•5•
Why the fantasies of the pauperization of the affluent that seem to be invoked in some minds whenever transfers of wealth are mentioned have little substance is indicated in the preceding chapter. It would not be possible, and it is not necessary in order to fulfill subsistence rights, to transfer so much wealth and income from the currently affluent to the currently deprived that today’s affluent will be reduced to a level only marginally better than subsistence. That already partly answers this chapter’s question. Nevertheless, since no calculation of the costs of fulfilling subsistence rights universally can be precise, one cannot rule out the possibility that those with the duties to aid the deprived will suffer some decline in the quality of their lives as a result of making the required transfers. Certainly the edge might be taken off their affluence.
Suppose that the transfers of income, wealth, and resources needed to aid those who have been deprived of subsistence would cause at least an undeniable slight decline in the quality of life for those who are the sources of the transfers. Would this decline give those with the subsistence duties some cause to complain or even some basis to deny that they actually bear the duties? In general, there is no reason why the performance of duties, especially duties correlative to basic rights, should cost the bearers of the duties nothing. But, as the broader population objection complains, it is possible for the costs to be unreasonably high, particularly when large numbers of people have the kind of rights in question.1 And if the magnitude of alleged duties is indefinite and open-ended, no one can be assured that what are said to be duties are not unacceptably excessive demands. The suspicion that any account of duties put forward is unreasonable must remain until some limit upon the duties is specified in the form of guidelines for the assignment of duties to specific bearers.2 The previous chapter, after all, deals only in aggregates. One wants to know how the aggregate burden is distributed and how much of it any given kind of individual is expected to bear.
Unfortunately for those of us who would like to move promptly from theory to practice—at least to some general guidelines for practice—not even a general account of basic rights, a general account of the correlative duties, and a short list of specific basic rights would enable us to generate a very long list of specific positive guidelines for U.S. government policy. What is already before us will provide some guidelines, because it is clear merely from these general accounts that, for example, in the case of every right the duty to avoid deprivation (I) must be universal and therefore applies to every individual and institution, including corporations, covered by U.S. policies.
The allocation of duties to avoid the deprivation of subsistence, then, is no problem. The duty is universal. Schemes, whether “assistance” or commercial, governmental or private, short-range or long-range, that leave anyone less able to provide for subsistence, whether through absolute or relative declines, must be changed to respect subsistence rights, whatever aggregate miracles they may be achieving or whatever benefits they are expected to bestow upon the future poor. No excuse is adequate for depriving any person of subsistence, except the extraordinary situation in which someone else’s subsistence cannot possibly be provided at any price by any other means.
Many deprivations, as noted in chapter 2, are systemic effects of the interaction of many factors no one or two of which can non-arbitrarily be singled out as the cause of the deprivation. What a transnational corporation is doing has its effect in part because of the effects of what the national government is doing, which has its effects in part because of the effects of what foreign governments are doing, etc., ad infinitum. This complexity feeds the temptation, also already mentioned, to reason that since the deprivations are the responsibility of practically everyone, they are the responsibility of no one in particular, least of all oneself. No one needs to change until after everyone else changes, it seems.3 But where the systemic deprivations are also essential and systematic, that is, where the deprivations have been part of the economic strategy chosen by the government, the mere duty to avoid deprivation (I) already requires the government to abandon its cruel strategy of threatening the survival of its own people for a more decent strategy.4 And presumably the responsibility for seeing that as much overall social planning as is needed (however much or little that turns out in fact to be) is done, also falls partly upon national governments, given the current organization of the world. This includes some responsibility for duty II-2, the duty to protect rights by designing (with the participation of the intended beneficiaries) institutions that avoid deprivations of rights.5 Duty II-1 is now also conventionally left to national—and, to some extent, lower level—governments.
