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Home > Resources > Ethics & International Affairs Journal > Volume 16.1 (Spring 2002) > Debate: Global Poverty Relief |
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More Than Charity: Cosmopolitan Alternatives to the "Singer Solution" [Full Text]
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May 2, 2002
The history of poverty relief is littered with serious failures. Peter Singer,
influential philosopher and controversist, claims to have a “solution.” It is
simple and severe: We, the relatively rich, have an obligation to give away
every cent in our possession that is not devoted to buying “necessaries.” For
the average American household, that means donating all income over $30,000 to
charities. Widespread donation of this kind would, Singer claims, end poverty.
Singer and his critics then tend to debate: “Are we morally obliged to sacrifice
so much?”
The present article shifts the terms of the debate. It asks: “Would a
charity-focused approach to alleviating poverty actually work?” The answer is
"no." At a global level especially, we interact with one another through a
complex web of political and economic arrangements; the poor remain poor because
these arrangements exclude them in important ways. Charity may at times help to
redistribute wealth, but it is a very limited vehicle for improving people’s
situation on a sustainable basis. For that we need not merely charities and NGOs
like Oxfam, but above all fundamental reforms to the rules and institutions of
global order. We need to abandon the narrow language of “selfishness versus
sacrifice” in favor of an approach that emphasizes “exclusion versus inclusion”;
the real issue is how the poor can also come to benefit systematically
from mechanisms of social cooperation.
This approach sets an immensely complex challenge, and we cannot dispense
with a political philosophy that helps to orientate reforms in the right
direction––reforms in production, consumption, aid, and more. Drawing critically
on the works of John Rawls and Karl Marx, the article explicates the three
dimensions that would characterize an effective political philosophy of this
kind. Contrary to Singer’s view, there is no royal road to poverty relief. But
it is possible to draw a map of many intersecting roads that together take us to
a place without poverty.
Download File (PDF, 117.78 K)
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The Carnegie Council's flagship publication, Ethics & International Affairs is an interdisciplinary resource for scholars, students, and policy analysts concerned with the moral dimensions of global issues. The journal covers global justice, civil society, democratization, international law, intervention, sanctions, and related topics.
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the Editors' discretion. All responses are
subject to editing for length and style. In the
event of any questions or substantive editing,
the response will be returned to the author
for final approval prior to publication.
Responses are published online, alongside
the article they address.
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