How Association Matters for Distributive Justice

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How Association Matters for Distributive Justice

Helena de Bres

Forthcoming in The Journal of Moral Philosophy

Abstract. Under which conditions does the relation between the levels of benefit and burden held

by distinct individuals become a concern of justice? Associativists argue that principles of

comparative distributive justice apply only among those persons who share some (special) form of

association; humanists argue that some such principles apply among all human persons qua human

persons. According to the “weak associativist” account that I defend, humanism is wrong, but so

are current versions of associativism. Association is necessary if talk of comparative distributive

justice is to be apt, but no special form of it is required. Whether or not principles of comparative

distributive justice do in fact apply to an association will depend on whether or not the conditions

for legitimate enforcement of the resulting duties are satisfied, and we can expect these conditions

to be satisfied by a wide range of associative forms.

At this point in the debate over global distributive justice, most philosophers writing on the

subject endorse all of the following claims. While some principles pertaining to the distribution

of resources apply exclusively within the state, other such principles apply across state borders;

we have urgent duties to help alleviate global poverty and secure all people’s human rights,

including social and economic rights; morality requires extensive redistribution of resources from

the citizens of rich to the citizens of poor countries, along with major reform of existing

international institutions; the current global distribution of socioeconomic goods is ethically

outrageous. The extent of agreement here is significant and striking, not least because the position

on global political morality that it picks out is one that most non-philosophers would vehemently

reject. As a result, the ongoing discussions in the global justice literature can seem to external

observers like a gathering of the faithful arguing over whether the revolution will occur on a

Monday or instead a Tuesday.

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The above core of agreement notwithstanding, there does remain a widespread and deep dispute

among contemporary philosophers of global justice over the answer to the following important

question. Under which conditions, if any, does the relation between the levels of benefit and

burden held by two or more individuals become a concern of justice? Existing answers to this

question fall neatly into one of two camps. One camp claims that the individuals must share

some form of association if the concern at issue is to arise; the other camp denies that claim. This

paper aims to advance this ongoing debate. In section one I clarify the question under discussion;

in section two I provide some reasons to doubt the non-associative answer to it; in section three I

point to problems with a widely endorsed variant of the associative answer; and in section four I

offer my own version of the associative answer. My aim is not to give conclusive arguments

against either of the positions that I reject, nor to defend a fully fleshed out alternative. Instead,

the paper has a “constructively taxonomical” character. My goal is to articulate a position that

lies, in some sense, between current associative and non-associative approaches, thereby allowing

us to capture the attractions, and avoid the difficulties, of both camps. The result, I will argue, is

a novel and appealing conception of the ground of our distributive duties that has the potential to

further expand the current philosophical consensus on what global political morality demands of

us.

1. The Question

The discussion to follow assumes the importance of a distinction, standardly drawn, between

what is morally required of us and what would make the world a better place.1 Insisting on this

distinction allows us to claim that a shift from one distribution to another would be a valuable

                                                                                                               1 Even consequentialists, who think that the former ultimately reduces to the latter, can accept the significance of this distinction, provided that they are of the “indirect” type. A helpful discussion of indirect consequentialism can be found in L.W. Sumner, The Moral Foundations of Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).

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improvement, without committing ourselves to the claim that we (or our institutions) are morally

required to enact that shift. What could make such a shift morally required, rather than merely

desirable? One plausible answer holds that the shift is required if justice demands it. But that

might not be the full answer, since humanitarian considerations might also generate stringent

distributive requirements, of equal strength to those of justice.2 What is special, then, about a

stringent distributive requirement based on justice? One distinguishing feature is the way in

which justice is concerned with the satisfaction of individual persons’ claims to goods. No

specific person has a claim against us, grounded in our humanitarian duties, that we alleviate her

suffering or deprivation in particular. However, if we have duties of justice to relieve suffering or

deprivation, each of the individuals who fall within the scope of those duties does have a

legitimate complaint against us if we fail to provide that relief. A second distinctive feature of

justice concerns its relationship to justifiable enforcement. It is generally morally permissible,

and may be morally required, to compel people to comply with duties of justice against their will.

This is not generally the case with other duties, including humanitarian ones.

Many philosophers of global justice now hold that we have duties of justice, thus understood, not

only humanitarian duties, to help ensure that all persons worldwide secure sufficient resources to

attain a basic level of wellbeing or autonomy.3 Such “sufficientarian” duties fall under the more

general category of non-comparative justice, in that they identify a specific form of treatment that

                                                                                                               2 Or perhaps greater strength. As Campbell writes, if we see justice not as “a synonym for rightness, even rightness in distribution, but as having to do with a specialized range of right-making characteristics, then it is perfectly in order to regard humanity as, in certain cases, overriding justice. Sometimes it is more important to relieve distress than to be fair.” (T.D. Campbell, ‘Humanity before Justice’, British Journal of Political Science 4:1 (1974), pp. 1-16, at p.14.) 3 See, e.g.; David Miller, National Responsibility and Global Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Mathias Risse, On Global Justice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012); Gillian Brock, Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Michael Blake, ‘Distributive Justice, State Coercion and Autonomy’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 30:3 (2001), pp. 257-296.

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is due to each claim-bearing individual or group, considered in isolation.4 Duties of comparative

justice, by contrast, are concerned with the relation between the levels of benefit or burden that

distinct individuals or groups enjoy or suffer. The most familiar principle of comparative justice

is one of equality; other candidates are a principle of “inclusion” that incorporates some concern

for relative position but stops short of requiring full equality5, and a prioritarian principle that

accords extra weight to the interests of the worse off.6

The question of whether principles of comparative justice extend to all persons is much more

contentious than the question of whether principles of non-comparative justice do. In order to

answer that question, we need to have a full account of “what has to be true of any two

individuals for it to be morally appropriate to claim that principles of distributive justice apply to

them”.7 In their responses to this question, philosophers divide over the truth of the following

competing theses:

Associativism. Principles of comparative distributive justice apply only among those

persons who share some (special) form of association.8

                                                                                                               4 Other candidates for non-comparative duties of distributive justice include a duty to satisfy claims to resources based on pre-institutional desert and Rawls’ international “duty of assistance”, which requires liberal or “decent” peoples to ensure that “burdened societies” have the resources necessary to attain just or decent institutions (see John Rawls, Law of Peoples (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999). 5 See Joshua Cohen and Charles Sabel, ‘Extra Rempublicam Nulla Justitia?’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 34:2 (2006), pp. 147-175. 6 See Derek Parfit, ‘Equality and Priority’, Ratio X (1997), pp. 202-221. 7 Gilabert, From Global Poverty to Global Equality, p. 163. 8 In the standard philosophical terminology, this amounts to claiming that duties of comparative distributive justice are “associative duties”: duties the justification for which appeals directly to the existence (past or present) of some kind of relationship. The debate over the defensibility of associativism, as defined here, occurs in relative isolation from other live debates about associative duties, e.g. that over whether or not associative duties are defensible, period (see the literature on the “voluntarist objection”) or whether or not they are compatible with general duties, especially to the global poor. For examples of these other discussions, see Samuel Scheffler, Boundaries and Allegiances (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); Niko Kolodny, ‘Do Associative Duties Matter?’, Journal of Political Philosophy 10:3 (2002), pp. 250-256; Kok-Chor Tan, ‘Boundary-making and equal concern’, Metaphilosophy 36:1-2 (2005), pp. 50-67; Jonathan Seglow, ‘Associative Duties and Global Justice’, Journal of Moral Philosophy 7 (2010), pp. 54-73.