Accordingly, however systemic and complex the sources of deprivations are, and regardless of whether the deprivations are essential or accidental, it now is considered ultimately the business of national governments to sort out all matters of avoidance and protection or see to it that they all get sorted out, with the participation of their people. I can think of no reason why anyone owes life, fortune, sacred honor, loyalty, or much else to a comprehensive political institution that cannot arrange to refrain from and to prevent deprivations of security, subsistence, participation, freedom of movement, and the substance of any other basic rights. National governments normally have rather grand pretensions concerning the functions they serve. Preventing deprivations of rights, as well as refraining from them, would seem fairly minimal.6
Although interesting questions could be raised about this conventional allocation of both duties to protect, II-1 and II-2, I think it is more important to concentrate in this chapter and the next upon the controversial question of how to allocate the duties to aid that are correlative to subsistence rights—most specifically, how to allocate the duty to aid the victims of failures in the performance of duties I and II, namely duty III-2.7 The articulation of principles to guide the assignment of duty III-2 for subsistence would add an additional layer to our analysis of basic rights and bring us one step closer to guidelines relevant to policy in a disputed area.8
DUTIES TO AID: THE PRIORITY PRINCIPLE
How much sacrifice can reasonably be expected from one person for the sake of another, even for the sake of honoring the other’s rights, is one of the most fundamental questions in morality, and no full or general answer will be presented here. The suggestion that can be made for subsistence duty III-2 is that the general kinds of transfers that are respectively obligatory, allowed, and forbidden are as follows.
As the figure indicates, only three types of transfers are required—and those only as necessary: the second only if the first is inadequate and the third only if the second is inadequate—and only three types are prohibited. With regard to the other ten types, one is at liberty, as far as the theory of rights is concerned, to do as one pleases or as one believes to be required by his or her own individual moral ideals. One is required to sacrifice, as necessary, anything but one’s basic rights in order to honor the basic rights of others. As indicated in chapter 4, I believe that in fact it is most unlikely that anyone would need to sacrifice anything other than preferences, to which one has no right of satisfaction and which are of no cultural value, in order to honor everyone’s basic rights, provided everyone with the duty to make some sacrifice of preferences does so.9 But I believe too that in principle one could be required to sacrifice the enjoyment of cultural enrichments and even non-basic rights if, after everyone who ought to sacrifice preferences had done so, people still remained deprived of basic rights. No evidence suggests, however, that anything even approximating the sacrifice of all preferences is actually needed in order to aid all who are deprived of basic rights.
A requirement that someone sacrifice the enjoyment of his or her own basic rights in order that someone else’s basic rights be enjoyed would, obviously, be a degrading inequality. No such transfer could possibly be required. Perhaps this transfer (see block 4 of the figure) ought to be prohibited, as are transfers (see blocks 8, 12, and 16) that would frustrate the basic rights of the source of the transfer for the sake of honoring something less than a basic right for the recipient. The reason for judging the sacrifice of one’s own basic rights for the basic rights of someone else to be permissible, not prohibited, is to leave open the possibility of heroism. Although people cannot be expected to surrender their basic rights, surely they are at liberty to do so, if they choose, and we might consider a knowing and willing sacrifice of this magnitude admirable and heroic. Where food was absolutely scarce and not adequate for everyone, no one could be required not to claim the food that was his or her right. But someone might heroically choose not to make the claim so that another person could have that share.
REQUIRED, PERMITTED, & PROHIBITED TRANSFERS ACCORDING TO THE PRIORITY PRINCIPLE
The sacrifices represented by blocks 8, 12, and 16 might conceivably also be considered heroic and argued to be permissible, and even praiseworthy. The sacrifice of basic rights for non-basic rights (block 8) is perhaps unclear, but the sacrifices of basic rights for goods to which there is no right (blocks 12 and 16) seem to be exchanges of so much for so little as to be quite irrational and deserving of prohibition. This same is true, less strongly, of a surrender of basic rights for non-basic rights. One would be concerned that any person who was willing to make any of these three sacrifices either did not fully comprehend the stakes or suffered from an inadequte sense of self-respect, consequently needing some protection from his or her own sacrificial impulses. For these same reasons, even the transfer represented by block 15 seems highly dubious.
