Mark Carney The Road to Glasgow is Paved with Data Mark Carney In a little over a year, the world will converge physically and virtually on Glasgow for COP26 hosted the United Kingdom in partnership with Italy. It will then be six years after the landmark Paris Accord, and the stakes could not be higher. Despite prolonged lockdowns of large swathes of the global economy, the earth’s car- bon budget continues to be rapidly depleted, the physical risks of climate change continue to mount, and the sixth mass extinction continues to progress. Paris was a triumph of commitment and process. Commitment by [193] governments to limit temperature rises to below 2 degrees, with a stretch target of 1.5 degrees. Process in the innovation of Nationally Determined Contributions, whereby countries set their own pledges, and the world transparently added them up to see whether those efforts did the job. That calculation, 2.8 degrees of warm- ing even if all countries fulfilled their pledges, was as sobering as it was disciplined. And it set the tone on the road to Glasgow: climate policy in the public and private spheres would be driven by data and data analytics because slogans won’t solve an existential crisis. In the event, many countries have fallen short of their pledges, and the IPCC estimates that the world is on course for up to 4 degree warming by the end of the century. At current rates of emissions, we have less than a decade left to stay within the carbon budget that keeps temperature rises below 1.5 degrees with 50% probability. Getting back on track will require a redoubling of public efforts and a quantum change in private investment. The IEA estimates that the low-carbon transition could require $3.5trn in energy sector investments every year for decades – twice the rate at present. Under their scenario, in order for carbon to stabilise by 2050, nearly 95% of electricity supply will need to be low carbon, 70% of new cars electric, and the CO2 intensity of the building sector will need to fall by 80%. For private markets to anticipate and smooth the transition to a net zero world, they need the right reporting, risk management, return optimisation. Our objective for Glasgow is to build these frameworks so that there is a new financial system in which every decision takes climate change into account. This requires a fundamental reordering of the financial system so that all aspects of finance— investments, loans, derivatives, insurance products, whole markets—view climate change as much a determinant of value as creditworthiness, interest rates or technology. A world in which the impact of an activity on climate change is a new vector, a new determinant, of value. Doing so requires new data sets and new analytic techniques. The challenges are enormous and the timescales tight, but the prize are protecting the planet while seizing the greatest commercial opportunity of our time. In order to bring climate risks and resilience into the heart of financial decision making, climate disclosure ( reporting ) must become comprehensive; climate risk management must be transformed, and sustainable investing ( returns ) must go mainstream. Reporting Catalysed by the G20 and created by the private sector, the Task Force on Cli- mate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) is a comprehensive, practical and flexible framework for corporate disclosure of climate-related risks and opportunities. Since the TCFD set out its recommendations for climate-related disclosures, there has been a step change in both demand and supply of climate reporting. The demand for TCFD disclosure is now enormous. Current supporters control balance sheets totaling $140 trillion and include the world’s top banks, asset managers, pension funds, insurers, credit rating agencies, accounting firms and shareholder advisory services. The supply of disclosure is responding, with four fifths of the top 1100 G20 companies now disclosing climate-related financial risks in line with some of the TCFD recommendations. Suitable for use by all companies that raise capital, the TCFD recommendations include a mixture of objective, subjective and forward-looking metrics: - Include disclosure of governance , strategy and risk management ; - Establish consistent and comparable metrics applicable across all sectors, as well as specific metrics for the most carbon-intense sectors; and - Encourage use of scenario analysis so as to consider dynamically the potential impact of the risks and opportunities of the transition to a low carbon economy on strategy and financial planning. The TCFD will call on new skills from measuring Scope 3 emissions to assessing strategy, risk and performance under different climate pathways. The next step is to make these disclosures mandatory through initiatives by national authorities, regulators and international standard setters. Understanding and using such forward-looking impact disclosure will become a core skill across the private financial sector. Risk management The providers of capital—banks, insurers, asset managers—and those who supervise them all need to improve their understanding