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Humanism. Some principles of comparative distributive justice apply among all human

persons qua human persons.9

The term “association”, as used here, refers broadly to a social, political or economic relationship

between two or more persons.10 Particular versions of associativism pick out particular types of

relationship as the crucial ones for distributive justice. If associativism is to be distinct from

humanism, it must exclude such abstract relationships as “being alive at the same time as” or

“being a fellow human”. So “association” should be understood to require some form of active,

intentional engagement between persons, whether direct (as in the case of face-to-face

interaction) or indirect (as when a relationship is mediated by an institution). It is possible that all

existing human persons share whatever form of association grounds comparative distributive

justice, according to a given associativist. (The relevant association could, for instance, be

“subjection to international law” or “participation in the global economy”.) The humanist’s

emphasis on human persons qua human persons distinguishes her position from one that grounds

principles of comparative distributive justice with universal reach only in this associativist way.

The above formulations of the opposing theses serve to pick out an interesting and controversial

debate, on which this paper will focus. By contrast, some philosophers have tended to construe

                                                                                                               9 According to Simon Caney’s “humanity-centered cosmopolitanism”, all persons qua persons have a claim of justice to equal opportunity for a flourishing life. (See Simon Caney, ‘Humanity, Associations and Global Justice: In Defense of Humanity-Centered Cosmopolitan Egalitarianism’, The Monist 94:4 (2011), pp. 506-534). Similarly, Pablo Gilabert’s “humanist egalitarian” theory of justice holds that “we should, to the extent that we reasonably can, pursue social orderings under which every human being has equal access to the conditions of a flourishing life.” (Gilabert, From Global Poverty to Global Equality, p. 196.) An earlier example of humanism can be found in Gregory Vlastos, ‘Justice and Equality’ in R. Brandt (ed.), Social Justice (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1962), pp. 31-73. 10 The relationship need not be current to generate duties on an associativist view: expired or abandoned associations might leave a moral residue, so to speak. (See Lea Ypi, Robert Goodin and Christian Barry, ‘Associative Duties, Global Justice, and the Colonies’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 37:2 (2009), pp. 103-135.) All mentions of association below should be understood to be prefaced with “past or present”.

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the theses too broadly, rendering one or other of them too implausible to be a genuine contender.

For instance, some formulations extend associativism to justice in general rather than distributive

justice in particular.11 This is inconsistent with the general practice of including duties to protect

human rights and to compensate for harm within the category of justice, since such duties can

clearly hold between non-associates. Other formulations extend associativism to distributive

justice in general, rather than comparative distributive justice in particular.12 But this again makes

rejecting associativism too easy: as noted above, many philosophers of global justice now claim

that duties of non-comparative distributive justice extend to all persons, associated or not. Others

have extended humanism to all principles of comparative distributive justice rather than only

some. But recent humanist accounts sensibly include an acknowledgement that some such

principles are limited in scope, due to the special nature of the benefits and burdens at issue.13

Still others have formulated both competing positions too narrowly, focusing on the sub-category

of egalitarian requirements rather than comparative ones more generally.14 Although this

reduction in scope produces no straw man, it sidelines in advance some interesting distributive

principles that ought to be part of the discussion.

2. Against Humanism

                                                                                                               11 See Rawls’ claim that there are certain “relations of men to one another which set the stage for questions of justice” (John Rawls, ‘Justice as Fairness’, Philosophical Review LXVII (1958), pp. 163-193, at p. 175) and the beginning, at least, of the passage in Nagel that starts: “Justice is something we owe through our shared institutions only to those with whom we stand in a strong political relation” (Thomas Nagel, ‘The Problem of Global Justice’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 33 (2005), pp. 113-147, at p.121). It’s clear that neither Rawls nor Nagel mean these claims literally, so I’m making a plea for clarity here, not a substantive objection. 12 See, e.g., Darrell Moellendorf, ‘Equal respect and global egalitarianism’, Social Theory and Practice 32 (2006), pp. 601-16, at p. 608-9. 13 See Gilabert, From Global Poverty to Global Equality, p. 221 and Caney, ““Humanity, Associations and Global Justice”, p. 507. 14 See Blake: “Only in the search for the justification of state coercion…does egalitarian distributive justice become relevant” (Blake, “Distributive Justice”, p. 265), and Nagel, ‘The Problem of Global Justice’, throughout.

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Is association necessary to generate duties of comparative distributive justice? In this section of

the paper, I begin my defense of the affirmative answer by arguing against humanism. Detailed

engagement with each of the arguments given for the several humanist accounts of distributive

justice present in the literature is a task much too large to attempt here. So, rather than aiming for

a refutation, this section pursues the more modest goal of undermining the initial appeal that

humanism seems to have for many people. I do that by, first, showing that a general form of

argument commonly used to support humanism fails, and, second, arguing that humanism’s

competitor, associativism, better fits our semantic intuitions. Because arguments based on

semantic intuitions are always vulnerable to a denial that the intuitions are shared or to doubts

about their significance, the force of the second point is debatable. I would be surprised if either

of the points made in this section convinced a card-carrying humanist to abandon his or her

position. But, to the extent that both points cast doubt on the naturalness of humanism for the

rest of us, they will help to clear the path for the associativist account that I develop in the

following section of the paper.

Humanists claim that it is possible for duties of comparative distributive justice to arise amongst

persons who share no form of association whatsoever. They often attempt to derive this thesis

relatively swiftly from some broadly accepted claim about value. Pablo Gilabert’s book From

Global Poverty to Global Equality provides a recent example. Gilabert argues that once we

accept “that all individual persons are ultimate units of equal moral respect and concern for

everyone” and identify “important advantages that all human beings have reason to value”, “to

say that some but not all humans are entitled to these advantages would seem, on the face of it,

morally arbitrary”. An effort to guarantee “equal access to the conditions of a flourishing life” is

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the only way “to show equal concern and respect for all”.15 This is too quick, however. There is

no direct connection between the equal worth of all persons and a moral requirement that those

persons all have equal access to important advantages. The temptation to think that there is such

a connection can be traced to a faulty inference from the claim that no person deserves to have

more advantages than another person to the claim that it is illegitimate for one person to have

more advantages than another.16 The inference fails because a person might have an advantage

for no good reason without that being a bad reason for him or her to have it. (Think of manna

falling from heaven in a world where everyone already has plenty of manna).