An alternative view would be that the prohibition of the sacrifices represented by blocks 8, 12, and 16 (or 15) is excessively paternalistic and that people who knowingly wish to sacrifice even their basic rights for lesser goods should be at liberty to do so. This view seems to me to attach an inordinate value to a kind of harmful (to the agent) liberty that is difficult to distinguish from irrational whims (like rushing into a flaming house to save your favorite bedroom slippers), but I would be willing to be persuaded that every type of transfer should be simply permissible, except those represented by the first three blocks.10
The case for requiring, in order and only as necessary, the transfers indicated by blocks 1, 2, and 3 will be presented in the next section. Here it is necessary only to emphasize that fairness would evidently require that no one be compelled to sacrifice more than the satisfaction of preferences until everyone else who ought to have done so has been compelled, if necessary, to sacrifice preferences.11 Coercion would be justified in bringing about universal compliance with the requirement for the transfers represented by block 1 in order to obviate any need for anyone to make transfers represented by block 2. Otherwise one is allowing a severe inequality among bearers of the same duty.
What may seem a superfluous category, cultural enrichment, is included between rights and preferences because I believe that actions that not only satisfy preferences but also contribute in an abiding fashion to civilization are morally superior to the mere satisfaction of preferences. A full argument for this judgment would be a digression here, however. Since in both rows and columns the respective assignments for preference satisfaction, cultural enrichment, and non-basic rights are always the same, people who do not share this judgment may ignore it with no effect on the main argument by treating cultural enrichment as one more kind of preference satisfaction or of non-basic rights, as they see fit.
If one does believe that cultural enhancement is an important and distinguishable value, an additional wrinkle appears in the argument. Assuming that the development and preservation of rational morality is one form of cultural enrichment, one could contribute to civilization by insisting upon respect for the basic rights of others and, presumably even more, by contributing to the development of policies and institutions that respect rights. If so, it is not entirely clear what it would mean to sacrifice cultural enrichment for oneself in order to promote the basic rights of others, in that the acts promoting the rights might be a reaffirmation, if not a refinement, of some of the best elements in one’s own culture. I shall not pursue the involutions of this argument, however, because, on such evidence as that cited earlier from Leontief, it does not seem realistic to think that the transfers needed to satisfy subsistence rights universally would require even so much as the sacrifice of all non-enriching satisfactions. Since it is unlikely that it would be necessary to move outside block 1, extensive discussion of block 2 seems pointless.
Underlying the figure and my explanation of it, then, is a fundamental principle for the assignment of the responsibility to perform duties that I will call the principle of priority for rights, or, for short, the priority principle:
1. the fulfillment of basic rights takes priority over all other activity, including the fulfillment of one’s own non-basic rights;12
2. the fulfillment of non-basic rights takes priority over all other activity except the fulfillment of basic rights, including the enrichment of culture and the satisfaction of one’s own preferences; and
3. the enrichment of culture takes priority over the satisfaction of preferences in ways that do not enrich culture.
