World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms

by Thomas W. Pogge

The poorest 46 percent of humankind have 1.2 percent of global income.
Their purchasing power per person per day is less than that of $2.15 in
the US in 1993; 826 million of them do not have enough to eat. One-third
of all human deaths are from poverty-related causes: 18 million
annually, including 12 million children under five.

At the other end, the 15 percent of humankind in the 'high-income
economies' have 80 percent of global income. Shifting 1 or 2 percent of
our share toward poverty eradication seems morally compelling. Yet the
prosperous 1990s have in fact brought a large shift toward greater
global inequality, as most of the affluent believe that they have no
such responsibility.

Thomas Pogge's book seeks to explain how this belief is sustained. He analyses how our moral and economic theorizing and our global economic order have adapted to make us appear disconnected from massive poverty abroad. Dispelling the illusion, he also offers a modest, widely sharable standard of global economic justice and makes detailed, realistic proposals toward fulfilling it.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction, Economics, Poverty, Political Science, Theory

284 pages, Paperback

First published November 8, 2002

About the author

Thomas Winfried Menko Pogge is a German philosopher and currently Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale University and Research Director at the Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature, University of Oslo. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University with a dissertation supervised by John Rawls. Pogge serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs journal, Ethics & International Affairs, and is an Ethics and Debt Project participant.

Pogge has written extensively on political philosophy, especially on Rawls, Immanuel Kant, cosmopolitanism, and, more recently, extreme poverty. His book World Poverty and Human Rights is widely regarded as one of the most important works on global justice. Pogge's work has been, along with that of Charles Beitz, one of the most important in the "first wave" of work on global justice. Yet what makes Pogge's contribution to the debate on global justice and the eradication of world poverty original is his emphasis on negative duties rather than on the positive duties stressed by Beitz. According to Pogge, the global rich have a stringent duty of justice to take decisive steps toward the eradication of global poverty primarily because they have violated the negative duty not to contribute to the imposition of a global institutional order that foreseeably and avoidably renders the basic socioeconomic rights of other human beings unfulfilled, and not because they must honor a positive duty to help others in need when they can at little cost to themselves. Recently, Pogge's argument has been aggressively critiqued by Joshua Cohen

Reviews

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish everyone could be exposed to the ideas in this book. Many people in affluent countries believe that world poverty is unfortunate, but not unjust, and certainly not that we are causing such poverty. Pogge makes incredibly clear, logical arguments to refute this claim. He shows that world poverty is in fact actively caused by our global economic order, which we are all complicit in sustaining. Even though estimates are that eradicating world poverty would require less than 1% (!!!) of the national incomes of affluent countries, we continue to perpetuate this unjust and self-serving global economic order. Pogge explains how our global system actually incentivizes violent coups in developing countries, embraces disproportionate consumption of natural resources, and encourages the pharmaceutical industry to profit off of the poor. However, rather than just lament these discouraging facts, this book offers insightful and creative (and believe it or not--politically feasible) alternatives. This might sound melodramatic... but I honestly feel like this book has freed me from the assumption that the current nationalist global order is a given. It has exposed me to the possibility of a more just and moral world--an idea that is both radical, realistic, and most importantly... the right thing to do.

[Boris · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE BEST BOOK EVER. A MUST-READ. I can't stress this enough.
Every person in the developed world must read it ASAP.

[Scott Goddard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although Pogge is quite difficult to grasp at times, especially in the chapters pertaining to human rights, the fact the remnants of the book are so powerfully enlightening, in that he distills the paradox of global poverty, gave me no other choice but to give this book a deserving five stars. Inside, Pogge effectively argues that the rich democracies - the US, EU, and so on - are, unlike they themselves belief, complicit in the continued perpetuation of impoverishment afflicting the less developed world. Not to spoil too much, Pogge identifies what he calls the international resource privilege and the international borrowing privilege, two aspects of the current international institutional order which, as a result of, incentivise coups and insurgency attempts. Among other causes mentioned, Pogge primarily concentrates on the remedial solutions to these problems, positing ways in which the West can ameliorate the ailment of poverty in its entirety - but importantly, not at a burdensome and significant cost to themselves. A must read for anyone interested in, and concerned about, the thousands of people who avoidably die each day, to preventable and curable causes.

[Ana Gil · Rating 5 out of 5]

MANDATORY

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have always had a fond opinion of Pogge's writing and thinking styles. His use of logic and algebraic methods helps separate him from other ethics and human rights thinkers and has always appealed to how I like to understand things. In this book, he lays down a very strong argument favoring a collective responsibility toward global poverty. While he doesn't always close out on the finer details, the premise is tough to go against. It is a heavy read, but not incomprehensible.

My only issues with the book are with some of the practical solutions. The vertical hierarchy is fascinating but would never happen. Others were neither interesting nor seemed effective (the democracy panel, for example). However, I can't dock Pogge for this. I don't think it is the job of the ethicist to provide practical recommendations. Pogge simply needs to lay down the tracks for IR specialists and others.

