Pogge believes that ‘democratically constituted governments…are truly the agents of their people’,³⁷ not truly the agents of the dominant capitalist class among the people.

He referred to Clinton as ‘the elected guardian of the US national interest’³⁸ rather than of the interests of American capitalism, which have been made their national interest through ideology, and writes that ‘There are firm constraints on what persons and groups within a larger social system may do by way of tailoring its rules, or corrupting the application of these rules, in their own favour.’³⁹

Pogge makes this seem so clear cut but not only are rules biased nationally and internationally to begin with, or access to the application of them priced or weighted on the basis of influence out of range, they can be sabotaged,⁴⁰ changed (as Pogge gives examples of in his writing),⁴¹ opted out of (as Australia did with regard to East Timor), ignored (again, e.g. the Australian involvement in Iraq – the troops of which were active in that country before any democratic decision was made to put them there) or simply rejected.⁴²

Pogge’s focus is on the human rights of the individual – particularly the global poor.⁴³ He repeatedly writes of ‘the global economic or institutional order’, and not what it is by name – capitalism.

Institutional reform (i.e. the reform through the use of conceptual reason of the products of conceptual reason) is at the heart of his writing as it is of cosmopolitan debate.⁴⁴ Abstract theorising about and calls for institutional reform amount to improving an economic system which has as its unavoidable, unintended core – exploitation. And that exploitation, as Marx has argued, has its own dynamic.

Pogge rejects class divisions, pitting ‘the affluent’ against ‘the impoverished’: ‘This catastrophe was and is happening, foreseeably, under a global institutional order designed for the benefit of the affluent countries’ governments, corporations, and citizens and of the poor countries’ political and military elites.’⁴⁵

‘The affluent’ comprise ‘we’, the firms are ‘ours’. He asks with outrage ‘What entitles a small global elite – the citizens of the rich countries and the holders of political and economic power in the resource-rich developing countries – to enforce a global property scheme under which we may claim the world’s natural resources for ourselves and can distribute these among ourselves on mutually agreeable terms?’⁴⁶ …and nowhere answers the question.

Pogge compares ‘us’ in our complicity against the global poor in ‘the gravest, crime against humanity ever committed’⁴⁷ with the ‘vastly more evil than our political leaders’ Hitler and Stalin, thereby displaying a complete absence of economic analysis – the same analysis he despises.

He would benefit from researching the behaviour of, for example, Ford, General Motors and its subsidiary in Germany – Opel – before, during and after World War II. I refer him to an article on the Washington Post website for starters: Ford and GM Scrutinised for Alleged Nazi Collaboration.

To argue as I do is not to deny the importance of personal ethical decisions and actions but it is, repeatedly, to emphasise that those must be determined and take place on the base and in the environment of a capitalist mode of production which functions through class domination and its means.⁴⁸

Part five/to be continued…

Notes

37. Pogge, ‘The Bounds of Nationalism’, op. cit., 132 ↩

38. Ibid. ↩

39. Ibid. ↩

40. With regard to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: ‘Despite the cross-border character of these rights, the Declaration upholds the sovereignty of individual states. Thus, a series of internal contradictions between universal human rights and territorial sovereignty are built into the logic of the most comprehensive international law document in our world.’, Benhabib, Another Cosmopolitanism, op. cit., 30 ↩

41. E.g. ‘The Bounds of Nationalism’ op. cit., pp. 131-134 ↩

42. ‘Resistance to the erosion of sovereignty has resulted in the U.S. refusal to join the Kyoto Treaty on atmospheric emissions and the International Criminal Court, decisions that have been widely criticised. Similar question arise over who is to determine the policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and over the authority of the United Nations in matters of international peace and security. But by far the most important institutions from this point of view are those of the international economy itself.’ Nagel, ‘The Problem of Global Justice’, op. cit., pp. 136-137; ‘The Geneva Convention of 1951 relating to the Status of Refugees and its Protocol added in 1967 is the second most important international legal document after the Universal Declaration. Nevertheless, neither the existence of this document nor the creation of the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees has altered the fact that this Convention and its Protocol are binding on signatory states alone and can be brazenly disregarded by non-signatories and, at times, even by signatory states themselves.’ Benhabib, Another Cosmopolitanism, op. cit., 30 ↩

43. ‘individual human persons…are the ultimate units of moral concern.’, Pogge, ‘An Egalitarian Law of Peoples’, op. cit., 210 ↩

44. O’Neill writes ‘any approach to transnational economic justice must in the end put demands for institutional reform centre stage’ and that she is arguing for a form of moral cosmopolitanism which entails an appropriate degree of ‘institutional cosmopolitanism…Moral cosmopolitanism, even approximate moral cosmopolitanism, does not point to a stateless world, but to forms of institutional cosmopolitanism’, Onora O’Neill, Bounds of Justice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000, pp. 141, 201-202; Nagel states that he is addressing a concern for socio-economic justice (‘the gruesome facts’) on justice, inequality and class relations. For him the answer depends on global institutions – there is a need ‘for more effective global institutions to deal with our collective problems, from global warming to free trade.’ Nagel, ‘The Problem of Global Justice’, op. cit., 143 ↩

45. Pogge, ‘Recognised and Violated by International Law: The Human Rights of the Global Poor’, op. cit., 740 ↩

46. Pogge, ‘The Bounds of Nationalism’ op. cit., 148 ↩

47. Pogge, ‘Real World Justice’, op. cit., 33 ↩

48. On the subject of ‘complicity’ I note that Pogge does find understanding when the focus is on the citizens of impoverished nations: ‘And having done all this, we lavish condescending pity on impoverished populations for their notorious “failure to govern themselves democratically”!’, Pogge, ‘The Bounds of Nationalism’, op. cit., 148. Pogge’s proposal for remedying the dire situation is that we can ‘try to initiate appropriate changes in national policies or global institutions’, we can ‘develop feasible paths of reform’ and do volunteer work or contribute to relief organisations, Pogge, ‘The Bounds of Nationalism’ op. cit., 149. He also thinks that the establishment of sex-tourist resorts and sweatshops in many of the poorer countries might be part of their best development strategy (Ibid.) – having previously written that ‘Third-world politicians are bribed or pressured by firms from the rich societies to cater to their sex tourism business’, ‘An Egalitarian Law of Peoples’, op. cit., 213 ↩