Before we look at the reasons for the priority principle, we might glance briefly at one more of its implications, which settles an inevitable problem. How much any given individual or nation would in fact need to sacrifice in order for those deprived of subsistence in fact to enjoy the subsistence to which they have rights clearly depends upon the extent to which the rest of whoever ought to make some sacrifices make the sacrifices they ought to make. And appeals for voluntary compliance with one’s duty to aid others to enjoy subsistence can be unfair, almost to the point of mild cruelty, to the responsive. For reliance on voluntary contribution allows the unresponsive totally to escape their fair share of the effort and encourages the responsive to do even more than their share. Obviously this sort of voluntarism also courts the danger of a shortfall in the amount of transfers needed and is for this reason also unfair to those currently deprived of their rights. Therefore, for the sake of fairness both to those deprived of their subsistence rights and to those who would be willing voluntarily to perform their subsistence duties to assist, the performance of these duties ought to be a legal obligation. People ought to tax themselves for the purpose, if indeed they have duties to aid those deprived of subsistence. Otherwise some people might be sacrificing more than preferences—in terms of the figure, they would be moving from block 1 to block 2—because other people had avoided sacrificing even preferences. This would violate section (3) of the priority principle. The coercion of the less responsive people is needed in order to avoid unfairness to the more responsive people.13
DEPRIVATION AND DEGRADATION
In chapter 4 I deferred the question of from whom transfers ought to come by temporarily labeling those with the primary duties to aid as “the affluent.” I can now be somewhat more specific about the answer to this difficult question. If the priority of transfers drawn from the priority principle and expressed in the figure is acceptable, one still vague but somewhat more specific indication of who counts as affluent is: people are affluent in proportion to the absolute amount of their consumption that consists of the satisfaction of preferences, to the satisfaction of which there is no right, rather than consisting of the enjoyment of basic rights and non-basic rights (or, I would add, of activities enriching culture as well as satisfying preferences). The affluent are those who spend absolutely large amounts in the satisfaction of mere preferences (their own or other people’s). It is they upon whom duties to aid in the fulfillment of basic rights fall first, other things being equal.
Now, why? Or, more to the point, why me, assuming I am among the affluent? Why am I required to sacrifice my preferences, if necessary, in order that someone else may enjoy his or her basic rights? Why accept the priority principle? A number of quite different arguments can be given.14 One of the strongest, I think, rests upon the still deeper and broader principle that degrading inequalities ought to be avoided. A refusal on the part of an affluent person to use any of the wealth at his or her command in order that others may be enabled to enjoy their basic rights would be an insistence upon the maintenance of a degree of inequality that is degrading: an inequality constituted by protected affluence and unprotected subsistence.
The assumption about inequality incorporated into this principle is only that there are types of inequality that are morally unacceptable, namely, inequalities that are degrading. This principle, which I will call the degradation prohibition, is not a strongly egalitarian principle. The principle does not mean that all inequality is unacceptable—it leaves open the possibility of justifying various sorts of inequalities. The principle means only that inequalities that are incompatible with self-respect—that are humiliating—are impermissible. Inequality is not prohibited by the principle but limited.15
It may be useful to recall as precisely as possible where we are in the overall argument of the book and what has, and has not, been established to this point. We have seen good reasons, I think, for concluding that everyone has subsistence rights or, in other words, that subsistence rights are universal. We have, second, seen that the provision of the social guarantees against standard threats that is an essential part of every moral right, or, at the very least, of every basic right, necessitates the fulfillment of all three main kinds of correlative duties. But, although everyone has a right to subsistence and every right to subsistence includes the three kinds of duties, it does not follow that toward every person with a right to subsistence, every other person bears all three kinds of duties. It does seem necessary that every person should fulfill toward everyone else the duty to avoid depriving, or that duties of avoidance (I) are universal. But none of the other duties appears to be universal, and for each of them we would need a principle for assigning responsibility.
For now I have chosen to focus on the responsibility for duty III-2, the duty to aid those deprived as a result of failures in the performance of duty I and duties II-1 and II-2. With the world in the state it is in, much is at stake in the assignment of these duties to aid the already deprived. The remaining question, then, is: given that everyone has a right to subsistence, and that every right to subsistence includes a duty to aid, who have the duties to aid? And the answer suggested is: at least the affluent, characterized as those consuming the absolutely largest amounts for the satisfaction of mere preferences (their own or other people’s).16 This is the answer dictated by the priority principle, which is itself required by the degradation prohibition. These abstract connections can also be put more concretely, as follows.