and management of climate-related financial risks. Changes in climate policies, new technologies and growing physical risks will prompt a reassessment of the value of virtually every financial asset. Firms that align their business models to the transition to a net zero world will be rewarded handsomely. Those that fail to adapt will cease to exist. The longer meaningful adjustment is delayed, the greater the disruption will be. Climate risks differ from conventional risks in several critical respects, including: Their unprecedented nature. Past experience and historical data are not good predictors of the probabilities in the future. Indeed, as the insurance industry has learned, yesterday’s tail event is becoming today’s central scenario. Their breadth and magnitude . They will affect every customer, in every sec- tor in every country. Their impact will likely be correlated, non-linear, irreversible, and subject to tipping points. They will therefore occur on a much greater scale than the other risks financial institutions are used to managing. That they are both foreseeable , in the sense that we know some combination of physical and transition risk will occur, and uncertain , in that the timing and scale is path dependent. Although the time horizons for physical risks are long - not the usual 3-5-year business planning horizon, but over decades— addressing major climate risks tomorrow requires action today . Indeed, actions over the next decade—prob- ably in the next three to five years—will be critical to determining the size and balance of future risks (1). It is self-evident that the financial system cannot diversify its way out of this risk. As the pandemic has revealed, the interconnections between the real economy and the financial system run deep. And just like Covid-19, climate change is a far-reaching, system-wide risk that affects the whole economy, from which the financial system is not immune and indeed cannot hide. As the CEO of Morgan Stanley remarked to Congress, “It’s hard to have financial stability if you don’t have a planet.” So if financial risk is to be reduced, then the underlying climate risks in the real economy must be managed. And fixing this collective action problem is a shared responsibility across financial institutions and regulators. The public and private sectors need to work together to solve it, and that means developing the necessary risk management expertise rapidly. That expertise is needed because it is challenging to assess financial risks in the normal way. As emphasised by the TCFD, it means that disclosures need to go beyond the static (what a company’s emissions are today) to the strategic (what their plans are for their emissions tomorrow). That means assessing the resilience of firms’ strategies to transition risks. This will be the principle focus of the new climate stress testing regime of central banks. At present, led by the Banque de France, the Nederlands Bank and the Bank of England, 16 central banks and supervisors will stress test their systems against different climate scenarios for a smooth transition to net zero to business-as-usual hothouse earth. Returns Financial participants increasingly recognise that sustainable investment brings enormous opportunities ranging from transforming energy to reinventing protein. While green investment products, such as green, sustainable and transition bonds are important catalysts to developing a new financial system, they will not be sufficient to finance the transition to a low carbon future. We need to mobilise mainstream finance to help support all companies in the economy to adjust business models to align with net zero pathways. Value will be driven by identifying the leaders and laggards, as well as the most important general-purpose technologies that will overcome choke points in the transition. That means having a more sophisticated understanding of how companies are working to transition from brown to green, not just where they are at a single point in time. Thus far, the approaches to doing so have been inadequate. Scores that combine E, S and G to give a single ESG metric—while worthy—are dominated by the S and the G. Carbon footprints are not forward-looking. And the impact of shareholder engagement is hard to measure. Moreover, a whole economy transition isn’t about funding only deep green activities or blacklisting dark brown ones. We need fifty shades of green to catalyse and support all companies towards net zero and be able to assess collectively whether we’re “Paris aligned.” That means investors must be able to assess the credibility of company transition plans. Transition planning is nascent and of varying quality among companies. Some have a stated net zero objective, but are yet to set out a credible strategy or tactics to achieving it. Others have fully integrated climate strategies, governance and investments. Emerging best practice transition plans include: - Defining net zero objective in terms of Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions; - Outlining clear short term milestones and metrics that senior management uses to