Equality and Special Relations of Cooperation

Abstract

This chapter examines a number of attempts to associate political coercion with the demand of equality and argue that none of them is persuasive. Finally, it argues that there is an alternative justificatory approach through which political coercion can be justified without reference to people’s distributive shares and therefore one can reject the statist conclusion without denying that political coercion needs to be justified to those who are subject to it.

Modern states are not just systems of coercion but also schemes of social and political cooperation. Some opponents of global equality argue that the boundaries of such cooperation should also define the proper scope for egalitarian justice. Chapter 5 examines their claims critically. It first argues that the existence of cooperative ventures is not a necessary condition for demands of equality to arise. Second, it refutes the view that one’s egalitarian entitlements should be conditional upon one’s contributions to the state’s capacity to provide basic collective goods. Third, it examines the reasons why egalitarian obligations of justice may be said to arise from social cooperation and argues that these reasons, if sound, actually imply that the scope of such obligations is global. Finally, the chapter considers some other possible reasons for attributing moral significance to states as schemes of social and political cooperation and argues that these reasons are compatible with global egalitarianism.