mill, that social sanctions are at least as problematic as legal regulations. I then compare the social ethos to similar systems of control, such as the kind of peer- to-peer surveillance and sanctioning that has evolved on social media, and the Social Credit System currently being implemented in China. The analysis suggests that much of the intuitive unease about these systems of social

171 Chapter 6 sanctions is due to concerns regarding their reliability, validity, transparency, proportionality, and deep reach. I argue, however, that the decentralised and informal nature of the sanctioning system I develop can avoid these problems sufficiently well. Section 6 concludes.

1. Internal and external motivation accounts of ethos Any society is obviously characterised by a number of ideals, principles and values, but for ease of discussion I will make three simplifying assumptions. Firstly, I will mostly talk of monist ethe6 based on a particular moral principle, rather than pluralist ones based on several. Secondly, while this section generalises to ethe in general, the rest of the chapter is explicitly concerned with analysing what an ethos of justice is. Thirdly, there is surprisingly little consensus on the relations between concepts like principles and duties, and I will not be able to interrogate this question here. This chapter will often use the concepts synonymously, but I note the following at the outset: Principle is arguably the wider concept. Depending on how a principle is formulated, it can be interpreted either as an account of right- making characteristics, or as a decision-procedure. The hybrid account I defend is based on the three principles of equality, reciprocity and fair burden-sharing presented in chapters 3 and 4 and, as I suggested in the last chapter, it should be understood as analogous to an account of right-making characteristics; a standard for what justice requires of individuals and why. The pro tanto duty to contribute that I investigate is hence a requirement that individuals act in ways that the account dictates. The role of the ethos, this chapter argues, is to encourage individuals to do so.7 I suggest that a general descriptive account of the concept is that a particular ethos exists in a group when most of its members act in accordance with (a) particular principle(s). This is broad enough to encompass ethe

6 Note that I will use the plural form “ethe”, although it is also common to use “ethoses”. 7 I hope this brief note is enough to clarify how to understand the relation between duty and principle in this chapter, even though it does not capture the complexity of the issue. Note, for instance, that many principles seem essentially equivalent to duties, since they require individuals to act in certain ways. Cohen, for instance, assumes that a normative principle is “…a general directive that tells agents what (they ought, or ought not) to do.” Cohen, RJE, 229. I believe that List and Val- entini, “The Methodology of Political Theory,” 535 f. capture a broader sense of the word, however, when they suggest that a principle is simply “…a statement—a proposition expressed in language—that applies, at least potentially, to more than one case.”, and note that principles might be normative (describing something like Cohen’s definition), evaluative (capturing the sense of principle as a standard of rightness), or positive (lacking normative or evaluative content).

172 Tying ourselves to the mast or acting for the sake of justice? Ethos, internal motivation, and social sanctions based on religious, moral, or other kinds of principles, and contains a sufficiency clause, specifying that not everyone, but sufficiently many, must act in accordance with the principle. It does not attach significance to why individuals do so. Consider, for instance, a society with an ethos of anti- racism, where most people refrain from holding and acting on racist sentiments and act in line with an anti-racist principle of equality. I conjecture that there are two relevant explanations for why this might be the case. Firstly, they might have accepted and internalised the egalitarian principle, respecting it because of its normative force. Alternatively, they might respect the principle because there is a system of social sanctions – such as public disapproval or ostracism – that calls out and punishes non-conformity. In this simplified example, citizens are thus motivated either by their belief in the normative force of principles as such, or by the desire to avoid social sanctions. Obviously, both motivational forces matter in our daily lives and the influence of one cannot in practice be distinguished from the influence of the other. For the purposes of this inquiry, it is nevertheless useful to make a theoretical distinction between the two, and I will proceed to show that we are helped by both of the following explanatory accounts of how an ethos might influence individuals.8

The internal motivation account: A particular moral ethos exists within a group when most of its members internalise and act from (a) particular principle(s).

The social sanctions account: A particular social ethos exists within a group when most of its members uphold a decentralised system of informal social sanctions that increases their compliance with the (a) particular principle(s).

These definitions are rather technical, and somewhat removed from collo- quial use of the term. For instance, I have noted that the term ethos is often used to refer to a set of closely related norms, or the collection of principles and values characteristic of a group. On my account, particular

8 The second definition in particular draws on the one provided by Carens, “The Egalitarian Ethos as a Social Mechanism,” 53, whose explicit intention of defining a morally legitimate and practically realisable egalitarian ethos leads him to propose the following: “Any ethos, as I am using the term, involves two components: a widely (though not necessarily universally) shared set of beliefs about how people ought to behave; a general (though not universal) willingness to act in accordance with those beliefs most of the time. To put it another way, an ethos is an effective set of informal social norms.”

173 Chapter 6 principles and values do not constitute the ethos, although an ethos is always based on particular principles and values. The reason for this move is that our aim here is to explain two different ways in which people are motivated to act in accordance with those principles and values: if a particular principle of justice requires individuals to act in particular ways – if it grounds a duty to contribute – a corresponding particular ethos helps to explain compliance with those demands. A central, and somewhat non- standard, assumption is thus that ethos is distinct from particular moral principles.9 This assumption enables progress both in the conceptual analysis and in the discussion of practical implications: While the point of this chapter is to establish that the duty to contribute should be enforced not through state intervention, but by the kind of ethos I am in the process of analysing, the related point I am currently making is that not only the account of contributive justice developed in this dissertation but indeed all views of justice that require individuals to act and be in certain ways require some kind of ethos. As discussed in chapter 2, for instance, even if there is disagreement on exactly what Rawls’s principles of justice demand of individuals, it is difficult to deny that the stability of a Rawlsian society requires citizens to internalise and act from his principles, including the natural duty of justice to support, comply with, and further just institutions.10 Similarly, although Robert Nozick’s rivalling historical account of justice is often thought to demand very little of individuals, its realisation still requires an ethos fos- tering belief in and respect for strong property rights and trust.11 Even objectionable principles have corresponding ethe. The institution of slavery in the United States was to some extent made possible, for instance, by a racist ethos based on the widespread (in a sufficiently large part of the population) internalisation of something like a principle declaring that people were not moral and legal equals, and a corresponding system of social (as well as institutional) sanctions against those who disapproved. Although

9 This is markedly different from the suggestion of Jonathan Wolff, “Fairness, Respect and the Egalitarian Ethos Revisited,” 342 that egalitarianism should not be seen as based on one fundamental principle, but rather a collection of values, where “ethos” refers to this collection of more or less formal values. This paragraph and the next rather follow and develop the points made in Carens, “The Egalitarian Ethos as a Social Mechanism,” 58–61. An important reason why my account might seem unconventional is, I believe, that Cohen’s use of the term reflects both Wolff’s and Carens’s respective interpretations, without explicitly recognising this. 10 Rawls, TJ, 99. Titelbaum, “What Would a Rawlsian Ethos of Justice Look Like?” suggests that a Rawlsian ethos would incorporate lexically ordered correlates of both of Rawls’s principles. 11 Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia. I discuss Carens’s similar point that even the Millian freedom from social pressure requires a corresponding ethos in note 54, below.

174 Tying ourselves to the mast or acting for the sake of justice? Ethos, internal motivation, and social sanctions slavery was dismantled in part because many people came to abandon this principle, perhaps partly due to an emerging rival system of social sanctions making it costlier to retain one’s conviction, the point is that the proposed definitions state that all three examples are instances of an ethos.12 An important upshot of the distinction is that it allows us to recognise that objections to a particular ethos are often misguided. It is sometimes claimed, for instance, that a strong egalitarian ethos of the kind Cohen defends would be objectionably demanding because it leaves too little freedom from the demands of justice.13 I believe that worries like these are, in fact, possible to interpret in three different ways: Firstly, some objections to a demanding ethos can be translated into objections to the very idea that principles of justice can make substantial demands on individuals. But in that case, the objection is not to the idea of an ethos as such, but to certain answers to the more fundamental question of what the proper site of justice is. It is, in fact, the same assertion that justice primarily applies to institutions and only secondarily and indirectly to individuals that I argued against in chapter 2. Secondly, some objections to a demanding or objectionable ethos can be translated into a concern about the particular principles upon which the ethos is based. Strictly speaking, it was not the American racist ethos as such that was problematic, but rather the racist principle to which it promoted adherence. The broad claim that Cohen’s ethos demands too much should thus be rephrased as an objection to the particular principle upon which Cohen’s ethos is based, and I address a similar demandingness objection to my account in the next chapter.14 Fi- nally, there is also a category of justified concerns about possible flaws inherent in the ethos understood as a social mechanism, and the way in which social sanctions could curtail individual freedom. On my analysis, it is only this final point that is in fact correctly directed towards the idea of an ethos, and I address it in section 5 below.

12 It also follows that the definitions generate a possibly endless set of more or less trivial or irrelevant ethe corresponding to different principles. The broad definitions hence require additional considerations to narrow down which principles are relevant or irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Since our question is that of contributive justice, I suggest that a relevant ethos on which to focus is one that promotes adherence to the hybrid duty set out in chapter 4. 13 This interpretation is sometimes encouraged by Cohen, such as when he states that “…the wide ethos requires […] that one does not violate equality in career choices.” Cohen, RJE, 371, emphasis added. Some writers take this to mean that the ethos does the requiring. For instance, Casal, “Marx, Rawls, Cohen, and Feminism,” 817;822 writes about the ethos “requiring” workers to take particular jobs, and the possibility that we may “violate” the ethos by not doing so. McTernan, “The Inegalitarian Ethos,” 100 makes a similar remark, as does Jenkins, “An Ethos for (In)Justice,” 193. 14 Whether it is wrong for individuals to uphold a “bad” ethos is a further, and separate, question.

175 Chapter 6

2. Internal motivation and the moral ethos as full compliance The definitions offered above roughly correspond to the ideas of internal and external motivation. The former is based on the idea that moral principles somehow give us reasons for action, that internal motivation can sometimes influence how individuals eventually decide to act. My belief that promises should be kept could lead me, for instance, to honour a promise I made to you, although I stand to gain by breaking it. There is also another category of motivating forces, however, which are in a sense external to morality but nevertheless promote its goals. This is the case if I honour my promise only because of my belief that I might otherwise get caught, and that people who are caught breaking promises are socially sanctioned and met with less respect and trust than before. While this section develops the former account, the next develops the latter. 15 To internalise and act from a principle entails that one performs certain actions because they are required by the principle. Shifting the discussion from generalities to specifically focus on justice, we can see that, if principles of justice had enough of this peculiar normative power over us, there would be no need for any kind of external motivation, either in stick or carrot form. Saying that justice requires an internally motivating ethos is thus similar to making the idealising assumption of full compliance. A common rationale for this assumption is that, by disregarding questions about how feasible it is that people will actually comply with the demands of justice, we can focus on what the nature of a just society would be like. I suggest that this fits well with one of the ways in which Cohen uses the concept of ethos in his critique of Rawls. After discussing the case of inequality-generating incentives that we reviewed in detail in chapter 3, Co- hen argues that “…a just society is normally impossible without [an ethos]”, making “…people internalize, and – in the normal case – unreflectively live by, principles that restrain the pursuit of self-interest and

15 There is a major philosophical debate on externalism and internalism about moral motivation. There, internalism seems to be the position that φ-ing cannot be morally required unless people are at least partly motivated to φ, and externalism is the opposite view. Although internalism as I am using it clearly presupposes that some moral principles are internally motivating, my question is not whether they can be moral principles unless they motivate us. As the discussion below shows, my point is that because internal motivation, if it exists, is seldom sufficient to motivate people to act justly we need to rely on the externally motivating social ethos. For an overview of the debate on internalism, see Björnsson et al., Motivational Internalism, chap. 1. For a discussion of trust in terms of the above distinction, see Pettit, “The Cunning of Trust.”

176 Tying ourselves to the mast or acting for the sake of justice? Ethos, internal motivation, and social sanctions whose point is that the less fortunate gain when conduct is directed by them.”16 With this kind of internally motivating ethos of justice informing individual choices – in effect producing full compliance with a duty to contribute – such inequalities would not be necessary in order to make the worst off better off. Internal moral motivation would replace, as it were, the external motivation of economic incentives. I believe that, despite their disagreement on what justice requires of individuals, Cohen’s ethos is similar to the way in which Rawls supports his idealising assumption of full compliance. Just as Cohen is concerned with the character of individuals, Rawls presupposes that citizens in a well-ordered society would display a “…sense of justice, that is, the capacity to understand, to apply and to act from (and not merely in accordance with) the principles of justice.”17 This moral power means that people will “…have a strong and normally effective desire to act as the principles of justice require.”18 It provides them with “…a regulative desire to comply with the corresponding principles.”19 and illustrates that “[t]o some degree, then, moral sentiments are necessary to insure that the basic structure is stable with respect to justice.”20 The similarities between Rawls’s notion of a sense of justice and Co- hen’s ethos suggests that we should view the account of a moral ethos offered above as functionally equivalent to the Rawlsian sense of justice, in the sense that the role of each is to help us understand what a just society with full compliance would be like. 21 What Cohen criticises is not a complete failure on Rawls’s part to see the importance of principles of justice

16 Cohen, RJE, 73. Other passages illustrating Cohen’s view that the ethos has causal effects, motivating internally, include Cohen, 17;70 n. 40;73;128;143;203 and Cohen, “Rescuing Justice from Constructivism and Equality from the Basic Structure Restriction,” 247. This assumption is often left undefended, such as when Cohen claims that the “…social ethos of reconstruction after war […] restrained desire for personal gain.” among executives in the post-World War II United King- dom. Cohen, RJE, 143. 17 Rawls, “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,” 525. 18 Rawls, TJ, 398. 19 Rawls, 498. 20 Rawls, 401. These assumptions are supported by the psychological theory of moral development and other arguments in part 3 of Rawls, TJ. 21 Michael Titelbaum, “What Would a Rawlsian Ethos of Justice Look Like?,” 303 argues that the ethos is not identical to but rather an extension of the sense of justice, and that we cannot “…read an egalitarian ethos straightforwardly off of Rawls’s descriptions of the just society, whether we focus on the two principles of justice or on his discussions of the sense of justice.” Titelbaum, 295. Properly understood, I believe that Titelbaum’s disagreement has to do with the content of the demands that justice makes on individuals. Titelbaum, 303 does indeed suggest that “[t]he sense of justice is a motive, possessed by members of the just society. It motivates those members to act on certain principles. […] Similarly, I think we should understand an individual ethos as a motive that drives the members of the just society to act on certain principles.”

177 Chapter 6 imbuing society and influencing people’s daily actions. He meticulously accounts for all the places in Rawls’s work where this is recognised22. What he calls out is rather an inconsistency on the part of Rawls and Rawlsians because they simultaneously recognise the importance of individuals acting on principles of justice, while also allowing for externally motivating economic incentives. This suggests that Rawls and Cohen agree that an ideally just society requires people to be motivated to do what justice requires, and that their disagreement rather has to do with what justice requires of individuals23: are individuals supposed to act on Rawls’s natural duty by supporting and furthering arrangements that satisfy his principles of justice or do they rather, as I argued in chapter 2, have a duty to act on the principles directly? Regardless, it seems highly implausible that any conception of justice could be realised simply because people recognise a duty to contribute and are moved to act on it. The demands of justice almost always go against people’s self-interest – although how much so depends on which conception of justice and corresponding set of duties for individuals we subscribe to – so, even if they are inherently motivating, they might seldom override all other motivations. The solution, I suggest, is to rely on the ethos not only as a label for a kind of moral inspiration, but also as a social mechanism generating external motivation.

3. Tying ourselves to the mast – External motivation and the social ethos If we are sufficiently committed to principles of justice to want to realise them, but insufficiently saint-like to succeed while relying only on internal motivation, one solution is to “tie ourselves to the mast” by setting up a system of external motivation as well. The rest of this chapter discusses

22 Cohen, RJE, 74 ff. 23 To be precise, Cohen, 73 believes that ”[f]or the […] difference principle to prevail there needs to be an ethos informed by the principle in society at large. Therefore, a society (as opposed to its government) does not qualify as committed to the difference principle unless it is indeed informed by a certain ethos or culture of justice.” He simultaneously accepts, however, that “[s]ometimes the difference principle in its lax interpretation can be recommended as a first virtue of social institutions, because we cannot get justice, and the injustice that goes with incentives is the best injustice we can get. […] I have not rejected the difference principle in its lax reading as a principle of public policy… [footnote added 2008: Nor have I denied that it can be optimal from the point of view of distributive justice (in the absence of an egalitarian ethos)]”. Cohen, 84 f.

178 Tying ourselves to the mast or acting for the sake of justice? Ethos, internal motivation, and social sanctions how we can conceive of a social ethos as a broader social phenomenon with the effect of motivating people to adhere to particular principles or norms. On this view, what I will call a social ethos is a mechanism for non-ideal circumstances, part of a system of social norms in which discharging one’s duty would be the basis for praise, status, or esteem, whereas failing to do so would be criticised and denounced.24 This is not an unfamiliar idea. Our behaviour in everyday life is already governed by expectations about what other people think of us, such as when we obey the rules of etiquette, conform to expectations about our gender, or take up a particular profession because of the status it enjoys. Frequently, “...the hope of favour and the fear of displeasure from our fellow creatures...”25 are powerful influences on our choices. Appreciating just how much of our social interaction depends on norms is nevertheless difficult. We can straightforwardly think of norms that we would rather do without, because they prevent cooperation, protect existing power asym- metries, or restrict individuals’ freedom or welfare. Beneficial norms at- tracting widespread agreement are much less apparent. Precisely because norms play important roles in our lives, they become invisible when they do this well, and this suggests it would be wrongheaded to strive for a norm-free society, as distinct from a society free of bad norms. The social sanctions account suggests, essentially, that this kind of informal social sanction can be employed as a means in the pursuit of justice.26

3.1. Norms and social sanctions The idea that an ethos can be understood as a social mechanism draws upon and develops work by Carens. Ever since he first introduced his account of a duty to contribute, Carens has appealed to an ethos-like solution to the question of how to enforce the duty, because people

24 This view is thus different from the non-ideal account of ethos set out by Jenkins, “An Ethos for (In)Justice”, who primarily focuses on how the assumption of non-ideal circumstances affects the principles upon which an ethos of justice should be based. 25 “…or from the Ruler of the Universe…” Mill, Utilitarianism and On Liberty, 204. 26 I agree with the conclusion of Carens, “An Interpretation...,” 167, that “…the question is not whether there should be a shared social ethos, but rather what that shared social ethos will be and why it should be one way rather than another.”

179 Chapter 6

...usually conform to social values even when they have not themselves internalized these values as personal goals. Presumably, the stronger the social disapproval associated with nonconformity, the more likely individuals are to conform.27

Recent social philosophical literature on norms can help us to develop this idea. A norm could most simply be described as a rule for behaviour, and in this sense, it can be seen as similar to how I have used “principles” above. Social norms, in turn, are shared among people and upheld by positive and negative social sanctions: transgressions are denounced, and adherence is praised. Note, further, that there are many kinds of social norms. While some could be fairly described as moral norms, since people are committed to them because they ascribe them normative force, many norms have no deeper foundation but are widespread either because they offer a solution to coordination problems28, or persist and are respected simply because “that’s how it’s always been”. Although our primary concerns are moral norms or principles, a general account of norms will thus view moral norms as a subset of social norms.29

27 Carens, Equality, Moral Incentives, and the Market, 133. Similarly, Carens, “The Egalitarian Ethos as a Social Mechanism,” 61 suggests that in a society valuing honesty, “…people will normally also find that it is in their interest to be honest. Honesty will (normally) be the best policy because of the social (and not just legal) sanctions that are visited upon dishonesty.” Importantly, there are some descriptions of ethos in Cohen’s writings that fit better with such an account than with the internal motivation account. For instance, Cohen, RJE, 142 describes “moral pioneers” who change their ways in light of feminist critique, thereby creating “…a path that becomes easier and easier to follow as more and more people follow it, until social pressures are so altered that it becomes harder to stick to sexist ways than to abandon them.” Other theorists developing the idea that social sanctions could or should somehow be used to further normative ideals include Brennan and Pettit, The Economy of Esteem: An Essay on Civil and Political Society; McTernan, “How to Make Citizens Behave: Social Psychology, Liberal Virtues, and Social Norms”; Kuran, Private Truths, Public Lies, and Osiel, The Right to Do Wrong. 28 It is arbitrary which side of the road we drive on, but there are great benefits of coordinating this. Driving on the right side, for instance, is thus a convention rather than a norm. See Bicchieri, Norms in the Wild, 18–28; Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society, 2, drawing on Lewis, Convention: A Philosophical Study. 29 In fact, theorists of norms often ensure that their accounts are non-committed to the claim that moral norms exist. Brennan et al., Explaining Norms, 57 f., for instance limit their discussion by viewing moral norms as part of positive morality. These are the principles people in general take to be moral principles, regardless of their relation to the moral norms with, perhaps, objective validity that philosophers believe they are engaged in studying. Similarly, Bicchieri, Norms in the Wild, 31–35 suggests that the difference between moral and social norms is that the preference to conform to the former is unconditional: we follow moral rules because we believe they ought to be followed and not because we expect others to do so or out of fear of sanctions. She is, however, agnostic about the existence of moral norms, and notes that a principle of fairness, for instance, may be a social norm for some and a moral norm for others, depending on the motivation of the agent pursuing it. My discussion will proceed under the assumption that a person can think of the duty to contribute as both a moral and a social norm at the same time.

180 Tying ourselves to the mast or acting for the sake of justice? Ethos, internal motivation, and social sanctions

Another central aspect of social norms is that they are upheld by a more or less comprehensive system of criticising non-conformity and praising conformity. This is captured in Christina Bicchieri’s influential rational choice-based theory of social norms, which states that a social norm is a rule of behaviour to which you prefer to conform, given that you think that most people you care about (your “reference network”) conform to it and believe that you ought to conform to it, and possibly also may sanction you if you do not.30 Yet, shame is not necessarily the central aspect here, and sanctions do not merely include stigmatising behaviour, but also how we approve of certain ways of acting and being. What is important here is the social and external aspect of producing compliance: it is essentially because you care about what other people think about you or can do to you, that you decide to conform to the norm.31 Importantly, this does not entail that a social ethos is a set of norms or principles. In light of the distinction above between the ethos and the principles on which it is based, the claim in this section is that a social ethos is the system of social sanctions which upholds commitment to particular principles. On both accounts, the ethos is that which promotes compliance with norms, or the duty to contribute. Experimental evidence seems to support the assumption that social sanctions are efficient ways of influencing people’s behaviour. Psycholo- gists and economists who have theorised social dilemmas in which the production of a public good is maximised if everyone contributes as much as they can, predict that people will be tempted to withhold their contributions and rather free-ride on others. Frequently, the risk of detection will be low enough to make this a prudent choice, leading to an overall outcome in which the cooperation in producing the public good – in our case, a just society – is lower than what everyone would prefer it to be. If deciding whether to comply with a duty to contribute is sufficiently similar to

30 Bicchieri, Norms in the Wild, 35; Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society, 11. The sanctioning clause is disjunctive in the definition offered in The Grammar of Society: you either believe a sufficiently large subset of the population expects you to conform to the norm, or that they may also sanction you if you do not. The sanctioning clause does not figure in the definition offered in the subsequently published Norms in the Wild. Cf. the similar definition of norms offered by Brennan et al., Explaining Norms, 29; Anderson, “Beyond Homo Economicus: New Developments in Theo- ries of Social Norms”; Brennan and Pettit, The Economy of Esteem: An Essay on Civil and Political Society, and Elster, The Cement of Society, chap. 3. 31 Cf. Elster, The Cement of Society, 99, who states that ”For norms to be social, they must be (a) shared by other people and (b) partly sustained by their approval and disapproval.”, and Brennan and Pettit, The Economy of Esteem: An Essay on Civil and Political Society, 267, who write “Norms materialize as regularities in social life, because there is general approval for the pattern of behavior involved, disapproval for the failure to elicit that behavior, or the expectation of such general approval or disapproval.”

181 Chapter 6 a public goods dilemma, and we assume that the social sanctions upholding norms are a kind of incentive – “…an intervention that affects the expected material costs and benefits associated with an action.”32 – I suggest that we can possibly translate some of the research programme’s find- ings to our current discussion. Experimental research suggests that decentralised monitoring and sanctioning of norm compliance can effectively alter people’s incentives structures so that complying with the norm, or contributing to the public good, becomes a more attractive option, especially so in repeated interactions.33 Since monitoring compliance and issuing social sanctions is itself costly, we might expect the free-rider problem to reappear as a second-order social enforcement dilemma: it is better for all individuals if norm transgressions are sanctioned, but better for each individual to free-ride on others’ doing so. Surprisingly, however, researchers can observe altruistic punishment, where people accept the costs of punishing despite receiving no material gain from it.34 As I will explain in section 5.1, I believe that social sanctions ought to take different forms depending on what justice actually requires of individuals and how much faith we can have in our judgements of people’s efforts. At this point, we can conclude, however, that a system of social sanctions can indeed be an effective way of increasing compliance with norms, suggesting that the idea of a social ethos seems to describe a feasible mechanism for encouraging compliance with the duty to contribute.

