Is Fair Trade a fair deal?

Abstract

Globalization contributes to a more interconnected global economy. This gives rise to greater challenges to providing a theory of global justice that can account for increasing complexities. Nicole Hassoun defends a powerful and distinctive contribution that claims that coercive institutions in the global order must secure sufficient autonomy to be legitimate because they are coercive. Fair Trade strategies are an illustration of a policy proposal for how globalization can be transformed into global justice. This article examines the issue of how much autonomy is ‘sufficient’ and whether a resource-based solution, like Fair Trade, is likely to contribute to that project. It is argued that the threshold for sufficient autonomy is too imprecise and much more than Fair Trade policies is required if global trade is to become a fairer deal for all.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

Many thanks to Nicole Hassoun for writing such an engaging work and for comments on an earlier draft of this essay.

¹ ‘We’ signifies the specific ‘we’ that is the likely audience for this article: persons living in and benefiting from living in affluent countries. All uses of ‘we’ have this intended meaning unless stated otherwise.

² The capabilities approach, drawn from Martha Nussbaum (2011) and others, is to be distinguished from the capability approach as discussed by Amartya Sen (1999a).

³ I do not wish to suggest that poverty can only be discerned through weighing the size of available resources, although this may often be a central indicator. For example, poverty can be determined through measuring the capabilities of individuals to do or to be. It may also be captured through examining whether someone has secured his or her basic needs. As an illustration, a millionaire washed ashore on a deserted island with bags full of dollars and lacking the ability to communicate with other people would be unable to use his currency to purchase goods to fulfil his basic needs—and so monetary resources are often a good proxy, but imperfect. I will not consider this issue further.

⁴ Pogge's view is influential, but also controversial. One overlooked problem is its conception of democracy. For Pogge, everyone taking part in a democratic exercise may possess a negative duty to others depending on its results—even those voting for the losing candidates. One objection is that it is unclear that when individuals choose candidates in competitive elections they endorse each and every future judgement of those chosen, especially where the decisions of elected politicians depart from what was known at the time of their election. Moreover, it is problematic that those who vote for the losing side should come to possess negative duties, especially if they voted for candidates that might not have given rise to negative duties by avoiding harm to others. This suggests that citizens may be under some duty to punish, if not overthrow, elected democratic leaders because of support for a global order they may not have created or actively enable.

⁵ I follow Pogge's specific understanding of negative duties in the discussion because my focus—Hassoun's account—is a clear attempt to employ these conceptual resources. It is nonetheless clear that negative duties can be distinguished from duties to compensate. However, it is also clear that they can be connected and perhaps overlap, at least in Pogge's theoretical framework. For example, he is careful to argue that negative duties are more about compensation than assistance to those in severe poverty because ‘our’ actions are defined more by addressing wrongful harms than charity and good works. This is defended in his important essay on ‘assisting’ the global poor as well as his proposal for a Global Resources Dividend (‘those who make more extensive use of our planet's resources should compensate those who, involuntarily, use very little’) (Pogge 2002, 204; 2004).

⁶ For example, see Miller (2007) for a defence of the connection theory of remedial responsibility. Miller argues for a hybrid theory bringing together both positive and negative duties. His theory of remedial responsibilities focuses on the responsibilities to provide remedy to people in severe poverty. This account recognizes that there can be a duty to provide remedy in virtue of the suffering of others irrespective of whether someone or some country is responsible for it. Unlike Pogge, Miller correctly recognizes that some poverty is the fault of no one, such as that arising from natural disasters. Miller's project is to offer a connection theory that essentially provides us with tools for weighing up the various connections different polities have to those in need to determine who or what has responsibilities to provide remedy. This account demonstrates that we need not choose between a view based on positive duties (Singer) and one based on negative duties (Pogge), but can bring the two together. For further critical discussion, see Brooks (2011).

⁷ There is a later passage that states, ‘Institutions must do whatever is necessary to help their subjects secure and maintain sufficient autonomy until, and unless, these people autonomously relinquish their ability to do so’ (Hassoun 2012, 56, emphasis added). This suggests that sufficient autonomy is only important where people choose it and where it can be jettisoned. The claim seems different from what is argued elsewhere and I will not consider it further. See Hassoun 2012, 66: ‘what is necessary here may just be what is realistically achievable’.

⁸ Hassoun's discussion connects interestingly with support from the Toronto School for an autonomy principle to replace the harm principle. In compelling work, Toronto colleagues Arthur Ripstein and Alan Brudner have argued that the problem with the harm principle is that harm should not be the focus, but rather harm to autonomy. For harm to be the proper focus of criminalization in this view, it only matters when harm is a violation of a person's autonomy. This account is attractive because it recognizes that not all harms should be part of criminal law, such as prize fighting (although this may be controversial), while its more restrictive idea of harm covers those cases we would want to include. See Brudner (2009) and Ripstein (2006).

⁹ For example, such cases are often found in films in which the hero or heroine, held either prisoner or hostage, carefully plans escape, for instance in Twelve years a slave.

¹⁰ This issue raises additional questions about the population Hassoun has in mind—is our focus the state, a group or a household?—which speaks to further complexities.

¹¹ Hassoun briefly discusses this global system at the end of Part 1. She also notes a ‘basic structure of the global institutional system … embodied in the UN, IMF, WB [World Bank], and WTO’, suggesting the parts-and-whole picture discussed above. See Hassoun (2012, 81).

¹² Andrew Walton claims that consequence-oriented arguments for Fair Trade, including by Hassoun, adhere to the following structure: ‘Individuals should advance X’ (‘normative claim’) and ‘by purchasing Fair Trade goods, individuals advance X’ (‘factual claim’) so ‘individuals should purchase Fair Trade goods in particular’ (‘conclusion’) (Walton 2013, 693; see 692, 695, 696, 699). Walton says this argument lacks ‘a smooth pathway to defending the conclusion’: this is because even if purchasing Fair Trade is ‘sufficient to meet a moral demand’ Fair Trade purchases represent one of many possible ways to satisfy this demand and so the conclusion does not follow (Walton 2013, 693). Similar claims appear in Walton (2012). This argument is incorrect—at least with respect to the specific claims made by Hassoun, who is one of Walton's first targets for criticism (2012). Hassoun's argument does not lead to the conclusion that, in Walton's words, ‘individuals should purchase Fair Trade goods in particular’ (Walton 2012, 692). Instead, her argument is that Fair Trade products provide individuals with reasons to purchase them, such as to advance certain goals that are normatively justified. Her defence of the Fair Trade Bio label is that such a scheme would be a form of voluntary regulation that should positively influence the purchasing preferences of buyers. It would be more accurate to say that individuals have a reason to purchase Fair Trade goods in particular. But whether or not individuals accept this as a reason for action may depend on other factors—and this is one crucial fact about her account that Walton overlooks.

¹³ See Alkire (2008), Nussbaum (2000; 2011), Sen (1995; 1999a; 1999b). See Brooks (2013b) for a general overview and Brighouse and Robeyns (2010) and Brooks (2015) for critical commentary. For a general overview, see Brooks (2013b) and Nussbaum (2000; 2011).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thom Brooks

Thom Brooks is Professor of Law and Government at Durham Law School, Director of the Centre for Law and Criminal Justice and the School's Director of Undergraduate Studies. Email: [email protected]