Another unpersuasive humanist argument derives from a claim about the value of wellbeing

rather than the value of persons. Gilabert writes, in support of extending duties of comparative

distributive justice to strangers rather than only associates:

If it is true that we should be concerned for the wellbeing of those we affect, then the

reason for being so concerned must be that the wellbeing of others imposes duties on us.

If, furthermore, such duties can also be positive, then it is utterly mysterious why we

would not have a prima facie duty to reach out for each other in order to affect each other

in ways that bolster our pursuit of wellbeing.17

This argument is inadequate for two reasons. First, however important a role wellbeing plays in

morality, it is misleading to suggest that wellbeing, by itself, “imposes duties” of justice on us. If

                                                                                                               15 Gilabert, From Global Poverty to Global Equality, p. 196. Similarly, see Vlastos’ argument in ‘Justice and Equality’ that it is the fundamental equal worth of all persons which gives rise to their rights to equal freedom and happiness. 16 This formulation of the point comes from Risse, On Global Justice, p. 83. See also Armstrong’s distinction between the “no prior claim” and “anti-influence” versions of the argument from moral arbitrariness in Chris Armstrong, ‘National Self-determination, Global Equality and Moral Arbitrariness’, The Journal of Political Philosophy (2009), pp. 1-22, at 13-15. 17 Gilabert, From Global Poverty to Global Equality, p. 178.

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it did, every time we came across an opportunity to advance the satisfaction of our favored social

welfare function, we would be duty-bound by justice to do so. The fact that very few, if any, of

us would endorse this result suggests that, if we do have duties of justice to promote the

wellbeing of associates, we need to point to moral considerations other than simply the value of

wellbeing to explain why that is so. We need to know whether or not those other considerations

hold amongst human persons qua human persons in order for Gilabert’s argument to support

humanism. Moreover, while a modified argument of roughly this type might eventually get us to

sufficientarian duties of justice with universal scope, due to the undeniable urgency of securing

basic forms of wellbeing, it would require substantial additional premises to get us to the

comparative duties with which humanists and associativists are concerned.

The weakness of the positive arguments that humanists often give for their position would be less

troubling if that position were intuitively compelling on its face. Some theses are so basic and so

obvious that arguing for them is as difficult as it is unnecessary. But the truth of humanism is not

evident in this way. To fix on the matter, imagine two groups of people living on separate islands

in complete isolation from each other: no shared institutions, no diplomacy, no trade, no wireless

connection. Assume that the two groups could transfer resources to each other - the islands are

not on separate planets - but that no such transfer, or any other form of interaction, has ever

occurred between them. Assume also that each islander has attained sufficiency, however you

understand that notion. Now take your favorite comparative principle of justice – perhaps the

Rawlsian difference principle, or a principle of equality of opportunity - and imagine applying it

so as to include all of the islanders. I find it counter-intuitive to say that failure to extend this

favored principle of yours across both islands would be unjust, whatever else we might say about

the desirability of so extending it. To me at least, the idea that duties of comparative distributive

justice hold between persons, in the absence of any past or present relationships between those

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persons, sounds straightforwardly odd.18 This by itself is simply the statement of an intuition, and

one that humanists will not share. So, in the remainder of this section, I offer a more substantive

argument that I believe explains and supports my reaction. Although I believe that many would

endorse this argument on reflection, to my knowledge it has not been formulated in quite this way

before.

On any account, justice is a complex notion: it incorporates a plurality of distinct concerns. The

first premise of my argument states that one aspect of that plurality is a distinction between

principles of distributive justice that are principles of fairness and those that are not. It doesn’t

much matter for my argument how precisely this distinction is drawn, as long as it is drawn in

some way, but one way of understanding it is the following. Principles of distributive justice in

general concern the proper allocation of benefits and burdens across individuals with competing

claims. Principles of distributive fairness require specifically that we satisfy claims to benefits

and burdens in proportion to the strength of those claims.19 Thus, a principle of justice that

requires us to ensure that all persons have their basic needs satisfied is not a principle of fairness;

a principle of justice that requires us to allocate the needed resources in accordance with the

urgency of the needs is.20

The second premise of my argument states that principles of fairness, at least, are grounded in

association.21 (We should be “associativists about fairness”). To see the plausibility of this claim,

                                                                                                               18 The earlier stipulation of the feasibility of an inter-island transfer of resources is important here. Without that stipulation, resistance to a verdict of injustice in this case could be readily accounted for by reference to the “ought implies can” principle rather than the absence of association. 19 See John Broome, Weighing Goods: Equality, Uncertainty and Time (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1991), p. 195. 20 Not all principles of fairness are principles of justice (see section 3). When they are not, principles of justice are liable to override them in cases of conflict. See Risse, On Global Justice, p. 276. 21 Note that this implies that the principle of fairness mentioned in the previous sentence does not apply to our actions towards non-associates, although a principle of efficiency arguably requires a similar course of action.

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consider the various specific forms of fairness that make up part of the substance of familiar

theories of distributive justice. The main candidates are norms of fair play, fair return, non-

exploitation and non-discrimination. Fair play requires that “if others have incurred costs in order

to produce benefits for you…you should be prepared to incur similar costs in order to produce

similar benefits” for those others.22 Fair return requires that people benefit from a joint venture in

accordance with (or, more strongly, in proportion to) their contribution to that venture. Non-

exploitation requires that we not take unfair advantage of others in the course of our interactions

with them (including the production and distribution of benefits and burdens). Non-discrimination

requires that when allocating resources across individuals, agents provide non-arbitrary

justifications for differences in treatment. Note that, since they assume past or present

engagements with others, unfair play, unfair return and exploitation are clearly impossible in the

absence of association. In such cases, there is no possibility of free riding, nothing to get back, no

way to exploit. So if any distributive unfairness obtains among non-associates, it looks like it

must derive from a violation of the norm of non-discrimination. But this suggestion is also

problematic, because a diagnosis of discrimination is difficult to motivate in the absence of

association. Who exactly is discriminating against whom when I, on my island, find myself with

30 pots of gold at birth and you, on your distant unassociated island, find yourself with 10?23 By

contrast, complaints of discrimination have a steady footing when we can point to a social,

political or economic relationship of some type in which the relevant parties are jointly involved.

