3071-The political economy of new slavery

Nigel Dower 197
a way the very poor are not. I say this not to induce guilt but to remind
the well-off that they are caught up in the global web of imperfections.
They can just accept it and benefit (so perhaps they might feel guilty
about that) or they can do their bit to make the world better, not least
by examining their own patterns of consumption and investment. Thus
they can become ethical consumers and ethical investors, if they are
willing to critique the sources of the goods they acquire, for example
whether they are produced in conditions of economic slavery/exploitation
like the production of carpets or trainers by children. They can
become ethical investors if they invest in companies with better track
records or look into where their banks and pension schemes do their
investing. If enough people did these things, businesses would have
to change their policies in order to sell their products or have more
resources for new investment.
Role of individuals
This leads me to the final point – the roles of individuals. In a way the
crucial roles of individuals have already been outlined: government
polices on aid will be partly a function of what their electorates want;
businesses will respond to the consumer preference of people; most
significantly, individuals can become directly involved in global civil
society and seek at a global level actively to influence what governments,
international bodies and business corporations do. If the life-conditions
of the very poor depend partly on what these bodies do, then what
individuals do, in turn, makes a great difference. The ethical task then
at this point is to engage in dialogue, debate and discussion about the
nature and scope of global responsibility. One way into this is to raise
the question: are we global citizens? This is a surprisingly controversial
question and for that reason is an important one to ask.
Nussbaum expresses well the need for cosmopolitan education in
her lead piece ‘Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism’ in For Love of Country
(Nussbaum, in Cohen, 1996), but the controversial nature of her proposal
is well brought out in many of the replies in that book. Almost
everyone nowadays accepts in the abstract the idea of universal human
values, now often thought of as universal human rights, but what is not
a matter of universal agreement is the idea of significant responsibilities
which are global in scope. Unless or until the latter idea is widely
accepted and the communitarian resistances to it fully dealt with, countries,
companies and individuals will preach the evils of poverty but
do relatively little about it. There is an immense ethical challenge here.
It is the challenge of a robust global ethic.