by Sen, Amartya
The third argument relates to the understanding of motivations. It takes the form of arguing that human beings are uncompromisingly self-centered and self-interested, and given that presumption, the point is sometimes made that the only system that can work effectively is just the capitalist market economy. However, this view of human motivation is not easy to sustain in terms of empirical observations. Nor is it correct to conclude that the success of capitalism as an economic system depends only on self-interested behavior, rather than on a complex and sophisticated value system that has many other ingredients, including reliability, trust, and business honesty (in the face of contrary temptations). Every economic system makes some demands of behavioral ethics, and capitalism is no exception. And values do have very considerable reach in influencing the behavior of individuals.
In emphasizing the possible role of values and norms in individual behavior, it is not my intention to argue that most people are moved more by their sense of justice than by their prudential and material concerns. Far from it. In making predictions of behavior—whether in personal work, private business, or public services—it is important to avoid the error of assuming that people are peculiarly virtuous and desperately keen to be just. Indeed, many well-meant planning exercises in the past have come to grief through overreliance on selfless individual conduct. In recognizing the role of broader values, we must not fail to note the extensive role of intelligent self-seeking, as well as of gross cupidity and greed.
It is a question of having a balance in our behavioral assumptions. We must not fall for the “high-minded sentimentality” of presuming that everyone is intensely moral and value-driven. Nor must we replace that unreal assumption by the equally unreal opposite assumption—what can be called “low-minded sentimentality.” This presumption, which some economists seem to prefer, takes the form of assuming that we are not at all influenced by values (only by crude considerations of personal advantage).58 Whether we deal with “work ethics,” or “business morality,” or “corruption,” or “public responsibility,” or “environmental values,” or “gender equity,” or ideas of “the right family size,” we have to take note of variations—and changeability—in priorities and norms. In analyzing issues of efficiency and equity, or the removal of poverty and subjugation, the role of values cannot but be crucial.
The purpose of the empirical discussions involving corruption (and earlier on, fertility behavior) is not merely to examine issues that are important in themselves, but also to illustrate the significance of norms and values in behavior patterns that may be crucial for the making of public policy. The illustrations also serve to outline the role of public interaction in the formation of values and ideas of justice. In the making of public policy the agency of “the public” has to be considered in different perspectives. The empirical connections not only illustrate the reach of concepts of justice and morality that people entertain, but also point to the extent to which value formation is a social process involving public interactions.
It is clear that we have good reason to pay special attention to creating conditions for more informed understanding and enlightened public discussion. This has some strong policy implications; for example, those that relate to the freedom of thought and action of young women, especially through expanding literacy and school education and through the enhancement of women’s employment, earning ability and economic empowerment (as discussed in chapters 8 and 9). There is also a big role for freedom of the press and the media, in their ability to take up these issues on an extensive basis.
The crucial function of public discussions is sometimes only partially recognized. In China, despite the control over the press in other respects, issues of family size have been widely discussed, and the emergence of a different set of norms regarding family size has been actively sought by public leaders. But similar considerations apply to many other areas of economic and social change, in which, too, open public discussion can greatly help. The lines of permissibility (and of encouragement) in China reflect the priorities of state policy. There is, in fact, something of a conflict here, which remains unresolved. It is reflected in the oddities of partial success in the chosen areas. For example, a reduction of fertility rates in China has been accompanied by an accentuation of gender bias in infant mortality and a sharp increase in sex-selective abortions. A fertility-rate reduction that is achieved not through coercion but through a greater acceptance of gender justice (including, inter alia, the freedom of women not to be overwhelmed by overfrequent childbearing and -rearing) would suffer from less internal tension.
Public policy has a role not only in attempting to implement the priorities that emerge from social values and affirmations, but also in facilitating and guaranteeing fuller public discussion. The reach and quality of open discussions can be helped by a variety of public policies, such as press freedom and media independence (including the absence of censorship), expansion of basic education and schooling (including female education), enhancement of economic independence (especially through employment, including female employment), and other social and economic changes that help individuals to be participating citizens. Central to this approach is the idea of the public as an active participant in change, rather than as a passive and docile recipient of instructions or of dispensed assistance.
CHAPTER 12
INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM AS A SOCIAL COMMITMENT
Bertrand Russell, who was a firm atheist, was once asked what he would do if, following his death, he were to encounter God after all. Russell is supposed to have answered, “I will ask him: God Almighty, why did you give so little evidence of your existence?”1 Certainly the appalling world in which we live does not—at least on the surface—look like one in which an all-powerful benevolence is having its way. It is hard to understand how a compassionate world order can include so many people afflicted by acute misery, persistent hunger and deprived and desperate lives, and why millions of innocent children have to die each year from lack of food or medical attention or social care.