That extreme inequalities in security or subsistence are subversive of the dignity of the deprived, as well as their vitality and longevity, is readily apparent, I think, but it may be worth briefly spelling out the situation for each of these two basic rights. The conflict between self-respect and the diametrical differences in rights to liberty where some people are guaranteed liberty and some are not, will then be perfectly obvious as well, if it is not already. First, the extreme inequality created when the security of some is guaranteed and the security of others is not:
Consider what the absence from some people of the protection of physical security accorded to other people would actually mean. Some people—call them the “superiors”—are adequately protected against all violations of their physical security, but other people—call them the “inferiors”—are not protected against violations of their security. If a “superior” were to assault another “superior,” society would protect the victim (just as it would have protected the attacker if he or she had been the victim instead). If an “inferior” were to assault a “superior,” society would of course also protect the victim. But whenever the victim of assault was an “inferior”—irrespective of whether the attacker was a “superior” or another “inferior”—the victim would be provided no defense by society. The “inferior” victim would be left to fend for himself or herself. “Superiors” are protected against physical assaults against which “inferiors” receive no protection. This inequality in provision for physical well-being is so profound as to be degrading to those who are denied consideration. Such a policy would add certain humiliating insult to probable physical injury.
Although I believe that it is virtually undeniable that an inequality consisting of the presence of physical protection for some and its absence from others is insulting and degrading, it is difficult to explain why, if any further explanation is actually needed. It seems to have to do with the importance of what is at stake. The less important a consideration is, the easier it is to accept inequalities with regard to it. But with regard to physical security, a minimum of which is needed for the enjoyment of every other right, an inequality that leaves some people below the minimum is morally unacceptable. By assuming that a person’s physical security is not very important—not important enough for society to protect—the unequal policy described and the institutions embodying it are virtually implying: this person is not very important. For a person’s physical security is not separable from the person. Indeed, one of the horrors of a rape that leaves permanent psychological damage or a beating that leaves permanent brain damage is that the person himself or herself is changed by the violence. In a real sense, the person may not survive even if he or she is not killed. This is a matter, in the apt Fraser/Vance phrase, of “the integrity of the person.”17 If physical security is important enough to be the substance of a basic right, it is too important for inequalities in social guarantees for it to be morally tolerable.
The situation created by a refusal, on the part of those with more than enough resources to provide for their own subsistence, to allow transfers to those unable to provide for their subsistence is a still more extreme inequality:
To deny a helpless person material resources that would save the person’s life or vitality in order to protect material resources controlled but not needed so desperately by one or more other persons is to inflict a profound indignity—not to mention probable death—upon the person whose urgent needs are denied. For it is not merely that the person’s own preferences are to be subordinated to someone else’s preferences, nor merely that the person’s own needs are to be subordinated to someone else’s needs, but that the person’s most vital needs are to be subordinated to someone else’s preferences—by accepted social practices and institutions. For social institutions to protect one person’s capacity to satisfy wishes in addition to enjoying rights, at the cost of failing to protect another’s capacity to enjoy any rights at all, is to place the second person in so secondary a position as to be insulting. It is not tolerable to treat one human being as so inferior to another human being that what he or she needs for a normal life can be acknowledged to be less important than what someone else wants but can do well without. This inequality in provision for physical well-being is so profound as to be degrading to those who are denied consideration. Such a policy would add certain humiliating insult to probable physical harm.
As in the case of physical security, it would be difficult to explain any further why an inequality consisting of some people’s being protected in more than subsistence and other people’s not being protected even in subsistence is degrading. Once again, the fulfillment of one’s fundamental subsistence needs seems too important a matter on which to “compromise” by settling for less than one’s vital minimum, when the total resources available are adequate to provide the minimum for all with more left over for many. A full glass for me and an empty glass for you is, in any case, not exactly a compromise—a point to which we will soon return.
And it is because an inequality that consists of some people’s security being guaranteed by society and other people’s security being ignored, or of some people’s subsistence or liberty being guaranteed and other people’s being ignored, is degrading that the priority principle presented in the preceding section is the appropriate guide for the assignment of responsibility for basic duties. The only feasible and reasonable way to avoid the inequalities condemned by the degradation prohibition is to allocate responsibility according to the priority principle.