4. The role of intentions and the dilemma of just citizens and just distribution I have suggested that the role of the social ethos is to buttress and complement the internal motivation of the moral ethos, and that this increases our chance of enforcing individual obligations when moral motivation is insufficient. Distinguishing between the two accounts of ethos reveals that this strategy seems to face a dilemma, however: If what matters is not only that we perform the just action but also that we do it for the right reason,

32 Bowles, The Moral Economy, 47. 33 Balliet, Mulder, and Van Lange, “Reward, Punishment, and Cooperation: A Meta-Analysis.” 34 Fehr and Gächter, “Altruistic Punishment in Humans.” In order to avoid a general “betrayal aversion” – the wish not to be taken advantage of – institutions possibly have a role in building trust and reducing the risk of this. For overviews, see Bowles, The Moral Economy and Gneezy, Meier, and Rey-Biel, “When and Why Incentives (Don’t) Work to Modify Behavior.”

182 Tying ourselves to the mast or acting for the sake of justice? Ethos, internal motivation, and social sanctions the social ethos seemingly undermines justice, since people would contribute not for the sake of justice, but in response to praise, esteem, or ostracism. So, if the moral ethos is insufficient, we need a social ethos, but if justice requires both a just distribution and just citizens, the risk is that we thereby not only replace but also corrupt people’s motivations, ultimately leading to a more just distribution but less just citizens. The assumption that it matters not only how but also why we act reso- nates with our daily moral reasoning, as well as many moral theories. It seems central in explaining why a particular action – such as keeping a promise – can be assessed differently depending on why the agent does it. Moreover, both Rawls and Cohen seem to include intentions in their theories of justice. Rawls considers how an egoist may sometimes happen to “…do things that a just man would do; but so long as he remains an egoist, he cannot do them for the just man’s reason.”35 Rather, the sense of justice is “…an executive and highest-order desire to act from certain principles of justice…”.36 Cohen, for his part, illustrates a similar point by asking us to imagine a society with a just distribution that has come about because its citizens have worked hard even though the fruits of their labour are redistributed. They do this, however, not because they follow the dictums of a principle of justice, but rather because the society has a strong Protestant ethos:

…which is indifferent to equality (on earth) as such, but whose stress on self- denial, hard work, and investment of assets surplus to needs somehow (despite the asceticism in it) makes the worst off as well off as it is possible for them to be.37

Despite accidentally achieving a just distribution in light of the difference principle, the Protestant society nevertheless does not count as constitu-

35 Rawls, TJ, 497. Passages like these can primarily be found in the more Kant-inspired writings of early Rawls. Kant, of course, argued that our actions, however amiable and right, only have moral worth when we perform our duty because it is our duty: Actions that conform with duty but are not performed from duty lack moral worth (but are not necessarily morally wrong). This is the case when a shopkeeper acts honestly just because it is in his long-term self-interest of making a profit, or even when he does it out of love for his customers rather than because duty requires it. Kant, The Moral Law: Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, 68–71. 36 Rawls, “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,” 533. 37 Cohen, RJE, 128. An analogous example used by Cohen is that “…there is more satisfaction all around when a promise is kept voluntarily.”, so “…both the agent and people at large have reason to prefer that the right thing be done for the right reason…” Cohen, 219 f.

183 Chapter 6 tively just, argues Cohen, because its citizens are not informed by the difference principle when they act.38 People moved by the Protestant ethos would act so as to bring about distributive justice, but have the wrong disposition of mind when doing so. Cohen thus concludes that “Justice in citizens” is a necessary condition for a just society.39 This raises the questions of whether contributive justice should attrib- ute any importance to people’s intentions, and whether there is a way to avoid the dilemma if it does. I suggest that we are helped by distinguishing between a strong and a weak version of the idea. These versions differ in how they deal with the less clear-cut plurality of motivations that characterise our daily lives. After all, we rarely act solely out of one set of considerations, or merely from one principle. I might decide to make a productive effort both because I believe I am obliged to do so, and because I fear the shame to which non-contributors are subjected. Consequently, the strong view states that, even if one’s actions might contribute to bringing about a just distribution, one would not act justly if any other consideration than what justice requires influences one’s decision. Contrast this with a possible weak view which states that, even if one’s actions might bring about a just distribution, one would not act justly if no consideration of what justice requires influences one’s decision. Both views hold that being influenced by what justice requires is a necessary condition for acting justly, but the weak view also assumes that it is sufficient. It tolerates any mix of justice-related and non-justice-related motivations. Insisting on the strong view seems to lead to suboptimal distributive outcomes in many cases. If we assume there is full compliance, enforcement mechanisms seem superfluous and people could be expected to do their part by contributing to the socially necessary labour and the social surplus.40 As soon as we relax these idealising assumptions, however, we will have to consider how people can be made to do their share in contributing to justice. Yet, the strong version of the view that intentions matter excludes relying upon formal or informal sanctions as a supplementary

38 Cohen notes that it is highly unlikely that this would ever happen, and that the kind of Protes- tantism described is “…utterly fantastic, at least for our day”. Cohen, RJE, 128. 39 Cohen, 129. Considering the opposite case, in which people are moved by just principles but fail to create a just distribution for other reasons, such as collective action problems, illustrates the status of the two conditions: Justice in citizens is a necessary condition for a just society, but not for a just distribution. It is not sufficient for a just society, however, since a just distribution is also necessary. That is, a society with justice in citizens would not be just if it did not also have a just distribution. 40 Note, however, that Rawls, TJ, 236 suggests that even with a sense of justice, we still need the state to enforce rules, in order to provide sufficient assurance that everyone will do their part in contributing to public goods.

184 Tying ourselves to the mast or acting for the sake of justice? Ethos, internal motivation, and social sanctions mechanism, even if they could significantly boost contributions. If we insist that people ought to contribute for reasons of justice, the realisation of the ideals of distributive and contributive justice might thus be frustrated. This seems odd. On the other hand, the strong view can be understood as merely stating that there is a value in realising moral demands for the right reasons that should at least count when we evaluate different states of affairs. Ceteris paribus, a society with a just distribution brought about by a moral ethos or sense of justice could be preferable to a society with an equally just distribution that has come about through non-justice-related motivations, even if this consideration weighs very lightly when we make all-things- considered policy decisions.41 On this view, the strong version is reserved for ideal theory, in the sense of theorising that aims to describe an ideal state of affairs or end-state, rather than second-best feasible alternatives or methods for transition.42 The weak version, which states that justice can be achieved even when people only partly act for reasons of justice, on the other hand, is compatible with externally motivating mechanisms, in effect suggesting how to deal with non-ideal circumstances with less than full compliance. Can we avoid the dilemma by adopting the strong view in ideal theory and the weak view in practice? Some results from the relevant empirical literature suggest that this would be too quick. Experiments show that internal and external motivations do not always work additively or synergis- tically but sometimes counteract each other. Researchers agree, for instance, that incentives must be designed carefully so as not to create moral disengagement: When external incentives are introduced, what individuals used to do out of a sense of duty might suddenly be subject to a market calculation of costs and benefits, leading them to conclude that it is not

41 Cohen could be said to be a proponent of the idea that that world would be “in one way better” Cohen, “How to Do Political Philosophy,” 231. 42 The multiple layers of disagreements between proponents and opponents of ideal theory make their theoretical debate notoriously difficult to pin down. I rely on the distinctions made by Val- entini, “Ideal vs. Non-Ideal Theory: A Conceptual Map” and am sympathetic to the suggestion that both ideal and non-ideal theory are part of the common project of normative theorising, made in Stemplowska, “What’s Ideal About Ideal Theory?”

185 Chapter 6 worth the price they are being offered.43 Even on the weak view, then, relying too much on external motivation might crowd out whatever moral motivation is left, and the dilemma would reappear.44 I suggest that a better way forward at this point is to shift the unit of analysis, as it were, from each particular act to the hypothetical original act of setting up or sustaining the ethos. The weak view is compatible with the idea that one does not have to perform every act that justice requires for the right reasons, as long as one supports – for the right reasons – the mechanism that ensures that one generally conforms to what justice requires. This appeal to a hypothetical agreement emulates the strategy of social contract theories of political morality. On this view, the question is not whether one has just intentions every time one acts, but whether one’s support for the necessary mechanism is explained by just intentions. Con- sider an analogy with a person trying to overcome procrastination. Given that this person fails to do the tasks she thinks she ought to do, she might manipulate herself and her environment to make it more likely that she will succeed. If putting out her running shoes before going to bed helps her not to skip her pre-breakfast run, it is arguably not her nudging mechanism but her original intention that matters.45 If she knows that promising a friend to go running together makes her less likely to skip it, her success is due not only to the friend but also to her own decision to make the commitment. Analogously, we avoid the dilemma even if we comply with a particular requirement of justice because of the sanctions otherwise imposed, as long as we are also committed to supporting the system of social sanctions as such. We should thus be internally motivated when we

43 The debate on this was sparked by sociologist Richard Titmuss, The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy, who famously argued that, even though a system of paying blood donors yields more blood available for transfusion than a system based on the logic of giving, the latter yields higher-quality blood (which is assumed to be all-things-considered preferable), while the former also undermines “the gift relationship” on which voluntary donations of blood rely. See also Arrow, “Gifts and Exchanges”; Singer, “Altruism and Commerce: A Defense of Titmuss against Arrow”; Goodin, “Making Moral Incentives Pay”, and Anderson, “Beyond Homo Eco- nomicus: New Developments in Theories of Social Norms,” 197. Newer empirical research has nuanced the picture, and interactions between the two kinds of motivation appears to vary across different situations. The suggested lesson is nevertheless that designing externally motivating sanctions must be done with caution. See Bowles, The Moral Economy, 39–78; 206 f. 44 For a discussion of a similar dilemma in law, see Thaysen, “I Would Do Anything for Law (and That’s a Problem).” 45 This example illustrates that the nudging mechanism is not external to her will but rather an extension of her will, suggest Heath and Anderson, “Procrastination and the Extended Will.”.

186 Tying ourselves to the mast or acting for the sake of justice? Ethos, internal motivation, and social sanctions tie ourselves to the mast by endorsing the system of social sanctions that ensure our own compliance with what justice requires.46

5. Does the social ethos limit freedom? Decentralised and informal monitoring and sanctioning I noted at the very outset of this inquiry that much of the pursuit of justice has become doubly individualised, such that individuals’ actions are now constantly assessed by other individuals. In light of what has been said about the social sanctions account of ethos, we are now able to evaluate and possibly draw some practical conclusions about this increasingly common practice. Just as many might be worried about how this often leads to individuals being too harshly sanctioned when they are publicly called out, some might say that the social ethos I defend threatens individual freedom. I noted in section 1 that the worry about individual freedom can be understood in three ways, and I suggested that the first two are properly interpreted as objections to the very existence, or the specific content, of substantial individual duties of justice. Most of the debate on the particular ethos that Cohen defends is indeed seemingly hampered by a failure to recognise this.47 There is also, I admit, a third version which states that there is some objectionable aspect inherent in the social ethos that makes it problematic, no matter what principles it is based upon. Note that this objection is not the same as the so-called demandingness objection we have touched upon throughout the dissertation. Since the current objection rather claims that a society in which we sanction people who fail to live up to certain demands would be deeply unattractive and unfree, we could call it the Stalinism objection.48 This section tries to reconstruct the strongest

46 Note that this idea is not just a reformulation of Rawls’s natural duty to “…support and to comply with just institutions that exist and apply to us […] [and] to further just arrangements not yet established…” Rawls, TJ, 99. As I have made clear in chapter 2, the pertinent difference is that Rawls asks individuals to support and further institutions that, in turn, further justice. My account instead asks individuals to support and further a mechanism – the social ethos – that then urges the individuals to further justice directly. They do this, then, by not only supporting but also supplementing and enhancing institutional efforts to promote justice. See also section 1 of the introductory chapter. 47 This is even reflected in the way in which Cohen himself reconstructs and answers “the freedom objection” in Cohen, RJE, chap. 5. 48 Note that my use of the label Stalinism is not identical to Cohen’s, who discusses the “Stalinist line” of forcing people to take particular jobs, especially in section 5 of Cohen, chap. 5. Needless to say, neither use of the terms should be taken to disrespect victims of real-world Stalinism.

187 Chapter 6 possible form of this objection, and to provide a reply in favour of the idea of relying on a social ethos to promote justice. I return to both objections in the next chapter. To understand what might be objectionable about the social ethos, we need to start by recognising that inherent in it, as well as other systems of social control, are the dual functions of both monitoring and sanctioning norm compliance.49 Firstly, such systems collect information on who does or does not conform to a particular norm and when. Then, some kind of positive or negative sanction is issued. One way to elaborate this freedom objection is consequently to claim that the system of social sanctions I am advocating could become too powerful, or be sufficiently similar to state coercion to warrant a demand for legitimacy. Just as the sanctions administered through the legal system can significantly reduce an individual’s freedom, so can the sanctions administered through the social ethos, this version of the objection argues. There are, nevertheless, relevant differences between the social ethos and other systems of control. To see this, note that the monitoring and sanctioning functions can be more or less formal and centralised. I have stressed that the social ethos should be understood as informal and decentralised in both functions, and we can contrast this with, for instance, an explicitly coercive system for enforcing laws. While laws are formal and codified, the norms or principles promoted by an ethos are informal. 50 And while the surveillance and sanctioning of crimes is usually highly centralised, with a police force, a system of courts, and penal facilities, an ethos would be based on peer-to-peer interactions without centralised score- keeping or coordination. Indeed, the lessons of chapters 4 and 5 are that the informal nature of the requirements of justice, and the difficulty in telling whether an individual has discharged their duty to contribute, means that the sanctions must always be correspondingly informal. While the violation of clearly stated laws can entail clear and substantive retribu- tion, the adherence to or violation of the demands of justice should not be met with sanctions that are too harsh or formal, but more appropriately by the kind of esteem or praise, approval or disapproval with which conformity or non-conformity with moral standards are usually met. The

49 Cf. Weissman, “P2P Surveillance in the Global Village,” 32. 50 Brennan et al., Explaining Norms, chap. 3 suggest that one important difference between formal and informal norms is that the former are upheld through tangible sanctions from the higher au- thority of the state, in a way that informal social norms are not. Another difference, following H. L. A. Hart, is that formal norms, unlike informal ones, are accompanied by secondary norms specifying how the formal norms may be changed. See also Frye, “Freedom without Law,” 304 ff.

188 Tying ourselves to the mast or acting for the sake of justice? Ethos, internal motivation, and social sanctions promise of the social ethos, on this view, is that compared with a system of formal and centralised sanctions administered by the state, it is a less freedom-curtailing alternative which can achieve the same goal of inducing individuals to adhere to the duty to contribute even when their moral motivation is insufficient. Some might reject the relevance of these distinctions, however, and as- sert that although other systems of social control might be more far-reaching, a social system of sanctions potentially reaches more deeply into people’s lives. John Stuart Mill, who displays acute awareness of the force of social sanctions views them as a double-edged sword with both appropriate and excessive purposes. Mill favours the idea that people who act hurtfully to others may be punished by general disapprobation51, and believes that we have a right to respond by avoiding their company, cautioning others against them, and lowering our opinion of them.52 He famously suggests, however, that there needs to be protection from having to conform to prevailing opinion and tastes, and that if society

…issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.53

While important and poignant, Mill’s objection cannot be directed against the ethos as such, but is better described as a combination of the first two objections from freedom that I discarded above. The distinction between principles or norms and the ethos as a mechanism for encouraging compliance helps us see this: Note that Mill is uneasy about society upholding the “wrong” mandates, but not necessarily the “right” ones. And while he thinks that society should stay out of “things with which it ought not to meddle”, he accepts social sanctions in other cases.54 The latter point is, in fact, a reformulation of the division of labour view, which I tried to reject

51 Mill, Utilitarianism and On Liberty, 95 f. 52 Mill, 149. 53 Mill, 91. 54 Carens, “The Egalitarian Ethos as a Social Mechanism,” 60 points out that paradoxically, the freedom from social pressure defended by Mill “…can only exist as a real freedom if it is supported by a social ethos, that is, if most people believe that it is wrong to interfere with certain kinds of personal choices, even through criticism. That belief itself then generates an informal social norm, with its accompanying social pressures.” See also Carens, “An Interpretation...,” 167, and, for a general discussion on how Mill conceives of social pressure, see Wilkinson, “Mill’s On Liberty and Social Pressure.”

189 Chapter 6 in chapter 2. And the former point is, again, an objection to the specific principles upon which a social ethos is based, rather than the ethos itself. The example of slavery in section 1 showed, however, that the claim that particular principles of justice may give rise to more objectionable ethe than others is, strictly speaking, not an argument against the role of an ethos, but at most an argument against those principles being principles of justice. Those who share Mill’s worry should hence direct it towards the principle or norm to which the ethos promotes conformity, and not the ethos itself. The best way to formulate the freedom objection to the social ethos is instead to claim that the decentralised and informal nature of the social ethos makes it systematically prone to error, since it would make individuals – with all of their known flaws and biases – the judge, jury, and exe- cutioner in the enforcement of justice. This is a valid concern which captures part of what is wrong about Stalinism and similar totalitarian systems. I believe that addressing it motivates a small digression by considering how the social ethos differs from similar systems of social control, to wit, the kind of peer-to-peer surveillance and sanctioning that is evolving online, and the Social Credit System (SCS) currently being implemented in China.55

5.1 The legitimacy of systems of social sanctions – Online public shaming and the Social Credit System Online sanctioning is becoming an increasingly effective mechanism for calling out improper behaviour. Norm transgressions are easily recorded and disseminated, and people’s online history provides a centralised cache of material that can be reviewed at any point. The prevalence of cameras also means that people’s behaviour in the real world always can become the subject of online outrage. Since the cost of joining the crowd and ad-

55 A related objection, which I will not address, questions the assumption that individuals can, in general, legitimately sanction others. Some might claim that individual A might lack the standing to criticise individual B for failing to discharge a duty to contribute, for instance if both of them have failed to discharge the duty. For a discussion of similar issues, see Cohen, Finding Oneself in the Other, chaps. 6, 7. Yet, as I have pointed out elsewhere, although the illocutionary force of a speech act of condemnation might be reduced if the speaker is engaged in the same activity that is being condemned, condemnations have additional functions. For instance, they can be understood as conveying information about the norms transgression and, with regard to the social sanctions discussed, they could arguably play a role in making norms transgressions less frequent. See Furen- dal, “Finding Oneself in the Other, Written by G. A. Cohen,” 345 f.

190 Tying ourselves to the mast or acting for the sake of justice? Ethos, internal motivation, and social sanctions ministering punishment is close to zero, millions of people globally regu- larly join in the criticism of individuals, which often reverberates in other societal spheres.56 Similarly, the Social Credit System which at the time of writing is being rolled out in China is a massive, technology-assisted experiment in social control, the stated goal of which is to encourage trustworthiness and punish untrustworthiness in citizens. Although the SCS is sometimes portrayed as a coherent scheme monitoring Chinese citizens’ private, public, and online lives, it is still more of a patchwork of programmes and pilot experiments. The idea seems to be that centrally re- cording and making public infringements of laws and regulations can induce individuals to act more virtuously. The system heralds model citizens and corporations and publishes blacklists of offenders and, among other things, bars them from operating businesses or travelling by high-speed trains. Although not quite the dystopian surveillance system it is sometimes portrayed to be – it shares similarities with regular financial credit score systems used throughout the world – some pilot programmes have assigned scores to individuals based on their perceived virtues and good deeds. While not strictly speaking part of the SCS, some Chinese companies also offer opt-in customer-reward programmes, in which your public score partly depends on your purchasing history and social media presence.57 Why might we find these systems unsettling, despite their desirable functions of reducing norm transgressions and increasing trust? And does the social ethos I defend share their problematic features? I suggest that worries about these kinds of social sanctioning systems are due to a number of factors. The Millian worry about deep reach discussed above, and the concern that these systems are meddling in things which should be left up to individuals, is probably a common initial reaction. Yet, my point in

56 A prominent example is the PR agent who in 2013 made an improper joke on Twitter before boarding a plane, sleeping through the global outcry it sparked, and waking up to protesters pho- tographing her when she landed, and ultimately losing her job. Ronson, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed; Weissman, “P2P Surveillance in the Global Village,” 36. Balliet, Mulder, and Van Lange, “Reward, Punishment, and Cooperation: A Meta-Analysis,” 606 cite studies showing that more people participate in administering punishment if it costs less to do so. 57 China Law Translate, “Establishment of a Social Credit System Plan Outline”; Matsakis, “How the West Got China’s Social Credit System Wrong”; Creemers, “China’s Social Credit System.” Similarly, a “Civic Culture Program” initiated by a mayor in Bogota contributed to reducing traffic deaths by, among other things, distributing thumbs-up and -down cards that pedestrians could flash to good and bad drivers, and to reduce water consumption by recognising those who saved and publicly penalising those who wasted water. Mockus, “Co-Existence as Harmonization of Law, Morality and Culture”, cited in Bowles, The Moral Economy, 128 f.

191 Chapter 6 chapter 2, repeated in the last section, is that individual behaviour has implications for justice and other moral values and could thus be evaluated from their perspective. This chapter has tried to show that we commonly audit each other without even reflecting on it. It is far from evident that this practice is always mistaken and that we should categorically denounce it. As I mentioned, even Mill believes that acting hurtfully towards others is a pro tanto reason to punish them by law or social disapproval.58 So, if online sanctions help to reduce discriminatory forces in society, or if the SCS helps prevent serial fraud, it is at least not obvious that they lack the mandate to do so, or that individuals should be left free to do whatever they want. I believe a more relevant source for concern is that these systems are imperfect, prone to abuse, and do not always live up to their purported goals. Firstly, we have good reasons to question their reliability and validity; that is, whether they actually and correctly measure compliance with the relevant norm or principle. After a moment’s honest reflection, many people would probably agree that a person’s Twitter history contains insufficient information for judging their moral character.59 Perhaps failure to repay one’s loans is a better ground for the SCS to judge one’s trustworthiness, but it is not a perfect proxy. Similarly, unless a system is transparent individuals cannot understand what they are doing wrong or right, and cannot learn or change their behaviour in light of the principles to which they are subjected. The Chinese SCS, for instance, might supposedly promote the virtue of honesty but in fact punish anything it views as defection from the party line, and online call-out culture might enforce norms that evolve so quickly that people cannot keep up with what is considered acceptable behaviour.60 Lack of coordination also risks undermining the proportionality between transgressions and sanctions, such as when one’s improper behaviour is broadcast to a global public, and met with outrage by

58 Mill, Utilitarianism and On Liberty, 95 f. Note that Mill writes of prima facie reason in the original source, but that I interpret him as meaning pro tanto, for reasons set out in section 5.1 of the introductory chapter. 59 Part of the problem seems to be the way social media shapes interactions online. As one Twitter user put it in an interview on the complex issue of “cancel culture”: “I don’t think that Twitter rewards asterisks and ums and skepticism, ambivalence, questions. I think Twitter rewards absolute claims, simple sort of black and white, good and evil allegories and binaries, and strong declarations of truth that leave little room for interpretation.” Barbaro, “Cancel Culture, Part 2: A Case Study.” Regardless of the architecture of social media, we must also not underestimate the intentional misunderstandings and antipathy of trolls, who “…destabilize an internet built on transparency and likability [and] pull us back toward the chaotic and unknown” Tolentino, Trick Mirror, 16. 60 Too much transparency might, however, enable individuals to game the system.

192 Tying ourselves to the mast or acting for the sake of justice? Ethos, internal motivation, and social sanctions millions of strangers instead of a handful of friends. Similarly, it is not evident that one’s wrongdoing in one sphere is a legitimate basis for being barred from participating in another, or being labelled a pariah.61 I suspect that the better way to understand our intuitive unease about many systems of social sanctions is that they are rooted in legitimate worries regarding their reliability, validity, transparency, and proportionality. Furthermore, I suggest that these worries in turn depend upon the more fundamental question of how the standard against which individuals are measured is decided to begin with, and what it says. While the Chinese state claims to operationalise trustworthiness into a number of measurable indicators, it does so single-handedly and with little insight. This suggests that we should prefer a more open and deliberative process. On the other hand, although online peer-to-peer sanctioning supposedly allows everyone, including previously excluded groups, to be part of the conversation on what constitutes acceptable or hurtful behaviour and speech, it also creates a state of constant flux to which people may find it difficult to adapt. Whenever there is uncertainty or disagreement about whether this standard is correct, the legitimacy and fairness of a system of social sanctions is likely to be questioned. The upshot of all this is that we clearly face inevitable trade-offs between different ways of enforcing the duty to contribute. A more formal system might seem more reliable and transparent, but this is just a veneer if it is not possible to state the corresponding principle clearly enough. Too much informality, however, risks letting too many non-contributors off the hook, or making the process of reaching judgements opaque. Similarly, although a more centralised system can be more efficient and proportional, it also raises worries about misuse of power that less centralised systems do not face. This problem is partly avoided if we give up the idea of centrally archiving norms transgressions, again at the cost of possibly failing to catch repeat offenders. Nevertheless, I ultimately believe that we should prefer that the duty to contribute is upheld partly through a social ethos, since its informal and decentralised nature will allow it to avoid the objections

61 For a more detailed analysis of online public shaming, which also emphasises the importance of proportionality, see Billingham and Parr, “Online Public Shaming.” Note that the COVID-19 pandemic struck after I had written the bulk of this chapter, but was still raging when I came to submit the dissertation. After some consideration, I deemed it too early to revise the current section to address all the novel ways in which decentralised and informal sanctions were being used to uphold norms about responsible behaviour in those extraordinary times. At the time of writing, it is nevertheless obvious that the pandemic has made the importance and centrality of peer-to-peer pressure abundantly clear, supporting the main points I am making. See also note 78 in chapter 4.