This issue, of course, is not new, and it has been a subject of some discussion among theologians. The argument that God has reasons to want us to deal with these matters ourselves has had considerable intellectual support. As a nonreligious person, I am not in a position to assess the theological merits of this argument. But I can appreciate the force of the claim that people themselves must have responsibility for the development and change of the world in which they live. One does not have to be either devout or nondevout to accept this basic connection. As people who live—in a broad sense—together, we cannot escape the thought that the terrible occurrences that we see around us are quintessentially our problems. They are our responsibility—whether or not they are also anyone else’s.
As competent human beings, we cannot shirk the task of judging how things are and what needs to be done. As reflective creatures, we have the ability to contemplate the lives of others. Our sense of responsibility need not relate only to the afflictions that our own behavior may have caused (though that can be very important as well), but can also relate more generally to the miseries that we see around us and that lie within our power to help remedy. That responsibility is not, of course, the only consideration that can claim our attention, but to deny the relevance of that general claim would be to miss something central about our social existence. It is not so much a matter of having exact rules about how precisely we ought to behave, as of recognizing the relevance of our shared humanity in making the choices we face.2
INTERDEPENDENCE BETWEEN FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY
That question of responsibility raises another. Shouldn’t a person herself be entirely responsible for what happens to her? Why should others take responsibility for influencing her life? That thought, in one form or another, seems to move many political commentators, and the idea of self-help fits well into the mood of the present times. Going further, some argue that dependence on others is not only ethically problematic, it is al
so practically defeatist in sapping individual initiative and effort, and even self-respect. Who better to rely on than oneself to look after one’s interests and problems?
The concerns that give force to this line of reasoning can indeed be very important. A division of responsibility that places the burden of looking after a person’s interest on another person can lead to the loss of many important things in the form of motivation, involvement and self-knowledge that the person herself may be in a unique position to have. Any affirmation of social responsibility that replaces individual responsibility cannot but be, to varying extents, counterproductive. There is no substitute for individual responsibility.
The limited reach and plausibility of an exclusive reliance on personal responsibility can best be discussed only after its essential role has first been recognized. However, the substantive freedoms that we respectively enjoy to exercise our responsibilities are extremely contingent on personal, social, and environmental circumstances. A child who is denied the opportunity of elementary schooling is not only deprived as a youngster, but also handicapped all through life (as a person unable to do certain basic things that rely on reading, writing and arithmetic). The adult who lacks the means of having medical treatment for an ailment from which she suffers is not only prey to preventable morbidity and possibly escapable mortality, but may also be denied the freedom to do various things—for herself and for others—that she may wish to do as a responsible human being. The bonded laborer born into semislavery, the subjugated girl child stifled by a repressive society, the helpless landless laborer without substantial means of earning an income are all deprived not only in terms of well-being, but also in terms of the ability to lead responsible lives, which are contingent on having certain basic freedoms. Responsibility requires freedom.
The argument for social support in expanding people’s freedom can, therefore, be seen as an argument for individual responsibility, not against it. The linkage between freedom and responsibility works both ways. Without the substantive freedom and capability to do something, a person cannot be responsible for doing it. But actually having the freedom and capability to do something does impose on the person the duty to consider whether to do it or not, and this does involve individual responsibility. In this sense, freedom is both necessary and sufficient for responsibility.
The alternative to an exclusive reliance on individual responsibility is not, as is sometimes assumed, the so-called nanny state. There is a difference between “nannying” an individual’s choices and creating more opportunity for choice and for substantive decisions for individuals who can then act responsibly on that basis. The social commitment to individual freedom need not, of course, operate only through the state, but must also involve other institutions: political and social organizations, community-based arrangements, nongovernmental agencies of various kinds, the media and other means of public understanding and communication, and the institutions that allow the functioning of markets and contractual relations. The arbitrarily narrow view of individual responsibility—with the individual standing on an imaginary island unhelped and unhindered by others—has to be broadened not merely by acknowledging the role of the state, but also by recognizing the functions of other institutions and agents.
JUSTICE, FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY
Central to the challenges we face in the contemporary world is our idea of an acceptable society. Why are some social arrangements hard to cherish? What can we do to make a society more tolerable? Underlying such ideas lie some theories of evaluation and—often implicitly—even some basic understanding of social justice. This is not, of course, the occasion to investigate theories of justice in any detail, which I have tried to do elsewhere.3 I have, however, used in this work some general evaluative ideas (briefly discussed in chapters 1–3) that make use of notions of justice and their informational requirements. It may be useful to examine the connection of those ideas with what has been discussed in the intermediate chapters.