The other way to avoid inequalities in the guarantees, of course, would be to have no social guarantees for the enjoyment of the substances of basic rights for anyone. But we have already seen too much reason to acknowledge at least three basic rights to be able to deny them to most people. All we are seeing now is (1) that if basic rights are guaranteed to some, they ought to be guaranteed to all; and (2) that if they are to be guaranteed to all, the transfers required by the priority principle are the proper ones to make. Otherwise, to deprivation is added degradation.
DEPRIVATION AND FAIRNESS
As I understand things, the degradation prohibition is near the moral rock-bottom. If someone thought that the principle that one ought to avoid degrading inequalities were itself in need of being justified by some further principle that was still more fundamental, I would be hard put to add another level to the argument. Where one is unable to move deeper, one can sometimes move to the side, so to speak, and can show that the same conclusion is also supported by another principle, which is no less fundamental than the first. The convergence of equally fundamental principles can then be at least as good a reason for the conclusion as further direct support for the single principle initially appealed to might have been.
Accordingly, it may be worth noticing that degradingly extreme inequalities are also unfair. I suspect the reason these extreme inequalities are unfair is because they are so degrading. But perhaps, conversely, they are degrading because they are so unfair. Fortunately, for present purposes we need not decide about the relation between the humiliation and the unfairness, since the extreme inequality I have described turns out in any case to be very unfair as well as degrading. I will try now to show why it is also so unfair.18
A quite different way to put the thesis of this section is as follows: property laws can be morally justified only if subsistence rights are fulfilled. Social guarantees for the retention of property are unfair unless combined with social guarantees for the availability of subsistence. Throughout the world one may not simply take from others even what one genuinely needs. Conceptions of property (and of gifts) differ, and rules about property differ: it may be private, state, communal, or—usually—mixed. But whoever legally controls what, people may not just take what they need from what they do not legally control and have not received as a gift. It is possible that if the person in need asks, what is needed will be given. Still, it may not merely be seized. Stealing is as illegal under socialism as it is under capitalism and all other economic systems. Hence, this point will be a general one about property systems, not a point about any particular kind of property system.
It is often asked, taking some set of rules against stealing for granted as background, whether it is really wrong to steal a loaf of bread to feed one’s starving children. But the deeper question, as the great “consent theorists” have recognized, is: is it, or on what terms is it, fair to have such rules? For rules of property, however traditional or unconscious in origins, are subject to conscious modification and are indeed constantly undergoing judicial, legislative, and customary modification. To try to have no rules about property would be lunatic. But from the fact that the elimination of all rules of property and theft is virtually impossible, it does not follow that even the best set of rules (whatever they are) are acceptable unconditionally. It may instead be the case that in order for any insistence upon compliance with even the best set of rules concerning ownership and stealing to be fair, the rules must fulfill one or more conditions.
Under what condition, then, is it fair to have property institutions that prohibit theft even by someone who is in fear of starving, or, more likely, slowly but inexorably deteriorating from nutritional insufficiencies? The answer, I think, is: only if the same set of institutions provides guarantees that the person in question will not in fact degenerate from insufficient consumption. More generally, institutions governing the ownership and transfer of property can be fair only if possession of the commodities required for the satisfaction of subsistence needs is guaranteed to those from whom compliance with the institutions is demanded. The moral acceptability of the enforcement of property rights depends upon the enforcement of subsistence rights. Why? How do we determine that this is a requirement of fairness?