In such cases, differences between the levels of benefit and burden held by distinct individuals

can be directly traced to differential treatment of those individuals by an identifiable set of agents.

Nagel expresses this idea, applied to the case of the state, as follows:

                                                                                                               22 Robert Goodin, Motivating Political Morality (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992), p. 23. 23 It might be argued that the more advantaged set of islanders are arbitrarily discriminating against the foreign islanders when they retain their goods domestically, for the use of their fellow islanders, rather than sending them overseas. But note that this sort of behavior looks very different from standardly recognized violations of the norm of non-discrimination. A mere failure to benefit does not generally constitute unfair discrimination.

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[T]here can be no possible objection to some people’s naturally enjoying immunity to

certain diseases or perfect health or sunny dispositions, even though this makes them

much better off than those who are constitutionally sickly or depressed. Better is simply

better in such cases because no inequality of treatment is implied. But once social

mechanisms enter into the causation of a benefit, its unequal distribution becomes a form

of unequal treatment by the society of its members, and the sense of unfairness makes its

appearance.24

My argument’s third and final premise claims that comparative distributive justice is always a

matter of fairness. This premise is supported by reflection on familiar comparative judgments.

For instance, when we object (if we do) to inequality within the state on grounds of justice, we

claim that it is not only unjust but unfair for some to have so much less than others. Similarly,

when we argue (if we do) that it is unjust for some member countries of the World Trade

Organization to do increasingly well out of the multilateral trading regime while others stall at a

minimal level of benefit, a complaint specifically of unfairness, not merely of injustice in general,

                                                                                                               24 Thomas Nagel, Equality and Partiality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p.107. See also Scanlon’s comments on the institutional underpinnings of fairness-based claims to “equal benefit” in his “The Diversity of Objections to Inequality” (Thomas Scanlon, The Difficulty of Tolerance: Essays in Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 202-218.

Can’t it sometimes be unfair to exclude non-associates from an association – a possible case of humanist distributive unfairness? In some cases this is so because those included and those excluded share a broader association that subsumes the one from which they are denied entry. In other cases, the specific charge of unfairness is unfounded, but exclusion can be morally criticized on the distinct ground that it undermines the basic welfare or human rights of those excluded. Associativists can accommodate both points.

One remaining worry here concerns cases of what we might call “discriminatory” exclusion. What if, for instance, against a backdrop of no association whatsoever, and in a world where all sufficientarian duties had been discharged, an association decided, for no reason other than animus, to admit only those outsiders who were white? The claim that such behavior would be wrong is compelling. But it is less obvious that it involves distributive unfairness in particular. The key wrong here does not seem to be one of an unfair distribution of benefits between white and non-white candidates for admission. Instead it is the sort of expressive wrong that is characteristic of racism: the classing of people as inferior on the basis of their group-membership, in denial of the fundamental moral equality of all persons.

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seems apt. Moreover, the arguments that philosophers give for these verdicts of injustice

standardly appeal to one or more of the norms of fairness that I distinguished above. I submit that

it is difficult to think of any principle of comparative justice (as opposed to a more general moral

principle about the value of, say, distributive equality) that is not also a principle of fairness.

To sum up, then, the argument runs as follows: (1) Only some principles of distributive justice are

principles of fairness; (2) Association is necessary to generate principles of fairness; (3) All

principles of comparative distributive justice are principles of fairness. Therefore (4)

Associativism: Principles of comparative distributive justice apply only among those persons who

share some (special) form of association.

Because this argument both is valid and generates associativism, humanists will want to reject

one or more of its premises. The second is the most likely target. According to the familiar

distinction introduced by Parfit, some egalitarians are deontic: they are concerned with relative

deprivation as an indication of morally inappropriate treatment of some by others. Others are

telic: they are fundamentally concerned with the pattern of benefits and burdens that obtains in

the world, not the way in which that pattern is produced.25 Many (all?) humanists are telic

egalitarians, and they may claim that my argument for premise two begs the question against their

view by assuming the deontic approach that they reject. This is mistaken, however. The

discussion above does construe fairness as an unavoidably deontic notion, at least on its surface.

But this deontic approach to distributive fairness is consistent with (although does not require) a

fundamentally telic approach to the ethics of distribution in general. To see this, notice that a

telic egalitarian (or prioritarian, etc.) can accept my argument about the associative nature of

principles of fairness, while also endorsing any or all of the following claims:

                                                                                                               25 See Parfit, “Equality and Priority”.

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Consequentialism. The moral rightness or wrongness of any thing (act, rule, institution,

etc.) is determined exclusively by that thing’s tendency to produce valuable states of

affairs.

Indirect consequentialism. Compliance with deontological principles (including

principles of fairness) is justified by its tendency to produce valuable states of affairs.

Axiological egalitarianism. More equal states of affairs are in one respect better than less

equal states of affairs.

Welfarist egalitarianism. More equal states of affairs tend to be better than less equal

states of affairs, because they produce more welfare.

As section one of this paper suggests, an associativist about distributive fairness can also, if she

wishes, endorse each of the following claims:

Humanitarianism. We have humanitarian duties to help eliminate extreme suffering and

deprivation, wherever it occurs.

Humanist sufficientarianism. Some principles of sufficientarian distributive justice apply

among all human persons qua human persons.26

Global associativist fairness. Some principles of distributive fairness apply among all

human persons, due to the forms(s) of association that they all share.27

                                                                                                               26 Note that, if what I have argued in this section is correct, these cannot be duties of fairness. That sounds right to me.

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In other words, as associativists, we can say all that we like about the fundamental irrelevance of

association to our distributive obligations, the moral desirability or imperative of pursuing a more

equal world, the justice of securing universal sufficiency and the unfairness of global equality,

without committing ourselves to the counter-intuitive claim that inequality (etc.) between non-

associates is unfair. I suggest that, once all of this is made clear, humanism loses much of its

appeal.28

3. Against Strong Associativism

I argued in the previous section that the compelling claims about value in which humanists often

attempt to ground their thesis do not suffice to do so and that associativism lines up better with

the way in which we standardly apply the concept of fairness. While neither of these points

refutes humanism, I believe that attention to them should substantially lessen whatever initial

appeal the position may have. But if the competing associativist position is to be convincing, this

is only half of what is required. Associativism is a general thesis: it picks out the broad family of

theories that ground all comparative principles of distributive justice in some form or other of

association. If we are to be persuaded by associativism, one substantial variant of it has to be

correct. The problem here is that the variants currently on offer incorporate significant problems.

