On why the poor have duties too

ABSTRACT

I argue that ascribing duties to the poor better realizes Deveaux’s methodological and normative commitments; address some of the concerns such ascription raises; and indicate how Deveaux’s rich description of collective and individual agency-building can contribute to theorizing moral agency in non-ideal circumstances more generally.

KEYWORS:

• victims’ duties
• non-ideal theory
• moral agency
• oppression
• victim-blamin

Introduction

When I first started reading Monique Deveaux’s Poverty, Solidarity, and Poor-Led Social Movements, it brought to mind Katherine Boo’s book about Annawadi, a Mumbai slum (Boo 2019). In Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum, we are introduced to a community of slum-dwellers in India: their personal aspirations, set-backs, neighbourly animosities, intimacies, and moments of joy, and the interactions between these micro-politics of the slum with the police, the rising Hindutva movement, India’s long-standing communal and caste tensions, and the economic liberalization that unleashes India’s global aspirations. Boo shares Deveaux’s commitment to heeding the poor’s perspectives but is less optimistic about moral and political agency in the circumstances of poverty:

[P]owerless individuals blamed other powerless individuals for what they lacked. Sometimes they tried to destroy one another. Sometimes … they destroyed themselves in the process. When they were fortunate … they improved their lots by beggaring the life chances of other poor people (Boo 2019, 237).

In Poverty, Solidarity, and Poor-Led Social Movements, Deveaux paints an alternative portrait of the poor. Drawing on a range of case studies, Deveaux powerfully argues for an understanding of poverty that takes seriously the moral and political agency of the poor, including in how we conceptualize poverty. Doing so, Deveaux argues, reveals poverty not to be the mere absence of resources – the deprivation model that is prevalent amongst utilitarian philosophers – but rather, to be a set of social and political relations that structurally dominate the lives of the poor. The participation of the poor in anti-poverty movements is critical, therefore, to correctly diagnose poverty as a political choice and social predicament that engenders social relations of domination, and to prescribe how poverty should be remedied. Without the poor’s involvement in anti-poverty movements, Deveaux argues that poverty will be misunderstood as the deprivation of resources, with palliative top-down solutions that do not fundamentally alter social and political relations. Without the poor’s involvement, then, the poor will always be with us; at most, we will ensure that their lives are a little less wretched.

Deveaux makes the case that the poor are morally entitled to be included in the political institutions that govern them, and that poor-led movements are vital for transforming the social and political structures underpinning poverty (Deveaux, 2021, 7). But she stops short of saying that the poor are morally required to participate in anti-poverty movements. I argue that this reluctance stands in tension with Deveaux’s own methodological and normative commitments. First, the failure to attribute responsibilities to the poor creates a normative gap: we know what state of affairs we are required to achieve, but we do not assign the duties required to achieve this state. Even in theory, then, the principles of justice cannot be realized. A normative gap is especially troubling for a work in non-ideal theory that seeks, as Deveaux does, to ‘provide a clear and compelling account of which practices of collective responsibility-taking can hasten just and progressive poverty eradication’ (Deveaux, 2021, 193) – that is, an account that seeks to show us how we transition from a less to a more just world. Second, reluctance to attribute such responsibilities to the poor is in tension with recognizing their moral agency; it risks treating them as moral patients rather than moral agents, and thereby reintroduces the ethical and political concerns Deveaux’s account so persuasively contends with. Indeed, attributing duties to the poor would seem to address Deveaux’s complaint that ‘poverty duties are consistently ascribed to actors in the global North in ways that obscure the agency of those who live in poverty’ (Deveaux, 2021, 12).