A two-step argument supports the judgment that property institutions can be fair only if subsistence needs for economic commodities are guaranteed. The first step appeals to what might be called the saints-and-heroes principle: it is not fair to expect ordinary human beings to abide by rules that only a saint or a hero could reasonably be expected to obey. Judgments about what it is reasonable to expect from ordinary people, although they are regularly made in legislation, judicial decisions, and elsewhere, are notoriously slippery. I cannot imagine myself, however, simply letting myself deteriorate and die out of respect for a set of social institutions that had actually presented me only with the choice: steal or deteriorate. In fact, it may be insulting to genuine saints to suggest that they would willingly die for such an inhumane system, an act more foolish than saintly, I would think. In any case, the demand is unfair because it is a pyschologically unrealistic candidate for service as a general rule.19
I am of course not discussing a situation in which lazy bums are declining well-paying jobs in favor of armed robbery. The situation in question is one containing no uncorrupt legal alternative to taking what is needed except doing without. Rather than displaying heroism, a decision to lay down one’s life in obedience to the rules of such a heartless system would demonstrate a lack of a healthy sense of self-respect, not to mention the absence of a normal sense of self-interest, more craven than constrained.20
Now it might be replied that the ultimate point about fairness is that it is not fair to demand something from people and provide them with nothing in return: nothing for something is clearly an unfair exchange. And the protection of property itself is something for those with property and nothing for those indefinitely without property.21 But those with no property need not be receiving nothing for something. They could be receiving all sorts of other benefits of other types in fair exchange for their compliance with the rules for the protection of property, such as protection of their bodily integrity against another kind of threat: assaults by other people in the form of murder, torture, rape, etc. In short, people could be provided security rights, but not subsistence rights, in exchange for their cooperation with property rights. This is no small benefit in exchange for not stealing, and it is not clear, according to this view, that demanding compliance with rules requiring this exchange is psychologically unrealistic or unfair. Why wouldn’t this be a reasonable compromise between the propertied and the property-less?22
But the “compromise” consists of protected affluence and unprotected subsistence. The reason for continuing to consider any such arrangement to be unfair starts from the crucial fact that the demand upon the deprived is not simply to refrain generally from stealing, but not to steal even when provided no alternative to going without the essentials of subsistence to which they have no other access. They are being asked to refrain from taking effective action in the face of a standard kind of destructive threat to their vital interests in life and bodily integrity: economic circumstances over which they have no control.
The interests that without subsistence rights are left unprotected against overwhelming economic circumstances are vital interests: health, physical vitality, physical soundness, life itself. What is unfair is to make any substantial demands of people some of whose vital interests are left unprotected against a major, common threat against which it is quite possible to protect them: it is unfair to demand of people actions the very performance of which would preclude for themselves a way of protecting a vital interest while failing to provide some other protection for that interest, when it is possible to protect it by means that do not threaten any vital interest of anyone.23 This will be called the principle of priority for vital interests over non-vital interests, or, for short, the vital-interests principle. Thus it may be perfectly fair to insist that no one ever simply take communal property, private property of others, or any property not theirs, provided institutions are available to transfer necessities to those who cannot provide for their own subsistence. But it is unreasonable to arrange human insitutions in a way that threatens vital interests when they can be arranged in a way that does not threaten vital interests.
Failure to abide by the vital-interests principle may be a kind of unfairness because it is a case of degrading inequality: not the more obvious case of treating equals unequally, but a case of treating extreme unequals equally. To protect non-vital interests by means that preclude the satisfaction of vital interests is to treat non-vital interests as if they are as important as—actually, as more important than—vital interests. On the other hand, as I mentioned earlier, this kind of inequality may be degrading because it is patently unfair. I have no clear intuitions about which is the more primitive concept. In any case, protected affluence in the face of unprotected subsistence is clearly both degrading and unfair to those who are unable to maintain life and health. For both reasons it would be wrong for the affluent to maintain their current advantages rather than to do their fair share to aid those deprived of subsistence by the past failures of social institutions.
In this short book I have generally avoided commenting in the text on other theories. But in the face of John Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness I can hardly take an opposing position on minimal economic justice, as I have in this section, without at least a very brief direct response to the Rawlsian position, which can be relied upon to have raised significant issues even when it is unacceptable.24 Many general difficulties face hypothetical consent arguments of the kind constructed by John Rawls, since they treat like products of a voluntary decision social relationships and institutions that people not only already find themselves in when they become mature enough to make rational decisions but are deeply shaped by. Nevertheless, social-contract stories can be at least a graphic way to picture some questions about what can be rationally justified. And all that I want to establish here is that Rawls does not succeed, in his own terms, in showing that it would be rational to agree to distributive principles that guarantee no floor. Subsistence rights are such a floor.