The existing critical literature vindicates this generalization at length; a brief recap of some of the

main difficulties with the more prominent contenders will have to suffice here:

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         27 For instances of this claim, see Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979); Thomas Pogge, Realizing Rawls (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989); Darrell Moellendorf, Cosmopolitan Justice (Boulder: Westview Press, 2002). 28 It is true that restricting comparative distributive justice to associates excludes the possibility of justice-based supra-sufficientarian norms in the absence of association. Following the definition of justice given in section one, this implies that humans qua humans do not have legitimately enforceable claims to the shares specified by candidate principles of equality, inclusion or priority. Some humanists will not be willing to give up this thesis. As noted earlier, my argument is directed at those of us who are not yet firmly committed with respect to this issue.

  16  

Normative implausibility. Thomas Nagel and Michael Blake ground comparative

distributive justice in the relation of co-subjection to (and, in Nagel’s case, co-authorship

of) coercive law.29 They conclude that comparative distributive justice is an exclusively

intra-state affair. Whether or not that inference is correct30, the conclusion is inconsistent

with the overwhelmingly plausible claim that at least some principles of comparative

distributive justice apply outside or across the borders of states.31

Empirical implausibility. Charles Beitz and Thomas Pogge avoid Nagel’s and Blake’s

counter-intuitive statism by grounding comparative distributive justice at the global level

in the existence of a “global basic structure” analogous to the domestic basic structure

that Rawls highlighted within the state.32 This move involves a significant exaggeration

of the current extent and density of international economic and political integration.33

Incompleteness. Andrea Sangiovanni argues that, within the state, principles of

(egalitarian) comparative distributive justice are grounded in co-citizens’ joint

engagement in the production of “the basic conditions and guarantees necessary to

develop and act on a plan of life”.34 Although this account may provide a (set of)

sufficient condition(s) for comparative principles, it fails to support the claim about the

necessity of association for comparative distributive justice that defines associativism.35

                                                                                                               29 Nagel, ‘The Problem of Global Justice’; Blake, ‘Distributive Justice, State Coercion and Autonomy’. 30 Cohen and Sabel argue that the relation that Nagel has in mind occurs in global as well as domestic politics (‘Extra Rempublicam’, pp. 166-8). 31 See Cohen and Sabel, ‘Extra Rempublicam’, p. 170. 32 Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations; Pogge, Realizing Rawls. 33 See my [reference removed] 34 Andrea Sangiovanni, ‘Global Justice, Reciprocity and the State’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 35:1 (2005), pp. 3-39, at p. 20. 35 See Simon Caney, ‘Justice, Equality and Humanity’ (unpublished).

  17  

In the remainder of the paper I elaborate a more compelling version of associativism than these

and other existing accounts. More specifically, I will propose an answer to the key associativist

question - which forms of association are necessary to generate principles of comparative

distributive justice? – that both offers a genuinely necessary condition and is consistent with our

normative and empirical judgments about central cases.

I earlier defined “association” as a social, political or economic relationship involving some form

of active engagement (whether direct or mediated) between two or more persons. Association,

thus understood, requires actual rather than potential engagement (so you are not associated with

someone merely by virtue of the fact that you could interact with them, although you do not).

Association also requires intentional rather than accidental engagement. Whether it involves

mere coordination of behavior or a more robust form of cooperation in pursuit of individual or

shared goals, association is more demanding in this respect than mere interdependence (a

situation in which one individual’s fate depends substantially on another individual’s actions and

the same holds for the second individual in relation to the first). Finally, association requires

active engagement (so that you are not associated with someone merely by virtue of the fact that

you find yourself in proximity to him or her and form the intention not to depart).

Although my definition of association incorporates the above constraints, it remains broad and

covers a wide range of social phenomena. It will be helpful to think of these phenomena as laid

out along a continuum, running from “weak” to “strong” associations. Two key variables along

this continuum are persistence and regulative structure. Both variables can be instantiated in

degrees: associations can persist for shorter or longer periods of time and can involve thinner or

thicker systems of rules. The higher the degree to which these features are present, we can say,

the “stronger” the association. At the weak end of the continuum we have what we might call

“mere interactions”: single discrete transactions that occur between strangers who meet briefly

  18  

and then part. Moving towards the strong end we have relationships that extend over a significant

period of time and are governed by a system of mutually recognized rules, norms and

expectations. Examples include families, teams, schools, churches, firms, states, international

organizations and the global order. Some “moderate” associations exhibit one feature to a high

degree but not the other: think of a single game of cricket or a lengthy paint job on a house.

I argued in the previous section of the paper that if principles of comparative distributive justice

are to apply between two persons, those persons must be, at the very least, weakly associated with

each other. This is because comparative distributive justice is a matter of fairness, and fairness

depends on the presence of at least some form of association. If weak association (at least) is

necessary for the application of norms of distributive fairness, it is nonetheless insufficient, since

some associations, especially of the weakest sort, do very little in the way of distributing benefits

and burdens. That said, norms of distributive fairness clearly apply to many weak associations.

For instance, weak co-associates often make contracts with each other, contribute to projects that

benefit each other and engage in activities in which some can readily take advantage of others’

vulnerability. Such activities then generate duties of fair play, fair return, non-exploitation and

non-discrimination. These duties can hold even in the weakest of associations: for instance, I can

unfairly exploit your desperation even if I just meet you very occasionally to trade my gin for

your olives at the otherwise closed border between our two isolated societies.

Although, as I have just suggested, principles of distributive fairness clearly apply liberally to

weak associations, talk of distributive justice, as distinct from distributive fairness, is most

common in relation to strong associations. In particular, it is most common in relation to very

strong associations: those involving an enduring system of comprehensive societal norms that

exert a deep and pervasive impact on the lives of those who participate in them. (The state, of

course, is the prime example, although some philosophers have identified associations in global

  19  

politics that they claim have similar features). In fact, despite their important differences, I take it

that all current associativists (including those listed at the beginning of this section of the paper)

would endorse the following thesis:

Strong Associativism. Principles of comparative distributive justice apply only among

those persons who share a (special) very strong form of association.

For reasons that will become clear later in this section, I need to introduce an important

clarification here about the form of both this thesis and of the broader associativist thesis that I

introduced in section one. Notice that both can be read in two ways: as a statement of the scope of

principles of comparative distributive justice and/or as a statement of those principles’ ground.

The scope of a principle is the set of persons (or groups of persons) to whom the principle

applies. For instance, the scope of a principle of domestic distributive justice is usually

understood to be the set of citizens (and perhaps residents) of a given political community. The

ground of a principle, on the other hand, is the set of normatively significant features that make it

the case that that principle applies. For instance, associativists have provided various answers to

the question of what precisely it is about citizenship (or residency) in a state that (they allege)

generates principles of comparative distributive justice. Some associativists highlight the coercive

nature of subjection to state power, others foreground a special kind of social cooperation, others

point to the shared history and culture of the nation or people to which the state belongs, etc.36

The ground of justice is what explains the scope of justice (when paired with relevant empirical

facts). It is therefore the philosophically more interesting notion, and the one on which I intend to

focus here (although see pp. 24-26 below).