In what follows, I show that attributing duties to the poor better realizes Deveaux’s methodological and normative commitments; address some of the concerns such attribution raises; and indicate how Deveaux’s rich description of collective and individual agency-building can contribute to theorizing moral agency in non-ideal circumstances more generally. Before I do so, two caveats are in order. First, attributing to victims of oppression duties with respect to that oppression is not tantamount to blaming victims for their oppression. ‘Victim-blaming’ denies the fact of oppression by attributing to victims responsibility for their various predicaments and suffering: by these lights, poverty results from a lack of talent, industry, judgement, prudence and restraint – and not from structural relations of domination and exploitation. By contrast, attributing duties to victims in the midst of this domination and exploitation is to take the fact of oppression as a given, and to then consider how victims, as moral and political agents, ought to respond to their oppression. Second, taking the fact of oppression as a given also informs the weightiness and content of these duties, in particular, the limits of these duties and the different ways that they can be discharged. Among other things, that victims are subject to moral requirements in the face of their oppression does not require them to risk their lives and well-being to resist their oppression, and it means that in many cases, the poor will simply not have the capacity to discharge their duties.

Political responsibilities to defeat poverty

I will begin by outlining Deveaux’s view of political responsibility (which I, following Deveaux, use interchangeably with duties). Deveaux does not dwell on the bases for political responsibility: she writes, ‘I spend much less time justifying this responsibility than is usual in philosophical discussions, largely because I do not think moral arguments of this sort are likely to motivate people to act’ (Deveaux, 2021, 192). Furthermore, ‘Developing justifications of moral duties conceived in abstraction from concrete struggles seems problematic on many counts, not least of which is that it risks repeating the epistemic exclusion of the very people they are intended to address.’ She tells us, however, that (1) she conceives duty broadly along the lines of Iris Marion Young’s ‘social connection’ model, which is especially helpful in understanding forward-looking collective responsibilities; (Deveaux, 2021, 193); and that (2) she is a moral pluralist in that she is willing to endorse different grounds for these responsibilities because different grounds will resonate better with different actors. As she emphasizes, ‘It is more important to provide a clear and compelling account of which practices of collective responsibility-taking can hasten just and progressive poverty eradication than it is to rehearse debates about what grounds moral duties to reduce poverty’ (Deveaux, 2021, 193). Deveaux’s attribution of duties to particular agents is largely instrumental, then, and determined, at least in part, by whether or not she believes such attribution is likely to motivate them to act.¹

Deveaux focuses on the duties of the nonpoor. She argues that appreciating the central role of the poor in anti-poverty movements alters how we ordinarily understand the duties of the nonpoor and calls on them to act in solidarity with the poor rather than simply increasing amounts of charity or supporting top-down institutional change. That is, the nonpoor have substantial duties, but these can be discharged only via particular relations with the poor. As for the political responsibilities of the poor, Deveaux demurs: ‘It is not my place, as a nonpoor political philosopher, to decide this. But as many readers will want to see this question addressed, I will retrace some of the arguments for and against this claim’ (Deveaux, 2021, 225). And so, Deveaux considers Young’s arguments about how the ‘social connection’ model of political responsibility will apply to victims themselves. Young argues that victims of structural oppression will have insights into the nature of that oppression and that, because their interests are especially affected, their perspectives have a special weight. This is consistent with Deveaux’s claims regarding the essential role that the poor play in anti-poverty movements. Deveaux nevertheless finds Young’s claim that victims have responsibilities to work with others to collectively transform unjust structures ‘problematic[]’(Deveaux, 2021, 226). Of victims’ duties to help other victims, Deveaux points to the many difficulties victims’ confront in doing so but concedes that (1) of those victims who have ‘become fully aware of the ways that structures of oppression affect them, there is arguably more reason to expect them to step up’ (Deveaux, 2021, 228) and (2) victims’ duties arguably include acting in solidarity with those already engaged in activism on their mutual behalf. In sum, ‘[poor people] who live in places where poor-led social movements (or politically active poor associations) exist may thus have a prima facie responsibility to exercise political solidarity with those working towards change – where they can safely due so, without jeopardizing their own well-being or that of loved ones’ (Deveaux, 2021, 230).