monitor progress and gauge success; - Board level governance; and - Embedding metrics in executive compensation. Schemes such as the Science Based Targets Initiative and Transition Pathway Initiative are already supporting companies to develop transition plans and certifying them when they meet appropriate thresholds. An emerging differentiator in the investment community will need to make these critical judgments. Over time, investors will not just judge company transition plans, they too shall be judged. Investors should be obliged to alignment of their portfolios with the transition and disclose their position in a readily understandable and impactful manner. There are several ways to do this. At the most basic end of the spectrum, investors could calculate the percentage of assets that have a net zero target. However, as disclosures improve in the real economy, a more sophisticated option is to calculate the degree warming potential of assets in a portfolio. A “warming potential” calculation – or Implied Temperature Rise – estimates the global temperature rise associated with emissions by the companies in an investment portfolio. For example, one of the world’s largest insurers, AXA, estimates that its assets are currently consistent with a 3.1 degree path, and it has developed an innovative climate Value-at-Risk model to measure the opportunities as well as risks from the climate-related exposures of its investments. Rating the warming potential of assets and portfolios has a number of ancillary benefits, including signaling to governments the transition path of the economy, and therefore the effectiveness of their policies; and empowering consumers to give them more choice in how to invest to support the transition. After all, with our citizens, particularly the young, demanding climate action, it is becoming essential for asset owners to disclose the extent to which their clients’ money is being invest- ed in line with their values. Conclusion A financial market in the transition to a 1.5 degree world is being built, but we need to accelerate the pace on the road to Glasgow. Now is the time for a step change to bring the reporting, risk management and return optimisation of sustainable finance into everyday financial decision making. This will require new data sets from scope 3 emissions to exposures to climate transition risk, and new financial skills from scenario analysis to assessing implied temperature warming. The common theme will be determining who is on the right and wrong side of climate history. In that way, private finance can bend the arc of that history towards climate justice. Endnote 1 UNEP Emissions Gap Report, 2019. Previous Next

The Brown University Journal of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (JPPE) is a peer reviewed academic journal for undergraduate and graduate students that is sponsored by the Political Theory Project and the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Society Program at Brown University. The Brown Journal of Philosophy, Politics & Economics Volume IV, Issue II scroll to view articles current issue Philosophy Interpersonal Remembrance and Mnemonic Wronging Andrej Gregus Shoring Against Our Ruin An Investigation of Profound Boredom in our Return to Normal Life Virginia Moscetti Unwitting Wrongdoing The Case of Moral Ignorance Madeline Monge Read More Politics Refuting the myth of progressive secularism An Analysis of the Legal Frameworks Surrounding Religious Practice in France and Bahrain Bridget McDonald Ronald Reagan and the role of humor in American movement conservatism Abie Rohrig Read More Economics The relationship between education and welfare dependency Aiden Cliff Against the Mainstream How Modern Monetary Theory and the Myth of Millionaire Tax Flight Challenge Conventional Wisdom Justin Lee Read More Applications for JPPE will resume in the fall! See Available Positions

Racial Capitalism Racial Capitalism in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Challenging the Fallacy of Black Entitlement under Service Delivery Protests. Olerato Mogomotsi University of Cape Town Author Miles Campbell Allie Dolido Sydney Munro Editors Spring 2018 This essay focuses on racial capitalism in post apartheid South Africa, with reference to service delivery protests. I. Introduction There is a domineering narrative within South African white liberal spaces that black people who have failed to escape the shackling cycle of poverty are lazy, incompetent, and sit on their verandas the whole day waiting for a job to fall in their hands (Biko, 2017). This narrative is conventionally understood as ‘black entitlement.’ White liberals erroneously believe that black poor people, who are in fact dispossessed and agentless, do not want to seize the opportunities South Africa has. With reference to the trend and nature of South African service delivery protests in post-Apartheid South Africa, I argue that South Africa has been and still is plagued by systemic racial capitalism that has persisted through South Africa’s transition into democracy. I argue that racial capitalism has manifested through the adoption of a neo-liberal economy, initiated by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission compromise. Consequently, the pre- and post-apartheid impact of a racially segregated and unilaterally white-benefiting capitalist economy is a rash on the black mind which has not seen adequate redress. I will first show how Marxist and Liberal authors have attempted to merge the concepts of race and capitalism. I will then highlight the Marxist and Liberal shortcomings in validating racial capitalism as a comprehensible and historically visible concept. I will then call for a holistic re-conceptualization of racial capitalism that makes up for the Marxist and Liberal shortcomings. This new conceptualization will inform the rest of my argument around the fallacy of black entitlement in South Africa. I will show that even a black majoritarian government has not been enough to correct the historic economic disadvantage that presently plagues the black poor majority. II. Conceptualising Racial Capitalism In this paper, I will make use of the micro and macro levels of political analysis to understand South Africa’s racial capitalism. This analysis will observe the condition of black South African lives over time in order to explain the persistence of racial capitalism from Apartheid until today. Additionally, by addressing inconsistencies in the Marxist and Liberal conceptions of race and capitalism, I will argue that the effects of colonialism and South African oppression politics have integrated racial capitalism into South African society. Liberal scholarship on racial capitalism in the Apartheid era focuses disproportionately on the socio-legal systematic framework of Apartheid to explain the relationship between race and capitalism. This literature almost regards race in South Africa as inherently anti-capitalistic and claims capitalism was incompatible with Apartheid, primarily because “free-market” capitalism requires equality of opportunity and agency (Schneider, 2003). In truth, liberal scholarship on the intersection of capitalism and racism in South Africa is incomplete because it fails to fully account for institutionalized racism, dispossession and the displacement of black people in South Africa. Liberal scholarship has completely ignored provisions made for white monopolized capitalism, so much so that an Apartheid-like economy could persevere constructively for 46 years. The writing of Merle Lipton exemplifies the liberal perception of an intersection between race and capitalism under the Apartheid regime which I critique. Lipton took no issue in disapproving of Apartheid on a moral basis. He argues that the legalized systematic exclusion of black people in South Africa was unwarranted and unsustainable (Hirsch, 1987). Lipton argued that South Africa, if it were to revive any sign of liberties or democracy and have a sustainable capitalist economy, needed to end Apartheid and replace it with multi-racialism (Hirsch, 1987). While admitting that the South African economy relied on the coerced, cheap labor of black people, it seems surprising and somewhat contradictory that Lipton also states that capitalism never required or supported Apartheid (Hirsch, 1987). This point by Lipton, that capitalism never required Apartheid, is incomplete because it fails to recognize the role that racism and white supremacy has had in the distribution of socio-economic resources, as well as with regard to the historical discrepancies of intergenerational endowments for Blacks relative to Whites. Lipton’s form of liberalism does not account for disproportionate endowments of historical value, such as education, property, wealth and capital that has enabled the legalization of a systematic exclusion and deskilling of black people. In particular, Liberal writing about South Africa tends to minimize the impact of the Bantustans. Liberal writers downplay the role of black people’s economic contribution (Murray, 1987). It is undeniable, as Colin Murray says, that the Bantustans excluded 'blacks from rights of access to jobs and housing in white South Africa;' thereby making blacks economic foreigners in their own country (Murray, 1987). There is a strong indication that due to a lack of education and skills, black migrant cheap labor was the backbone of the agricultural and mining sectors of the South African economy. This produced a “whites as owners” and “blacks as laborers” framework of traditional capitalism being practiced in South Africa between the 1960s and 1970s (Schneider, 2003). Thus, it is clear that we cannot discount the impact of systematic exclusion from economic activity in the form of adequate welfare provision, labor mobility and deskilling, which incites consistent wealth creation disproportionately along racial lines. It is the discounting of the abovementioned systematic exclusion that accounts for the incompleteness of the liberal attempt to conceptualize racial capitalism. Alternatively, Marxist scholarship places disproportionate emphasis on capitalism’s need for class creation and reproduction, thus ignoring the role of racial subjugation (SACP, 1987). In