All in all, this book spoke to me on a deep level. I have always taken issue to people calling attention to their charitable works. I won't go into a full thesis on why, but the bottom line is I've always felt charity to be something you partake in simply because you are a decent human being. Pogge provides a philosophical grounding in that type of thinking.

[Will Walkup · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredible collection of essays interrelated by subject matter and edited for cohesion. Pogge outlines a water-tight and incriminating argument for the moral obligation to, at a minimum, cease harming our poverty stricken global neighbors. Although the information is not given in the simplest prose, the book does a great job of educating the reader on multiple levels of the issue, and stops just short of a cry to action—that, in true philosophical fashion, he leaves to us.

[Francis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part social science, part philosophy, World Poverty and Human Rights thoroughly outlines why citizens of the developed world have an ethical duty to help the global poor and makes modest policy recommendations to alleviate their maladies. Although the book can be a bit dense at times, it reveals the culpability of the global order where Third World poverty is concerned and why the current approach to this issue seems to be falling short.

A vitally important work.

[George Verdi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book filled with original ideas that challenges how we think about human rights, poverty and global institutions. Pogge is not afraid to grapple with some of the most complex questions of global governance and to offer convincing answers. Be careful however. His analytical arguments come at the cost of the book being dry at some points. A small price to pay, if you ask me.

[jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thomas Pogge is the man.

[David Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eye opening.

[Greg Hickey · Rating 4 out of 5]

The facts about the extent of global poverty are pretty staggering, as Thomas Pogge explicitly demonstrates from the outset of this book. At the time of publication, "46 percent of humankind live[d] below the World Bank's $2/day poverty line" and 43 percent of those people fell "below the World Bank's better-known $1/day poverty line." Yet "shifting merely 1 percent of aggregate global income - $312 billion annually - from the [wealthiest 903 million people] to the [poorest 2.8 billion people] would eradicate sever poverty worldwide." That such a goal could be achieved by citizens in affluent nations giving only 1% of their income to the poor is itself a pretty compelling reason to do so. But is not a strong philosophical reason, and Pogge rightly endeavors to show why the wealthy have a moral duty to help the poor.

Pogge begins from the admirable position of arguing from a framework of negative, rather than positive, duties. It is a much easier task to show that the wealthy have a duty to aid the poor if we assume that people have a general duty to help those in need. It is a far more difficult task to argue, as Pogge does, that we have a duty to help the poor because we contribute to their impoverished state. He points to two aspects of the current global order to make his point:
1. "Any group controlling a preponderance of the means of coercion within a country is internationally recognized as the legitimate government of this country's territory and people - regardless of how this group came to power, of how it exercises power, and of the extent to which it may be supported or opposed by the population it rules."
2. Recognition of a coercive government as legitimate "means also that we accept this group's right to act for the people it rules and, in particular, confer upon it the privileges freely to borrow in the country's name... and freely to dispose of the country's natural resources."

However, Pogge fails to effectively capitalize on the power of these two observations. Much of this failure is do to the fact that this book is actually a collection of Pogge's previously written essays, which he has attempted to arrange as chapters in the most logical order. A complete argument for a duty to aid the global poor does not appear until the final essay/chapter, nearly 100 pages after he raises the two salient points above. The structure of the book distances the premises of his argument from their justifications, challenging the reader to piece together the fragments of his overall claim.

Still, the fragments are there, and if the reader has followed him thus far, Pogge would do well to offer a specific call to action. Instead, his major recommendations involve the creation of global oversight committees, a messy political procedure very far removed from ordinary citizens, and one that seems unlikely to emerge in the near future. A more pertinent message would direct the individual reader on the best ways to alleviate poverty, perhaps by donating to specific charities or lobbying one's elected officials on specific issues. So World Poverty and Human Rights offers a complete, yet fragmented, argument for aiding the global poor, but doesn't quite connect with readers not involved with political systems in their daily lives. But it is certainly worth reading for those who have the patience and lack of prejudice to follow and engage Pogge's arguments.

[Taryn Janati]

Note to self: From a footnote from Michael Huemer's "Is There a Right to Immigrate?": Narveson (1993, pp. 153-5) suggests that most world poverty is caused by the governments of poor countries. Thomas Pogge (World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms [Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008], pp. 218-22), however, argues that the U.S. government is partly responsible for many harms suffered by inhabitants of less developed nations.

[Isendor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pogge knows a lot and has good opinions. However the language was sometimes a bit too sophisticated for me (I'm not a native and the English terminology of philosophy isn't familiar to me) so now I just hope that I've understood things correctly. :D This was an eyeopener, now I have a better understanding of the current reasons for poverty and its existence.

[Shishir · Rating 3 out of 5]

Moral imperative to tackle this issue which harms and hurts the poor.

[Steven Schoonover jr.]

My favorite conception of institutional harm to date......We live in a world that desperately needs a real account of systemic violence. This is a good start....

[Ft. Sheridan · Rating 5 out of 5]

On point.