Subversión y moraleja

Andrej Grubacic’s and Staughton Lynd’s Wobblies and Zapatistas is a different kind of history book. Being a conversation between both, the main text is formed by Lynd’s answers to Grubacic’s questions, in which the former reflects on his trajectory as an activist and civil rights lawyer in the US. It is a form of oral history, in which Lynd draws from his personal experience to answer Grubacic’s questions, and in doing so creates a historical narrative of his time. Although many times confusing due to its lack of a single narrative and Lynd’s multiple digressions, the book is innovative because the historian (Grubacic) gives voice to the historical subject (Lynd in this case) with only partial guidance; Grubacic leads the conversation by choosing the questions, but it is Lynd who ultimately has the last word. This is the complete opposite to what is common in most historical accounts, in which the historian is the only writing authority. Moreover, Grubacic’s intention is not to portr...

Pogge’s Global Resource Dividend (GRD) has been criticised as an unrealistic or impractical proposal, but there are also significant normative objections to his argument. Not only could the GRD effects be less predictable than Pogge supposes, but they could also be counter-productive to his main aim. Pogge’s solution to eradicating systemic poverty, that is poverty caused by our failure to assist and our failure ‘not to harm’, has been a global resource dividend. The proposal is based on the idea that the global poor own an inalienable stake in all limited resources, and thus the GRD says that states shall not have full libertarian property rights over the natural resources (although retaining sovereignty), but can be required to share a small part of the value of any resources they decide to use and sell. The GRD would focus on those resources that have a negative environmental impact, and would work as a tax levied at the point of extraction. Meant to be a practical, easy to ...

If we agree with articles 25 and 28 of the UNDHR that everyone has the right to an adequate standard of living and is entitled to a social and international order that guarantees this (and other) rights, severe, absolute global poverty can only be seen as a human rights violation. The violation derives not only from certain agents causing poverty but also from the failure to deal effectively with the elimination of poverty when in a position to do so. It is necessary to go beyond the socioeconomic vs. political rights discussion, looking instead at the conditions under which severe poverty manifests a human rights violation and looking at the agents responsible for it, if any. The distinction between acts and omissions, positive and negative duties, needs to be questioned and both sides bridged for a more fruitful understanding of global poverty as a human rights violation. Let us first look at the side of the violation that occurs when severe poverty is caused. According to ...

In a world in which citizenship is equivalent to medieval feudal status, and in which state borders are heavily patrolled and human movement criminalised, the idea of open borders seems far from achievable. However, open borders are more than desirable from a liberal egalitarian view of justice. Joseph Carens has been one of the most influential proponents of open borders from a liberal egalitarian perspective. Liberal egalitarianism sees all human beings as free and equal moral persons, and considers freedom of movement as a crucial prerequisite for the fulfilment of other rights such as equality of opportunity. Liberal egalitarianism does not require one to deny the importance of freedom of association: we should generally be free to choose our associates, as long as the resulting associations do not lead to unjust, oppressive agreements. The strand of liberal egalitarianism known as luck egalitarianism seeks to reverse all inequalities that are due to brute luck, and thus ho...

Many arguments have been put forward in favor of restricting immigration, from establishing security (especially since 9/11) to dire political realism. Most of the arguments for restrictions are based on the state’s right to self determination, which includes rights such as freedom of association or preserving culture. However, not only are these justifications inadequate in themselves but also can be easily trumped by the human right to freedom of movement and subsistence if we consider the current context of extreme global inequalities and severe global poverty, in which citizenship is equivalent to medieval feudal status. Christopher Wellman has argued for border restrictions based on a state’s right to freedom of association. Seeing states as autonomous bodies and comparing them with private clubs or marriages, Wellman holds that the state’s right to freedom of association includes the right not to associate and the right to disassociate. Although recognising that the state’s ...

The conventional accounts of a just distribution of emission rights not only fail to account for issues of intergenerational fairness and gender distributive effects, but also assume that there is a distributive principle for everything. There cannot be a just distribution of emission rights because emission rights entail a right to pollute, which runs contrary to issues of human rights and global justice. The idea of distributing emission rights derives from the necessity to limit (and reduce) emissions of greenhouse gases as a key step to tackle climate change. Theorists have proposed many different distributive criteria, the most salient being grandfathering, equality and historical responsibility. The principle of grandfathering argues that the fair share of emission for any actor should be a function of its past share of emissions, and thus everyone should make proportionate cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions. Although this principle has been defended for promoting eff...

Carbon emissions do not have value in themselves but only serve to valuable goals; there is no (human) right to pollute. For this reason, talking about responsibilities to reduce emissions rather than emission rights is the most coherent approach for dealing with climate change. The empirical and the normative are deeply intertwined in this questions, as emission rights have a dubious track record in the real world, and thus the starting point must be one grounded in reality. Emission rights have become the mainstream approach for dealing with climate change. Although its fair share is very much contested, the notion of emission rights derives from the idea that the emission of some amount of CO2 should be assured to people as a human right, as we all need energy for production and consumption, and energy is most commonly obtained in today’s world through processes that emit CO2. Emission rights are both appealing to affluent and poor countries. They allow carbon intensive indu...