193 Chapter 6 faced by the SCS and online interactions. Even though the preceding chapters have explained the grounds for the hybrid account, I have repeated the point that it is difficult to tell exactly what constitutes a valuable contribution, and whether one has fulfilled one’s duty. This requires there to be some leeway in the enforcement of the requirements. With regard to the proportionality of sanctions, the social ethos in my account of contributive justice would consequently not – unlike online monitoring and sanctioning and the SCS – include an eternal archive of everyone’s past actions. There would be no central bureau measuring and cataloguing the exact contributions from each individual, issuing warnings, threats, or punish- ments for falling short of a specified contribution quota. Transgressions would not be made public so as to maximise stigma. Rather, individuals would keep an eye on how well people in their wider or narrower social networks live up to the relevant principle. This would be similar to how many people already know one or two friends or relatives who seem to be wasting their talents or, analogously, which co-workers make offensive jokes or unwanted sexual advances. Sanctions in the social ethos would not be like online outrage or the SCS’s impinging upon freedoms, but more akin to how people already encourage relatives to aim higher, or call out the improper behaviour of colleagues. In sum, when considering the virtues and vices of different systems of social control, I suggest that the informal and decentralised nature of the way an ethos monitors and sanctions is an essential feature. Since the pro tanto nature of the duty to contribute makes it challenging to state its demands precisely, and monitoring compliance is difficult and possibly in- trusive, I therefore suggest that we have to be content with the ethos as an imperfect enforcement mechanism. While this reduces its capacities compared to online public shaming and the SCS, possibly letting some individuals off the hook, the same features also reduce its Orwellian tendencies and increase its attractiveness.

6. Conclusions After previous chapters have addressed who should contribute, why, and what, this chapter has now answered the inquiry’s final guiding question, by arguing that the duty to contribute should be enforced through an ethos. Although both Carens and Cohen have made similar claims, the analysis offered here has helped to bring the concept of ethos under much-

194 Tying ourselves to the mast or acting for the sake of justice? Ethos, internal motivation, and social sanctions needed critical scrutiny. Specifically, I argued that an ethos could be understood either as individuals being committed to and acting from principles of justice, or as individuals sustaining and being influenced by a system of social sanctions. This has revealed an often-overlooked tension inherent in the idea, rooted in the possible conflict between people doing the just thing for the just reasons – the importance of intentions – and the supplementary role played by social sanctions. Since it is highly implausible that any conception of justice could be realised only through moral motivation or decentralised and informal sanctions, the proposed solution to this problem allows a reasonable compromise, by allowing us to tie ourselves to the mast, if that helps us to reach our goal. What would a society characterised by the moral and social ethe set out in this chapter be like? I will return to this question in the final chapter, but the examples provided in the last section are meant to suggest that it in fact would not be radically different from how societies already function. What we decide to do in our everyday lives is already governed by some mixture of moral commitments and social sanctions. The main point of this chapter is simply to emphasise that the same kind of motivational mix would be the best way to encourage people to act on the pro tanto duty to contribute defended in this dissertation. Section 5 has offered the outlines of an account of how systems of social sanctions can legitimately be relied upon to uphold such a duty, and thereby also helped evaluate the practice of online sanctions and the Social Credit System, and how we should think about them. In sum, in a society with the kind of social ethos I have defended, people’s contributions to the socially necessary labour would be recognised as valuable, and as providing the goods and services we all need. Opting out from doing your bit would be sanctioned, not by cutting you off from taking part of the social product, but by questioning from people around you. The sanctions would ideally be transparent and proportional, and sensitive to the fact that we will never know exactly who has contributed more or less than others, or enough. The conclusion is not that we ought to create a whole new system of social control, but simply that we should harness the ways in which we already influence each other.

195 Chapter 7

Chapter 7 – Conclusions

This dissertation has developed and defended an account of contributive justice, specifying what justice requires of individuals, and why. By considering who should contribute and why, what a contribution is, as well as how a duty to contribute should be enforced, its main conclusions are that individuals have a substantial pro tanto duty to contribute towards the furthering of a just society, and that individuals should respond to and uphold a decentralised system of social sanctions that help to monitor and sanction adherence to this duty. After summarising the argument that has led us to these conclusions, I will devote most of the final pages to responding to potential objections that have been looming throughout the inquiry, reflecting on its limitations, and discussing its implications, both in terms of what we should expect of individuals, and what further questions have been raised.

1. A brief summary of the argument After chapter 1 had set the stage and introduced the aim of providing an account of contributive justice, chapter 2 took up the challenge raised by the idea of a division of labour: If principles of justice primarily apply to institutions and only secondarily to individuals, then the very idea of contributive justice is based on a misconception and my project should be abandoned at the outset. I argued against the division of labour, however, and defended the non-division thesis – that principles of justice apply directly both to institutions and to individuals – by rejecting the best arguments against it. The desideratum of explaining who should contribute thus received an answer, since my account specifies that both institutions and individuals are relevant agents of justice. Chapters 3 and 4 then addressed the second desideratum and considered possible answers to why contributing is a duty. In chapter 3, I interrogated the equality-based duty provided by Cohen – which states that individuals ought to contribute to bring about equality to the extent that

196 Conclusions they reasonably can – and the problems it faces. To avoid these problems, I suggested, Cohen needs to endorse a pluralist account which appeals to another value, distinct from justice as narrowly understood. In chapter 4, I turned to evaluating a reciprocity-based duty to contribute, which states that individuals who have benefited from others’ contributions ought to contribute something that benefits those others, and a burden-based duty, which states that individuals ought to contribute to the socially necessary labour needed to ensure that people receive what they are due as a matter of justice. My analysis suggested that the shortcomings of these appeals to reciprocity and fair burden-sharing respectively, can be avoided if they are combined with equality into a hybrid account. This constituted my defence of the stronger thesis of the dissertation: all three aspects of equality, reciprocity, and fairly sharing burdens are indeed important parts of justice, and can be combined into a hybrid account which is more attractive than accounts grounded in just one of them. In light of the distinction between socially necessary labour and the social surplus, I argued that we can apply the burden-based rationale to justify a duty to contribute to the former, while appealing to reciprocity when justifying an obligation to contribute to the latter. This gives us a two-part pro tanto duty to contribute whereby, firstly, everyone has a duty to make an equally good effort, in relation to their ability, to contribute the socially necessary labour needed to realise just states of affairs, where everyone receives what they are due as a matter of justice. If and when this level is reached, everyone then has a conditional obligation to further benefit others, if they benefit from the additional work of others. While it is unjust to opt out and refuse to contribute in the first way, the hybrid account does leave room for people to wholly or partly reject the surplus and thereby absolve themselves from having to contribute further. What, then, should count as a contribution? My suggested definition of a contribution as the provision of a good or service that others value or need was introduced in chapter 4, and I addressed the challenge of deciding the value of a contribution in chapter 5. Specifically, I critically assessed the commonly used market solution for determining the social value of a contribution. Appealing to well-known shortcomings and problems with markets that lead to mismatches between market prices and social value, I criticised the idea that we can simply look at the market reward for a person’s contributive effort to decide whether he or she has made a valuable contribution. Given that we lack any better alternatives, I nevertheless suggested that, in addition to all the ways in which people can make

197 Chapter 7 direct and indirect contributions, market prices can be one of the many proxies with which we will have to be content when making imperfect attempts to assess the value of what we and others contribute. Chapter 6 then addressed the final desideratum, of how the duty to contribute should be enforced. Analysing the idea of an ethos, I suggested that a society can be described as having a moral ethos when most of its citizens internalise and act from certain principles, and that a social ethos exists when most of its members uphold a decentralised system of informal social sanctions that increases their compliance with certain principles. In order to uphold the duty to contribute, individuals would indeed have to be internally motivated to do their bit. Whenever this is insufficient, however, we can rely on a social ethos of decentralised and informal social sanctions that praise adherence and disapprove of failures to contribute. In light of the arguments in chapter 6, it is clear that the ethos-based answer is more attractive than various forms of state-led, centralised and formal sanctioning systems, including the Chinese Social Credit System. A major contribution of this inquiry is hence the way in which its analytical and theoretical framework and critical analysis has pushed forward the debate on the idea of a duty to contribute. It has done so by synthesis- ing and sharpening the existing major positions, and it has thereby developed and defended a novel take on what justice requires of individuals, and why. Since I have not claimed that existing reciprocity-based accounts are pure reciprocity-based accounts, or that existing burden-based accounts completely reject the importance of reciprocity, my argument does not ultimately depend on whether the particular positions I have discussed are unable to address the problems I have identified. Nevertheless, avoiding the problems would arguably require these positions to embrace a hybrid account similar to the one defended here, and to more explicitly defend its component parts. So, even if the building blocks used in the hybrid account are not new, the way they have been assembled is arguably a novel and attractive way of systematically answering the four guiding questions set out at the start.

2. Responding to objections At the same time, I do not think these questions exhaust the list of desiderata that an account of contributive justice should ideally fulfil. The reason why I have addressed these questions in particular is that I believe they

198 Conclusions are the most important ones: we need to answer them before we can begin to answer other questions. Sceptics might nevertheless disagree with how I have answered them. They could also note that stronger justification could have been provided – that the reflective equilibrium we hopefully find ourselves in could have been wider – if I had also considered other questions. This section hence addresses some of the objections that I suspect might have occurred throughout the inquiry. The first and third of these have to do with what the account demands, and specifically the charge that it demands impossibly or implausibly much of individuals. The second and fourth objections criticise the vagueness of my account, and claims that the lack of precise implications impedes our ability to evaluate it. Since my answers to these questions are spread across numerous places in the dissertation, I believe that it is necessary to collect them together and offer an integrated version of the objections and my replies in this section.

2.1 “The account demands the impossible” I suspect that many readers’ primary objection to the account set out in this dissertation is that it seems objectionably demanding: if my claims about what justice requires of individuals are correct, then the duty to contribute seems too costly and difficult to live up to. Individuals might have to make relatively large sacrifices in the name of justice, and if they refuse or fail, they will not only be acting unjustly, but their peers will also impose costly sanctions on them. This objection assumes that, because the account seems to demand too much, there must be something wrong with it. In order to evaluate this so-called demandingness objection, we need to specify it further. As I understand this worry, it covers both a charge that the account is absurd and hence mistaken, because it demands the impossible, as well as the charge that the account is mistaken because it demands too much. A third possible interpretation is the Stalinism objection raised in the last chapter, which states that what is problematic is not the demands themselves, but that their implementation would create a deeply unattractive society. This section addresses the first version, while section 2.3 addresses the other two. The first version of the demandingness objection is a so-called reductio ad absurdum, and notes that the theoretical framework and underlying understanding of justice upon which my account relies yield a duty which is impossible to satisfy, and that the absurdity of this indicates that my

199 Chapter 7 account should be rejected. Specifically, it states that the outcome-based view of justice I partly rely on assumes that the mere existence of an injustice creates a duty for individuals to promote justice, and that this risks leading to futile and Quixotic projects. For instance, on an outcome-based as opposed to procedure-focused view of justice, it does not necessarily matter whether an unequal distribution has come about as a consequence of some agent’s actions or through mere chance, or whether any specific agent can do something about it or not. Suppose, for instance, that a small meteorite strikes the Earth, and destroys important infrastructure and the provision of basic services in one city but not another. On my hybrid account, an appeal to equality would identify the resulting inequality as unjust, and together with an appeal to some non-comparative standard of what each is due, this would create a duty for relevantly situated agents in the second city to contribute to the socially necessary labour needed to help the victims in the first city. Moreover, this duty would apply even if it were impossible to help the meteorite victims, for instance because the disaster had destroyed all methods of communicating with and providing goods and services to the victims. Individuals who were not responsible for the disaster would nevertheless be required to mitigate it, and – what is worse – they would fail to discharge their duty to contribute simply because they cannot contribute. Many will find the prospect of this kind of “cosmic injustice” odd, and criticise my account for stating that people in the second city fails to discharge their duty to contribute. Calling an unchangeable state of affairs, or an inequality caused by a natural disaster, unjust is a category mistake, they would claim: although it is clearly unfortunate, it is not unjust. By extension, the absurdity of identifying injustices for which no one is responsible and suggesting that individuals are required to change them even when they cannot do so, reveals that there is something wrong with my account of contributive justice. I nevertheless reject the absurdity of this position, and believe it is important to question the conservative sentiment at its core. The hardships suffered by victims of natural disasters are no less difficult just because they were not caused by a neglectful or malevolent agent, and I believe it to be a positive feature and not a bug if a normative framework can register a state in which some are worse off than others as unjust and not merely unfortunate. For one thing, it makes it clear that the need to remedy their situation is a question of justice: Even if the meteorite cannot be blamed for striking one city rather than another, describing the consequences as

200 Conclusions unjust helps us see to why those who were spared are indeed required to help those who were made worse off by the incident.1 Furthermore, even if it might seem foolish to insist that unalterable situations can be unjust, we also know that changing circumstances constantly make possible what was once unimaginable. Accepting a notion like cosmic injustice thus helps to keep our attention on the idea that if we could do something about an unjust state of affairs, we should do so, for reasons of justice.2 We do not have to deny the much-discussed principle of “ought-implies-can” in order to make this point. It is enough to question the particular interpretation of “can” that underlies the current objection. In a more general sense, just because something has failed so far, we cannot conclude that it should be abandoned3, and we might still be under a duty to invest some amount of resources to put ourselves – or future generations – in a position where the situation can be changed.4 This is the aspirational stance to political philosophy that I have maintained throughout the dissertation.5

2.2 “The duty in the account is not a duty of justice” A related but distinct objection states that the problem is not just the existence of cosmic injustice, but that my account is insufficiently clear regarding who owes what to whom. Specifically, a common view in contemporary theorising about justice is that duties of justice – unlike duties of

1 For simplicity, I disregard possible meteorite insurance schemes and similar counterarguments. 2 Temkin, “Justice, Equality, Fairness, Desert, Rights, Free Will, Responsibility, and Luck,” 60. 3 Immanuel Kant suggested, for instance, that “…the idea that something which has hitherto been unsuccessful will therefore never be successful does not justify anyone in abandoning even a pragmatic or technical aim (for example, that of flights with aerostatic balloons). This applies even more to moral aims, which, so long as it is not demonstrably impossible to fulfil them, amount to duties.” Kant, “On the Common Saying: ‘This May Be True in Theory, but It Does Not Apply in Prac- tice,’” 89. 4 Gheaus, “The Feasibility Constraint on the Concept of Justice,” 459; Gilabert, “Debate: Feasi- bility and Socialism,” 59–63. Cohen notes that giving up too easily means we fall victim to a fallacy of sour grapes, which “…deprives you of the ideals you need to keep the faith for a future which may offer ampler possibilities. […] If the fox succeeds in convincing himself that the grapes are sour, he will not pick them when, finally, they are so ripe and heavy that they bend the branch and come within his reach.” Cohen, “David Miller on Market Socialism and Distributive Justice,” 5. Cohen later developed this idea and argued that it might even constitute good political strategy, since “[f]undamental socialist values which point to a form of society a hundred miles from the horizon of present possibility are needed to defend every half-mile of territory gained and to mount an attempt to regain each bit that has been lost.” Cohen, “Back to Socialist Basics,” 5. 5 How we ought to handle the changing feasibility frontier and the many interpretations of “ought- implies-can” are two central questions in the debate on ideal and non-ideal theory, which I cannot expand upon in this context. Cf. Chahboun, “Art of the Possible? Feasibility and Compliance in Ideal and Nonideal Theory.”

201 Chapter 7 charity, for instance – always correlate with claim-rights. An agent has a claim-right to a good when he or she is owed it, and when he or she can demand that someone provides it. Being bound by a duty of justice, correspondingly, means that one owes it to the right-holder to provide the good, and that one wrongs the right-holder if one fails to do so. Some assume that a necessary condition for a duty to be a duty of justice is that it corresponds to this kind of claim-right. Furthermore, it is often assumed that this explains why duties of justice are legitimately enforceable in a way that other kinds of duties are not.6 For our purposes, we can call this “the strict view” of justice. On the strict view, the individual duty I defend seems unable to qualify as a duty of justice, because the relationship between the duty-bearer and the claimant is impenetrably murky: We cannot know who would wrong whom if they failed to contribute to justice; no individual can bring about justice independently of what others do; and while the cost of discharging the duty would be borne by duty-bearers, the possible benefits would be dispersed among all claimants. This fails to fulfil the strict view’s criteria for duties of justice. The objection thus states that, just as the meteorite strike discussed above is unfortunate but not unjust, the duty to contribute is at best a duty of beneficence or charity, something that it would be good if individuals felt like doing, but not something we can legitimately coerce them into doing.7 First of all, I should note that I do not share the strict view of what counts as a duty of justice. The introductory chapter made it clear that I subscribe to an alternative view under which relevantly situated individuals ought to bring about a just state of affairs, and my insistence that identifying cosmic injustices might be valuable implies that those who suffer

6 This line of reasoning builds on Hohfeld, “Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning” and can be discerned in, for instance, Valentini, “The Natural Duty of Justice in Non-Ideal Circumstances: On the Moral Demands of Institution Building and Reform,” 3–5, and Anderson, “The Fundamental Disagreement between Luck Egalitarians and Relational Egali- tarians,” 4 ff. Others would add that duties of justice are always negative, requiring one to refrain from doing something., e.g. Buchanan, “Justice and Charity.” 7 A view like this is expressed, I believe, in Quong, “Justice Beyond Equality,” 326–33, and Valen- tini, “The Natural Duty of Justice in Non-Ideal Circumstances: On the Moral Demands of Insti- tution Building and Reform,” 3–5. Note that all of this also applies, it seems to me, to individual duties to mitigate climate change, although it is unclear whether the view’s defenders would wish to conclude that individuals cannot be coerced into changing their behaviour in that case.

202 Conclusions from a natural disaster are unjustly made worse off, even if they cannot reasonably claim that the disaster wronged them.8 It is not necessary to accept this assumption, however, because it is indeed possible to interpret my account in a way that seems to cohere with the strict view. With regard to the need for the duty to correlate with claim-rights, we can appeal to the fact that the duty to contribute is grounded both in the view that one should reciprocate to a scheme of cooperation from which one has claimed benefits, and in the view that there is something each is due as a matter of justice. Not doing one’s share is thus unjust: On the first view because other participants in the cooperation can claim a right not to be taken advantage of by free-riders, and on the second view because other people may lack access to what they have a right to as a matter of justice and because they have a right not to have to shoulder more than their fair share of the burden of the socially necessary labour. Furthermore, even if one cannot single-handedly bring about a just state of affairs, chapter 2 discusses some of the ways in which one’s daily behaviour often has at least marginal effects on the justice of a distribution that I think individuals should take into account. Finally, with regard to whether my duty is legitimately enforceable, I suspect that many proponents of the strict view have in mind what the state may legitimately coerce its subjects to do. This overlooks another category of sanctions, upheld by individuals themselves, that can be employed to the same purposes but lack some of the features of state coercion. If properly calibrated to avoid the problematic features discussed in chapter 6, I believe the social ethos would be a legitimate enforcement mechanism of the duty that I develop and defend in this dissertation.

2.3 “The account demands too much and would have objectionable consequences” Some might worry that the real problem is not that individuals cannot possibly live up to the demands of justice, or that they cannot tell who they are helping by doing so, but that respecting the duty would require them to sacrifice too much of their other goals and interests. Recall, for

8 On the view I favour, the pertinent question is not whether a non-sentient object or event can wrong others but rather what claims for compensation, or perhaps solidarity, those who suffer the disaster’s consequences can make on others, by appealing to suddenly being worse off through no fault of their own, or some other standard of justice. Cf. the distinction made by Cohen, “How to Do Political Philosophy,” 227 between the questions of what justice is, what the state should do, and which social states of affairs ought to be brought about all-things-considered.

203 Chapter 7 instance, that Rawls prioritises liberty over requiring individuals to contribute directly towards just distributions.9 Although I argued, in chapter 2, that the common assumption of a division of labour creates too much leeway for individuals, sceptics might insist that my account instead demands too much, or grants individuals too little freedom from the demands of justice. It should be clear from the fact that I have addressed various versions of this objection throughout the dissertation that I share this legitimate worry, and the following summarises how I have tried to accommodate its central concern. Firstly, in order to avoid ambiguity, we should return to the two interpretations introduced in section 2.1. On one interpretation, the claim seems to be that extending principles of justice to individuals creates a duty that is too demanding and hence limits their freedom in an objectionable way. This is the core of what I have called the demandingness objection, since it assumes that justice either should not or could not demand too much, and claims that my account does so.10 Another related, but distinct, interpretation states that the practice of upholding this duty would lead to an unfree society in which people were reprimanded if they acted in ways that did not contribute to justice. This is what I called the Stalinism objection in section 5 of chapter 6. The former worry states that the account as such demands too much and must hence be wrong, while the latter worry claims that social relations risk being corrupted if the account were to be implemented. I suspect that these two worries are often run together. A satisfying reply nevertheless requires us to distinguish between them.11

9 See section 3.1 of the introductory chapter, and Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 64. 10 To be precise, it could say either that, since justice cannot demand too much, I must be mistaken about what justice is. If, for instance, justice includes concerns about liberty, as Rawls suggests, then the demandingness of my account indicates that it is misleading to speak of it in justice terms. Or, the objection could say that, since my account demands too much, it shows that I have put undue weight on the value of justice, in the grander scheme of things necessary to consider when searching for all-things-considered judgements. My reply below relies on the second interpretation. 11 Examples of the demandingness objection include when J. Donald Moon, “Equality, Moral In- centives, and the Market by Joseph Carens - Review by J. Donald Moon,” 149 f. argues, pace Carens, that any “maximalist” view of our obligations to others must be mistaken and demand too much, because it would deny individuals the freedom to pursue their own life plans. Similarly, Quong, “Justice Beyond Equality,” 326–33, has argued, pace Cohen, that since giving up one’s preferred occupation is a very demanding moral requirement, it must be a supererogatory rather than a required act, and thus cannot be a demand of justice. The Stalinism objection is one that I have encountered when presenting parts of this dissertation in seminars, and also draws on an actual point made by David Schmidtz, Persons, Polis, Planet: Essays in Applied Philosophy, 8, n. 2, who is critical of the way in which ideal theorising in political philosophy disregards the question of compliance, and has argued that “…when we choose a principle of justice, we choose the particular

204 Conclusions

I will offer one preliminary and three substantial replies to the demandingness objection. The preliminary answer, to which I have not appealed in the body of the dissertation, questions the premise that justice, or morality more generally, cannot demand too much. The intuitive force of this objection is substantially reduced once we consider that it might simply be the case that justice demands what it demands. Our perceived failure to live up to demanding principles can be explained, after all, in two ways: Either demanding accounts are in fact mistaken, and a person who prima facie seems to be acting in an insufficiently moral way might in fact act in line with the correct, more circumscribed, moral code. Or, demanding accounts are correct and we are simply imperfect moral beings who often fail to act or refrain from acting as we should. Those who press the demandingness objection seem to assume that the observation that an account is demanding can serve as evidence in favour of the former explanation, as the moral primacy argument in favour of a division of labour did in section 4 of chapter 2. I fail to see how this could be a reliable method for deciding what is going on here, however: Although it seems attractive to use information about how demanding a particular duty would be as grounds for evaluating that duty, it will inevitably also cater to bias and stack the deck against more demanding duties such as my account. At the very least, we must surely be wary so as not to reject radical principles solely on the basis that they threaten the status quo.12 I believe, however, that my account survives the demandingness objection even if we accept its premise that justice cannot demand too much. The first of my three substantial replies to the demandingness objection was also found in the discussion of moral primacy, where I argued that this concern is not enough to discard all substantial individual duties out of hand, because individuals can often promote justice in ways that are only trivially costly or difficult. This would be even more likely if there were a moral ethos and people were motivated to act on the duty because, I assume, if one genuinely believes that something is a moral demand, this

compliance problem that goes with it. If it would take a KGB to achieve compliance, the principle is a bad principle, period.” Thanks to Naima Chahboun for drawing my attention to this passage. 12 This kind of reply is common in the extensive literature on demandingness that I can only mention in passing here. This literature is often, but not only, focused on whether the seeming demandingness of utilitarianism speaks against it. See, for instance, Smart and Williams, Utilitarian- ism: For and Against; Railton, “Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality”; Kagan, “Does Consequentialism Demand Too Much?”, and for a reply that inspired the preliminary answer above, Berkey, “The Demandingness of Morality.”