                                                                                                               36 Of course, when fully elaborated, such accounts go still deeper than this. It’s not, after all, the bare presence of the cited features that is said to give rise to concerns with relative deprivation, but instead the way in which those features impact on persons’ lives.

  20  

With that clarification in place, we can ask this: is strong associativism, understood as a thesis

about the ground, rather than simply the scope, of comparative distributive justice, correct? I will

now argue (against the bulk of the existing literature) that it is not. Although there are many

versions of strong associativism, focusing on a single (family of) version(s) will serve my

purposes here. Let’s consider, then, the widely endorsed proposal that it is the non-voluntary

nature of (certain) very strong associations that explains why principles of comparative

distributive justice (allegedly) exclusively apply within them.37 The standard argument for this

account of the ground takes the following contractualist form. Non-voluntary subjection to a set

of comprehensive societal norms involves the bending of some people’s wills by others, a prima

facie incursion on the autonomy of those so subjected. Any such incursion requires a justification

that those subjected can accept as consistent with their status as free and equal persons. This

special justificatory demand can only be met by ensuring that the distribution of benefits and

burdens produced by the social system in question satisfies certain conditions concerning relative

position.38

Critics have raised reasonable doubts about whether this type of argument is sufficient to ground

comparative distributive justice. Why, they ask, must the justification for non-voluntary

subjection to political power take the form of a guarantee of principles of comparative distributive

justice in particular, as opposed to, say, basic constitutional protections or a right to participate in

collective decisions?39 Whatever we think about this question, the more important problem for

defenders of this version of strong associativism is that the argument fails to show that the non-                                                                                                                37 A non-voluntary association is one that a person cannot leave without facing unreasonable costs. Non-voluntariness appears as one among several essential features in Moellendorf’s and Beitz’s account of the associative ground of distributive justice (see Moellendorf, ‘Equal respect and global egalitarianism’, p. 608-9, and Charles Beitz, ‘Justice in International Relations’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 4:4 (1975), pp. 360-389, at p.374). Nagel and Blake focus on the related (stronger) idea of coercion, Aaron James on the related (weaker) idea of “power in social organization” (Aaron James, ‘Power in Social Organization as the Subject of Justice’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 86 (2005), pp. 25-49). 38 See, e.g. Nagel, ‘The Problem of Global Justice’, pp. 17-18. 39 See e.g. Caney, “Humanity, Associations and Global Justice”, p. 521 and Richard Arneson, 'Do Patriotic Ties Limit Global Justice Duties?’, Journal of Ethics 9 (2005), pp. 127-50.

  21  

voluntary nature of an association is necessary to ground concerns about relative deprivation. In

fact, it seems perfectly clear that such concerns are apt within associations in which membership

and terms are both entirely voluntary. It is only fair, for instance, that hungry strangers who

cooperate in an impromptu boar hunt in the woods should be egalitarians over dinner, regardless

of the absence of any “will-bending” whatsoever between them. And notice that this counter-

example (and many others like it) holds against any version of strong associativism, since the

form of association that it involves is weak rather than very strong. The problem for strong

associativists in general is that the reasons for caring about equality, priority or inclusion within

an association appear to be already present before comprehensive and pervasive societal norms,

non-voluntary or otherwise, enter the scene.40 If so, features exclusive to strong association

appear to be superfluous when it comes to grounding principles of comparative distributive

justice.

But if features unique to very strong associations don’t ground principles of comparative

distributive justice, what does? I propose the following. The associative ground of comparative

distributive justice is just the simple fact of distributively consequential association, whether

weak or strong, voluntary or non-voluntary. This minimal form of association is present within

impromptu boar hunts as well as within states, and in both cases it constitutes the only form of

association necessary to generate justice-based concerns about the relation between individuals’

benefits and burdens. What is it precisely about distributively consequential association that

generates a fairness-based concern with relative position in the distribution of goods? One’s

answer to that question will depend both on the specific fairness principle at issue and on one’s

underlying moral theory. Consequentialists will generally claim that the appropriateness of such

                                                                                                               40 Caney and Christiano make a similar point (Caney, ‘Humanity, Associations and Global Justice’, pp. 518-520; Thomas Christiano, ‘Immigration, political community and cosmopolitanism’, San Diego Law Review 45 (2008), pp. 933-961, at pp. 948-9. However, their accounts differ from mine (elaborated in the next paragraph) in that, as humanists, they assume that fully association-independent factors ground these pre-existing comparative concerns.

  22  

concerns derives from the (perhaps complex) ways in which the relative standing of associates

impacts on their interests; non-consequentialists will point instead to the imperative of respecting

the agency and moral equality of others in our interactions with them. This more foundational

debate lies beyond the scope of the current discussion. The crucial point here is that the correct

account of the associative ground of comparative distributive justice makes no essential reference

to any particular type of association, beyond the minimal requirement of actual, intentional, active

engagement with distributive significance.

However, although this is the only associative condition that must be satisfied if concerns of

comparative distributive justice are to arise, it is not the only condition, period. There is, in fact,

an important difference between the duties of distributive fairness that arise within an impromptu

boar hunt and the duties of distributive fairness that arise within, say, the state. This difference

explains why the latter (among others), but not the former, are duties of comparative distributive

justice proper. What is it?

I propose that we take our cue here from the general characterization of justice that I gave in

section one. According to that characterization, a distinctive feature of duties of justice, as

compared to other duties, is the permissibility of enforcing them by non-voluntary means (i.e. by

means that make it the case that the enforcee has no reasonable alternative but to comply). Such

enforcement can take a variety of forms, including coercive threats as well as coercive acts, and

the employment of sanctions along with the use of physical force. As Gilabert has recently

suggested, such enforcement is permissible when four conditions are satisfied:

1) the duties at issue protect or promote especially weighty interests,

2) enforcement is necessary for or strongly contributes to protecting or promoting those

interests,

  23  

3) enforcement is feasible, and

4) enforcement would not impose unreasonable costs.41

Because non-voluntary enforcement necessarily overrides agents’ wills, it is a prima facie

infringement of their autonomy. Because autonomy is valuable, such enforcement therefore

always imposes some cost(s). This is why the interests advanced by it must be particularly

weighty (condition 1), why the probability of its producing the desired results must be high

(conditions 2 and 3), and why its down-sides must be kept firmly in view (condition 4).

