Abstract
The chapter is devoted to exploring a decent social minimum as a set of guarantees aimed at protecting persons from extreme poverty; enabling them to lead a decent life; ensuring their involvement in society and access to shared material and intellectual values; and, in the final analysis, providing the opportunity for their moral and intellectual flourishing. Guarantees of a decent social minimum represent an important instrument of poverty and inequality alleviation. My chapter intends to clarify the most controversial issues surrounding a decent social minimum: its content, scope, elements and relation to principles of social justice and equality. I develop an idea that it is necessary to distinguish between two interpretations of equality – distributive equality and equality of status – and analyze their interdependence. I argue then that it is equality of status that is the key idea of the demand for a decent social minimum and show that the following distributive guarantees necessarily derive from equality of status and form essential components of a decent social minimum: minimum political conditions of a decent life (equal citizenship), minimum socio-economic conditions of a decent life (decent standard of living), and guarantees of protection from extreme inequality (non-dominance and non-discrimination). Finally, while applying the principle of sufficiency conformable to equality of status, I examine the scope of a decent standard of living.
The research is supported by the SNSF Ambizione grant (No. 142547).
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Notes
- 1.
My thesis does not contradict another of Alston’s suggestions to put “questions of resource redistribution at the centre of human rights debates” (Alston 2015, para. 56), because I think that equality of status should shape distributive practices.
- 2.
For example, while developing Gerald Neuman’s ideas, Christopher McCrudden formulates three elements of a basic minimum content of human dignity. According to the first two of them – the “ontological claim” and the “relational claim” – “every human being possesses an intrinsic worth, merely by being human” and “this intrinsic worth should be recognized and respected by others, and some forms of treatment by others are inconsistent with, or required by, respect for this intrinsic worth”. He argues then that “there appears to be no consensus politically or philosophically” on how these claims are best understood in various societies and legal cultures (McCrudden 2008, 679–680).
- 3.
It looks as if Miller sees the correlation of dignity and equality of status in the same way: “So if people are to have dignity and respect in this society now, it must be the kind of dignity and respect that social equality provides” (Miller 1997, 234).
- 4.
My chapter deals with equality of status in the public domain. An excellent examination of equality of status in interpersonal relationships can be found in Scheffler (2015).
- 5.
- 6.
The focus of my chapter is not on social relationships among those in extreme poverty, but rather on relationships between those on different sides of the extreme poverty line.
- 7.
For example, the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights provides an analysis of “detrimental effects of economic inequalities on the enjoyment of human rights” (Alston 2015, para. 26–32).
- 8.
For instance, a survey carried out by Oxfam in six states (Spain, Brazil, India, South Africa, the UK and the US) demonstrated that “a majority of people believe that laws are skewed in favour of the rich” (Oxfam 2014, 3).
- 9.
See also: ICESCR (Art. 11), CRC (Art. 27), CEDAW (Art. 14), CRPD (Art. 28), ESC (Art. 4, 13), CFREU (Art. 34), Protocol of San Salvador (Art. 6, 7, 9, 12, 15).
- 10.
It is necessary to note that the matter does not concern fair conversions of advantages from one sphere to another. It is beyond question, for example, that a good education may be a key for an interesting and well-paid job and well-deserved prestige in a particular society may be the reason to be elected into its representative body.
- 11.
On a definition of discrimination see Andrew Altman’s article (Altman 2015).
- 12.
See also: ICESCR (Art. 2), CRC (Art. 2), CEDAW, CRPD, ICERD.
- 13.
According to Anderson, who applies the capabilities approach to her “relational theory of equality”, equality of status or “democratic equality guarantees not effective access to equal levels of functioning but effective access to levels of functioning sufficient to stand as an equal in society” (Anderson 1999, 318).
- 14.
Stephen Nathanson opposes the criteria of sufficiency and decency (Nathanson 2005). I proceed from the assumption that sufficiency is one of criteria of the principle of decency.
- 15.
Theories of justice that do not integrate a decent standard of living – for instance, John Rawls’ maximin principle (Rawls 1971) and Philippe Van Parijs’ highest sustainable basic income (Van Parijs 1995) – do not correspond to the principle of sufficiency, because they do not guarantee that the minimum level of well-being indispensable for maintaining a decent life can be achieved in impoverished societies.
- 16.
See: CESCR General Comments No. 3, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 21.
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Human Rights Instruments
The Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights in the Area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Protocol of San Salvador).
The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFREU).
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).
The European Social Charter (ESC).
The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD).
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).
Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) General Comments
CESCR General Comment No. 3: The nature of States parties obligations (Art. 2, para. 1 of the Covenant).
CESCR General Comment No. 12: The right to adequate food (Art. 11 of the Covenant).
CESCR General Comment No. 13: The right to education (Art. 13 of the Covenant).
CESCR General Comment No. 14: The right to the highest attainable standard of health (Art. 12 of the Covenant).
CESCR General Comment No. 15: The right to water (arts. 11 and 12 of the Covenant).
CESCR General Comment No. 17: The right of everyone to benefit from the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he or she is the author (Art. 15, para. 1 (c) of the Covenant).
CESCR General Comment No. 18: The right to work (Art. 6 of the Covenant).
CESCR General Comment No. 19: The right to social security (art. 9 of the Covenant).
CESCR General Comment No. 20: Non-discrimination in economic, social and cultural rights (art. 2, para. 2 of the Covenant).
CESCR General Comment No. 21: Right of everyone to take part in cultural life (art. 15, para. 1 (a) of the Covenant).
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Pribytkova, E. (2016). A Decent Social Minimum as a Matter of Justice. In: Gaisbauer, H., Schweiger, G., Sedmak, C. (eds) Ethical Issues in Poverty Alleviation. Studies in Global Justice, vol 14. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41430-0_3
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