205 Chapter 7 arguably makes it less demanding to act on it. In a word, the duty to contribute will at least sometimes not be particularly demanding.13 A second answer is reflected in the way in which my account consistently talks of pro tanto rather than all-things-considered duties. As I described in section 5 of the introductory chapter, the pluralism about moral values that underlies this assumption means that the demands of justice are properly conceived of as inputs into a process of deciding what to do. Other considerations, including the instrumental and intrinsic value we might ascribe to individual freedom, also go into this process, and can outweigh or be outweighed by the duty to contribute. This admittedly limits how neat and precise the outcome of this study can be, and makes the duty conditional upon further considerations. Yet, if the underlying metatheoretical assumption of pluralism is correct, then we can indeed not expect anything else. More importantly, this is a systematic way in which considerations about individual freedom can enter into all-things-considered prescriptions. In a word, how demanding the duty to contribute is depends on how we weigh it against other important values. The third kind of answer that I have offered was primarily discussed in chapters 3 and 4, where I introduced a distinction between locally and globally productivist duties. An example of the former is the Fabrean duty to bring about equality that was discussed in chapter 3, which ceases to demand further contributions once a steady state of equality has been achieved. An example of the latter is the qualified duty I considered at the end of that chapter, which would constantly require individuals to contribute to human flourishing. The hybrid account that I ultimately defend in chapter 4 avoids the demandingness objection by striking a balance between global and local productivism: the only requirement of justice that is strictly speaking unconditional is to contribute to the socially necessary labour that must be performed in any society. After this, further requirements to contribute are conditional, in the sense that individuals are free to opt out from the reciprocal relations that create them. My account does indeed state that there are certain things that each individual must do or

13 This answer is similar to one discussed by Carens, “An Interpretation...,” 164 f., who notes that on a roughly Kantian understanding of freedom, only moral actions are free, and a genuine moral duty consequently cannot limit freedom. Cohen, RJE, 192 discusses a similar reply and notes that we usually do not think we are constrained by having to comply with a moral prohibition against murder.

206 Conclusions else will fail to act justly. This requirement may be more or less demanding.14 But my account also states that, once you have done your part, you do not act unjustly if you decide not to do more than that.15 Even if sceptics accept the defence just offered, they might press the Stalinism objection, which holds that it is not the content of the duty but rather its implementation that is problematic. A society where people are constantly monitored to determine whether they are working sufficiently much in the right kind of occupation, and where their peers criticise their personal choices, surely seems deeply unattractive to many people. If the implementation of my account would create such a society, that would speak against my account as such, according to this objection. My answers to this worry are primarily found in chapters 4 through 6. In essence, chapters 4 and 5 made it clear that the precise content of the duty to contribute will inevitably be rather vague, and that consequently it will be difficult to tell whether you or someone else have done their bit or not. This is one of the main reasons why an enforcement mechanism that increases compliance with the duty cannot be too formal or centralised, and can by no means be a legal one. Relying on the state to enforce a duty to contribute is likely to be both counterproductive and objectionable, since many people would misrepresent their talents and preferences, rather than sharing it with that kind of institution. Instead, the position taken in chapter 6 reflects the approach taken by serious philosophical defenders of similar duties, by appealing to the ethos-based solution of enforcing the duty.16 In short, to a certain extent individuals will be inspired to contribute to justice because they believe it is the right thing to do. This

14 As I explain in chapter 4, how demanding the burden-based part of my hybrid account is will depend on what our specific account of what people are due stipulates, because this decides what counts as socially necessary labour. It also depends on the state of the world, i.e. how difficult or easy it is to perform the socially necessary labour. Finally, one problem from which I have abstracted is that, if there is low compliance with the duty to contribute, the burden on those who attempt to discharge it might increase and become more demanding. 15 Note that my reply to the demandingness objection differs from Cohen’s, who primarily relies on the notion of agent-centred prerogatives to avoid it. In my view, this part of Cohen’s account is theoretically underdeveloped and to some extent seems like an ad hoc solution. The more systematic way in which my account responds to the objection is hence one of this dissertation’s contributions. 16 As I have indicated throughout this dissertation, Lawrence Becker, “The Obligation to Work,” 46 f. rejects the kind of legal enforcement of work requirements that existed in the Soviet Union, Joseph Carens, “An Interpretation...,” sec. IV, stresses that he defends a moral and not a legal duty, and Cohen, RJE, 123 argues that the indeterminacy of relying on a duty rather than, say, a strict set of rules, in fact makes it the more freedom-respecting alternative. The point about central control being counterproductive echoes Cohen, 218 f.

207 Chapter 7 is not as utopian as it appears at first: just consider that there is a quite remarkably high willingness to pay taxes in many countries, considering the slight chance of getting caught if one were to cheat. When moral motivation is insufficient, I suggest that we can rely on the additional motivation provided by social praise and sanctions. The fact that contributions will always be shrouded in vagueness limits how harsh they can be, and suggests that we should opt for emphasising positive appreciation rather than negative criticism. Upholding the duty would involve neither a top- down bureaucratic machine nor a society-wide public shaming apparatus. Whether you perform your duty or not would not be centrally recorded, and those who clearly fail to act justly would not be sent to re-education camps. The social ethos I defend in chapter 6 is more like the social system already in place, and which every day explains minor reactions to norm transgressions and norm conformity: a pat on the back, a wry smile, or the calling-out of hurtful behaviour. Relying on such an informal and decentralised system means that, in the event that someone who has indeed made a valuable contribution is wrongly sanctioned, the damage will at least be limited. The price for limiting the number of false positives of norms transgressions – which I believe is all things considered worth paying – is to accept that some non- contributors will get off the hook. The extended discussion of this in chapter 6 is hopefully sufficient to show that the way in which my account would lead to individuals criticising others for failing to do their duty, or commending them for discharging it, cannot plausibly be regarded as producing Stalinism or any disconcerting approximation of it.

2.4 “The account is too indeterminate to guide action” The final major objection to my account is rooted not in its demandingness but in its vagueness. It is so vague, this objection claims, that it is in fact difficult to evaluate it properly: We need to know more about what my account ultimately entails – how it would affect people’s lives – in order to tell whether it is plausible. A critical reader might claim that my account is too open-ended, and indeed merely half an account, since it has not produced more determinate practical conclusions. For instance, my specific answer to the question of how to enforce the duty to contribute immediately raises a number of further questions that I have not been able to address. Some are empirical, such as what the best way to foster the necessary moral and social ethe I advocate is. Should the education system

208 Conclusions be set the task of instilling the right kind of moral motivation in young people, and would that be possible? These questions, in turn, raise philosophical ones, such as whether it would be legitimate to do so.17 Further- more, I have only discussed non-comparative aspects of justice in general terms, and not specified what, more precisely, is included in the socially necessary labour. What are the things that people are due as a matter of justice, and what institutional arrangements for securing them are necessary once people are ready to act on their duty? Although I have tried to be as clear as possible about what a contribution is, some readers might be frustrated by the lack of a concise and clear list of examples of what constitute contributions on my view, or a better decision-procedure than the suboptimal one I settle for at the end of chapter 5. Furthermore, several of the idealisations and abstractions made in the inquiry prevent it from being readily applicable. I have not, for instance, addressed the philosophical and practical problem of dealing with partial compliance: Although I condemn opting out as unjust, I do not say anything about whether the remaining contributors are expected to pick up the slack, or if they are justified in continuing to contribute at the same level, even though this results in underproduction.18 And, as I indicated in section 4.2 of the introductory chapter, I have abstracted from the issue of global justice, and all the ways in which we think the scope of justice could influence our answers to the questions of who should contribute, and why. Finally, others might find my account flawed for its lack of ambition, given that I am satisfied with defending a pro tanto duty to contribute, but say little about how it trans- lates into all-things-considered judgements. What, more precisely, are the other relevant values at stake, and how should they be weighed against the duty to contribute that I defend? In response, it is important to recall the distinction between the theoretical and practical goals of political philosophy, introduced in section 5

17 Utopian socialists tend to answer both questions in the affirmative. Robert Owen, A New View of Society, or, Essays on the Formation of the Human Character: Preparatory to the Development of a Plan for Gradually Ameliorating the Condition of Mankind, 19, for instance, suggests that “Any general character, from the best to the worst, from the most ignorant to the most enlightened, may be given to any community, even to the world at large, by the application of proper means; which means are to a great extent at the command and under the control of those who have influence in the affairs of men.” 18 I am, as it were, concerned with why leaving slack for others is unjust, rather than with the question of whether it is unjust not to pick up the slack others have left. For a good overview of the latter question, see Miller, “Taking up the Slack? Responsibility and Justice in Situations of Partial Compliance.”

209 Chapter 7 of the introductory chapter. I believe that there is some degree of independence between the two, and that we must not overlook the conclusions we can defend. Even if the world is so complex that an account is difficult to apply:

…rejecting what can be learned from research in political theory because of its messy uncertainties and disagreements, is treating a problem of blurred vision by putting out one eye. The result will be that we will see like a cyclops, with no depth of field.19

The issues of what justice requires of individuals and why are inescapably political-philosophical questions, and that is why this is a political-philosophical dissertation. It is in some sense a mistake to request that it should answer more practical questions regarding application and implementation, since they lie downstream of the more fundamental aspects on which I have chosen to focus. I have no quarrel with the basic idea that a division of labour increases efficiency by allowing different people to specialise in different things. I believe that the resources available to political philosophers, in the form of having time to think hard and employing methods that promote clarity and rigour, means that my contribution to the debate can promote and aid further discussion, clarifying what is at stake and offering tools to think about it.20 Of course, the inquiry and its conclusions would ideally have received justification from a wider reflective equilibrium. Still, the limitations just discussed do not necessarily mean that it is particularly narrow, either. A final reason for accepting some degree of indeterminacy is that clarifying implications requires committing my account to more specific positions in the debate on distributive justice, but this is arguably unwise because it would undermine one of the important outcomes of the inquiry. The point of bringing up the weaker thesis and illustrating how each of equality, reciprocity, and fairly sharing burdens ground some form of a

19 Grant, “Political Theory, Political Science, and Politics,” 592. 20 Swift and White, “Political Theory, Social Science, and Real Politics,” 54. Cohen once noted that a common remark at the end of philosophical texts is that the author regrets not having discussed the importance of what they have focused on, in relation to all the other relevant values. He goes on to suggest, however, that merely noticing the importance of an aspect that others have overlooked is a valuable contribution to practical discussion. In a passage reminiscent of Marx’s remark about writing “recipes for the cookshops of the future”, Cohen, Finding Oneself in the Other, 145 suggests that “[p]hilosophers often have something novel to say about what, as it were, ingredients should go into the, as it were, cake even when they can say nothing about the propor- tions in which these ingredients, or values, are to be combined, across different cases: not because that is not important, but because the problem simply does not yield to general recipe making.”

210 Conclusions duty to contribute, is to illustrate that the notion of contributive justice is not a fringe idea, and that there are many ways of reaching the conclusion that there is a pro tanto duty to contribute to justice. If the weaker thesis is correct, then practically everyone who is committed to some form of ideal of distributive justice should direct some of their attention to the parallel branch of contributive justice as well. Since answering the out- standing questions just exemplified would require me to commit to more specific understandings of justice and jeopardise this ecumenical upshot, I believe we should view the limitations of my account less as defects and more as indications of where researchers should turn next. The next section illustrates some of the complexities involved in making assessments of what the duty to contribute entails in something like our real word. It shows that dealing with concrete practical implications and policy proposals is better achieved by interdisciplinary research, lest it sink into arm- chair theorising.

3. Implications of the account Given what I have just said, I do not think it wise to speculate about what the short-term political consequences of my account are. Instead, the next three sub-sections pursue three aims. Firstly, illustrating the kinds of real- world practices around work and work requirements to which my account would be an alternative. Secondly, illustrating the kind of reasoning that is necessary to reach practical conclusions, by considering what my account would say in three cases of individuals desiring to opt out of their duty to contribute, and what further empirical issues we need to address in order apply it. And thirdly, illustrating one way in which the argument of this inquiry could be transferred to another sphere, namely that of climate ethics.

3.1 What the account says about real-world work requirements One way of drawing out implications is to ask what my account says about the real-world political practice of inducing people to work. There is currently a ubiquitous reliance on proverbial carrots to make people work, or work harder. I do not deny that economic incentives, in the form of tax credits, the abolition of certain taxes on income or capital, and bonuses offered in private corporations, can indeed be efficient ways of achieving

211 Chapter 7 this, at least if we take people as they are. Notwithstanding this, my account has repeated Cohen’s point – and provided new and firmer foundations for it – that justice in fact requires us to contribute even without this kind of motivation. An implication of my view, just like Cohen’s, is that, to the extent to which people acted on a duty to contribute rather than in pursuit of their self-regard, society would be more just. And by elaborating the notion of ethos, my account has sketched some of what it would take for the alternative scenario to become actualised. There is also, however, a complementary and widespread reliance on proverbial sticks to make people work, or work harder. Recall my claim in the introductory chapter that the enforcement mechanism of making people’s access to welfare services conditional on their contributing is flawed political practice based on flawed political reasoning. The argument provided throughout this dissertation has hopefully made it clear what I mean by this. To be fair, few welfare states make all access conditional upon contributing. Nevertheless, the political practice is flawed because extensive conditionality is still enough to bully people into accepting worse jobs, with worse conditions, than they otherwise would, given that they might lose their means of subsistence if they reject these jobs. It is also flawed because it often relies on a simplistic equivocation between the market price of labour and the value of one’s contributions. It suggests that the low marginal productivity of workers in some of the worst jobs reflects a low willingness to discharge a duty to contribute, and it wrongly castigates them for failing to do their bit. Furthermore, it is philosophically flawed, not only because of the mistaken market-based assumption upon which it is based, but also because of the almost pure reciprocity-based assumptions at its core. Despite my account’s inability to specify what a fully just society would be like, its philosophical foundations allow us to critique the defi- ciency of existing political practice for enforcing a duty to contribute

3.2 Opting out through philanthropy, retirement, and emigration I will now illustrate the kind of practical and philosophical considerations that would have to be undertaken in order to apply the account of contributive justice set out in this dissertation, by considering three cases of how individuals could defend opting out from the duty to contribute. The following brief discussion should not be understood as all-things-considered policy proposals following from my position, but rather as illustrations of the kinds of evaluations and analyses that we would have to make

212 Conclusions when balancing the pro tanto duty against other considerations and drawing out implications of my account. The first case is that of a wealthy individual who tries to justify opting out from her duty to contribute to the socially necessary labour by donating resources to some kind of justice-promoting goal. Imagine, for instance, an incredibly wealthy tech entrepreneur who truly believes in the duty to contribute and donates her fortune to a justice-promoting charity. Say that the fortune is so great, and the charity so efficient, that the philan- thropist would thereby contribute more than anyone else can come close to achieving. Is this individual now free to spend the rest of her days pursuing other goals, permanently absolved from the duty to contribute? It seems quite plausible, prima facie, that this might be the case, especially if the wealthy person contributes more through this single act than others do throughout their lives. Let us accept, for now, the idea that there is some sort of threshold which is fulfilled when one has contributed sufficiently to the production of both socially necessary and social-surplus labour. There are still many factors to take into account before we can decide how to answer the question. Firstly, how was the fortune amassed? If it involved outright violations of justice, then special claims can arise that are not resolved by the philanthropic gesture. Even if this were not the case, however, it is not obvious that anyone could earn the amount of money needed to reach the threshold, if the society in question was substantially more just than most current societies are. For the reasons discussed in chapter 5, it is far from obvious that people become wealthy simply because markets reward productive efforts. The luck involved in winner- takes-all markets and platform effects, together with how copyright and other legal institutions are set up, elevate some businesses and their leaders high above the rest.21 I conjecture that many conceptions of justice would claim that this undermines the entrepreneur’s initial claim to the fortune. And those who argue that she indeed deserved her money would have to explain why she should be freed from the duty to contribute, given that it focuses on relative rather than absolute effort. In sum, either the money is not theirs to give away to begin with, or billionaire entrepreneurs should continue to make contributions, just as everyone else is expected to. A second case is perhaps more mundane, and concerns a regular worker who reaches the end of his or her working life. Is retirement acceptable because of the contributions made throughout the working years, or does it constitute a failure to discharge one’s duty to contribute? Any plausible

21 Frank, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy.

213 Chapter 7 account of contributive justice should be able to recognise the efforts that people make throughout their lives, and if we accept some kind of the threshold conception just introduced, it allows us to state that if one contributes sufficiently well relative to one’s potential, there likely comes a point where one has contributed sufficiently in an absolute sense. Conse- quently, barring extreme cases in which people are faring badly and no one except the prospective retiree is relevantly situated to help them, it seems possible to assume that others can pick up the burden, freeing those who have already made substantive relative contributions. It is important to note, however, that there are many ways in which we can contribute to justice. I discussed some of these in chapter 2, before narrowing this inquiry to specifically focus on the kind of contribution one makes when one provides goods and services that others value or need. So, even if re- tirees can probably be said to have contributed enough in the productive sense, they ought to continuously contribute in the wider sense of supporting just institutions, or by striving towards just informal social practices and norms.22 The final example is possibly the most complex, and concerns a talented professional who wants to move from one country to another. Does my account allow this, or would such an individual be failing to discharge his duty to contribute? The issue is complex because it raises questions about political obligations and international distributive justice from which I have explicitly abstracted for the purposes of this inquiry. There are at least four relevant considerations, and they seem to pull in different directions. Firstly, it seems that the reciprocity-based parts of my account could motivate some kind of duty to stay. If the individual has received a publicly subsidised education, for instance, it is not unreasonable that he should stay at least for a while (or return after a while abroad), in order to reciprocate towards those who, as it were, helped pay for the education. Sec- ondly, it seems that the burden-based part could explain why some people could be expected not only to stay in their original country but to work in specific parts of it. Since the point of the duty is to ensure that the socially necessary labour is being performed, individuals with rare talents might be said to fail to discharge their duty unless they employ their talents in the

22 And with regards to making a contribution, note that I am discussing the duty to contribute to justice specifically. There might be other obligations that one takes on by entering special relationships, such as a parent-child relationship. So, even if a retiree is not under a duty to contribute to justice, he or she might be morally blameworthy if he or she opts out from all kinds of labour or relationships with others.

214 Conclusions right manner. Some countries already enforce something like this, requiring publicly trained doctors to work in particular areas of the country.23 The third and fourth considerations constitute important caveats, however. Firstly, remember that the duty to contribute defended here is not a legal duty, and I have repeatedly stressed that it should not be enforced through state sanctions but through moral and social ethe. Hence, even if what I have just said is a correct description of the productive decisions faced by talented professionals, it does not entail that they should be forced to choose in either way. At most, they would know that they have a pro tanto duty to contribute for these reasons, and if they choose differently without being able to justify it, they could rightfully be criticised by others. Far from anything like a legal prohibition against moving abroad, the kinds of sanctions to which my account could lead would be more like the way in which tax evasion is informally criticised today. A second caveat is that, once we open up the discussion to questions of international distributive justice, it raises doubts about the assumptions this inquiry has made around what constitute relevant injustices and contributions. The intricate literature around the so-called brain drain problem tries to grapple with how individuals and states should handle the migration of talented professionals, questions that ultimately depend on the underlying empirical issues: Going abroad could indeed be a better way of contributing, if it allows an individual to earn money in order to send re- mittances, or enables a transfer of skills that increases productivity in their home country.24 Furthermore, on some approaches to global justice, it is unlikely that the worst off in the richest countries lack what they are due as a matter of justice, at least not to the extent that the worst off in the worst off countries do. So, if we broaden the scope of justice, it might be the case that one’s talents are more useful in other countries than one’s own. In both of these cases, the duty to contribute might hence require some people to migrate.

23 Frehywot et al., “Compulsory Service Programmes for Recruiting Health Workers in Remote and Rural Areas,” 366 found some kind of compulsory service programmes in more than 70 countries. Many of these offered some kind of incentives, but a few simply require graduating doctors to work in under-served areas, usually for one year. 24 For a discussion about this, and a defence of institutional restrictions on emigration, see Brock and Blake, Debating Brain Drain: May Government Restrict Emigration?, pt. I.

215 Chapter 7

3.3 Individual duties to combat climate change? Another potential outcome of the account I have offered is that it can help us when considering other political-philosophical issues. Several central claims of this dissertation could perhaps be transferred to other issues where we need to consider how to balance impartial requirements against personal pursuits in order to resolve political problems. One example is global poverty, which raises similar issues of balancing duties arising in individuals’ special relationships to loved ones against duties to distant strangers.25 Another crucial issue is what our duties as individuals are in light of the social consequences of climate change. The issues of contributive justice and combating climate change are similar, in the sense that mitigating the process of climate change – as well as carrying the costs of adapting to it – can be achieved by individuals, institutions, or both. Are we required, for instance, to reduce our carbon footprint, or is individual action hopeless and insignificant compared to institutional efforts?26 I do not claim that my account of contributive justice can be readily translated into an account of individual duties to combat climate change and its social consequences. The primary reason is that my account is entirely rooted in philosophical theorising on justice and is attuned to specific issues relevant there. Large parts of what I say in this dissertation might, however, be helpful when considering the different, and possibly more complex, issues raised by climate change. The arguments against the division of labour in chapter 2 seem, for instance, to be applicable in a potential debate about whether the duty to combat climate change should fall primarily on institutions or individuals. The ideas of reciprocity and burden-sharing discussed in chapter 4 in some ways mirror, and could possibly help illuminate, the existing debate on climate justice, which often assumes that duties to mitigate or to pay for adaptation should fall either on those with the ability to pay (a form of burden-sharing) or on those who have contributed to the problem or benefited from historical emissions (a form of reciprocity-based reasoning). Finally, the extended discussion on ethos-based solutions to enforcing individual duties set out in chapter 6 can hopefully contribute to the discussion on how potential climate-change-related duties can be put into practice. Arguably, the kind

25 Recall my discussion on Effective Altruism in section 3.3 of the introductory chapter, and my remarks about the unclear implications of my account for issues of global justice in section 4.2 of that chapter. 26 For an extended discussion more attuned to the nuances of this question than I am able to provide here, see Duus-Otterström and Jagers, “Identifying Burdens of Coping with Climate Change.”

216 Conclusions of social sanctions captured by the account of a social ethos have already begun to develop organically, with the Swedish word “flygskam” (“flight shame”) – the stigma associated with emitting greenhouse gases by flying – recently becoming a buzzword.27

4. Modest proposals for future research The replies that I have offered to objections and the reflections on the study’s limitations are, I hope, sufficiently convincing to ensure that the conclusions of the inquiry survive. Yet, each objection and limitation opens up a new avenue for further research into the questions of how individual actions influence justice, and how principles of justice should influence individual actions. Similarly, while my account of contributive justice has focused on individual duties, there are numerous related research projects that focus on other aspects.28 I prefer to think of all these accounts as complementary rather than rival, in the sense that we are approaching the same problem from different angles and with different tools. Those who wish to join this research programme, broadly conceived, would hence be wise to consider the questions left unanswered by this dissertation, such as how to legitimately generate belief in, and support for, the idea of a duty to contribute; how to design social institutions that help to further such support; how to implement enforcement mechanisms and decision-procedures that help people to determine when they have contributed; how to handle the problems raised by partial compliance and lack of any assurance that others will do their part; how to reform existing political enforcement mechanisms to better reflect the proper philosophical foundations of the duty to contribute; and how to think of related issues such as climate change and what it requires from individuals.

27 Quick, “Flygskam.” See also Frank, Under the Influence, chap. 9. There is plenty to say about the COVID-19 pandemic, which at the time of writing is nowhere near its end. I have chosen not to try to apply my account to analysing the pandemic because I believe it is too early to do so. There is no question, however, that it has actualised many of the themes that resonate with the topic of this dissertation, such as the way in which both individuals and institutions need to contribute to reaching morally desirable goals, and how social sanctions help to ensure compliance with demands to change one’s day-to-day life. I suspect that future research on the pandemic will bolster, but also help to nuance, the claims defended in this inquiry. 28 Such as Gomberg, How to Make Opportunity Equal: Race and Contributive Justice; Carens, “The Egalitarian Ethos as a Social Mechanism”, and Stanczyk, From Each. And hopefully, this dissertation has helped to develop ideas that the late Cohen is unable to elaborate further.

217 Chapter 7

There are undoubtedly many more issues raised by what is included in – and what has been left out of – this study. My hope is that, despite its limitations, this dissertation nevertheless constitutes a valuable contribution to our common and continuing inquiry into the idea that we are all required to make a valuable contribution.

218 Bibliography

Bibliography

Aas, Sean. “You Didn’t Build That: Equality and Productivity in a Complex Society.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 1, no. 1 (2017): 1–20. Albertsen, Andreas. “Markets, Distributive Justice and Community: The Egalitarian Ethos of G. A. Cohen.” Political Research Quarterly 72, no. 2 (2019): 376– 88. Alstadsæter, Annette, Niels Johannesen, and Gabriel Zucman. “Tax Evasion and Ine- quality.” American Economic Review 109, no. 6 (2019): 2073–2103. Anderson, Elizabeth S. “Beyond Homo Economicus: New Developments in Theories of Social Norms.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 29, no. 2 (2000): 170–200. ———. “The Fundamental Disagreement between Luck Egalitarians and Relational Egalitarians.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 40, Supplementary volume 1 (2010): 1–23. ———. “What Is the Point of Equality?” Ethics 109, no. 2 (1999): 287–337. Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics. Edited by William D. Ross and Lesley Brown. Ox- ford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Arneson, Richard J. “Egalitarianism.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2013 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta, 2013. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2013/entries/egalitarianism/. ———. “Equality and Equal Opportunity for Welfare.” Philosophical Studies: An In- ternational Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 56, no. 1 (1989): 77–93. ———. “Justice Is Not Equality.” Ratio 21, no. 4 (2008): 371–91. ———. “Luck Egalitarianism: A Primer.” In Responsibility and Distributive Justice, edited by Zofia Stemplowska and Carl Knight, 24–50. Oxford: Oxford Uni- versity Press, 2011. ———. “Meaningful Work and Market Socialism.” Ethics 97, no. 3 (1987): 517–45. ———. “Property Rights In Persons.” Social Philosophy and Policy 9, no. 1 (1992): 201–30. ———. “Why Not Capitalism?” In Distributive Justice and Access to Advantage, edited by Alexander Kaufman, 207–34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Arnold, N. Scott. “Capitalists and the Ethics of Contribution.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 15, no. 1 (1985): 87–102. Arras, John D. “The Way We Reason Now: Reflective Equilibrium in Bioethics.” In The Oxford Handbook of Bioethics, edited by Bonnie Steinbock, 46–71. Ox- ford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Arrow, Kenneth J. “Gifts and Exchanges.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 1, no. 4 (1972): 343–62.

