ABSTRACT
This chapter explains how the moral equality of combatants is possible. While contributions to unjust ends are usually unjustified, one can be justified in contributing to certain kinds of unjust collective actions. Organizations—long-standing, hierarchical groups dedicated to a particular social function—perform “irreducibly corporate actions.” These actions are more than an aggregate of the group members’ contributions, transformed by the organization’s systems into distinct, irreducible actions. The separation between the two agents—the organization member and the organization—creates the possibility that different reasons for committing the contributory and collective action obtain. The contributor may be justified in contributing to an unjust collective action because of the causal attenuation between the individual and collective actions, the effect of intervening agents, and the mix of good and bad outcomes traceable to the member’s contribution. Members’ contributory actions are unjustified if they do, atypically, have a culpable orientation toward the unjust collective actions they advance because one has strong moral reasons not to culpably perform an unjust action. Yet the organizational structure that creates the distinction in justifications also typically shield members from having the knowledge, freedom of action, and intentionality to be culpable for collective action.