historicizing class creation through racial lines, Marxist conceptions completely sidelined the historical impact, nature, and intent of settler colonialism in changing the psychology of South African blackness. While I admit that cheap black labor is a manifestation of racial capitalism, racial capitalism cannot be removed from the narrative of settler colonialism in South Africa. The experience of continual dispossession of blacks from their social and economic endowments is informed by the institutionalization of settler colonialism as bedrock of racial capitalism. Marxist conceptions of racial capitalism in South Africa focused primarily on the issue of Black cheap labor. The economy of South Africa was sustained by black unskilled workers, who were forced to migrate from the Bantustans to South African economic hubs such as Johannesburg to find work (SACP, 1987). The views of neo-Marxist writers, such as Nancy Leong, provide a revisionist yet historically deficient view of racial capitalism, stating that racial capitalism is the “process of deriving social or economic value from the racial identity of another person” (Leong 2013). Leong comments on how liberalism has made blackness a desirable entity, which is to be captured, possessed and used (Leong 2013). While this type of Marxist conception focuses on the importance of race relations in driving capitalism, it still lacks an adequate explanation of why Black people are disadvantaged in a capitalist system. It is arguable that more can be done in the literature to hone in on the extent to which settler colonialism was the fundamental determinant the native’s structural economic exploitation. This may further inform how the subjugation of natives in South Africa became a structurally inherited and sustained method of fostering a type of capitalism which is drawn along racial lines. The South African Communist Party’s “Colonialism of a Special Type Document” fittingly substantiates my argument about this point, as it too claims that South Africa’s capitalism maintained the norm of colonial dominance, where the colonial ruling class (White people) and the oppressed black majority live in one country (SACP, 1987). The structural reinforcement of capitalism by the white owning class has not changed with the changed South African Political climate, which should be seen as a factor solidifying racial capitalism in post-Apartheid South Africa. While racial capitalism occurred in the Apartheid system, it is not reliant on that particular regime. Rather, we must understand that racial capitalism exists today because of the intersection of settler colonialism intent, historical dispossession and the deskilling of black people. Thus, by merging Liberal and Marxists concepts of race and capitalism, I conclude that racial capitalism is best defined as follows: Racial capitalism is a malleable term that defines the conditions under which racial identities are used to reinforce coercive power relations, which are seen in the racialization of socio-economic resources. It is informed by the domination of a particular racial group in order to extract economic gain for the benefit of the dominant class (Leong, 2013). Racial capitalism at its core makes use of racial prejudice as an instrument of maintaining unequal participation in the market resource allocation process by reinforcing systematic dispossession and deskilling of the oppressed race under a typically liberal economy ideological set. III. Racial Capitalism in the New South Africa This above-mentioned definition of racial capitalism recognizes that the birth and persistence of the capitalist economy in South Africa is inseparable from the unjust system of domination encapsulated by settler colonialism and the maintenance of black dispossession. This definition indicates that the black body is considered valuable so long as it can provide labor and be remunerated with subsistence wages. This leads to its commodification. I anticipate that liberal critics of my working definition might find that this conception of racial capitalism is incompatible with the current condition of South Africa post-1994, a country that adopted what is argued as the best constitution in the world, and maintains a predominantly black-ruled democratic state. However, I counter the supposed positive effects attributed to the process of democratization and liberal constitutionalism, by arguing that there was very little redress, which has resulted in the transferal of racial capitalism into the democratic state, even after 1994. I argue this because the South African government, at a pivotal time of regime change, chose to focus on a creating a globalized neoliberal economy rather than leveling the intergenerational effects of distorted socio-economic endowments along racial lines. To assert this argument, I will refer particularly to the period of transition and ten years post-transition into democracy. Additionally, I will address the way in which uncertainty and neoliberal compromises informed economic policy in the period of democratic transition in South Africa. There is a vivid indication