219 Bibliography

Atkinson, Anthony B. Inequality: What Can Be Done? Cambridge, Massachusetts; London, England: Harvard University Press, 2015. Axelrod, Robert M. The Evolution of Cooperation. New York: Basic Books, 2006. Bales, R. Eugene. “Act-Utilitarianism: Account of Right-Making Characteristics or De- cision-Making Procedure?” American Philosophical Quarterly 8, no. 3 (1971): 257–65. Balliet, Daniel, Laetitia B. Mulder, and Paul A.M. Van Lange. “Reward, Punishment, and Cooperation: A Meta-Analysis.” Psychological Bulletin 137, no. 4 (2011): 594–615. Barbaro, Michael. “Cancel Culture, Part 2: A Case Study.” The Daily, August 11, 2020 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/11/podcasts/the-daily/cancel-culture.html. Barry, Brian. Justice as Impartiality: A Treatise on Social Justice, Volume II. Oxford: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 1995. Baynes, Kenneth. “Ethos and Institution: On the Site of Distributive Justice.” Journal of Social Philosophy 37, no. 2 (2006): 182–96. Becker, Lawrence. Reciprocity. London; Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986. ———. “Reciprocity, Justice, and Disability.” Ethics 116, no. 1 (2005): 9–39. ———. “The Obligation to Work.” Ethics 91, no. 1 (1980): 35–49. Berkey, Brian. “Against Rawlsian Institutionalism about Justice.” Social Theory and Practice 42, no. 4 (2016): 706–32. ———. “Double Counting, Moral Rigorism, and Cohen’s Critique of Rawls: A Re- sponse to Alan Thomas.” Mind 124, no. 495 (2015): 849–74. ———. “Obligations of Productive Justice: Individual or Institutional?” Critical Re- view of International Social and Political Philosophy 21, no. 6 (2016): 726– 53. ———. “The Demandingness of Morality: Toward a Reflective Equilibrium.” Philo- sophical Studies 173, no. 11 (2016): 3015–35. ———. “The Institutional Critique of Effective Altruism.” Utilitas 30, no. 2 (2018): 143–71. ———. “The Philosophical Core of Effective Altruism.” Journal of Social Philosophy, Forthcoming, 1–23. Berlin, Isaiah. “Two Concepts of Liberty.” In Liberty, edited by Henry Hardy, 2nd ed., 166–217. 1958. Reprint, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Bertrand, Marianne. “Coase Lecture - The Glass Ceiling.” Economica 85, no. 338 (2018): 205–31. Bicchieri, Cristina. Norms in the Wild: How to Diagnose, Measure, and Change Social Norms. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017. ———. The Grammar of Society: The Nature and Dynamics of Social Norms. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Billingham, Paul, and Tom Parr. “Online Public Shaming: Virtues and Vices.” Journal of Social Philosophy, Forthcoming, 1–20. Birnbaum, Simon. Basic Income Reconsidered: Social Justice, Liberalism, and the De- mands of Equality. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. ———. “Should Surfers Be Ostracized? Basic Income, Liberal Neutrality, and the Work Ethos.” Politics, Philosophy & Economics 10, no. 4 (2011): 396–419.

220 Bibliography

Björnsson, Gunnar, Caj Strandberg, Ragnar Francén Olinder, John Eriksson, and Fred- rik Björklund. Motivational Internalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Bou-Habib, Paul, and Serena Olsaretti. “Liberal Egalitarianism and Workfare.” Journal of Applied Philosophy 21, no. 3 (2004): 257–70. Bowles, Samuel. The Moral Economy: Why Good Incentives Are No Substitute for Good Citizens. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016. Brennan, Geoffrey, Lina Eriksson, Robert E. Goodin, and Nicholas Southwood. Ex- plaining Norms. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Brennan, Geoffrey, and Philip Pettit. The Economy of Esteem: An Essay on Civil and Political Society. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Brighouse, Harry, and Adam Swift. Family Values: The Ethics of Parent-Child Rela- tionships. Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2014. Brock, Gillian. “Sufficiency and Needs-Based Approaches.” In The Oxford Handbook of Distributive Justice, edited by Serena Olsaretti, 86–106. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Brock, Gillian, and Michael Blake. Debating Brain Drain: May Government Restrict Emigration? Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Brock, Gillian, and Rachel McMaster. “Global Taxation and Accounting Arrange- ments: Some Normatively Desirable and Feasible Policy Recommendations.” In Taxation: Philosophical Perspectives, edited by Martin O’Neill and Shepley Orr. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Brown, Brookes. “Reciprocity Without Compliance.” Philosophy & Public Affairs, Forthcoming, 1–40. Brownlee, Kimberley. “The Lonely Heart Breaks: On the Right to Be a Social Contrib- utor.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 90, no. 1 (2016): 27–48. Buchanan, Allen E. “Justice and Charity.” Ethics 97, no. 3 (1987): 558–75. ———. “Justice as Reciprocity versus Subject-Centered Justice.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 19, no. 3 (1990): 227–52. Carens, Joseph H. “An Interpretation and Defense of the Socialist Principle of Distri- bution.” Social Philosophy and Policy 20, no. 1 (2003): 145–77. ———. Equality, Moral Incentives, and the Market: An Essay in Utopian Politico- Economic Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. ———. “Rights and Duties in an Egalitarian Society.” Political Theory 14, no. 1 (1986): 31–49. ———. “The Egalitarian Ethos as a Social Mechanism.” In Distributive Justice and Access to Advantage, edited by Alexander Kaufman, 50–78. Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press, 2014. Casal, Paula. “Marx, Rawls, Cohen, and Feminism.” Hypatia 30, no. 4 (2015): 811– 28. ———. “Occupational Choice and the Egalitarian Ethos.” Economics and Philosophy 29, no. 1 (2013): 3–20. Chahboun, Naima. “Art of the Possible? Feasibility and Compliance in Ideal and Noni- deal Theory.” Ph. D. Dissertation, Stockholm University, 2020.

221 Bibliography

China Law Translate. “Establishment of a Social Credit System Plan Outline.” China Law Translate (blog), April 27, 2015. https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/so- cialcreditsystem/. Cholbi, Michael. “The Duty to Work.” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 21, no. 5 (2018): 1119–33. Christiano, Thomas. “A Foundation for Egalitarianism.” In Egalitarianism: New Essays on the Nature and Value of Equality, edited by Nils Holtug and Kasper Lip- pert-Rasmussen, 41–82. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007. Chuang, Kimberly Wen-Chun. “An Account of Contributive Justice.” Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of Michigan, 2018. Available at https://deep- blue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/147526. Cohen, Gerald Allan. “Back to Socialist Basics.” New Left Review 207 (1994): 3–16. ———. “David Miller on Market Socialism and Distributive Justice.” Unpublished typescript, 1989. ———. “Expensive Taste Rides Again.” In On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice, and Other Essays in Political Philosophy, edited by Michael Otsuka, 81–115. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011. ———. “Fairness and Legitimacy in Justice, and: Does Option Luck Ever Preserve Jus- tice?” In On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice, and Other Essays in Political Philosophy, edited by Michael Otsuka, 124–43. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011. ———. Finding Oneself in the Other. Edited by Michael Otsuka. Princeton Univer- sity Press, 2012. ———. “How to Do Political Philosophy.” In On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice, and Other Essays in Political Philosophy, edited by Michael Otsuka, 225–35. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011. ———. If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re so Rich? Cambridge, Massachu- setts: Harvard University Press, 2000. ———. “Incentives, Inequality, and Community.” In The Tanner Lectures on Human Values 13, edited by Grethe Peterson, 261–329. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1992. ———. “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice.” In On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice, and Other Essays in Political Philosophy, edited by Michael Otsuka, 3–43. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011. ———. Rescuing Justice and Equality. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2008. ———. “Rescuing Justice from Constructivism and Equality from the Basic Structure Restriction.” In On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice, and Other Essays in Political Philosophy, edited by Michael Otsuka, 236–54. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011. ———. Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ———. “The Limits of Contractual Equality: A Reply to Jacques Bidet.” Ratio Juris 8, no. 1 (1995): 85–90. ———. “The Pareto Argument for Inequality.” Social Philosophy and Policy 12, no. 1 (1995): 160–85.

222 Bibliography

———. “Where the Action Is: On the Site of Distributive Justice.” Philosophy & Pub- lic Affairs 26, no. 1 (1997): 3–30. ———. Why Not Socialism? Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. Cohen, Joshua. “Taking People as They Are?” Philosophy & Public Affairs 30, no. 4 (2001): 363–86. Constitution (Fundamental law) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1936). Available at https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sta- lin/works/1936/12/05.htm. Cordelli, Chiara. “Justice below the State: Civil Society as a Site of Justice.” British Journal of Political Science 46, no. 4 (2016): 915–36. ———. “The Institutional Division of Labor and the Egalitarian Obligations of Non- profits.” Journal of Political Philosophy 20, no. 2 (2012): 131–55. Creemers, Rogier. “China’s Social Credit System: An Evolving Practice of Control.” SSRN Electronic Journal, 2018. Daniels, Norman. “Reflective Equilibrium.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philoso- phy (Fall 2018 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta, 2018. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/reflective-equilibrium/. ———. “Wide Reflective Equilibrium and Theory Acceptance in Ethics.” The Journal of Philosophy 76, no. 5 (1979): 256–82. Dewey, Caitlin. “GOP Lawmaker: The Bible Says ‘If a Man Will Not Work, He Shall Not Eat.’” Washington Post. March 31, 2017. https://www.washing- tonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/31/gop-lawmaker-the-bible-says-the- unemployed-shall-not-eat/. Duus-Otterström, Göran, and Sverker C. Jagers. “Identifying Burdens of Coping with Climate Change: A Typology of the Duties of Climate Justice.” Global Envi- ronmental Change 22, no. 3 (2012): 746–53. Dworkin, Ronald. A Matter of Principle. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Univer- sity Press, 1985. ———. Justice for Hedgehogs. Cambridge, Massachusetts; London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011. ———. “Liberalism.” In Public and Private Morality, edited by Stuart Hampshire, 113–43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. ———. “Ronald Dworkin Replies.” In Dworkin and His Critics: With Replies by Dworkin, edited by Justine Burley, 339–95. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. ———. Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality. Cambridge, Massa- chusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000. Elster, Jon. The Cement of Society: A Study of Social Order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Estlund, David. “Debate: Liberalism, Equality, and Fraternity in Cohen’s Critique of Rawls.” Journal of Political Philosophy 6, no. 1 (1998): 99–112. ———. Utopophobia: On the Limits (If Any) of Political Philosophy. Princeton; Ox- ford: Princeton University Press, 2019. “Ethos n.” In Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press, accessed September 23, 2020. https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/64840. Fabre, Cécile. “Distributive Justice and Freedom: Cohen on Money and Labour.” Utili- tas 22, no. 4 (2010): 393–412.

223 Bibliography

———. “Good Samaritanism: A Matter of Justice.” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 5, no. 4 (2002): 128–44. ———. Whose Body Is It Anyway? Justice and the Integrity of the Person. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Farrelly, Colin. “Dualism, Incentives and the Demands of Rawlsian Justice.” Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue Canadienne de Science Politique 38, no. 3 (2005). ———. “Justice in Ideal Theory: A Refutation.” Political Studies 55, no. 4 (2007): 844–64. Fehr, Ernst, and Simon Gächter. “Altruistic Punishment in Humans.” Nature 415 (2002): 137–40. Feinberg, Joel. “Noncomparative Justice.” Philosophical Review 83, no. 3 (1974): 297– 338. Finkel, Michael. The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit. New York: Vintage Books, 2018. Folbre, Nancy. “‘Holding Hands at Midnight’: The Paradox of Caring Labor.” Femi- nist Economics 1, no. 1 (1995): 73–92. ———. “Measuring Care: Gender, Empowerment, and the Care Economy.” Journal of Human Development 7, no. 2 (2006): 183–99. Frank, Robert H. Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2016. ———. Under the Influence: Putting Peer Pressure to Work. Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2020. Frankfurt, Harry. “Equality as a Moral Ideal.” Ethics 98, no. 1 (1987): 21–43. Fraser, Nancy. “Contradictions of Capital and Care.” New Left Review, no. 100 (2016): 99–117. Freeman, Samuel R. “G. A. Cohen’s Critique of Rawls’s Difference Principle.” The Harvard Review of Philosophy 19 (2013): 23–45. ———. Rawls. London; New York: Routledge, 2007. ———. “The Basic Structure of Society as the Primary Subject of Justice.” In A Com- panion to Rawls, edited by Jon Mandle and David A. Reidy, 88–111. Hobo- ken: Wiley, 2014. Frehywot, Seble, Fitzhugh Mullan, Perry W. Payne, and Heather Ross. “Compulsory Service Programmes for Recruiting Health Workers in Remote and Rural Ar- eas: Do They Work?” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 88, no. 5 (2010): 364–70. Frye, Harrison P. “Freedom without Law.” Politics, Philosophy & Economics 17, no. 3 (2017): 298–316. ———. “Incentives, Offers, and Community.” Economics and Philosophy 33, no. 3 (2017): 367–90. Furendal, Markus. “Defining the Duty to Contribute: Against the Market Solution.” European Journal of Political Theory 18, no. 4 (2019): 469–88. ———. “Finding Oneself in the Other, Written by G. A. Cohen.” Journal of Moral Philosophy 12, no. 3 (2015): 343–46. ———. “Rescuing Justice from Indifference: Equality, Pareto, and Cohen’s Ethos.” So- cial Theory and Practice 44, no. 4 (2018): 485–506.

224 Bibliography

Gauthier, David P. Morals by Agreement. Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 1986. Geertz, Clifford. “Ethos, World-View and the Analysis of Sacred Symbols.” The Anti- och Review 17, no. 4 (1957): 421–37. George, David. Preference Pollution: How Markets Create the Desires We Dislike. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. Gheaus, Anca. “The Feasibility Constraint on the Concept of Justice.” The Philosophi- cal Quarterly 63, no. 252 (2013): 445–64. Gheaus, Anca, and Lisa Herzog. “The Goods of Work (Other than Money!).” Journal of Social Philosophy 47, no. 1 (2016): 70–89. Giddens, Anthony. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structu- ration. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984. Gilabert, Pablo. “Debate: Feasibility and Socialism.” Journal of Political Philosophy 19, no. 1 (2011): 52–63. ———. “Justice and Feasibility: A Dynamic Approach.” In Political Utopias: Contem- porary Debates, edited by Kevin Vallier and Michael E. Weber, 95–126. New York, N. Y.: Oxford University Press, 2017. ———. “The Socialist Principle ‘From Each According To Their Abilities, To Each According To Their Needs’.” Journal of Social Philosophy 46, no. 2 (2015): 197–225. Gneezy, Uri, Stephan Meier, and Pedro Rey-Biel. “When and Why Incentives (Don’t) Work to Modify Behavior.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 25, no. 4 (2011): 191–210. Gomberg, Paul. How to Make Opportunity Equal: Race and Contributive Justice. Ox- ford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007. ———. “Why Distributive Justice Is Impossible but Contributive Justice Would Work.” Science and Society 80, no. 1 (2016): 31–55.. ———. “Work.” In The Oxford Handbook of Distributive Justice, edited by Serena Olsaretti, 513–30. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Goodin, Robert E. “Making Moral Incentives Pay.” Policy Sciences 12, no. 2 (1980): 131–45. Goodnough, Abby. “Appeals Court Rejects Trump Medicaid Work Requirements in Arkansas.” The New York Times. February 14, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/14/health/medicaid-work-requirements.html. Gosseries, Axel. “Three Models of Intergenerational Reciprocity.” In Intergenerational Justice, edited by Axel Gosseries and Lukas H. Meyer, 119–46. Oxford: Ox- ford University Press, 2009. Gosseries, Axel, and Tom Parr. “Publicity.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philoso- phy (Fall 2017 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta, 2017. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/publicity/. Govier, Trudy. “The Right to Eat and the Duty to Work.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 5, no. 2 (1975): 125–43. Graeber, David. Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. Westminster, London: Penguin Books, 2019. Grant, Ruth W. “Political Theory, Political Science, and Politics.” Political Theory 30, no. 4 (2002): 577–95. Hansson, Sven Ove. Verktygslära För Filosofer. 4th ed. Stockholm: Thales, 2015.

225 Bibliography

Harrison, Virginia, and Mir Sabbir Jack Simon. “‘I Sued My Child for Money to Sur- vive.’” BBC News, February 11, 2019, sec. Business. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45636236. Hartley, Christie. “Two Conceptions of Justice as Reciprocity.” Social Theory and Practice 40, no. 3 (2014): 409–32. Hatzisavvidou, Sophia. Appearances of Ēthos in Political Thought: The Dimension of Practical Reason. London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2016. Hayden, Dolores. “Two Utopian Feminists and Their Campaigns for Kitchenless Houses.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 4, no. 2 (1978): 274–90. Hayek, Friedrich A. “The Use of Knowledge in Society.” The American Economic Re- view 35, no. 4 (1945): 519–30. Heath, Joseph. “Dworkin’s Auction.” Politics, Philosophy & Economics 3, no. 3 (2004): 313–35. Heath, Joseph, and Joel Anderson. “Procrastination and the Extended Will.” In The Thief of Time: Philosophical Essays on Procrastination, edited by Chrisoula Andreou and Mark D. White, 233–52. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Oxford World’s Classics. 1651. Reprint, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Hochschild, Arlie Russell. “The Nanny Chain.” In The Inequality Reader: Contempo- rary and Foundational Readings in Race, Class, and Gender, edited by David B. Grusky and Szonja Szelényi, 2nd ed., 446–49. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2011. Hodgson, Louis-Philippe. “Why the Basic Structure?” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 42, no. 3/4 (2012): 303–34. Hohfeld, Wesley Newcomb. “Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Ju- dicial Reasoning.” Yale Law Journal 23, no. 1 (1913): 16–59. Howley, Aimee, Craig Howley, Larry Burgess, and Drew Pusateri. “Social Class, Amish Culture, and an Egalitarian Ethos: Case Study from a Rural School Serving Amish Children.” Journal of Research in Rural Education 23, no. 3 (2008): 1–12. Hsieh, Nien Hê. “Survey Article: Justice in Production.” Journal of Political Philosophy 16, no. 1 (2008): 72–100. Jackson, Ben. “The Conceptual History of Social Justice.” Political Studies Review 3, no. 3 (2005): 356–73. Jenkins, David. “An Ethos for (In)Justice.” Social Theory and Practice 41, no. 2 (2015): 185–206. ———. “Denying Reciprocity.” European Journal of Political Theory 15, no. 3 (2016): 312–32. Johannsen, Kyle. A Conceptual Investigation of Justice. New York, N. Y.: Routledge, 2019. Junestav, Malin. Arbetslinjer i Svensk Socialpolitisk Debatt Och Lagstiftning 1930- 2001. Ph. D. Dissertation, Uppsala Studies in Economic History 72. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2004. Kagan, Shelly. “Does Consequentialism Demand Too Much?” Philosophy & Public Affairs 13, no. 3 (1984): 239–54.

226 Bibliography

———. The Limits of Morality. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. Kandiyali, Jan. “The Importance of Others: Marx on Unalienated Production.” Ethics 130, no. 4 (2020): 555–87. Kant, Immanuel. “On the Common Saying: ‘This May Be True in Theory, but It Does Not Apply in Practice.’” In Kant: Political Writings, edited by Hans Siegbert Reiss, 2nd ed. 1793. Reprint, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991. ———. The Moral Law: Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. Edited by H. J. Paton. Hutchinson University Library. Routledge Classics. London: Routledge classics, 2005. Keller, Simon. Partiality. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013. Keynes, John Maynard. “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren.” In Essays in Persuasion, edited by John Maynard Keynes, 321–32. 1930. Reprint, London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2010. Kittay, Eva Feder. Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality and Dependency. 2nd ed. Abingdon, Oxford; New York, NY: Routledge, 2020. Klosko, George. “Political Obligation and the Natural Duties of Justice.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 23, no. 3 (1994): 251–70. Knight, Carl, and Zofia Stemplowska. “Responsibility and Distributive Justice: An In- troduction.” In Responsibility and Distributive Justice, edited by Carl Knight and Zofia Stemplowska, 1–23. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Kuran, Timur. Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Fal- sification. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997. Kymlicka, Will. Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction. 2nd ed. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Laden, Anthony Simon. “The House That Jack Built: Thirty Years of Reading Rawls.” Ethics 113, no. 2 (2003): 367–90. Landemore, Hélène, and Isabelle Ferreras. “In Defense of Workplace Democracy: To- wards a Justification of the Firm–State Analogy.” Political Theory 44, no. 1 (2016): 53–81. Lang, Gerald. “Rawlsian Incentives and the Freedom Objection.” Journal of Social Phi- losophy 47, no. 2 (2016): 231–49. Lapidus, John. “Private Health Insurance in Sweden: Fast-Track Lanes and the Alleged Attempts to Stop Them.” Health Policy 121, no. 4 (2017): 442–49. Lenin, Vladimir Ilʹich. “On the Famine: A Letter to the Workers of Petrograd.” In Col- lected Works, volume 27, edited by Robert Daglish, translated by Clemens Dutt, 4th ed., 391–98. 1918. Reprint, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972. Lewis, David K. Convention: A Philosophical Study. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969. Lippert-Rasmussen, Kasper. Luck Egalitarianism. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. ———. “Publicity and Egalitarian Justice.” Journal of Moral Philosophy 5, no. 1 (2008): 30–49. ———. Relational Egalitarianism: Living as Equals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

227 Bibliography

———. “What Mr. Spock Told the Earthlings: The Aims of Political Philosophy, Ac- tion-Guidingness and Fact-Dependency.” Critical Review of International So- cial and Political Philosophy 22, no. 1 (2019): 71–86. List, Christian, and Laura Valentini. “The Methodology of Political Theory.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology, edited by Herman Cap- pelen, Tamar Szabó Gendler, and John Hawthorne, 525–54. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Lister, Andrew. “Justice as Fairness and Reciprocity.” Analyse & Kritik 33, no. 1 (2011). Lundquist, Lennart. Demokratins Väktare: Ämbetsmännen Och Vårt Offentliga Etos. Lund: Studentlitteratur, 1998. MacAskill, William. Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and How You Can Make a Difference. New York, N. Y.: Gotham Books, Penguin Group USA, 2015. ———. “The Definition of Effective Altruism.” In Effective Altruism: Philosophical Issues, edited by Theron Pummer and Hilary Greaves, 10–28. Oxford: Ox- ford University Press, 2019. Marshall, Thomas Humphrey. “Citizenship and Social Class.” In Citizenship and So- cial Class, and Other Essays, 1–85. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950. Marx, Karl. “Critique of the Gotha Programme.” In Marx/Engels Selected Works, 310–31. 1875. Reprint, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1968. Maskivker, Julia. Self-Realization and Justice: A Liberal-Perfectionist Defense of the Right to Freedom from Employment. Routledge, 2017. Matsakis, Louise. “How the West Got China’s Social Credit System Wrong.” Wired, July 29, 2019. https://www.wired.com/story/china-social-credit-score-system/. Matthew, Dale C. “Purview and Permissibility.” Social Theory and Practice 40, no. 1 (2014): 73–98. Mauss, Marcel. The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. Translated by Ian Cunnison. London: Cohen & West, 1970. McClosky, Herbert, and John Zaller. The American Ethos: Public Attitudes Toward Capitalism and Democracy. A Twentieth Century Fund Report. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1984. McMahan, Jeff. “Moral Intuition.” In The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory, edited by Hugh LaFollette and Ingmar Persson, 2nd ed., 103–20. Oxford: Blackwell, 2013. McTernan, Emily. “How to Make Citizens Behave: Social Psychology, Liberal Virtues, and Social Norms.” Journal of Political Philosophy 22, no. 1 (2014): 84–104. ———. “The Inegalitarian Ethos: Incentives, Respect, and Self-Respect.” Politics, Phi- losophy & Economics 12, no. 1 (2012): 93–111. Mead, Lawrence M. The New Politics of Poverty: The Nonworking Poor in America. New York, N.Y.: Basic Books, 1992. Meckled-Garcia, Saladin. “Why Work Harder? Equality, Social Duty and the Market.” Political Studies 50, no. 4 (2002): 779–93. Melenovsky, Chris. “The Basic Structure as a System of Social Practices.” Social Theory and Practice 39, no. 4 (2013): 599–624.

