ABSTRACT
It has been argued recently that, from a moral point of view, we are not merely obliged to help the victims of absolute poverty, but that we must above all stop harming them. This claim is based on the empirical assumption that world poverty is to a significant extent caused by an unjust and harmful world order imposed on poor countries by the inhabitants of the wealthier ones. Thomas Pogge argues therefore that we all have ‘a negative duty not to uphold injustice, not to contribute to or profit from the unjust impoverishment of others’ (Pogge 2002, 197; see also Pogge 2002, 21, 66sqq., 172; Pogge 2004, 273). In this chapter, we will not discuss the empirical question whether the institutional global order is indeed decisive for the persistence of world poverty. We will rather assume that world poverty is amongst local factors caused by global rules and by our contributing to and profiting from them. Yet, from this assumption it does not follow that the normative question about the moral responsibility for the destitution of the poor is already answered. After all, there is the widespread view that even if we all as consumers, investors, managers and citizens of democratically ruled countries are somehow causally involved in exploiting mechanisms, our contribution is so marginal and loose that the responsibility for the distress lies entirely or at least primarily in the governments of the affected countries. 2
