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Contesting Political Differentiation pp 191–217Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Structural Injustice and the Paradigm of Solidarity

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Abstract

This chapter analyses the structural injustice created by the Eurozone crisis and the kind of duties it triggers. First, it clarifies why the management of the crisis resulted in structural injustice. The Eurozone has corralled its members into a community of fate, in which all are dependent on all, but where some profit and some lose out under the same economic regime. Then, the chapter raises the problem of unjust enrichment and compensatory obligations in the so-called wrongful-benefits paradigm (WBP). It argues that the type of structural injustice generated by the Eurozone arrangement gives rise to duties that are not in the form of compensatory obligations. Rather, it gives rise to collective, forward-directed duties—duties of solidarity—to correct wrongs akin to political justice.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Further, ‘it makes no sense to talk about the Eurozone crisis in the past tense. Greek and Italian debt are less sustainable today than they were in 2010’. Eurozone authorities have only papered over the cracks in the Eurozone system and have not really solved the problems (Münchau 2018).

  2. 2.

    See, e.g., Karnitsching (2017).

  3. 3.

    See, e.g., Schäfer and Streeck (2013), Streeck (2013), Altvater et al. (2013), Varoufakis (2016), Galbraith (2016), Stiglitz. (2016), and Blyth (2013).

  4. 4.

    See also Menéndez (2013), Enderlein (2013), and Kreuder-Sonnen (2016).

  5. 5.

    ‘The circumstances of justice obtain whenever mutually disinterested persons put forward conflicting claims to the division of social advantages under conditions of moderate scarcity’ (Rawls 1971: 128).

  6. 6.

    ‘[…] my first-person judgment I have the right to life entails the judgment you owe me the duty to respect my right to life, and vice versa. Furthermore, the reciprocity condition shows that the judgment I have the right to life must also entail you have the right to life, for you and I are one in original rights’ (Zylberman 2014: 167).

  7. 7.

    ‘A duty or a legal obligation is that which one ought […] to do. “Duty” and “right” are correlative terms. When a right is invaded, a duty is violated’ (Hohfeld 1913: 32). ‘Hohfeld distinguished four legal advantages that A can have in relation to B, which, correlatively, entail four legal disadvantages of B in relation to A. If A has a right (or, more specifically, a claim-right) against B, B has a correlative duty to A; if A has a privilege (or liberty, or permission, or justification right) with respect to B, B has no-right against A; if A has a power with respect to B, B faces a liability from A; and if A has an immunity from B, B has a disability with respect to A. Each legal advantage also has its negation: having a claim-right is the opposite of having no-right; a privilege is the opposite of a duty; a power is the opposite of a disability; and an immunity is the opposite of a liability’ (Applbaum 2010: 220–221).

  8. 8.

    ‘Agents can be morally blameworthy for failing to disgorge in compensation benefits which they involuntarily receive as a result of wrongdoing which harms other agents’ (Butt 2014: 343).

  9. 9.

    However, ‘a probabilistic distribution curve might be developed so that the closer one is to the injustice, the likelier it is that one has benefited even though there is nothing to prevent someone a good deal further off from benefiting more or someone very close from not benefiting at all’ (Brooks 1989: 40). So, ‘the general duty to prevent injustice bears more heavily on those who are closest to it’ (Brooks 1989: 31). See also Waldron (1996) on Kant’s proximity principle.

  10. 10.

    Germany has benefited at the expense of the weaker economies, according to: Varoufakis (2016), Galbraith (2016), and Stiglitz (2016). On 28 November 2011, on the occasion of an official visit to Berlin, the Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski addressed an audience, pointing out that Germany is the biggest beneficiary of the euro and has ‘the biggest obligation to make [it] sustainable’ (Offe 2014: 98).

  11. 11.

    Causality and responsibility are tricky. The circumstances of benefit and causality may, in fact, be interlinked; one may be responsible when benefiting from injustice. In that case, it is a question of inverted or reversed causality.

  12. 12.

    However, there were warnings. See Yeager (1962).

  13. 13.

    See, e.g., Issing (2014).

  14. 14.

    Who, like persons, have legal personality and can sign and terminate contracts.

  15. 15.

    See, e.g., Lastra and Buchheit (2014), Kenadjan et al. (2013), Olivares-Caminal (2009), and Rieffel (2003). See further: Lienau (2014), Esposito et al. (2013), and Wong (2012). On the general problem of measuring liability, probability and proximity, see Feinberg (1968), Brooks (1989), Birks (2005), and Hedley (1997).

  16. 16.

    On remedial responsibility, see Miller (2007). However, this concept is tailored to our moral duties to help suffering persons—vulnerable creatures—in general. Moreover, ‘[t]he problem with Miller’s position is that it is overly narrow by focusing solely on our national identities as the characteristic most relevant for determining remedial responsibilities’ (Brooks 2014: 156).

  17. 17.

    This is called a Kaldor-Hicks compensation. See Hicks (1939) and Kaldor (1939).

  18. 18.

    These are so-called end-state approaches to justice (Nozick 1974). See also Eriksen (2016).

  19. 19.

    See Young (1990: 25) and Habermas (1996: 418f.).

  20. 20.

    Here, ‘The point is not to blame, punish, or seek redress from those who did it, but rather to enjoin those who participate by their actions in the process of collective action to change it’ (Young 2006: 122).

  21. 21.

    Solidarity is substantial and relative—it creates imperfect duties. ‘Imperfect duties are, accordingly, only duties of virtue. Fulfilment of them is merit (meritum = +a), but failure to fulfil them is not in itself culpability (demeritum = −a) but rather mere deficiency in moral worth (= 0), unless the subject should make it his principle not to comply with such duties’ (Kant 1996 [1797]: 194).

  22. 22.

    See Habermas’ self-correction: ‘I no longer support the assertion that “Justice conceived deontologically requires solidarity at its reverse side” because it leads to moralization and depoliticization of the concept of solidarity’ (Habermas 2015: fn. 23).

  23. 23.

    For the concept of supererogation, see A. Eriksen (2015).

  24. 24.

    Solidarity ‘ascribes to me a duty to join in efforts to repair unjust social relations and restore equitable relationships. […] Because solidarity does not trade in the language of quanta of unjust benefit, it does not confront me as a moral debtor. Thus, I am neither required to pay back in full what I owe, nor released from my obligations when I have done so. I am instead required to join the struggle’ (Kolers 2014: 428).

  25. 25.

    For example, the borrowing costs of debt-ridden countries decrease when the ECB declares its liability.

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  1. ARENA Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Erik O. Eriksen

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Eriksen, E.O. (2019). Structural Injustice and the Paradigm of Solidarity. In: Contesting Political Differentiation. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11698-9_8

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