228 Bibliography

Micheletti, Michele. Political Virtue and Shopping: Individuals, Consumerism, and Collective Action. 2nd ed. New York; Secaucus: Palgrave Macmillan Springer, 2015. Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism and On Liberty. Edited by Mary Warnock. 1863. Re- print, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2003. Miller, David. “Justice.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2017 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta, 2017. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/justice/. ———. Market, State, and Community: Theoretical Foundations of Market Socialism. Oxford, England; Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 1989. ———. “Our Unfinished Debate about Market Socialism.” Politics, Philosophy & Economics 13, no. 2 (2014): 119–39. ———. “Political Philosophy for Earthlings.” In Political Theory: Methods and Ap- proaches, edited by David Leopold and Marc Stears, 29–48. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. ———. Principles of Social Justice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999. ———. “Taking up the Slack? Responsibility and Justice in Situations of Partial Com- pliance.” In Responsibility and Distributive Justice, edited by Zofia Stem- plowska and Carl Knight, 230–45. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. ———. “The Nature and Limits of the Duty of Rescue.” Journal of Moral Philosophy, Forthcoming, 1–22. Mills, Charles W. “‘Ideal Theory’ as Ideology.” Hypatia 20, no. 3 (2005): 165–83. Mockus, Antanas. “Co-Existence as Harmonization of Law, Morality and Culture.” Prospects XXXII, no. 1 (2002): 19–37. Moon, J. Donald. “Equality, Moral Incentives, and the Market by Joseph Carens - Re- view by J. Donald Moon.” Ethics 94, no. 1 (1983): 146–50. Murphy, Liam B. “Institutions and the Demands of Justice.” Philosophy & Public Af- fairs 27, no. 4 (1998): 251–91. Murphy, Liam B., and Thomas Nagel. The Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Nagel, Thomas. Equality and Partiality. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. ———. “The Problem of Global Justice.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 33, no. 2 (2005): 113–47. Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books, 1974. Nussbaum, Martha C. “Rawls and Feminism.” In The Cambridge Companion to Rawls, edited by Samuel R. Freeman, 488–520. Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Okin, Susan Moller. Justice, Gender, and the Family. New York: Basic Books, 1989. Olsaretti, Serena. “Introduction: The Idea of Distributive Justice.” In The Oxford Handbook of Distributive Justice, edited by Serena Olsaretti, 1–10. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. ———. Liberty, Desert and the Market: A Philosophical Study. Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press, 2004.

229 Bibliography

Olson, Kristi A. “Solving Which Trilemma? The Many Interpretations of Equality, Pa- reto, and Freedom of Occupational Choice.” Politics, Philosophy & Econom- ics 16, no. 3 (2017): 282–307. ———. “The Endowment Tax Puzzle.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 38, no. 3 (2010): 240–71. O’Neill, Martin. “Power, Predistribution, and Social Justice.” Philosophy 95, no. 1 (2020): 63–91. O’Neill, Onora. Towards Justice and Virtue: A Constructive Account of Practical Rea- soning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Osiel, Mark. The Right to Do Wrong: Morality and the Limits of Law. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2019. Otsuka, Michael. “Prerogative to Depart from Equality.” In Political Philosophy, edited by Anthony O’Hear, 95–112. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Owen, Robert. A New View of Society, or, Essays on the Formation of the Human Character: Preparatory to the Development of a Plan for Gradually Ameliorat- ing the Condition of Mankind. 1816. Reprint, London: The Macmillan Press Ltd., 1972. Parfit, Derek. Equality or Priority? Lindley Lecture 1991. Lawrence: University of Kan- sas Press, 1995. ———. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 1984. Parijs, Philippe van. “Difference Principles.” In The Cambridge Companion to Rawls, edited by Samuel R. Freeman, 200–240. Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cam- bridge University Press, 2003. ———. “Egalitarian Justice, Left-Libertarianism and the Market.” In Hillel Steiner and the Anatomy of Justice: Themes and Challenges, edited by Ian Carter, Ste- phen de Wijze, and Matthew H. Kramer, 145–62. New York: Routledge, 2009. ———. Real Freedom for All: What (If Anything) Can Justify Capitalism? Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 1995. Pettit, Philip. “The Cunning of Trust.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 24, no. 3 (1995): 202–25. Plato. The Republic of Plato. Translated by Allan David Bloom. New York: Basic Books, 1991. Pogge, Thomas. “On the Site of Distributive Justice: Reflections on Cohen and Mur- phy.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 29, no. 2 (2000): 137–69. Porter, Thomas. “The Division of Moral Labour and the Basic Structure Restriction.” Politics, Philosophy & Economics 8, no. 2 (2009): 173–99. Proposition 2020/21:1 Putnam, Ruth Anna. “Review: Reciprocity and Virtue Ethics.” Ethics 98, no. 2 (1988): 379–89. Quick, Miriam. “Flygskam,” February 11, 2020. https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190718-flygskam. Quong, Jonathan. “Justice Beyond Equality - Review Essay: G. A. Cohen, Rescuing Justice and Equality.” Social Theory and Practice 36, no. 2 (2010): 315–41. Railton, Peter. “Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality.” Philoso- phy & Public Affairs 13, no. 2 (1984): 134–71.

230 Bibliography

Ramsay, Maureen. “Just Contribution.” Contemporary Political Theory 1 (2002): 39– 57. Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Rev. ed. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999. ———. Collected Papers. Edited by Samuel R. Freeman. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999. ———. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. Edited by Erin Kelly. Cambridge, Massa- chusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001. ———. “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory.” The Journal of Philosophy 77, no. 9 (1980): 515–72. ———. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. ———. “The Basic Structure As Subject.” American Philosophical Quarterly 14, no. 2 (1977): 159–65. ———. The Law of Peoples. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999. Robeyns, Ingrid. “A Universal Duty to Care.” In Arguing about Justice. Essays for Philippe van Parijs, edited by Axel Gosseries and Yannick Vanderborght, 283– 90. Louvain: Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 2011. ———. “Ideal Theory in Theory and Practice.” Social Theory and Practice 34, no. 3 (2008): 341–62. Roemer, John E. How We Cooperate: A Theory of Kantian Optimization. New Ha- ven; London: Yale University Press, 2019. ———. “Ideology, Social Ethos, and the Financial Crisis.” The Journal of Ethics 16, no. 3 (2011): 273–303. ———. “Incentive Provision and Coordination as Market Functions.” Zeitschrift Für ArbeitsmarktForschung 43, no. 1 (2010): 6–16. Ronson, Jon. So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. New York: Riverhead Books, 2015. Ronzoni, Miriam. “The Global Order: A Case of Background Injustice? A Practice-De- pendent Account.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 37, no. 3 (2009): 229–56. Rose, Julie L. “On the Value of Economic Growth.” Politics, Philosophy & Economics 19, no. 2 (2020): 128–153. Ross, William David. The Right and the Good. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930. Russell, Bertrand. “In Praise of Idleness.” Harper’s Magazine October (1932). Sainsbury, Diane. “Gender, Care, and Welfare.” In The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Politics, edited by Georgina Waylen, Karen Celis, Johanna Kantola, and S. Laurel Weldon, 313–31. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Sandel, Michael J. What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. London; New York: Allen Lane, 2012. Sangiovanni, Andrea. “Global Justice, Reciprocity, and the State.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 35, no. 1 (2007): 3–39. ———. “How Practices Matter.” Journal of Political Philosophy 24, no. 1 (2016): 3– 23. Satz, Debra. “Gender.” In The Oxford Handbook of Political Philosophy, edited by David Estlund, 354–72. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. ———. Why Some Things Should Not Be For Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

231 Bibliography

Scanlon, Thomas Michael. “Justice, Responsibility, and the Demands of Equality.” In The Egalitarian Conscience: Essays in Honour of G. A. Cohen, edited by Christine Sypnowich, 70–87. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. ———. “Rawls on Justification.” In The Cambridge Companion to Rawls, edited by Samuel R. Freeman, 139–67. Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 2003. ———. Why Does Inequality Matter? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Scheffler, Samuel. “Distributive Justice, the Basic Structure and the Place of Private Law.” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 35, no. 2 (2015): 213–35. ———. “Egalitarian Liberalism as Moral Pluralism.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 79 (2005): 229–53. ———. Human Morality. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. ———. “Is the Basic Structure Basic?” In The Egalitarian Conscience: Essays in Hon- our of G. A. Cohen, edited by Christine Sypnowich, 102–28. New York: Ox- ford University Press, 2006. ———. “Rawls and Utilitarianism.” In The Cambridge Companion to Rawls, edited by Samuel R. Freeman, 426–59. Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ———. The Rejection of Consequentialism: A Philosophical Investigation of the Con- siderations Underlying Rival Moral Conceptions. Rev. ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. Schelling, Thomas C. “Dynamic Models of Segregation.” The Journal of Mathematical Sociology 1, no. 2 (1971): 143–86. Schmidtz, David. Persons, Polis, Planet: Essays in Applied Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Schwartz, Adina. “Meaningful Work.” Ethics 92, no. 4 (1982): 634–46. Schweickart, David. After Capitalism. 2. ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Pub- lishers, 2011. Schwenkenbecher, Anne. “Joint Duties and Global Moral Obligations.” Ratio 26, no. 3 (2013): 310–28. Sen, Amartya. Inequality Reexamined. New York: Harvard University Press, 1992. ———. Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 1981. “Senator Elizabeth Warren Speech in Washington Square Park.” Campaign 2020. New York, N. Y., United States: C-SPAN, September 16, 2019. https://www.c- span.org/video/?464314-1/senator-elizabeth-warren-campaigns-york-city. Shelby, Tommie. “Justice, Work, and the Ghetto Poor.” Law and Ethics of Human Rights 6, no. 1 (2012): 69–96. Singer, Peter. “Altruism and Commerce: A Defense of Titmuss against Arrow.” Philos- ophy & Public Affairs 2, no. 3 (1973): 312–20. ———. “Famine, Affluence and Morality.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 1, no. 3 (1972): 229–43. ———. The Life You Can Save: How to Do Your Part to End World Poverty. New York: Random House, 2010. ———. The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically. New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2015.

232 Bibliography

Smart, John Jamieson Carswell, and Bernard Williams. Utilitarianism: For and Against. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1973. Smith, Paul. “Incentives and Justice: G. A. Cohen’s Egalitarian Critique of Rawls.” So- cial Theory and Practice 24, no. 2 (1998): 205–35. Smith, Steven R. “The Social Construction of Talent: A Defence of Justice as Reciproc- ity.” Journal of Political Philosophy 9, no. 1 (2001): 19–37. Srinivasan, Amia. “Stop the Robot Apocalypse.” London Review of Books, September 23, 2015. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n18/amia-srinivasan/stop-the- robot-apocalypse. Stanczyk, Lucas. From Each, Unpublished typescript. ———. “Managing Skilled Migration.” Ethics & Global Politics 9, no. 1 (2016): 1– 11. ———. “Productive Justice.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 40, no. 2 (2012): 144–64.. Steiner, Hillel. “Capitalism, Justice and Equal Starts.” Social Philosophy and Policy 5, no. 1 (1987): 49–71. Stemplowska, Zofia. “What’s Ideal About Ideal Theory?” Social Theory and Practice 34 (2008): 319–40. Stemplowska, Zofia, and Adam Swift. “Ideal and Nonideal Theory.” In The Oxford Handbook of Political Philosophy, edited by David Estlund. New York: Ox- ford University Press, 2012. Swift, Adam, and Stuart White. “Political Theory, Social Science, and Real Politics.” In Political Theory: Methods and Approaches, edited by David Leopold and Marc Stears, 49–78. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Syme, Timothy. “The Pervasive Structure of Society.” Philosophy and Social Criticism 44, no. 8 (2018): 888–924. Tan, Kok-Chor. “Justice and Personal Pursuits.” The Journal of Philosophy 101, no. 7 (2004): 331–62. ———. Justice, Institutions, and Luck: The Site, Ground, and Scope of Equality. Ox- ford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Temkin, Larry S. “Being Good in a World of Need: Some Empirical Worries and an Uncomfortable Philosophical Possibility.” Journal of Practical Ethics 7, no. 1 (2019): 1–23. ———. “Equality, Priority, and the Levelling Down Objection.” In The Ideal of Equality, edited by Matthew Clayton and Andrew Williams, 126–62. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000. ———. Inequality. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. ———. “Justice, Equality, Fairness, Desert, Rights, Free Will, Responsibility, and Luck.” In Responsibility and Distributive Justice, edited by Carl Knight and Zofia Stemplowska, 51–76. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Tersman, Folke. “Recent Work on Reflective Equilibrium and Method in Ethics.” Phi- losophy Compass 13, no. 6 (2018): 1–10. ———. Reflective Equilibrium: An Essay in Moral Epistemology. Ph. D. Dissertation, Stockholm University. Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell International, 1993. Thaysen, Jens Damgaard. “I Would Do Anything for Law (and That’s a Problem): Criminalization, Value, and Motives.” Criminal Law and Philosophy 14, no. 2 (2020): 169–88.

233 Bibliography

Thomas, Alan. “Cohen’s Critique of Rawls: A Double Counting Objection.” Mind 120, no. 480 (2011): 1099–1141. ———. “Prerogatives, Incentives, and Institutionalism: A Reply to Brian Berkey.” Mind 124, no. 495 (2015): 875–90. Timmons, Mark. Moral Theory: An Introduction. Elements of Philosophy. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013. Titelbaum, Michael G. “What Would a Rawlsian Ethos of Justice Look Like?” Philoso- phy & Public Affairs 36, no. 3 (2008): 289–322. Titmuss, Richard. The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy. New York: Pantheon Books, 1971. Tolentino, Jia. Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion. London: 4th Estate, 2019. Tomlin, Patrick. “Can I Be a Luck Egalitarian and a Rawlsian?” Ethical Perspectives 19, no. 3 (2012): 371–97. ———. “Survey Article: Internal Doubts about Cohen’s Rescue of Justice.” Journal of Political Philosophy 18, no. 2 (2010): 228–47. Tørsløv, Thomas R., Ludvig S. Wier, and Gabriel Zucman. “The Missing Profits of Nations.” NBER Working Paper Series. Cambridge, Massachusetts: National Bureau of Economics Research, 2020. http://www.nber.org/papers/w24701. Trifan, Isabella. “What Makes Free Riding Wrongful? The Shared Preference View of Fair Play.” Journal of Political Philosophy 28, no. 2 (2020): 158–80. Valentini, Laura. “Coercion and (Global) Justice.” American Political Science Review 105, no. 1 (2011): 205–20. ———. “Ideal vs. Non-Ideal Theory: A Conceptual Map.” Philosophy Compass 7, no. 9 (2012): 654–64. ———. “The Natural Duty of Justice in Non-Ideal Circumstances: On the Moral De- mands of Institution Building and Reform.” European Journal of Political Theory Forthcoming (2017). Vallentyne, Peter. “Justice, Interpersonal Morality, and Luck Egalitarianism.” In Dis- tributive Justice and Access to Advantage, edited by Alexander Kaufman, 40– 49. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Vandenbroucke, Frank. Social Justice and Individual Ethics in an Open Society: Equal- ity, Responsibility, and Incentives. Berlin; New York: Springer, 2001. Veen, Robert J. van der, and Philippe van Parijs. “Entitlement Theories of Justice: From Nozick to Roemer and Beyond.” Economics and Philosophy 1, no. 1 (1985): 69–81. Vrousalis, Nicholas. “G. A. Cohen’s Vision of Socialism.” Journal of Ethics 14, no. 3 (2010): 185–216. ———. The Political Philosophy of G. A. Cohen: Back to Socialist Basics. London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. Wang, Jeng, and Janet C. Mentes. “Factors Determining Nurses’ Clinical Judgments about Hospitalized Elderly Patients with Acute Confusion.” Issues in Mental Health Nursing 30, no. 6 (2009): 399–405. Watts, Beth, and Suzanne Fitzpatrick. Welfare Conditionality. London: Routledge, 2018. Weeks, Kathi. The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011.

234 Bibliography

Weinberg, Justin. “Norms and the Agency of Justice.” Analyse & Kritik 31, no. 2 (2009): 319–38. Weissman, Jeremy. “P2P Surveillance in the Global Village.” Ethics and Information Technology 21, no. 1 (2019): 29–47. White, Jonathan, and Lea Ypi. “Rethinking the Modern Prince: Partisanship and the Democratic Ethos.” Political Studies 58, no. 4 (2010): 809–28. White, Stuart. The Civic Minimum: On the Rights and Obligations of Economic Citi- zenship. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. ———. “The Left and Reciprocity.” Soundings 46 (2010). https://www.lwbooks.co.uk/soundings/46/left-and-reciprocity. ———. “What’s Wrong with Workfare?” Journal of Applied Philosophy 21, no. 3 (2004): 271–84. Wiens, David. “‘Going Evaluative’ to Save Justice from Feasibility—a Pyrrhic Victory.” The Philosophical Quarterly 64, no. 255 (2014): 301–7. Wilkinson, Martin. Freedom, Efficiency and Equality. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmil- lan, 2000. ———. “Mill’s On Liberty and Social Pressure.” Utilitas 32, no. 2 (2020): 219–35. Williams, Andrew. “Incentives, Inequality, and Publicity.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 27, no. 3 (1998): 225–47. ———. “Justice, Incentives and Constructivism.” Ratio 21, no. 4 (2008): 476–93. Williams, Andrew T. The Ethos of Europe: Values, Law and Justice in the EU. Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Williams, Bernard. Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers, 1973-1980. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Wolff, Jonathan. “Fairness, Respect, and the Egalitarian Ethos.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 27, no. 2 (1998): 97–122. ———. “Fairness, Respect and the Egalitarian Ethos Revisited.” The Journal of Ethics 14, no. 3–4 (2010): 335–50. ———. “G. A. Cohen: A Memoir.” In Lectures on the History of Moral and Political Philosophy, edited by Jonathan Wolff, 327–43. Princeton: Princeton Univer- sity Press, 2014. ———. “Social Equality and Social Inequality.” In Social Equality: On What It Means to Be Equals, edited by Carina Fourie, Fabian Schuppert, and Ivo Wallimann- Helmer, 209–25. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Yeoman, Ruth. “Conceptualising Meaningful Work as a Fundamental Human Need.” Journal of Business Ethics 125, no. 2 (2014): 235–51. Young, Iris Marion. Responsibility for Justice. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Zheng, Robin. “What Is My Role in Changing the System? A New Model of Responsi- bility for Structural Injustice.” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 21, no. 4 (2018): 869–85.

235 Sammanfattning på svenska

Sammanfattning på svenska

Kampen för mer rättvisa samhällen har ofta innefattat krav på att orättvisa lagar och regler ska avskaffas eller reformeras. Strävan efter rättvisa verkar emellertid ha genomgått ett slags dubbel individualisering, i bemärkelsen att det numera ofta är individers beteende och uttalade värderingar som är föremål för andra individers kritiska granskning. Inte bara institutioner och lagar, utan även de principer människor accepterar och dagligdags agerar utifrån, verkar alltså vara föremål för kontroll, och ny teknik innebär att upplevda normöverträdelser lättare kan uppmärksammas och tillrätta- visas. Denna praktik kan emellertid svårligen utvärderas eller vägledas av samtida politisk filosofi, eftersom disciplinen i allmänhet betraktar rättvisa i första hand som en egenskap hos samhällets institutioner, snarare än en egenskap hos enskilda personer. Denna avhandling inom normativ politisk filosofi syftar därför till att avhjälpa disciplinens begränsningar, och bidra till en bättre förståelse av vad rättvisan kräver av individer, och varför. Dess fyra vägledande frågor – vem som bör bidra till rättvisan och varför, samt vad ett bidrag är och hur en plikt att bidra bör upprätthållas – ger struktur åt en filosofisk undersökning som utvecklar och försvarar slutsatsen att individer har en plikt att bidra till ett rättvist samhälle, och att rätt sorts informella och decentraliserade sanktioner kan vara ett lämpligt sätt att upprätthålla denna plikt. Idén om en plikt att bidra är allmänt förekommande politiskt, och prin- cipen om att ”Den som inte vill arbeta ska heller inte äta” har förfäktats av såväl Lenin som aposteln Paulus. Moderna välfärdsstater har i samma anda under de senaste decennierna utvecklats mot att göra rätten för individer att ta del av välfärdstjänster villkorad av att de arbetar, söker arbete, eller studerar. Idén är dock inte tillräckligt väl utredd filosofiskt, eftersom det inom politisk filosofi ofta antas att individer endast har en plikt att skapa och stödja rättvisa institutioner. Positionen som utmejslas i denna avhandling skiljer sig såväl från politisk praktik som den filosofiska mittfåran. Den skiljer sig från den förra genom att förkasta idén om att individers rätt att ta del av samhällets produktion är helt och hållet avhängig att de faktiskt bidrar produktivt. Och den skiljer sig från den senare genom att förkasta

236 Sammanfattning på svenska begränsningen som ett institutionellt rättvisefokus innebär, och istället för- svara idén om att individers vardagliga val och handlingar också bör leva upp till vissa rättviseprinciper. Tre rättvisegrunder för en plikt att bidra diskuteras i avhandlingen. Den första är baserad på jämlikhet och säger, i korthet, att individer har en plikt att bidra till att frambringa en jämlik, och därmed rättvis, fördelning av nyttigheter. Den andra är baserad på reciprocitet och säger, i korthet, att individer som gagnas av andras bidrag har en plikt att återgälda detta genom att själva bidra. Den tredje är baserad på idén om bördodelning, och säger, i korthet, att eftersom rättvisan kräver att alla har tillgång till en viss uppsättning nyttigheter, bör bördan att producera dessa fördelas på ett rättvist sätt, och att individer har en plikt att göra sin del av detta socialt nödvändiga arbete. Avhandlingens första, svagare, tes, är att vardera av dessa tre aspekter av rättvisan kan förklara en motsvarande individuell rätt- viseplikt. Så länge vi accepterar att någon av de tre grunderna fångar en aspekt av rättviseidealet så bör vi acceptera att det finns en rättviseplikt som kräver att individer bidrar, grundad i denna aspekt. Denna slutsats kan accepteras även av dem som förkastar avhandlingens andra, starkare, tes, vilken säger att alla tre aspekter är viktiga delar av rättvisan. Givet att rättvisa kräver att individer främjar såväl jämlikhet och reciprocitet som bördodelning, kan de tre grunderna kombineras till en så kallad hybridposition, som är mer attraktiv än de alternativa positioner som bara utgår från en av grunderna. Hybridpositionen rättfärdigar en tvådelad plikt att bidra. Till att börja med har alla en plikt att bidra till att säkerställa att alla får det som de på rättvisegrunder är tillbörliga. Om, och när, detta har uppnåtts, har alla en förpliktelse att bidra till att gagna andra, givet att de själva har gagnats av andras bidrag. Individer agerar alltså orättvist om de vägrar bidra till det socialt nödvändiga arbete som krävs för att säkerställa det första målet, eller om de inte återgäldar andras bidrag utöver denna grundnivå. Men hybridpositionen lämnar samtidigt utrymme för individer att avsäga sig ytterligare förmåner bortom grundnivån, och de kan därmed frigöra sig själva från förpliktelsen att fortsätta bidra. Avhandlingen beskriver och försvarar också idén om att ett socialt etos – ett decentraliserat och informellt sanktionssystem – är ett möjligt och attraktivt sätt att säkerställa att individer följer plikten att bidra. Det skulle likna det sätt på vilket normer redan upprätthålls informellt i alla sam-

237 Sammanfattning på svenska hällen, och avhandlingen argumenterar för att det inte skulle vara frihets- inskränkande på samma sätt som ett centraliserat och formellt sanktionssystem skulle vara. Detta sammanfattar huvuddragen i avhandlingens argumentation. En mer detaljerad redogörelse för varje kapitel finns nedan.

Kapitel 1 Det inledande kapitlet sammanfattar avhandlingens argumentation, och introducerar de vägledande frågor som sammanfattats ovan. Kapitlet ger också en översikt av den litteratur som skrivits om idén om en plikt att bidra, och relaterar den position som försvaras till John Rawls inflytelserika teori om rättvisa, samt G. A. Cohens omfattande kritik mot densamma. Avhandlingens syn på rättvisa diskuteras utförligt, bland annat genom att introducera två distinktioner som är centrala i avhandlingens analys av jämlikhets-, reciprocitets- och bördodelningsperspektiven. Den första distinktionen är mellan utfallsbaserad respektive processfokuserad rättvisa. Processfokuserad rättvisa betraktar rättvisa som en egenskap hos sociala procedurer, inklusive samhällelig gemenskap och samarbete. Enligt detta perspektiv är individuella rättviseplikter grundade i individers skyldighet att respektera formerna för samarbetet, oavsett vilket utfall som faktiskt frambringas. Utfallsbaserad rättvisa ser istället rättvisa som en egenskap hos resultatet av sådana processer, såsom de fördelningar av nyttigheter som följer av det samhälleliga samarbetet. Enligt detta perspektiv har såle- des individuella rättviseplikter sin grund i en skyldighet att frambringa rättvisa fördelningar. En andra central distinktion är mellan komparativ och icke-komparativ rättvisa. Den förra positionen menar att vad människor har rätt till på rätt- visegrunder bör fastslås genom att titta på vad andra har, vilket är fallet om vi till exempel kräver att alla bör ha lika mycket av en viss nyttighet. Icke- komparativ rättvisa besvarar istället frågan i absoluta termer, genom att till exempel fastslå något som alla har rätt till oavsett vad andra får. Dessa distinktioner utgör stommen i avhandlingens analytiska ramverk. Kapitel 1 redogör också för de metodologiska antaganden som ligger till grund för undersökningen, och det antagande om moralisk värdepluralism som innebär att den plikt som försvaras är av ett slags pro tanto-karaktär. Det innebär, i korthet, att rättvisa antas vara blott ett av många viktiga värden, vilka kan komma att väga tyngre än rättvisehänsyn. Även om det är viktigt att individer bidrar till rättvisan kan det således hända att plikten

238 Sammanfattning på svenska trumfas av andra värden i vissa situationer. Plikten är alltså inte allomfat- tande och utan undantag, och avhandlingen har inte anspråk på att besvara vad individer till syvende och sist bör göra i olika situationer. Dess bidrag är istället en bättre förståelse av en av faktorerna som måste ingå i det resonemang som kan besvara denna praktiska fråga.