First, I have argued for the primacy of substantive freedoms in judging individual advantage and in evaluating social achievements and failures. The perspective of freedom need not be merely procedural (though processes do matter, inter alia, in assessing what is going on). The basic concern, I have argued, is with our capability to lead the kind of lives we have reason to value.4 This approach can give a very different view of development from the usual concentration on GNP or technical progress or industrialization, all of which have contingent and conditional importance without being the defining characteristics of development.5
Second, the freedom-oriented perspective can accommodate considerable variations within that general approach. Freedoms are inescapably of different kinds, and in particular there is the important distinction, already discussed, between the “opportunity aspect” and the “process aspect” of freedom (on this see the discussion in chapter 1). While these different constituent components of freedom often go together, sometimes they may not, and much will then depend on the relative weights that are placed on the different items.6
Also, a freedom-oriented approach can go with different emphases on the relative claims of efficiency and equity. There can be conflicts between (1) having less inequality of freedoms and (2) getting as much freedom as possible for all, irrespective of inequalities. The shared approach permits the formulation of a class of different theories of justice with the same general orientation. Of course, the conflict between equity-oriented and efficiency-oriented considerations is not “special” to the perspective of freedoms. It arises no matter whether we concentrate on freedoms or on some other way of judging individual advantage (for example by happiness or “utilities,” or by “resources” or “primary goods” that the persons respectively have). In standard theories of justice this conflict is addressed by proposing some very specific formula, such as the utilitarian requirement to maximize the sum total of utilities irrespective of distribution, or the Rawlsian Difference Principle that requires maximizing the advantage of the worst off, no matter how this may affect the advantages of all others.7
In contrast, I have not argued for a specific formula to “settle” this question, and have concentrated instead on acknowledging the force and legitimacy of both aggregative and distributive concerns. That acknowledgment itself, along with the need to pay substantial attention to each of these concerns, draws our attention forcefully to the relevance of some basic but neglected issues in public policy, dealing with poverty, inequality and social performance seen in the perspective of freedom. The relevance of both aggregative and distributive judgments in assessing the process of development is quite central to understanding the challenge of development. But this does not require us to rank all development experiences in one linear order. What is, in contrast, indispensably important is an adequate understanding of the informational basis of evaluation—the kind of information we need to examine in order to assess what is going on and what is being seriously neglected.
In fact, as discussed in chapter 3 (and elsewhere8) at the level of the pure theory of justice, it would be a mistake to lock prematurely into one specific system for “weighting” some of these competitive concerns, which would severely restrict the room for democratic decision making in this crucial resolution (and more generally in “social choice,” including the variety of processes that relate to participation). Foundational ideas of justice can separate out some basic issues as being inescapably relevant, but they cannot plausibly end up, I have argued, with an exclusive choice of some highly delineated formula of relative weights as being the unique blueprint for “the just society.”9
For example, a society that allows famines to occur when prevention is possible is unjust in a clearly significant way, but that diagnosis does not have to rest on a belief that some unique pattern of distribution of food, or of income, or of entitlements, among all the people in the country, will be maximally just, trailed by other exact distributions (all completely ordered vis-à-vis one another)
. The greatest relevance of ideas of justice lies in the identification of patent injustice, on which reasoned agreement is possible, rather than in the derivation of some extant formula for how the world should be precisely run.
Third, even as far as patent injustice is concerned, no matter how inescapable it may look in terms of foundational ethical arguments, the emergence of a shared recognition of that “injustice” may be dependent in practice on open discussion of issues and feasibilities. Extreme inequalities in matters of race, gender, and class often survive on the implicit understanding—to use a phrase that Margaret Thatcher made popular (in a different but somewhat related context)—that “there is no alternative.” For example, in societies in which antifemale bias has flourished and been taken for granted, the understanding that this is not inevitable may itself require empirical knowledge as well as analytical arguments, and in many cases, this can be a laborious and challenging process.10 The role of public discussion to debate conventional wisdom on both practicalities and valuations can be central to the acknowledgment of injustice.
Given the role that public debates and discussions must have in the formation and utilization of our social values (dealing with competing claims of different principles and criteria), basic civil rights and political freedoms are indispensable for the emergence of social values. Indeed, the freedom to participate in critical evaluation and in the process of value formation is among the most crucial freedoms of social existence. The choice of social values cannot be settled merely by the pronouncements of those in authority who control the levers of government. As was discussed earlier (in the introduction and chapter 1), we must see a frequently asked question in the development literature to be fundamentally misdirected: Do democracy and basic political and civil rights help to promote the process of development? Rather, the emergence and consolidation of these rights can be seen as being constitutive of the process of development.