Normative gaps and non-ideal theory

Deveaux’s view of the poor’s duties introduces a normative gap: she provides a normative account of what justice requires and constraints on how justice can be realized but does not fully provide the normative resources for this realization. The poor’s participation is necessary for poverty to be overcome, the nonpoor have responsibilities to overcome poverty in solidarity with the poor, but the poor do not themselves have a duty to begin such efforts. Put another way, everyone could do what is morally required of them (or be willing to do so), and we might not be able to get off the ground the anti-poverty movements required to realize justice. The nonpoor who read Deveaux’s book and are persuaded by its powerful arguments will know that they have a duty to defeat poverty that they can discharge only through solidarity with the poor, but because the poor are not themselves morally required to engage in anti-poverty movements, the nonpoor could be left with no means of discharging their duties to defeat poverty – other than unilaterally providing assistance as they see fit.

Normative gaps may be relatively common in ideal theory, in which questions of political feasibility and implementation can be bracketed. But a normative gap is a problem for an exercise in transitional non-ideal theory (Valentini 2012) that wants to ‘provide a clear and compelling account of which practices of collective responsibility-taking can hasten just and progressive poverty eradication.’ For, it is precisely a practice of collective responsibility-taking amongst the poor that is necessary for poverty eradication. If the poor decline to participate in poverty eradication, then either the conscientious nonpoor do little – since they are waiting for there to be poor activists with whom to act in solidarity – or the conscientious nonpoor take the lead in poverty eradication – thereby replicating the troubling approaches to poverty that ostensibly animate Deveaux’s critique.

These worries about a normative gap might seem exaggerated on two counts. First, because it is in the poor’s interests to eradicate poverty, they will seek to do so even in the absence of a duty; duties for the poor, therefore, are not essential to realizing Deveaux’s normative account. But the structural relations of domination that Deveaux so compellingly draws mitigate against this tidy solution. Given the risks of engaging in anti-poverty politics and the uncertain gains these efforts will yield, it will often be in the poor’s interests to work within unequal and oppressive structures, to try to use them to their benefit, to gain what they can without pushing for greater change for others – in fact, to exploit other poor people. Indeed, even when the poor act in order to assist one another, this assistance might similarly be at cross-purposes with bringing about more lasting change. A poor person wanting to help her neighbour may know which police officer to bribe, but this will only prop up the system of corruption and relations of exploitation in which they are both enmeshed.² The poor are not a uniform group with compatible interests; it is not always in their interests to engage in anti-poverty activism aimed at transforming social and political relations; and even when they act with a view to helping one another, this will not necessarily transform social and political relations.

Second, even if the poor do not engage in resistance efforts, this does not mean the nonpoor are left to sit around twiddling their thumbs. Under the ‘social connection’ model, the nonpoor have forward-looking responsibilities because they are connected to structural injustice; these myriad connections might also provide opportunities for the nonpoor to subvert, challenge, and weaken the poor’s oppression. The nonpoor, especially in wealthy countries that dictate unfair terms of international trade, can pressure their governments to pursue more just international economic policies. The nonpoor can support companies and products that engage in fair labour practices, engage in campaigns against those that do not, and at a minimum, change their consumption patterns. That the nonpoor can act to alleviate poverty, however, does not mean that they can substitute for the poor in anti-poverty movements. There is a limit to how much the nonpoor can achieve on their own. They can minimize their participation in poverty-sustaining practices and institutions, but they cannot transform the social and political relations that dominate the poor by themselves – to do so unilaterally would replicate these relations of domination and risk the misdiagnoses of poverty and the prescription of top-down solutions against which Deveaux so persuasively writes.

