ABSTRACT
Previous chapters cleared the ground for a conversation about cosmopolitan ethics in global finance via a case study of the Tobin tax. Using a pragmatic approach, it was argued that cosmopolitanism can be viewed as a contingent contribution to an ethical conversation about reforming global finance. Moreover, it was argued in Chapter 2 that the Tobin tax campaign is ripe for inclusion in this conversation. Increasingly, ethical arguments for global redistribution and democratic global governance suffuse the civil society campaign. Specifically, an emphasis by NGOs on global redistribution and making global financial governance more accountable reflect broad cosmopolitan ambitions. The Tobin tax is a good case study for thinking through the ethical possibilities, ambiguities and limits pertaining to cosmopolitan ethics in global finance. Chapter 3 pursued this line of thinking via an analysis of the vocabulary of cosmopolitan justice and its potential synergies with the Tobin tax. While important for extending Tobin tax debates, it was argued that cos-
mopolitan justice is more ambiguous than may be supposed. If cosmopolitan thought seeks to place individuals at the heart of justice then there is ambiguity in the way that ‘practical justice’ – either via a GRD or a Tobin tax – falls back on a cash-based solution to poverty, where money comes from the ‘North’ (usually states) and goes to the ‘South’ (usually states). This is not to argue that such money transfer could not be put to good use, rather it is to identify that the position does not question the principle of universal capitalism and thereby precludes those alternatives – individual, local, regional, global – that might empower people in the construction of finance/justice. Pragmatically speaking, the question of how a cosmopolitan approach to
global finance via a Tobin tax responds to particularity – a particularity that may require Chilean-style capital controls, or widespread popular education as to what finance is – means that the democratic questions of representation and inclusion should be central. As one Tobin tax advocate, Rudy De Meyer argued: ‘We do not want the Tobin Tax to become another Money Machine. The democratic and emancipatory aspects of our campaign should be clear.’1
Therefore the discussion will now turn to the potential for a cosmopolitan democratic framing of the Tobin tax.