Kapitel 2 Det andra kapitlet utreder frågan om vem som bör bidra till rättvisan, och bemöter en möjlig invändning som skulle kunna underminera hela projektet, nämligen argumentet att det bör finnas ett slags arbetsdelning mellan vad institutioner respektive individer bör göra. Detta är en allmänt ve- dertagen position hos många av dem som tagit intryck av John Rawls rätt- viseteori, och den innebär att rättviseprinciper företrädesvis reglerar institutioner, och endast i andra hand och indirekt vad individer bör göra. Det finns, menar bland andra Rawls, naturliga rättviseplikter för individer att till exempel skapa, stödja och upprätthålla rättvisa institutioner. Men rättviseprinciperna han försvarar är i första hand tänkta att tillämpas på dessa institutioner. Individers dagliga handlingar bör därför förstås som endast indirekt bundna av rättvisekrav: så länge individer respekterar rätt- visa institutioner är de i praktiken fria att handla som de vill. Denna ar- betsdelningsidé är inte kompatibel med de individuella rättviseplikter avhandlingen försvarar, och behöver därför bemötas innan projektet kan fortskrida. Kapitlet identifierar och kritiserar tre grunder på vilka arbetsdelnings- idén kan rättfärdigas. Den första grunden är metodologisk och säger att vi behöver fastslå vad rättvisan kräver av institutioner innan vi kan fastslå vad den kräver av individer. Denna position förkastas relativt omgående i kapitlet, eftersom den inte kan utesluta att förhållandet är det omvända – det vill säga att individuella rättviseplikter måste identifieras för att kunna fast- slå vilka krav rättvisan ställer på institutioner. Den andra grunden har stöd i antagandet att samhällets grundläggande institutioner – i jämförelse med individers agerande – har mycket djupare och mer omfattande konsekvenser för hur rättvist ett samhälle är. Institut- ioner har därtill en unik förmåga att avhjälpa orättvisor. Denna grund kri- tiseras dock för att förbise att individuella handlingar visst kan ha omfattande konsekvenser för rättvisan. Ett exempel som diskuteras är hur individers vardagliga handlingar kan understödja eller underminera sociala normer som i sin tur verkar begränsande på vilka möjligheter individer har i livet.

239 Sammanfattning på svenska

Den tredje möjliga grunden för idén om arbetsdelning invänder mot den höga kostnad för individer som individuella rättviseplikter medför. Individer som ständigt är tvungna att främja rättvisan är till exempel oför- mögna att eftersträva vissa moraliska värden som bara de kan realisera, såsom vänskap. Även om detta är en viktig poäng är den dock otillräcklig för att rättfärdiga en kategorisk arbetsdelning där individer skulle vara be- friade från rättvisekrav som inte innebär en orimlig uppoffring. Slutsatsen av detta kapitel är således att idén om arbetsdelning inte kan rättfärdigas och att individuella rättviseplikter därmed inte kan avfärdas. Individer bör istället ha rättviseaspekter i åtanke när de, till exempel, upp- rätthåller eller underminerar sociala normer, när de konsumerar olika slags varor och tjänster, och när de fattar beslut om vad de ska göra med sin produktiva förmåga. Resten av avhandlingen är avgränsad till att fokusera på den sista frågan, den om produktiva bidrag till samhället.

Kapitel 3 Det tredje kapitlet undersöker jämlikhet som en möjlig grund för en plikt att bidra. Specifikt granskar kapitlet G. A. Cohens position att rättvisa krä- ver en jämlik fördelning och att individer därför agerar orättvist om de skulle kräva ojämlikhetsskapande incitament, som högre lön eller lägre skatt, för att producera mer. Cohen menar att egalitär rättvisa kräver att de bidrar ändå. Detta är kanske den mest inflytelserika positionen inom debatten kring individuella rättviseplikter, men många verkar ha förbisett ett uppenbart problem för Cohens position: Även om jämlikhetsidealet kan fördöma kravet på ojämlikhetsskapande incitament, kan det rimligtvis inte förklara varför individer bör göra större bidrag. Problemet beror på Cohens syn på rättvisa, som i och med att den likställer rättvisa med jäm- lika utfall är helt komparativ. Om det enda som spelar roll är att varje individ har lika mycket som andra individer är Cohen oförmögen att fö- respråka en jämlik fördelning där alla är på en absolut högre nivå framför en jämlik fördelning där alla är på en absolut lägre nivå. Det finns därmed inte heller goda jämlikhetsbaserade skäl att kräva att individer ska bidra till att förverkliga den högre absoluta nivån. Kapitlet utreder olika sätt att undvika detta problem, och föreslår till slut att det går att härleda en princip om mänskligt blomstrande ur Cohens sammantagna filosofiska position, vilken kan grunda en pluralistisk plikt att bidra som kräver att individer bidrar till att främja mänskligt blomstrande, på ett sätt som inte leder till ojämlikhet. Slutsatsen är således att Cohens jämlikhetsbaserade svar på frågan om varför individer bör bidra är

240 Sammanfattning på svenska otillräckligt, och måste kompletteras med en ytterligare princip av det slag som den som identifierats.

Kapitel 4 Detta kapitel fortsätter att besvara frågan om varför individer bör bidra genom att analysera ett antal reciprocitets- respektive bördobaserade perspektiv som förekommer i litteraturen. Kapitlet ger också en del av svaret till frågan om vad ett bidrag är, genom att föreslå att det innefattar att tillhandahålla en nyttighet eller tjänst som andra behöver eller vill ha. Sam- mantaget kan alla bidrag i en ekonomi aggregeras till vad som kallas den samhälleliga produktionen. Kapitlet föreslår också att denna produktion kan delas in i socialt nödvändigt arbete respektive socialt överskott. Det förra är det arbete som krävs för att upprätthålla ett samhälle över tid och säkerställa de normativa mål som samhället satt upp. Det senare skapas av det arbete som sker efter att dessa mål har uppnåtts. Distinktionen spelar en avgörande roll i hybridpositionen som försvaras i kapitlet, men avhandlingen försvarar inte en särskild uppfattning om var gränsen mellan nöd- vändigt och överskottsarbete går, eftersom det beror på ytterligare frågor om rättvisa som inte behöver besvaras för att argumentationen ska kunna fortskrida. Reciprocitetsbaserade försvar av en plikt att bidra, som till exempel Stu- art Whites och Lawrence Beckers teorier, säger, i korthet, att den som har gagnats av andras bidrag har en plikt att återgälda dem, samt att rätten att gagnas av andras bidrag är villkorad av att själv bidra till att gagna andra. Detta är vid första anblick en attraktiv position, och den verkar ha brett politiskt stöd. Samtidigt verkar det onekligen så att själva förmågan att bidra är ojämlikt fördelad, och att vissa med lätthet kan producera större bidrag än andra. Analysen i detta kapitel visar att rent reciprocitetsbaserade perspektiv inte kan ta detta i beaktande, eftersom de är procedurfokuserade och komparativa. Det innebär att de tvingas säga att människor som inte kan bidra bör utestängas från den samhälleliga produktionen. Sådana teorier kan inte heller säga att individer agerar orättvist när de lämnar samarbetet och därmed avsvär sig plikten att bidra –– även om detta innebär att de kvarvarande medborgarna får bära en ökad börda av att säkerställa att alla får det de på rättvisegrunder är tillbörliga. Bördobaserade perspektiv som Cécile Fabres och Lucas Stanczyks teorier fokuserar istället på dessa bördor, och antar att det finns en viss upp- sättning nyttigheter och tjänster som alla är tillbörliga på rättvisegrunder.

241 Sammanfattning på svenska

Sådana perspektiv motiverar således en individuell rättviseplikt med hän- visning till att alla måste dra sitt strå till stacken när det gäller att säkerställa detta. Deras brist består dock i att de inte kan uttala sig om hur det sociala överskottet bör fördelas om, och när, det socialt nödvändiga arbetet har utförts. Bördobaserade perspektiv kan till exempel inte fördöma fripassa- gerare som inte bidrar till det sociala överskottet men ändå drar nytta av fördelarna det skapar. Bristerna i bägge perspektiven kan emellertid avhjälpas genom att kom- binera dem till den hybridposition som redogjorts för inledningsvis. Ge- nom att tillämpa reciprocitetsöverväganden på det sociala överskottet, och bördobaserade överväganden på det socialt nödvändiga arbetet, kan vi dra nytta av perspektivens styrkor men släcka ut deras respektive brister: Alla individer har alltså en ovillkorad bördobaserad plikt att bidra till att säker- ställa att alla får det som de är tillbörliga på rättvisegrunder. Om, och när, detta har uppnåtts, har alla en villkorad reciprocitetsbaserad förpliktelse att bidra till att gagna andra, givet att de själva har gagnats av andras bidrag. Denna tvådelade struktur gör att hybridpositionen kan fördöma individers agerande som orättvist om de vägrar att bidra till det socialt nödvändiga arbetet, men lämnar också utrymme för dem att avsäga sig socialt överskott och därmed bli fria från ytterligare förpliktelser.

Kapitel 5 Frågan om vad ett bidrag är fortsätter att besvaras i kapitel 5, vilket utreder hur vi kan gå till väga för att värdera olika bidrag. Även om individer accepterar att de bör bidra, behöver de veta hur och vad de ska bidra med. En vanlig lösning på detta problem är att förlita sig på marknadsmekan- ismer, till exempel genom att anta att människor utför ett mer värdefullt arbete ju högre lön de har. Detta antagande grundar sig i idén om att priser, inklusive priset på arbete, är ett resultat av utbud och efterfrågan, och att de därmed fångar vad människor i allmänhet värdesätter. Att koordi- nera arbete genom marknadspriser skulle, enligt denna tanke, leda till att människor kan maximera sina bidrag genom att maximera sin lön. Kapitlet kritiserar den så kallade marknadslösningens underliggande premisser. Till att börja med är det inte alltid fallet att marknadsmekan- ismer ger korrekta indikationer på vad som faktiskt efterfrågas. Om inte jämlik köpkraft råder kommer till exempel välbeställdas preferenser väga tyngre, och om inte externaliteter korrigeras är faktiska priser missvisande. Förespråkare av marknadslösningen, såsom Joseph Carens, kan erkänna dessa tillkortakommande och försvara en idealiserad form av marknader,

242 Sammanfattning på svenska men det innebär att de också drar nytta av implicita normativa antaganden om vad ett rättvist utfall är, vilka inte kan sägas ha sin grund enbart i mark- nadsmekanismer. Den fortsatta kritiska analysen visar att marknader inte alltid kan sägas identifiera vad som anses vara socialt värdefullt. Exempelvis bör knappast värdet hos vissa beroendeframkallande varor, och tjänster som tillfredsstäl- ler moraliskt förkastliga preferenser, anses reducerbart till vad människor är villiga att betala för dem. Marknader har dessutom svårt att registrera värdet hos tjänster som saknar ett pris, såsom oavlönat hushålls- och om- vårdnadsarbete. Givet att vi inte vill förneka att sådant arbete har ett socialt värde, och att vi inte vill kommodifiera det genom att förvandla privata relationer till marknadsrelationer, är alltså en ansenlig del av den samhäl- leliga produktionen bortom marknadslösningens räckvidd. Marknadslösningen skulle alltså vara både missvisande och otillräcklig om den tillämpades i en värld som vår, och att basera produktiva beslut på potentiell lön skulle vara en dålig beslutsmekanism för individer. Denna slutsats underminerar emellertid inte det motsvarande så kallade riktig- hetskriteriet för vad individer bör göra: Även om vi saknar en felfri mek- anism för att avgöra hur vi ska agera i en given situation innebär det inte att det saknas ett rätt svar på frågan. Plikten att bidra undermineras alltså inte av faktumet att vi inte alltid vet hur vi ska göra för att handla i enlighet med den. Lärdomen av kapitlet är att frågan om hur väl individer lever upp till plikten att bidra måste ta detta i beaktande och att vi i många fall hellre bör fria än fälla den som till synes inte bidrar tillräckligt. Vilket pris en vara eller tjänst betingar på marknaden kan alltså endast i ljuset av en mängd förbehåll ingå i hur vi värderar olika bidrag.

Kapitel 6 Kapitlet fortsätter att utreda frågan om hur plikten att bidra bör upprätt- hållas och utvecklar och försvarar idén om att ett etos är centralt i detta. Etos förstås ofta som ett deskriptivt begrepp, synonymt med värdegrund eller de grundläggande principerna i en grupp eller ett samhälle. Hos G. A. Cohen och i den efterföljande debatten används begreppet emellertid också som en del av en förklaring till varför individer agerar som de gör. Kapitlet syftar till att klargöra hur det kan tänkas gå till när ett etos påver- kar hur individer agerar, samt att utvärdera möjligheterna att förlita sig på ett etos för att upprätthålla en plikt att bidra. Etosbaserad motivation kan förstås som intern eller extern. Enligt den förra uppfattningen existerar ett visst etos i en grupp när de flesta av dess

243 Sammanfattning på svenska medlemmar har internaliserat och handlar utifrån en viss princip. Enligt den senare uppfattningen existerar ett visst etos i en grupp när de flesta av dess medlemmar upprätthåller ett decentraliserat och informellt system av sociala sanktioner som ökar efterlevnaden av en viss princip. Distinktionen återspeglar de interna respektive externa drivkrafter som kan sägas förklara moraliskt beteende: antingen gör vi det rätta eftersom vi tror att det är rätt, eller för att vi tar i beaktande vilka positiva och negativa sanktioner som vårt beteende medför. Med stöd av samtida socialpsykologisk och filosofisk forskning kring sociala normer argumenterar kapitlet för att sociala sanktionssystem inte bara är oundvikliga utan också attraktiva sätt att upp- rätthålla normer, samt den individuella rättviseplikt som försvaras i avhandlingen. En möjlig spänning mellan målet om att nå rättvisa samhällen och ide- alet att människor ska ha rätt avsikter diskuteras också: Om vi förlitar oss på externa sociala sanktioner kan det undergräva människors genuina ”moraliska motivation”. Den lösning som föreslås är att vi bör förstå rätt- visa som förenligt med att människor är externt motiverade – och till exempel handlar rättvist för att undvika att bli kritiserade av andra – så länge de är internt motiverade av rättvisa att acceptera det sociala sanktionssy- stemet som sådant. Kapitlet bemöter också invändningen att etoset skulle innebära orimliga inskränkningar av individers frihet. Etoset kontrasteras mot de omfattande repressalier som normbrytande individer nuförtiden kan möta på nätet, samt det så kallade sociala kreditsystem som just nu håller på att upprättas i Kina. Till skillnad från dessa sanktionssystem skulle etoset vara både decentraliserat och informellt, och det skulle alltså inte finnas en central da- tabas med överträdelser. Inte heller skulle sanktionerna mot individer ut- mätas av statliga institutioner, eller det stora antalet människor som ofta deltar i drev på nätet. Givet de problem med att avgöra om en specifik individ bidrar som diskuterats i kapitel 5, bör alltså det sociala etoset inte innefatta för kraftiga sanktioner, och det kan snarast jämföras med de informella sätt som individer redan upprätthåller normer i alla samhällen.

Kapitel 7 Det avslutande kapitel 7 sammanfattar avhandlingen, bemöter invänd- ningar, resonerar kring implikationer, samt nämner några möjliga områ- den som bör utredas ytterligare. Kapitlet bemöter invändningar som har att göra med att den position som utvecklats och försvarats ställer omöjliga, alternativt orimliga, krav på

244 Sammanfattning på svenska individer, att plikten som försvaras egentligen inte är en rättviseplikt, samt att positionen är för vag, i och med att plikten är av pro tanto-karaktär. I korthet går svaren på invändningarna ut på att ytterligare förtydliga varför plikten inte skulle medföra orimligt höga kostnader för individer, och att diskutera hur vissa grundläggande antaganden om rättvisans natur innebär att avhandlingen kan undvika kritiken. Kapitlet diskuterar också vilka slags överväganden som skulle behöva göras för att nå slutsatser om specifika handlingar och praktiker, och huruvida de är förenliga med rättvisans krav eller ej. Avhandlingen kan till exempel visa bristerna hos många existerande krav på att individer arbetar eller söker arbete för att få ta del av vissa välfärdstjänster. Dess analytiska ramverk kan dock inte ensamt avgöra om till exempel individer som flyttar utomlands sviker sin plikt att bidra, och inte heller huruvida de kan göra sig fria från rättviseplikten genom att skänka sin förmögenhet till rättvise- främjande åtgärder. Avhandlingen kan emellertid bidra till det praktiska resonemang som behöver föras att besvara sådana frågor. Avslutningsvis diskuteras hur de avgränsningar och förenklingar som har gjorts i avhandlingen leder till obesvarade frågor som bör utredas i fortsatt forskning, till exempel kring hur ett socialt etos kan och bör upp- rätthållas, samt hur vi bör hantera situationer där endast vissa agerar i enlighet med plikten att bidra.

245

Doktorsdisputationer (filosofie doktorsgrad)

1. Tage Lindbom (1938) Den svenska fackföreningsrörelsens uppkomst och tidigare historia 1872-1900. 2. Lars Frykholm (1942) Studier över artikel 48 i Weimarförfattningen. 3. Jörgen Westerståhl (1945) Svensk fackföreningsrörelse. 4. Hans Thorelli (1954) The Federal Antitrust Policy. 5. Bruno Kalnins (1956) Der Sowjetische Propagandastaat. 6. Åke Thulstrup (1957) Aggressioner och allianser. Huvuddragen i europeisk storpo- litik 1935-39. 7. Lars Sköld (1958) Kandidatnomineringen vid andrakammarval. 8. Rune Tersman (1959) Statsmakterna och de statliga aktiebolagen. 9. Jurij Boris (1960) The Russian Communist Party and the Sovietization of the Ukraine. 10. Per Sundberg (1961) Ministärerna Bildt och Åkerhielm. En studie i den svenska parlamentarismens förgårdar. 11. Gunnar Wallin (1961) Valrörelser och valresultat. Andrakammarvalen i Sverige 1866-1884. 12. Göran Lindahl (1962) Uruguay’s New Path: A Study in Politics during the First Colegiado, 1919-33. 13. Elmar Nyman (1963) Indragningsmakt och tryckfrihet 1785-1810. 14. Tomas Hammar (1964) Sverige åt svenskarna. Invandringspolitik, utlänningskon- troll och asylrätt 1900-1932. 15. Krister Wahlbäck (1964) Finlandsfrågan i svensk politik 1937-1940. 16. Torsten Landelius (1965) Workers, Employers and Governments: A Comparative Study of Delegations and Groups at the International Labour Conference 1919- 1964. 17. Kjell Goldmann (1971) International Norms and War Between States: Three Stud- ies in International Politics. 18. Daniel Tarschys (1972) Beyond the State: The Future Polity in Classical and Soviet Marxism. 19. Harald Hamrin (1975) Between Bolshevism and Revisionism: The Italian Com- munist Party 1944-1947. 20. Birger Hagård (1976) Nils Wohlin. Konservativ centerpolitiker. 21. Gunnar Hellström (1976) Jordbrukspolitik i industrisamhället med tyngdpunkt på 1920- och 30-talen.

Stockholm Studies in Politics ISSN 0346-6620 (De med * utmärkta avhandlingarna är doktorsavhandlingar, som av skilda skäl ej ingår i Stockholm Studies in Politics)

1. Thomas G Hart (1971) The Dynamics of Revolution: A Cybernetic Theory of the Dynamics of Modern Social Revolution with a Study of Ideological Change and Organizational Dynamics in the Chinese Revolution. 9903705557 2. Sören Häggroth (1972) Den kommunala beslutsprocessen vid fysisk planering. 9903658125 3. Gunnar Sjöstedt (1973) OECD-samarbetet: Funktioner och effekter. 9905287434 4. Yngve Myrman (1973) Maktkampen på arbetsmarknaden 1905-1907. En studie av de ickesocialistiska arbetarna som faktor i arbetsgivarpolitiken. 9900827953 * Rolf Ejvegård (1973) Landstingsförbundet. Organisation, beslutsfattande, för- hållande till staten. (Grafisk Reproduktion Tryckeri AB). 5. Lars-Erik Klason (1974) Kommunalförbund och demokrati. En studie av kommunikationsprocessen i kommunalförbund. 9900795474 6. Magnus Isberg, Anders Wettergren, Jan Wibble & Björn Wittrock (1974) Partierna inför väljarna. Svensk valpropaganda 1960-1966. (Allmänna förla- get) 91-38-01936-1 7. Bengt Owe Birgersson (1975) Kommunen som serviceproducent. Kommunal service och serviceattityder i 36 svenska kommuner. 9901646588 8. G Roger Wall (1975) The Dynamics of Polarization. An Inquiry into the Pro- cess of Bipolarization in the International System and its Regions, 1946-1970. 990168627X 9. James Walch (1976) Faction and Front: Party Systems in South India. (Young Asia Publications: New Delhi) 9901135281 10. Victor Pestoff (1977) Voluntary Associations and Nordic Party Systems. A Study of Overlapping Memberships and Cross-Pressures in Finland, Norway and Sweden. 9901232996 * Chimelu S. Chime (1977) Integration and Politics Among African States. Lim- itations and horizons of mid-term theorizing. (Scandinavian Institute of African Studies). 91-7106-103-7 * Katarina Brodin (1977) Studiet av utrikespolitiska doktriner. (SSLP/Försvarsdepartementet). * Lars Thunell (1977) Political Risks in International Business: Investment Be- havior of Multinational Corporations (Praeger Publishers: New York). 11. Harriet Lundblad (1979) Delegerad beslutanderätt inom kommunal social- vård. (Liber) 9138-048909-4 12. Roland Björsne (1979) Populism och ekopolitik. Utvecklandet av en ekopoli- tisk ideologi i Norge och dess relationer till ett mångtydigt populismbegrepp. 91-7146-039-X

13. Anders Mellbourn (1979) Byråkratins ansikten. Rolluppfattningar hos svenska högre statstjänstemän. (Liber) 91-38-04850-7 14. Henry Bäck (1979) Den utrikespolitiska dagordningen. Makt, protest och in- ternationella frågor i svensk politik 1965-1973. 91-7146-065-9. 15. Rune Premfors (1980) The Politics of Higher Education in a Comparative Perspective: France, Sweden, United Kingdom. 91-7146-071-3 16. Sahin Alpay (1980) Turkar i Stockholm. En studie av invandrare, politik och samhälle. (Liber) 91-38-05635-6 17. Diane Sainsbury (1980) Swedish Democratic Ideology and Electoral Politics 1944-1948: A Study of Functions of Party Ideology. (Almqvist & Wiksell In- ternational) 91-22-00424-6 18. Roger Ko-Chi Tung (1981) Exit-Voice Catastrophes: Dilemma between Mi- gration and Participation. 91-7146-160-4 19. Stig Munknäs (1981) Statlig eller kommunal skola? En studie av centrali- serings- och decentraliseringsproblem inom svensk skolförvaltning. 9902487424 20. Bo Lindensjö (1981) Högskolereformen. En studie i offentlig reformstrategi. 91-7146-184-1 21. Claes Linde (1982) Departement och verk. Om synen på den centrala statsför- valtningen och dess uppdelning i en förändrad offentlig sektor. 91-7146-406-9 * Bernt Öhman (1982) Löntagarna och kapitaltillväxten. Solidarisk lönepolitik och löntagarfonder. (Jernströms Offsettryck AB) 91-38-07152-5 22. Stefan Swärd (1984) Varför Sverige fick fri abort. Ett studium av en policy- process. 91-7146420-4 23. Bo Malmsten (1984) Bostadsbyggande i plan och verklighet. Planering och ge- nomförande av kommunal bostadsförsörjning. (Statens råd för byggnadsforsk- ning 869:1984) 91-540-4139-2. 24. Bertil Nygren (1984) Fredlig samexistens: klasskamp, fred och samarbete. Sov- jetunionens detente-doktrin. (Utrikespolitiska institutet) 91-7182-576-2 25. Jan Hallenberg (1984) Foreign Policy Change: United States' Foreign Policy toward the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China 1961-1980. 91-7146-428-X 26. Jan Wallenberg (1985) Några effektivitetsproblem i statlig byråkrati. (Student- litteratur) 9144-23401-5 27. Maud Eduards (1985) Samarbete i Maghreb. Om regionalt samarbete mellan Marocko, Algeriet, Tunisien och Libyen 1962-1984. 91-7146-438-7 28. Ishtiaq Ahmed (1985) The Concept of an Islamic State: An Analysis of the Ideological Controversy in Pakistan. 91-7146-458-1 29. Michele Micheletti (1985) Organizing Interest and Organized Protest: Diffi- culties of Member Representation for the Swedish Central Organization of Salaried Employees (TCO). 917146-451-4 30. Torbjörn Larsson (1986) Regeringen och dess kansli. Samordning och byrå- krati i maktens centrum. (Studentlitteratur) 91-44-25311-7 31. Ingegerd Municio (1987) Från lag till bruk. Hemspråksreformens genomfö- rande. 91-7146471-9