Like someone committed to the fulfillment of subsistence rights, Rawls does focus his theory upon the fate of the worst-off. No change is an improvement by Rawlsian standards of justice unless it changes for the better the position of the worst-off. But instead of providing a floor, or, to change the metaphor, a life-preserver, Rawls provides only a rope, hitching the worst-off (in a rather loose way) to all the better-off. Whenever the better-off improve themselves, the rope of justice requires that the worst-off should be pulled upward too, by at least a little. But Rawlsian theory contains no provision that everyone’s head must, for a start, be held above the surface of the water. I am reminded of Tawney’s famous metaphor about the vulnerability of Chinese peasants who were said to be like “a man standing permanently up to the neck in water, so that even a ripple might drown him.”25 The Rawlsian difference principle can be fulfilled while people continue to drown but with less and less water over their heads.26
Rawls says little about the renunciation of violence and trickery, but a critical element in agreeing to live in accord with the Rawlsian principles would be such a surrender of alternative means for trying to satisfy one’s needs, including one’s subsistence needs. I do not see how Rawls could possibly demonstrate that agreeing to be governed unresistingly by a set of institutions that do not guarantee the fulfillment of one’s subsistence needs is more rational than any other strategy, including a refusal to agree to anything. One alternative to agreement on principles of justice is to reserve to oneself the option of taking by stealth or force, if necessary, one’s vital necessities. I am saying not that this alternative is clearly more rational but only that it is not clearly less rational.27 It is Rawls who holds that unanimous agreement is possible on terms that are rational for everyone.
Or rather, he stipulates that there is to be a unanimous agreement and argues that his principles are superior to the alternatives on which unanimous agreement might be possible.28 But the stipulation that there shall be unanimous agreement begs the critical question, because to stipulate that there will be an agreement is simply to stipulate that no one has any minimum demands for which it is reasonable to hold out and refuse to be cooperative. And that is not at all clear, especially when the minimum demand might be for the fulfillment of what I am calling basic rights.29
Rawls would need to show that abandonment of all struggle aimed at fulfilling basic rights, without receiving in exchange any guarantee that even subsistence needs will be fulfilled by the institutions to which one is expected to declare loyalty, is clearly more rational in general than continuing the struggle. On what grounds this choice could be shown generally to be more rational I cannot imagine. Surely the relative wisdom of the alternative strategies would depend in part on the prospects that the struggle would succeed, which surely would vary from one situation to another, and also in part on one’s sense of dignity and whether it countenanced voluntarily settling for less than one’s most basic needs—in some cultures death in a struggle for subsistence would be considered more honorable than submissively withering, and it is not apparent why this is less rational than acceptance of a radical inequality that leaves one without physical necessities.30
Is it clearly more rational to agree that one’s fortunes may permissibly be indefinitely low, provided only that when those who are already better-off than oneself become still better-off, one’s own fortunes must improve at least slightly, rather than trying, at least where there is some prospect of success, to mobilize effective opposition to any system of institutions that does not redistribute available wealth until everyone has an adequate minimum? When people have so little to lose—indeed, have no definite absolute amount to lose—it is difficult to give them motivating reasons not to resort to violence except in the form of a greater capacity for violence that makes their own violence likely to fail. This is a formula for the kind of deprivation enforced by repression that is widely followed today, a phenomenon that Rawls himself undeniably abhors.
We have, then, two fundamental reasons that separately and together support the priority principle in its requirement that the affluent take some responsibility for the fulfillment of the subsistence duty to aid (III-2). A refusal by the affluent to shoulder this responsibility would constitute an attempt to preserve inequalities that are degrading for those deprived of subsistence and are unfair to them as well. That social institutions should be used to preserve rather than to eliminate extreme and degradingly unfair inequalities is beyond rational justification. The affluent who insist on preserving such institutions are entitled to no indignation when they find the deprived being uncooperative. For the deprived will be correct in thinking that such extreme inequalities can be backed only by might, not right.