Of course, the nonpoor could advocate for policymaking processes that include the poor, recognizing that combating poverty requires the transformation of social and political relations and that such transformation cannot be done without the poor.³ And there is much to be done by the nonpoor to institutionalize the poor’s voice and to remove the obstacles and risks that stifle this voice. But even here, the participation of the poor is necessary. For one, the understanding of poverty as political is one that Deveaux attributes to the poor – without the poor organizing and advancing this view, it is not clear that the nonpoor would come to appreciate that poverty is a set of relations and not simply the absence of resources. And even when the nonpoor conscientiously seek to enable the participation of the poor in processes of social and political transformation, they still need the poor to participate in these processes.

The nonpoor will have duties to combat poverty simply in virtue of their connection to it, but absent the participation of the poor, they are unable to fully discharge these duties in the way that Deveaux mandates. Without the poor, anti-poverty movements of the type that Deveaux embraces will not get off the ground. Of course, Deveaux can point to the simple fact that anti-poverty movements exist: whether or not there is a normative gap in principle, in practice, some of the poor do, in fact, engage in anti-poverty movements. Deveaux may simply be focusing on what duties the nonpoor have, taking poor-led social movements as a given. But this would be a mistake. For one, given Deveaux’s commitment to normative inquiry that is grounded in political practice, the fact that some poor do engage in anti-poverty movements warrants normative scrutiny. It is a virtue of Deveaux’s approach that political practice is taken to reveal and inform philosophical principle. Second, as Deveaux’s case studies reveal, poor-led social movements are not a given; in fact, they are the result of concerted efforts that prevail against overwhelming odds. Understanding the normative bases of the poor’s participation in anti-poverty social movements helps to better understand how these movements come about and, importantly, how they ought to come about. There are, morally speaking, better and worse ways for the poor to form and lead anti-poor social movements. Subjecting the poor’s participation to normative scrutiny can be helpfully action-guiding, for the poor and nonpoor alike. As Deveaux repeatedly insists, the poor’s participation is essential to transform the oppressive social and political relations that constitute poverty; if it is essential but not also required, then a normative gap arises. This normative gap is not merely a philosophical problem: because it stymies the effort to ‘provide a clear and compelling account of which practices of collective responsibility-taking can hasten just and progressive poverty eradication,’ it will also have political consequences.⁴

Agency and duties among the poor

Attributing duties to the poor helps to satisfy Deveaux’s aim of providing a normative account that will help bring about its own realization: it closes a normative gap that her account otherwise has, and might help encourage the poor to act in ways that ‘hasten just and progressive poverty eradication’. That is, attributing duties to the poor might satisfy Deveaux’s instrumental concerns with respect to duty attribution. Attributing duties might encourage the poor not to act in self-interested ways that are parasitic on other poor people, or not to assist one another in ways that reinforce, rather than challenge, the oppressive relations in which they are enmeshed. For as others have noted, attributing duties to the victims of injustice can be instrumentally valuable, encouraging them to recognize themselves as moral agents and emboldening them to exercise their agency (LaGuardia-LoBianco 2018). After all, the nonpoor more easily oppress the poor when the latter are passive and do not see themselves as moral and political agents.

But these instrumental considerations aside, recognizing the moral agency of the poor entails recognizing that they are subject to moral reasons, including to moral requirements and entitlements. To do otherwise would be to treat the poor as moral patients: beings with moral standing that entitles them to moral consideration and even moral obligations from others but who are themselves incapable of being subject to reciprocal obligations because they are not moral agents. It is precisely this view of the poor as the passive beneficiaries of others’ moral impulses that Deveaux so powerfully dismantles by insisting on their moral and political agency – and yet she appears hesitant to embrace an important implication of this agency.

