Global Justice According to Roemer: Three Interpretations

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Global Justice according to Roemer: Three Interpretations Philippe Van Parijs Chaire Hoover d’éthique économique et sociale, Université catholique de Louvain & Department of Philosophy, Harvard University Outline of a paper to be presented at the conference Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. A Conference in Honor of Professor John Roemer’s 60th birthday UMass at Amherst, May 6-7, 2005 What would a just world would look like? John Roemer gives some clues in his critique of the “unequal exchange” approach (Roemer 1983) and in his case for restrictive immigration policy based on a global “difference principle (Roemer 2005). But he also successively developed two general normative approaches, one culminating in his General Theory of Exploitation and Class (1982), the other one in his Equality of Opportunity (1998). Both can be expanded to formulate principles of global justice. What would a just world be like if it were characterized by the absence of Roemerian exploitation? What would it be like if it were characterized by Roemerian equality of opportunity? Would these two just worlds differ from one another? Is either of these conceptions consistent with Roemer’s explicit treatment of international issues? Whether this makes one, two, three of four distinct views, which of them is correct — if any? References Roemer, John E. 1982. A General Theory of Exploitation and Class, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Roemer, John E. 1983. "Unequal exchange, labor migration and international capital flows: a theoretical synthesis", in Marxism, the Soviet Economy and Central Planning. Essays in honor of Alexander Erlich (P. Desai ed.), Cambridge (Mass.): M.I.T. Press, 34-60. Roemer, John E. 1998. Equality of Opportunity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Roemer, John E. 2005. “The Global Welfare Economics of Immigration”, Yale University, Working Paper, 25p..

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