32. Tuija Meisaari-Polsa (1987) Ståndpunkter i UNCTAD. En analys av general- debatterna 1964-1979.91-7146-472-7 33. Virginia Capulong-Hallenberg (1987) Philippine Foreign Policy Toward the U.S. 1972-1980: Reorientation? 91-7146-478-6 34. Hans Bergström (1987) Rivstart? Från opposition till regering. (Tidens förlag) 91-550-3315-6 35. Agneta Bladh (1987) Decentraliserad förvaltning. Tre ämbetsverk i nya roller. (Studentlitteratur) 91-44-27731-8 36. Nils-Eric Hallström (1989) Lagen om ungdomslag i beslut och genomförande. 91-7146-782-3 37. Maritta Soininen (1989) Samhällsbilder i vardande. (CEIFO) 91-87810-03-X 38. Stefan Lindström (1991) Hela nationens tacksamhet. Svensk forsknings-politik på atomenergiområdet 1945-1956. 91-7146-932-X 39. Yeu-Farn Wang (1991) China's Science and Technology Policy: 1949-1989. 91-7146-953-2. 40. Jan Hylén (1991) Fosterlandet främst? Konservatism och liberalism i höger- partiet 1904-1985. (Norstedts) 91-38-50086-8 41. Jan Johansson (1992) Det statliga kommittéväsendet. Kunskap, kontroll, kon- sensus. 91-7146969-9 42. Janina Wiktoria Dacyl (1992) Between Compassion and Realpolitik: In Search of a General Model of the Responses of Recipient Countries to Large-Scale Refugee Flows with Reference to the South-East Asian Refugee Crisis. 91-7146-007-X 43. Leo Bartonek (1992) Der Topos »Nähe« - Ernst Blochs Eintrittsstelle in die Sozialwissenschaften. Ein Beitrag zur Ontologie der modemen Gesellschaft. 91-7153-022-3 44. Jan-Gunnar Rosenblad (1992) Nation, nationalism och identitet. Sydafrika i svensk sekelskiftesdebatt. (Bokförlaget Nya Doxa) 91-88248-24-0 45. Alexa Robertson (1992) National Prisms and Perceptions of Dissent: The Eu- romissile Controversy Reflected in Opinion and the News in the UK and the FRG 1980-1983. 91-7153-070-3 46. Lars Lindström (1993) Accumulation, Regulation, and Political Struggles. Manufacturing Workers in South Korea. 91-7153-121-1 47. Göran Bergström (1993) Jämlikhet och kunskap. Debatter och reform-strate- gier i socialdemokratisk skolpolitik 1975-1990. (Symposion Graduale) 91-7139-135-5 48. Jens Bartelson (1993) A Genealogy of Sovereignty. 91-7153-140-8 49. Ingvar Hjelmqvist (1994) Relationer mellan stat och kommun. 91-7153-186-6 50. Emmanuel Obliteifio Akwetey (1994) Trade Unions and Democratisation: A Comparative Study of Zambia and Ghana. 91-7153-250-1 51. Kristina Boréus (1994) Högervåg. Nyliberalism och kampen om språket i svensk debatt 1969-1989. (Tidens förlag) 91-550-4129-9 * Steve Minett (1994) Power, Politics and Participation in the Firm (Athenaeum Press Ltd, Newcastle) 1 85628 331 3

52. Michael Karlsson (1995) Partistrategi och utrikespolitik. Interna motiveringar och dagspressens agerande i Catalina-affären 1952 och EEC-frågan 1961/62. 91-7153-346-X 53. Sun-Joon Hwang (1995) Folkrörelse eller affärsföretag. Den svenska konsum- etkooperationen 1945-1990. 91-7153-379-6 54. Ulrika Mörth (1996) Vardagsintegration - La vie quotidienne - i Europa. Sve- rige i EUREKA och EUREKA i Sverige. 91-7153-460-1 55. Claes Wahl (1996) The State of Statistics: Conceptual and Statistical Reason- ing in the Modern State 1870-1940. 91-7153-506-3 56. Peter Kjaer (1996) The Constitution of Enterprise: An Institutional History of Inter-firm Relations in Swedish Furniture Manufacturing. 91-7153-538-1 57. Eva Haldén (1997) Den Föreställda Förvaltningen. En institutionell historia om central skolförvaltning. 91-7153-578-0 58. Kristina Riegert (1998) "Nationalising" Foreign Conflict: Foreign Policy Ori- entation as a Factor in Television News Reporting. 91-7153-743-0 59. Peter Ehn (1998) Maktens administratörer. Ledande svenska statstjänstemäns och politikers syn på tjänstemannarollen i ett förändringsperspektiv. 91-7153-779-1 60. Magnus Norell (1998) Democracy and Dissent. The Case of an Israeli Peace Movement, Peace Now. 91-7153-828-3 61. Jan Lionel Sellberg (1998) Hur är samhället möjligt? Om den tidigmoderna naturrättens språkfilosofiska grunder. Brännpunkt: Samuel Pufendorf. 91-7153-825-9 62. Jan-Axel Swartling (1998) Ideologi och realitetsarbete. Om analys av makt och dominans på etnometodologisk grund. 91-7153-846-1 63. Magnus Ekengren (1998) Time and European Governance. The Empirical Value of Three Reflective Approaches. 91-7153-861-5 64. Peter Strandbrink (1999) Kunskap och politik. Teman i demokratisk teori och svensk EU-debatt. 91-7153-943-3 65. Jouni Reinikainen (1999) Right against Right. Membership and Justice in Post-Soviet Estonia. 91-7153-951-4 66. Eric Stern (1999) Crisis Decisionmaking: A Cognitive-Institutional Approach. 91-7153-9936 67. Ulf Mörkenstam (1999) Om "Lapparnes privilegier". Föreställningar om sa- miskhet i svensk samepolitik 1883-1997. 91-7265-004-4 68. Cecilia Åse (2000) Makten att se. Om kropp och kvinnlighet i lagens namn. (Liber) 91-4706080-8 69. Margreth Nordgren (2000) Läkarprofessionens feminisering. Ett köns- och maktperspektiv. 91-7265-133-4 70. Charlotte Wagnsson (2000) Russian Political Language and Public Opinion on the West, NATO and Chechnya. Securitisation Theory Reconsidered. 91-7265-135-0 71. Max M. Edling (2000) A revolution in favour of government. The American Constitution and ideas about state formation, 1787-1788. 91-7265-130-X 72. Pasquale Cricenti (2000) Mellan privilegier och fattigdom. Om italiensk demokrati och socialpolitik ur ett välfärdsstatsperspektiv. 91-7265-179-2

73. Henrik Berglund (2000) Hindu Nationalism and Democracy: A Study of the Political Theory and Practice of the Bharatiya Janata Party. 91-7265-198-9 74. Magnus Reitberger (2000) Consequences of Contingency: the Pragmatism and Politics of Richard Rorty.91-7265-199-7 75. Mike Winnerstig (2001) A World Reformed? The United States and Euro- pean Security from Reagan to Clinton.91-7265-212-8 76. Jonas Nordquist (2001) Domstolar i det svenska politiska systemet: Om demokrati, juridik och politik under 1900-talet. 91-7265-218-7 77. Kjell Engelbrekt (2001) Security Policy Reorientation in Peripheral Europe. A Perspectivist Approach. 91-7265-234-9 78. Susanna Rabow-Edling (2001) The intellectuals and the idea of the nation in Slavophile thought. 91-7265-316-7 79. Nelli Kopola (2001) The Construction of Womanhood in Algeria. Moudja- hidates, Aishah Radjul, Women as Others and Other Women. 91-7265-317-5 80. Maria Jansson (2001) Livets dubbla vedermödor. Om moderskap och arbete. 91-7265-340-X 81. Dagmar von Walden Laing (2001) HIV/AIDS in Sweden and the United Kingdom Policy Networks 1982-1992. 9-7265-342-6 82. Marika Sanne (2001) Att se till helheten. Svenska kommunalpolitiker och det demokratiska uppdraget. 91-7265-348-5 83. Bror Lyckow (2001) En fråga för väljarna? Kampen om det lokala vetot 1893- 1917. 91-7265-359-0 84. Magnus Enzell (2002) Requiem for a Constitution. Constitutionalism and Political Culture in Early 20th Century Sweden. 91-7265-395-7 85. Welat Songür (2002) Välfärdsstaten, sociala rättigheter och invandrarnas maktresurser: En jämförande studie om äldre från Mellanöstern i Stockholm, London och Berlin. 91-7265-405-8 86. Johan Lembke (2002) Defining the New Economy in Europe. A Comparative Analysis of EU Technology Infrastructure Policy, 1995-2001. 91-7265-417-1 87. Maria Wendt Höjer (2002) Rädslans politik. Våld och sexualitet i den svenska demokratin. (Liber). 91-47-06585-0 88. Håkan Karlsson (2002) Bureaucratic Politics and Weapons Acquisition: The Case of the MX ICBM Program. 91-7265-531-3 89. Andreas Duit (2002) Tragedins institutioner. Svenskt offentligt miljöskydd under trettio år. 91-7265-528-3 90. Lucas Pettersson (2002) Information och identitet. Synen på televisionens politiska roll i Sverige och EU. ISBN 91-7265-549-6 91. Magnus Jedenheim Edling (2003) The Compatibility of Effective Self-Owner- ship and Joint World Ownership. 91-7265-589-5 92. Peter Hallberg (2003) Ages of Liberty: Social Upheaval, History Writing and the New Public Sphere in Sweden, 1740-1792. 91-7265-629-8 93. Linus Hagström (2003) Enigmatic Power? Relational Power Analysis and Statecraft in Japan’s China Policy. 91-7265-628-X 94. Jacob Westberg (2003) Den nationella drömträdgården. Den stora berät- telsen om den egna nationen i svensk och brittisk Europadebatt. 91-7265- 681-6

95. Eva Erman (2003) Action and Institution – contributions to a discourse theory of human rights. 91-7265-726-X 96. Göran Sundström (2003) Stat på villovägar. Resultatstyrningens framväxt i ett historisk-institutionellt perspektiv. 91-7265-750-2 97. Ersun Kurtulus (2004) State Sovereignty. The Concept, the Referent and the Ramifications. 91-7265-754-5 98. Magdalena Kettis (2004) The Challenge of Political Risk. Exploring the Political Risk Management of Swedish Multinational Corporations. 91- 7265-842-8 99. Sofia Näsström (2004) The An-Archical State. Logics of Legitimacy in the Social Contract Tradition. 91-7265-924-6 100. Gunilla Herolf (2004) France, Germany and the United Kingdom – Co- operation in Times of Turbulence. 91-7265-797-9 101. Lena Dahlberg (2004) Welfare relationships. Voluntary organisations and local authorities supporting relatives of older people in Sweden. 91-7265- 928-9 102. Anette Gröjer (2004) Den utvärdera(n)de staten. Utvärderingens institut- ionalisering på den högre utbildningens område. 91-7265-939-4 103. Malena Britz (2004) The Europeanization of Defence Industry Policy. 91- 7265-916-5 104. Hans Agné (2004) Democracy Reconsidered. The Prospects of its Theory and Practice during Internationalisation - Britain, France, Sweden, and the EU. 91-7265-948-3 105. Henrik Enroth (2004) Political Science and the Concept of Politics. A Twen- tieth-Century Genealogy. 91-7265-967-X 106. Lisbeth Aggestam (2004) A European Foreign Policy? Role Conceptions and the Politics of Identity in Britain, France and Germany. 91-7265-964- 5 107. Catrin Andersson (2004) Tudelad trots allt – dualismens överlevnad i den svenska staten 1718-1987. 91-7265-978-5 108. Johan Lantto (2005) Konflikt eller samförstånd? Management- och mark- nadsreformers konsekvenser för den kommunala demokratin. 91-7155- 103-4 109. Daniel Helldén (2005) Demokratin utmanas. Almstriden och det politiska etablissemanget. 91-7155-136-0 110. Birgir Hermannsson (2005) Understanding Nationalism, Studies in Ice- landic Nationalism 1800-2000. 91-7155-148-4 111. Alexandra Segerberg (2006) Thinking Doing: The Politicisation of Thoughtless Action. 91-7155-179-4 112. Maria Hellman (2006) Televisual Representations of France and the UK under Globalization. 91-7155-219-7 113. Åsa Vifell (2006) Enklaver i staten. Internationalisering, demokrati och den svenska statsförvaltningen. 91-7155-243-X 114. Johnny Rodin (2006) Rethinking Russian Federalism. The Politics of In- tergovernmental Relations and Federal Reforms at the Turn of the Millen- nium. 91-7155-285-5

115. Magnus Lembke (2006) In the Lands of Oligarchs. Ethno-Politics and the Struggle for Social Justice in the Indigenous-Peasant Movements of Guate- mala and Ecuador. 91-7155-300-2 116. Lenita Freidenvall (2006), Vägen till Varannan Damernas. Om kvinnore- presentation, kvotering och kandidaturval i svensk politik 1970-2002 91- 7155-322-3 117. Arita Eriksson (2006) Europeanization and Governance in Defence Pol- icy: The Example of Sweden. 91-7155-321-5 118. Magnus Erlandsson (2007) Striderna i Rosenbad. Om trettio års försök att förändra Regeringskansliet. 978-91-7155-448-2 119. Anders Sjögren (2007) Between Militarism and Technocratic Governance: State Formation in Contemporary Uganda. 978-91-7155-430-7 120. Andreas Behnke (2007) Re-Presenting the West. NATO’s Security Dis- course After the End of the Cold War. 978-91-7155-522-9 121. Ingemar Mundebo (2008) Hur styrs staten? 978-91-7155-530-4 122. Simon Birnbaum (2008) Just Distribution. Rawlsian Liberalism and the Politics of Basic Income. 978-91-7155-570-0 123. Tove Lindén (2008) Explaining Civil Society Core Activism in Post-So- viet Latvia. 978-91-7155-585-4 124. Pelle Åberg (2008) Translating Popular Education – Civil Society Cooper- ation between Sweden and Estonia. 978-91-7155-596-0 125. Anders Nordström (2008) The Interactive Dynamics of Regulation: Ex- ploring the Council of Europe’s Monitoring of Ukraine. 978-91-7155- 616-5 126. Fredrik Doeser (2008) In Search of Security After the Collapse of the So- viet Union: Foreign Policy Change in Denmark, Finland and Sweden, 1988-1993. 978-91-7155-609-7 127. Mikael Blomdahl (2008) The Political Use of Force: Beyond National Se- curity Considerations as a Source of American Foreign Policy. 978-91- 7155-733-9 128. Jenny Cisneros Örnberg (2009) The Europeanization of Swedish Alcohol Policy. 978-91-7155-748-3 129. Sofie Bedford (2009) Islamic Activism in Azerbaijan: Repression and Mo- bilization in a Post-Soviet Context. 978-91-7155-800-8 130. Björn Harström (2009) Vad vi inte får se. 100 år av censurpolitik. 978- 91-7155-878-7 131. Monica Andersson (2009) Politik och stadsbyggande. Modernismen och byggnadslagstiftningen. 978-91-7155-944-9 132. Jenny Madestam (2009) En kompispappa och en ytlig djuping. Parti-eli- ters ambivalenta partiledarideal. 978-91-7155-962-3 133. Marja Lemne (2010) För långt från regeringen – och för nära. Expertgrup- pen ESO:s födelse, levnad och död. 978-91-7447-006-2 134. Maria Carbin (2010) Mellan tystnad och tal – flickor och hedersvåld i svensk offentlig politik. 978-91-7447-037-6 135. Sofie Tornhill (2010) Capital Visions. The Politics of Transnational Pro- duction in Nicaragua. 978-91-7447-052-9

136. Barbara Kunz (2010) Kind words, cruise missiles and everything in between. A neoclassical realist study of the use of power resources in U.S. policies towards Poland, Ukraine and Belarus 1989–2008. 978-91-7447-148-9 137. Eva Hansson (2011) Growth without Democracy. Challenges to Authoritari- anism in Vietnam. 978-91-7447-199-1 138. Anna Ullström (2011) Styrning bakom kulisserna. Regeringskansliets politiska staber och regeringens styrningskapacitet. 978-91-7447-235-6 139. Karl Gustafsson (2011) Narratives and Bilateral Relations: Rethinking the 'History Issue' in Sino-Japanese Relations. 978-91-7447-305-6 140. Svend Dahl (2011) Efter folkrörelsepartiet. Om aktivism och politisk föränd- ring i tre svenska riksdagspartier. 978-91-7447-357-5 141. Emelie Lilliefeldt (2011) European Party Politics and Gender: Configuring Gender Balanced Parliamentary Presence. 978-91-7447-379-7 142. Andreas Johansson (2011) Dissenting Democrats. Nation and Democracy in the Republic of Moldova. 978-91-7447-406-0 143. Ola Svenonius (2011) Sensitising Urban Transport Security: Surveillance and Policing in Berlin, Stockholm, and Warsaw. 978-91-7447-390-2 144. Katharina Tollin (2011) Sida vid sida - en studie av jämställdhetspolitikens genealogi 1971-2006. 978-91-7389-898-0 145. Niklas Bremberg (2012) Exploring the Dynamics of Security Community- Building in the post-Cold War Era: Spain, Morocco and the European Union. 978-91-7447-463-3 146. Pär Daléus (2012) Politisk ledarskapsstil: Om interaktionen mellan personlig- het och institutioner i utövandet av det svenska statsministerämbetet. 978-91- 7447-535-7 147. Linda Ekström (2012) Jämställdhet – för männens, arbetarklassens och effektivitetens skull? – En diskursiv policystudie av jämställdhetsarbete i mas- kulina miljöer. 978-91-7447-327-8 148. Lily Stroubouli Lanefelt (2012) Multiculturalism, Liberalism and the Burden of Assimilation. 978-91-7447-597-5 149. Mats Wärn (2012) A Lebanese Vanguard for the Islamic Revolution: Hezbol- lah's combined strategy of accommodation and resistance. 978-91-7447-604- 0 150. Constanza Vera-Larrucea (2013) Citizenship by Citizens: First Generation Nationals with Turkish Ancestry on Lived Citizenship in Paris and Stock- holm. 978-91-7447-636-1 151. Göran von Sydow (2013) Politicizing Europe: Patterns of Party-Based Oppo- sition to European Integration. 978-91-7447-666-8 152. Andreas Nordang Uhre (2013) On Transnational: Actor Participation in Global Environmental Governance. 978-91-7447-709-2 153. Cajsa Niemann (2013) Villkorat förtroende. Normer och rollförväntningar i relationen mellan politiker och tjänstemän i Regeringskansliet. 978-91-7447- 776-4 154. Idris Ahmedi (2013) The Remaking of American Strategy toward Iran and Iraq: Outline of a Theory of Foreign Policy Change. 978-91-7447-813-6 155. Mikiko Eto (2014) Women and Politics in Japan: A Combined Analysis of Representation and Participation. 978-91-7447-833-4 156. Monica Svantesson (2014) Threat Construction inside Bureaucracy: A Bour- dieusian Study of the European Commission and the Framing of Irregular Im- migration 1974-2009. 978-91-7447-853-2

157. Magnus Lundgren (2014) International organizations as peacemakers: The evolution and effectiveness of supranational instruments to end civil war. 978- 91-7447-950-8 158. Andreas Gottardis (2014) Reason and Utopia. Reconsidering the concept of Emancipation in Critical Theory. 978-91-7649-016-7 159. Matilda Valman (2014) Three faces of HELCOM - institution, organization, policy producer. 978-91-7649-033-4 160. Max Waltman (2014) The Politics of Legal Challenges to Pornography: Can- ada, Sweden, and the United States. 978-91-7649-047-1 161. Mikael Olsson (2015) Austrian Economics as Political Philosophy. 978-91- 7649-062-4 162. Matilde Millares (2015) Att välja välfärd. Politiska berättelser om valfrihet. 978-91-7649-082-2 163. Maria-Therese Gustafsson (2015) Beyond Conflict and Conciliation: The Implications of different forms of Corporate-Community Relations in the Pe- ruvian Mining Industry. 978-91-7649-125-6 164. Henrik Angerbrandt (2015) Placing Conflict: Religion and Politics in Kaduna State, Nigeria 978-91-7649-233-8 165. Per-Anders Svärd (2015) Problem Animals: A Critical Genealogy of Animal Cruelty and Animal Welfare in Swedish Politics 1844–1944 978-91-7649- 234-5 166. Helena Tinnerholm Ljungberg (2015) Omöjliga familjen. Ideologi och fan- tasi i svensk reproduktionspolitik 978-91-7649-231-4 167. Elín Hafsteínsdottir (2015) The Art of Making Democratic Trouble: Four Art Events and Radical Democratic Theory 978-91-7649-232-1 168. Björn Jerdén (2016) Waiting for the rising power: China’s rise in East Asia and the evolution of great power politics 978-91-7649-394-6 169. Martin Westergren (2016) The Political Legitimacy of Global Governance Institutions: A Justice-Based Account 978-91-7649-521-6 170. Björn Ottosson (2017) A Cacophony of Voices: A Neoclassical Realist study of United States Strategy toward Central Asia and Southern Caucasus 1991– 2006 978-91-7649-626-8 171. Livia Johannesson (2017) In Courts We Trust: Administrative Justice in Swe- dish Migration Courts 978-91-7649-694-7 172. Karin Gavelin (2018) The Terms of Involvement: A study of attempts to reform civil society’s role in public decision making in Sweden 987-91-7797- 165-8 173. Åse Lidbeck (2018) Allianser och Illusioner: Socialdemokratin och konsumt- ionsbeskattningen 978-91-7797-203-7 174. Alba Mohedano Roldán (2018) Equality and Participation: Distribution of Outcomes in Participatory for Managing Natural Resources 978-91-7797- 296-9 175. Anneli Gustafsson (2018) Riksdagsdebatt iscensatt: Ett feministiskt teatralt perspektiv på subjektskonstruerande makt i det demokratiska samtalet 978-91- 7797-280-8

176. Jasmina Nedevska Törnqvist (2018) Why Care About Future People's Envi- ronment? Approaches to Non-Identity in Contractualism and Natural Law 978-91-7797-400-0 177. Christofer Lindgren (2018) De små medlens betydelse: Om meningsskap- ande, mångtydighet och styrning i offentlig förvaltning 978-91-7797-448-2 178. Faradj Koliev (2018) Naming and Shaming: The politics and effectiveness of social pressure in the ILO 978-91-7797-460-4 179. Max Fonseca (2019) Your Treatment, My Treat? On Lifestyle-Related Ill Health and Reasonable Responsibilitarianism 978-91-7797-530-4 180. Tua Sandman (2019) The dis/appearances of violence: When a 'peace-loving' state uses force 978-91-7797-512-0 181. Helena Hede Skagerlind (2019) Governing Development: The Millennium Development Goals and Gender Policy Change in Sub-Saharan Africa 978- 91-7797-604-2 182. Tarek Oraby (2019) A Darwinian Theory of International Conflict 978-91- 7797-811-4 183. Johanna von Bahr (2020) International organizations and children’s rights: norm adoption, pressure tactics and state compliance 978-91-7797-962-3 184. Christina Alnevall (2020) Women’s Discursive Representation. Women as Political Representatives, Mother and Victims of Men’s Violence in the Mexi- can Parliament 978-91-7797-966-1 185. Hedvig Ördén (2020) Securing Judgement: Rethinking Security and Online Information Threats 978-91-7797-937-1 186. Magna Robertsson (2020) Personligt mod. Om krigsdekorationer som mjuk normstyrning under insatsen i Afghanistan åren 2008-2012. 978-91-7911- 034-5 187. Karim Zakhour (2020) While We Wait: Democratization, State and Citizen- ship among Young Men in Tunisia’s Interior Regions 978-91-7911-106-9 188. Gustav Ramström (2020) The Case for Causal Individualism in Social Sci- ence 978-91-7911-232-5 189. Magnus Christiansson (2020) Defence transformation in Sweden: The strate- gic governance of pivoting projects 2000–2010 (Santérus Förlag) 978-91- 7335-058-7 190. Markus Furendal (2020) Do Your Bit, Claim Your Share: Justice, Ethos, and the Individual Duty to Contribute 978-91-7911-304-9

Markus Furendal ORCID iD: 0000-0002-2378-750X

ISBN 978-91-7911-304-9 ISSN 0346-6620

Department of Political Science

Doctoral Thesis in Political Science at Stockholm University, Sweden 2020