Deveaux explains the reasons for this reticence. First, demonstrating a sensitivity to her social and political position, she states: ‘It is not my place, as a nonpoor political philosopher, to decide [the question of the responsibilities of the poor.]’ Here, however, Deveaux conflates attributing a duty to an agent with holding that agent to account. Standing is relevant only to the latter: Deveaux can attribute moral duties (and rights) to any other agent, but she would need certain standing in order to hold that agent to account and to engage in accountability practices, such as blaming or expressing indignation. For example, when Alice makes a promise to Brenda, Alice has a promissory obligation – if Carla is aware of the promise, then Carla is in a position to attribute a promissory obligation to Alice. When Alice carelessly breaks her promise to Brenda, however, it would be inappropriate for Carla to feel indignant, to express disappointment and anger, and to engage in any range of accountability practices. Standing matters, then, but not to the question of whether or not a duty exists. Focusing on one’s relative standing and privilege can have the perverse effect of shifting the focus away from the moral and political agency of the poor and of failing to treat them as moral equals – a concern to which Deveaux otherwise is alert.⁵

There are other reasons, of course, to hesitate to attribute duties to the poor. Given their several and overlapping structural disadvantages, and the multiple sources of domination and violence in their lives, it might simply be too burdensome for the poor to discharge moral requirements. To speak of the poor’s duties would seem to simply add to the burdens of those who are already burdened, and for whom survival is a daily uncertainty. Relatedly, to speak of the poor’s duties might seem to distract from the more pressing matter, namely, the duties of the nonpoor to do the urgent work of remedying poverty, to recognize it as a political and social phenomenon and not merely a matter of resource-deprivation, and to therefore work with the poor in bringing about the structural transformations necessary to address poverty.⁶ Indeed, given that aid from the nonpoor often is misguided or indeed can be complicit in propping up oppressive relations, directing our attention to the nonpoor might seem important to prevent further harm. And finally, speaking about the poor’s duties might seem to invite blaming the poor. Victim-blaming is a pernicious instantiation and mechanism of structural oppression that denies the structural causes of victims’ plight in favour of focusing on their individual failings, making them and others believe that if only the poor worked harder, or demonstrated greater ingenuity, or made more prudent decisions, then they would not be poor.

In a work of political philosophy so keenly attuned to the realities of political practice and the vagaries of moral discourse, it is not surprising that relatively little attention is paid to the poor’s duties. But the poor’s duties warrant philosophical and political attention precisely given the realities of political practice and moral discourse. For one, equivocating about the poor’s duties is at odds with insisting that they are moral and political agents; treating the poor’s duties gingerly and reluctantly is to treat the poor with kid gloves, which is resonant with treating them like moral patients and not agents. Second, exploring the poor’s duties invites reflection on moral agency under conditions of oppression, which counters the tendency to theorize moral agency in ideal circumstances.⁷ As Deveaux illustrates through her careful engagement with concrete case studies (Deveaux, 2021, 155–158), individual agency is expanded when collective capabilities are fostered by poor organizations, through collective empowerment, and through collective action. Poverty, and other contexts of oppression, complicate the relationship between individual and collective agency, in particular by suggesting that in non-ideal circumstances, collective agency can be crucial to building the individual agency of its members. Extending this analysis to the poor’s duties could similarly shed light on the complex interactions between agency and duties on the individual and collective level – how, for example, discharging duties of mutual assistance amongst the poor can help repair the self-respect and expand the moral agency of poor individuals.⁸ Indeed, exploring agency and duty in the non-ideal context of poverty allows us to conceive of moral agency as scalar, to appreciate the importance of collective practices to individual agency, and to consider the ways in which bearing and discharging duties can expand moral agency. In short, theorizing moral agency – and hence moral duties – among the poor would extend one of the key contributions Deveaux makes: to challenge harmful orthodoxies, in philosophy and politics, that arise through theorizing that is disengaged from political reality and, crucially, from the perspectives of those being theorized about.

Conclusion

It is difficult to overstate the importance of Deveaux’s contribution, which comes at a time when inequality is increasing, the poor are disdained as embarrassments and failures, and technocratic and punitive solutions abound. Rather than eradicate poverty, policymakers are keen to erase the poor – like the Annawadi slum dwellers Boo describes, who are concealed behind ‘Beautiful Forever’ billboards that advertise Italianate floor tiles to a new India keen to avert its eyes from the poor. As both authors reveal, the poor have complex moral and ethical personalities that are not reducible to the deprivations they suffer. Deveaux demonstrates the vital political consequences of this complex moral agency, and the crucial role the poor play in understanding and eradicating poverty.