The duties of distributive fairness that arise within some associations – one-off boar hunts, for

example – plausibly do not satisfy the above conditions. (To take just the first: the interests in a

fair share of the boar, as opposed to a share sufficient to stave off hunger, are not especially

weighty). The duties of distributive fairness that arise within other associations – the state, for

example – plausibly do. I propose that duties of comparative distributive justice are simply those

(associative) duties of distributive fairness that fall into the second category: those that are

legitimately enforced. Notice that, according to this conception, the determination of a duty as

one of justice is indirect: the suggestion is that we identify a duty D to perform a given action A

as one of justice by reference to the morality of another action B, viz. the action of compelling

someone to fulfill D.42 The duty in question will be a duty of comparative distributive justice, in

particular, if it responds to fairness-based claims to a distribution concerned with relative

position. Also notice that, on this conception, although non-voluntariness plays a role in

                                                                                                               41 This is a slight modification of a passage that appears on p. 12 of Gilabert, From Global Poverty to Global Equality. Gilabert claims that all duties of justice are prima facie enforceable, but only all-things-considered enforceable when these conditions are satisfied. The proposal that I offer in the next paragraph is different: I am suggesting that duties only count as ones of justice when these conditions are satisfied. 42 Notice also that my proposal implies that the determination of a duty as one of justice depends in part on feasibility considerations (see enforcement condition 3). Those who side with Cohen on the relevance of facts to principles will be troubled by this feature (see G.A. Cohen, Rescuing Justice and Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), p. 253, inter alia). I disagree with Cohen, but lack the space to engage with that debate here.

  24  

determining whether or not a duty is one of justice, that role is very different from the one that

“non-voluntarist” strong associativists about the ground of justice have in mind. Non-

voluntariness (in the form of subjection to political power) doesn’t generate norms of distributive

fairness in the sense of providing a case for them. Instead non-voluntariness (in the form of

enforcement of a duty) serves to place independently generated norms of distributive fairness in a

special moral category (one of obvious normative significance).43

A worry may arise here that, because the above account makes any distributively consequential

association at least potentially a site of distributive justice, it risks legitimating a wave of

troubling acts of coercive enforcement across multiple domains of life. Every time a person

makes a somewhat unfair informal agreement with another person, or divides a child’s birthday

cake unevenly, does the specter of sanctioned coercion loom? This concern reflects a

misunderstanding of my proposal. What makes the prospect under view troubling is that, in the

cases in question, coercive enforcement would be some mixture of a) unnecessary, b) unhelpful,

c) infeasible, and/or d) costly (not least, in terms of autonomy). In other words, my proposal itself

explains why treating these associations as “sites” of distributive justice would be inappropriate.

The objection does raise the interesting question, however, of which associations will count as

sites of justice on my view. I argued above that strong associativism, understood as a thesis about

the ground of comparative distributive justice, is false. But what about strong associativism,

understood as a thesis about scope? It might be suggested, in support of this distinct thesis, that

the four conditions for enforcement listed above are commonly jointly satisfied in very strong

associations, but never jointly satisfied in weak associations. If this were so, enforcement of

                                                                                                               43 Sangiovanni comes to a broadly similar conclusion by means of different arguments. See: “bending people’s will by, for example, coercing them is at best a causal means or instrument for ensuring compliance with distributive obligations that hold independently” (Andrea Sangiovanni, ‘The Irrelevance of Coercion, Imposition, and Framing to Distributive Justice’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 40:2 (2012), pp. 79-110, at p. 81).

  25  

duties of distributive fairness would be permissible only in very strong associations, and

principles of comparative distributive justice would only apply within those associations.

Very strong associations possess a number of features that suggest that enforcement of the duties

of distributive fairness that arise within them is more likely to be permissible than it is in weak

associations. Given that (by definition) very strong associations involve a system of

comprehensive societal norms that exert a deep and pervasive impact on the lives of those who

participate in them, the duties of distributive fairness that arise within them are likely to protect

weighty interests (satisfying the first condition listed above).44 As for the second and third

conditions: the dense regulative structure that is built into very strong associations means that the

enforcement of any duties of fairness that arise within those associations will often be both

feasible and helpful. Very strong associations come with an enforcement arsenal at their

fingertips, so to speak: an established structure of rules and expectations that can be effectively

deployed to sanction unfair behavior. However, it would be rash to claim that these conditions

can never be jointly satisfied in weak associations. The duties of distributive fairness that apply

within associations that are short-lived and unstructured may well also protect weighty interests

and therefore satisfy the first condition. (Think here of a one-off highly exploitative transaction

between two individuals). As for the second and third conditions, the many philosophers who

claim that sufficientarian duties of distributive justice hold in the absence of association will want

to deny that any shared normative structure is necessary for the effective enforcement of duties of

distributive justice. I see no general reason to think that the comparative duties that apply within

weak associations pose special problems in this regard. Finally, there is no quite general reason

to think that enforcement is any less likely to impose unreasonable costs in very strong

                                                                                                               44 This is even more likely to be the case in associations in which membership is non-voluntary. When you can’t escape an association, the unfairness of its terms will be especially important to you, because the defense “take it or leave it” won’t apply. This is another respect in which non-voluntariness can matter in the context of my account.

  26  

associations than it is in weak ones. For these reasons, I doubt that the scope thesis is defensible

(although I’m not especially inclined to deny it here). Some weak associations are likely to be

sites of comparative distributive justice on my account. However - to return to the worry raised

earlier - that should not be troubling, provided that we keep the enforcement conditions (and

particularly the fourth) firmly in mind. If coercive enforcement of duties of distributive fairness

were to impose unreasonable costs – including costs with respect to autonomy – it would not be

permissible.

I suspect that it’s the (at least initial) plausibility of strong associativism about scope that makes

strong associativism about ground so appealing to many people. It’s important, then, to

emphasize that the truth of strong associativism about scope would be entirely consistent with the

account of the ground of justice that I am concerned to advance here. Let me finish this section by

pointing out, in a similar spirit, that some plausible claims about the special significance of very

strong association for the content of distributive justice are also compatible with my account. In

particular, some fairness-based arguments for egalitarian distribution may apply within some very

strong associations, but not outside them. I will provide two brief examples, involving the norms

of non-exploitation and non-discrimination.

