There has recently been much debate about the idea of levying a tax on particular transactions on international financial markets. Economists have argued about how much revenue such an international financial transaction tax would raise and they disagree about what effects it would have on trade volumes, financial stability, and overall growth. Politicians have argued about the feasibility of introducing such a tax internationally and they disagree on its adequacy as a policy response to the current financial and economic crisis. (...) This article contributes to the debate about international financial transaction taxation by bringing the perspective of political philosophy to bear on the politicians’ and economists’ arguments about policy. I shall outline a framework for thinking about justice in finance, and defend the idea of an international financial transaction tax as an instrument for making the international financial system more just. (shrink)

Economic theory teaches that it is in every country’s interest to trade. Trade is a voluntary activity among consenting parties. On this view, considerations of justice have little bearing on trade, and political philosophers concerned with global justice should stay largely silent on trade. According to a very different view that has recently gained prominence, international trade can only occur before the background of an international market reliance practice shaped by states. Trade is a shared activity among states, and all (...) participating states have in principle equal claims to gains from trade. Trade then becomes a central topic for political philosophers. Both views are problematic. A third view about the role of trade in a theory of global justice is then presented, which gives pride of place to a notion of exploitation. The other two views should be abandoned. (shrink)

Nobody has offered such a comprehensive philosophical approach to trade. Nonetheless, James's approach does not succeed. First, we explore James's constructivist method, which does less work than he suggests. The second topic is James's take on the different ‘grounds’ of justice. We explore the shortcomings of approaches that focus exclusively on trade. Our third topic is why James thinks trade is such a ground. The fourth topic is how James argues for his proposed ‘structural equity.’ This proposal remains under-argued. Our (...) fifth topic is to explore why structural equity would generate several specific principles. Finally, we discuss James's notion of autarky. Autarky sets the benchmark for James's ideas about how to divide gains of trade. We doubt that it can do so. (shrink)

This paper offers a new version of a historically influential, yet today unpopular, neglected, and on the whole insufficiently developed argument for socialism: socialism makes it possible for people to really act together. This idea of socialist action, combining the claims that there is a particularly valuable form of joint action and that socialism is about making such action possible, played an important role in the history of the labor movement, going back to the early Marx and running through various (...) strands of socialist thought. I shall argue that socialist action should be seen as central to the socialist project, its critique of capitalism, and the institutional alternatives envisaged by it. (shrink)

Some political philosophers believe that equality emerges as a moral concern where and because people coerce each other. I shall argue that they are wrong. The idea of coercion as a trigger of equality is neither as plausible nor as powerful as it may initially appear. Those who rely on the idea that coercion is among the conditions that give rise to equality as a moral demand face a threefold challenge. They will have to succeed in jointly (a) offering a (...) convincing account of the wrongness of coercion, (b) rendering cogent the idea that the demand of equality arises in response to the moral problem of coercion, and (c) identifying some types of interaction as relevantly coercive. This challenge, I believe, cannot be met. More precisely, I argue that two important accounts of coercion fail to meet it. (shrink)

John Rawls famously claims that ‘justice is the first virtue of social institutions’. On one of its readings, this remark seems to suggest that social institutions are essential for obligations of justice to arise. The spirit of this interpretation has recently sparked a new debate about the grounds of justice. What are the conditions that generate principles of distributive justice? I am interested in a specific version of this question. What conditions generate egalitarian principles of distributive justice and give rise (...) to equality as a demand of justice? My paper focuses on relationalist answers to this question. Advocates of relationalism assume that ‘principles of distributive justice have a relational basis’, in the sense that ‘practice mediated relations in which individuals stand condition the content, scope and justification of those principles’. To say that principles of justice are ‘based’ on and ‘conditioned’ by practice mediated relations is ambiguous. I will here be concerned with advocates of what I call the relationalist requirement , viz. positions which assume that ‘practice mediated relations’ constitute a necessary existence condition for principles of egalitarian distributive justice. Relationalists who endorse this view come in different varieties. My focus is on relationalists that view social and political institutions as the relevant ‘practice mediated relation’. The question at stake, then, is this: Are institutionally mediated relations a necessary condition for equality to arise as a demand of justice? Strong relationalists of the institutionalist cast, call them advocates of the institutionalist requirement , differ in important respects. They argue about what set of institutions is foundationally significant, and they disagree on why only that institutional relation gives rise to egalitarian obligations of justice. My paper engages two ways of arguing for the institutionalist requirement : Julius’s framing argument and Andrea Sangiovanni’s reciprocity argument . The issue at stake are the grounds of egalitarian justice and I will argue that the institutionalist requirement is mistaken. It is not the case that egalitarian obligations of distributive justice arise only between and solely in virtue of individuals sharing a common institution. (shrink)

Just institutions have claims on us. There are two reasons for thinking that such claims are warranted. First, one may believe that we are under a natural duty of justice to support and further just institutions. If one believes that it matters whether institutions are just, one also has a reason, almost as a matter of consistency, to support and further just institutions. Second, one may believe that by enjoying the benefits brought about by cooperation through just institutions, one incurs (...) an obligation to support these institutions. Those who accept and enjoy the benefits brought about by cooperation through a just scheme are under an obligation of fairness to reciprocate. But what happens to these reasons to support and comply with an institution if the scheme of cooperation is less than fully just? There is hardly a real-world institution, policy, or scheme of social cooperation that would qualify as fully just. However, questions about obligations of fairness and duties of justice under conditions of injustice have hitherto suffered relative neglect. I shall outline an overall framework for thinking about these questions by asking what the victims of injustice owe to moderately unjust institutions. (shrink)

Some contractualist egalitarians try to accommodate a concern for numbers by embracing a pluralist strategy. They incorporate the belief that the number of people affected matters for what distribution one ought to bring about by arguing that their primary contractualist concern for justifiability to each may be outweighed by aggregative considerations. The present contribution offers two arguments against such a pluralist strategy. First, I argue that advo- cates of the pluralist strategy are forced to abandon the rationale behind the criterion (...) of universal acceptability. Second, I show that pluralist contractualists will be unable to avoid the dreaded conclusion that originally motivated their contractualism. Ultimately, these arguments matter for the nature of egalitarian- ism. They should give those in search of sound distributive principles a reason to make sense of their egalitarian commitment in a non-contractualist way. If a sound set of distributive principles includes comparative and relational princi- ples, while contractualist egalitarianism does not lend itself to being pluralistically combined with non-individualist principles, telic egalitarianism may after all be part of the truth in distributive ethics. (shrink)