Poverty is one domain in which philosophical approaches mirror political and policy responses, or as we see in the ‘effective altruism’ movement, where philosophy can directly inspire these responses. Deveaux lucidly articulates why we, as philosophers and global citizens, should have deep misgivings about some of these trends. She then goes on to provide an alternative vision: she begins with the moral and political agency of the poor, the insights that poor-led social movements provide on the nature of poverty, the importance of these movements for remedying the multifaceted and structural harms of poverty, and the duties of the nonpoor to work with these movements to defeat poverty. What emerges is a philosophically rigorous and politically astute account of how political and social change can be instigated by the most marginalized.

Given that Deveaux is challenging well-entrenched philosophical orthodoxies and policy orientations, her argument principally is addressed to those who embrace these approaches or might easily take them for granted. As such, her account describes how poor-led social movements operate and she focuses on elaborating what this means for the duties of the nonpoor – all with a view to helping bring about the social change these social movements aim at realizing. What receives less treatment is what this account of anti-poverty movements means normatively for the poor, in particular, whether the poor have duties to engage in anti-poverty movements.

I have tried to show that attributing duties to the poor extends the methodological and normative commitments underlying Deveaux’s account. First, attributing duties to the poor bridges a normative gap that otherwise arises and helps ensure that this powerful account of remedying poverty does, in fact, explore what ‘practices of collective responsibility-taking can hasten just and progressive poverty eradication.’ Second, moral agency entails moral responsibility. If we want to respect the moral agency, long denied, of the most marginalized, then this means taking them seriously as morally responsible agents. To be sure, contexts of marginalization, oppression and deprivation burden moral agency in various ways, and in some cases, will extinguish it entirely. But I take it that Deveaux is committed to the view that many, if not most, poor people are moral agents. Indeed, her careful discussion of poor-led social movements and of the complex interactions between individual and collective capabilities, is an important exploration of moral agency under conditions of oppression. In this context, duties are not necessarily constrictive and punitive, but instead, can play a role in individual and collective agency in ways that are agency expanding and affirming.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Presumably this attribution is conditional on whether or not these individuals actually bear these duties.

² This example is adapted from Boo (2019).

³ Avery Kolers suggests that those seeking to act in solidarity with victims of injustice may have to, in some circumstances, act as solidary entrepreneurs. In the context of poverty, the nonpoor would first endow the poor with the requisite epistemic and other resources to initiate anti-poverty movements, and would then defer to them. Kolers, A Moral Theory of Solidarity (Kolers 2016): 158–160. I raise concerns about entrepreneurship and suggest ways that these concerns can be mitigated. Vasanthakumar, The Ethics of Exile: a political theory of diaspora (Oxford University Press, 2021): 77–80.

⁴ I thank an anonymous reviewer for encouraging me to expand on this argument.

⁵ Deveaux asks: ‘Yet if privileged persons may have more extensive responsibilities vis à vis injustices, might this unwittingly displace the poor as agents of justice, landing us back where we started?’ Deveaux at 200.

⁶ See, e.g., E. Yankah, ‘Whose Burden to Bear? Privilege, Lawbreaking and Race,’ Criminal Law and Philosophy, 16:13, pp1–16 (Yankah 2022) for an analogous argument with respect to the criminal justice system.

⁷ Important exceptions include Margaret Urban Walker, Moral Understandings: a feminist study in ethics (Oxford University press Walker 2007) and Lisa Tessman, Burdened Virtues: Virtue Ethics for Liberatory Struggles (Oxford University Press Tessman 2005).

⁸ See, e.g., A. Vasanthakumar, ‘Victims’ Reasons and Responses in the Face of Oppression,” The Harvard Review of Philosophy 28(1):143–155 (Vasanthakumar 2021).