Some forms of exploitation are more likely to occur within very strong than weak associations,

due to three ways in which subjection to rules can increase our vulnerability. First, the

constraining nature of rules blocks off certain avenues of self-protection. A dramatic instance of

this is the Lockean point that in delegating the enforcement of our rights of life and limb to the

state, we divest ourselves of our personal defensive capacity against nearby humans, as well as

against a state that turns nasty. Second, knowledge on the part of others that a person is

committed to a system of rules makes his or her behavior more predictable than it otherwise

would be, thereby increasing opportunities for unfair advantage-taking. Third, the capacity of

  27  

shared rules to tie together the fates of non-intimates can make the actions of distant others

consequential for our own lives in ways that are unforeseeable to both them and us. Even if our

fellow rule-subjectees have no interest in harming or exploiting us, they may end up doing so, as

it were, helplessly. Where the norm of non-discrimination is concerned, the key effect of very

strong association is its capacity to render individual discriminatory acts more harmful. Socially

sanctioned rules have insidious effects on the mental states, including the self-conceptions, of rule

subjectees. This means that very strong associations can be powerful disseminators of demeaning

and stigmatizing attitudes, capable of crippling those subject to them. The greater risks produced

by very strong association as opposed to weak association, where exploitation and discrimination

are concerned, call for greater insurance against those risks.45 And this heightened concern will

sometimes express itself in a requirement of equal (or progressive) benefit as a precaution against

the entrenchment of social and political hierarchy. The point here, to be clear, is not that fairness-

based egalitarian requirements never arise in weak associations, but only that certain norms of

fairness may be more likely to generate demands for egalitarian distribution within certain very

strong associations.

4. For Weak Associativism

The position left standing after strong associativism is appropriately abandoned is a more

minimalist account of the ground of comparative distributive justice (call it “weak

associativism”). Due to the necessity of association for the application of norms of fairness, the

presence of association is necessary for talk of comparative distributive justice to be apt. But no

special form of association (within the distributively consequential sub-set) is required. Whether

or not principles of comparative distributive justice do in fact apply to an association will depend

                                                                                                               45 In both cases, we should also remember the brighter side of the coin. The trust-building and identity-forming aspects of very strong associations can produce strong motivations to benefit co-associates and can thereby provide powerful support for resource redistribution on grounds of fairness.

  28  

on whether or not the conditions for justifiable enforcement of the resulting duties are satisfied.

The satisfaction of these conditions is contingent on a set of partly normative, partly empirical

considerations of which it is difficult to give an account that is both fully general and informative.

The determination will have to proceed on a case-by-case basis, via substantive moral and

empirical argument.

What I have offered in this paper is a moral typology: a particular way of organizing the

conceptual landscape in this area. Why should we adopt this picture of the terrain? I’ll finish by

mentioning three advantages that the weak associativist approach has over strong associativism.

They concern its attractive implications regarding the ground, scope and content of comparative

distributive justice. Where the ground is concerned, weak associativists are able to exploit an

intuitive connection between personal and political morality. On their account, duties of

comparative distributive justice that apply to strong associations, such as the state, do not have a

fundamentally different moral foundation from the duties of distributive fairness that apply to

weak associations, such as those of acquaintances. This puts the duties in question on a familiar,

non-mysterious ground. By contrast, strong associativists tend to overemphasize the specialness

of distributive justice, without providing a persuasive account of where that specialness comes

from.

Where scope is concerned, weak associativism supports an appealing pluralism about the sites in

which duties of comparative distributive justice arise. Although weak associativists can readily

explain why such duties apply within the state, their account is very unlikely to justify containing

comparative distributive justice exclusively within state borders. At the same time, however, due

to the minimal nature of their requirements, weak associativists do not need to appeal to

exaggerated claims about the close similarity of the domestic and international political orders in

order to defend the possibility of cross-border comparative distributive justice. Thus weak

  29  

associativists can avoid the normative implausibility of Nagel and Blake, while also avoiding the

empirical implausibility of Beitz and Pogge.

Finally, weak associativists can escape a dilemma concerning the content of comparative

distributive justice that troubles strong associativists. Strong associativists tend to hold that the

extent of egalitarianism required within an association tracks the extent to which their favored

form of strong association is present. This idea gets expressed in one of two forms. Either

egalitarian requirements kick in at full strength as soon as the chosen associative form reaches a

certain degree, but not before, and do not vary thereafter (the “discontinuous” option) or the

requirements become steadily more egalitarian as the associative form itself increases in intensity

(the “continuous” option). As Caney has recently argued, neither option is attractive: the

discontinuous option cannot accommodate our sense that association can alter the content of

distributive justice before and after it reaches a threshold of intensity, and the continuous option

has yet to be paired with a plausible account of the precise formula according to which degree of

equality tracks degree of association.46 A weak associativist can avoid both horns of this dilemma

by emphasizing that the application of egalitarian distributive justice doesn’t depend in any

simple, linear fashion on the density of any one particular form of association. Instead, its

application depends on the idiosyncratic ways in which norms of fairness are played out in many

different forms of association, as well as on the matter of whether the conditions for justifiable

enforcement are satisfied within those different associative forms.

These advantages of weak over strong associativism are ones that weak associativism shares with

humanism. Humanists, clearly, do not have to answer questions about what makes strong

associations special where comparative distributive justice is concerned or about the precise

relationship between association and egalitarian demands. Nor do they need to engage in                                                                                                                46 Caney, ‘Humanity, Associations and Global Justice’, pp. 522-525.

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empirical acrobatics to locate duties of comparative distributive justice internationally. Moreover,

a sophisticated humanist account can take on board some of the more general attractions of an

associativist approach: it can accommodate the idea that association alters the substantive

implications and urgency of our duties and the distribution of responsibility for fulfilling them.47

What even a sophisticated humanism cannot do, however, is account for the deeper connections

between association and fairness, and between justice and permissible enforcement, that I have

argued are integral to our standard understanding of comparative distributive justice. Weak

associativism provides a way to capture those intuitions, while steering clear of the problems of

strong associativism.

5. Conclusion

Many philosophers believe that there is something special about association, where distributive

justice is concerned. This paper has provided a novel construal of that idea that is invulnerable to

the compelling objections to which existing construals are subject. According to the “weak

associativist” account of the ground of justice that I have elaborated here, the presence of

association is unnecessary for norms of distributive justice in general to apply. We should leave

room for the possibility of non-comparative distributive justice in the absence of association. Nor

are a variety of special forms of association recently highlighted by philosophers necessary for

the application of principles of comparative distributive justice. Instead, the sole associative

condition that must be satisfied if the relation between the levels of benefit and burden held by

distinct individuals is to become a concern of justice is the bare presence of (distributively

consequential) association.

                                                                                                               47 Caney, ‘Humanity, Associations and Global Justice’, pp. 525-529.

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One general conclusion of the paper is that philosophers should avoid the temptation to identify

“the” form of association that “gets” duties of comparative (or specifically egalitarian)

distributive justice “going”. Instead we should concentrate on asking ourselves what form, if any,

a variety of familiar duties of distributive fairness take in various associative contexts. The

assumption going in should be that, provided that association with more than minimal distributive

consequences is occurring, those duties are likely to apply. The question that really matters, then,

is not “whether?” or “why?” It’s the much more fruitful: “how?”