of how compromise politics, which played out through the African National Congress (ANC) primary and National Party negotiating agents, is coupled with the consolidation of neo-liberalism and the protection of racial capitalism in South Africa. The ANC initially had hoped to enact radical economic transformation in South Africa. This is evident from the drafting of the Freedom Charter by the ANC and its allies in 1955 to the introduction of the radical “Reconstruction and Development Programme” policy in 1996. In particular, the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) was an ANC document that stated the intent to use the resources of the country to explicitly eradicate Apartheid, moving towards building a non-racialized society (RDP, 1994). The RDP Policy document recognized the effects of “repressive labor policies” under colonialist domination (RDP, 1994). Furthermore, the document also admitted that the economy was built through systemic racial division, and finally recognized that a political democracy could not flourish with the mass of South Africans remaining impoverished, landless and having no tangible prospects for an increasing standard of living (RDP, 1994). Therefore, the ambitions aimed at addressing these observations and conditions around the past and future of South Africa necessarily are ambitions aimed at the eradication of racial capitalism in South Africa. I claim that it is highly probable that if the ANC, in assuming power, had religiously followed the Freedom Charter and the Reconstruction and Development Plan (RDP), racial capitalism would be well on its way to eradication in the foreseeable future. Upon receiving much negative feedback on the RDP plan by organizations such as the IMF and World Bank, the ANC was pressured to put the interests of economic liberalization over racial justice in redressing the impact of historical racialization of wealth creation. This compromise is evident in the 1996 adoption of the Growth, Employment, and Redistribution (GEAR) neoliberal policy, which favored the deregulation of markets and opposed state intervention in the economy (Schneider, 2003). Such privatization clearly ignored the fact that the poor black majority would be made unable to participate, considering there is no substantial effort in GEAR that aims to equitize and equalize the starting positions of black and whites in economic participation (Reddy, 2011). The adoption of neoliberal policy, despite unconvincing theories on neoliberalism and the perfecting nature of capitalism, was a compromise that allowed continued white monopolization with only one or two elements of emancipation for the black poor (Schneider, 2003). In short, the adoption of neoliberal policies after Apartheid protected and consolidated white economic interests. The adoption of an unregulated capitalist market with limited government intervention meant that white people could retain the wealth and endowments they accumulated over 200 years of settler colonialism and Apartheid in South Africa (Schneider, 2003). While it is true that negotiation and compromises during the regime transition made provisions for political emancipation, they did very little in reality to provide sizeable and immediate economic emancipation, leaving South Africa in a crisis of racial capitalism. Despite an attempt at political negotiation and economic compromises, white people still earn five times more than blacks in South Africa, despite the country being majority black (Stats SA, 2017). There is a systemic economic problem, which cannot be removed from the clawing effects of a historically racially discriminating economy; endowments and privileged market access still remain largely skewed to the white minority in South Africa. It is unlikely today that South Africa will be able to get rid of racial capitalism - especially if the government fails to account for the influence of racialized intergenerational endowments. IV. Racial Capitalism as Material Life: Service Delivery Protest and Black Entitlement Service delivery protests in post-Apartheid South disprove the idea that racial capitalism is incompatible with the new black majoritarian democracy. As I have discussed, moderate economic policy approaches to poor black people can, to some extent, be held responsible for the lack of improvement of the material life of black people post-Apartheid. The service delivery protests display the anger in the black living memory of Apartheid, characterized by a feeling of imprisonment under racial capitalism. These protests can be used to explain that the traditional notion of black entitlement must be replaced by a new understanding, which normatively asserts poor black people’s entitlement to decent service delivery from the government. Black entitlement should not imply the unwillingness of black people to be active participants in the free market economy, but rather, black people fighting back the dispossession faced at the hands of their government. The concept of black entitlement is barely developed in existing literature. It is a concept discussed in the early 2000s when the ANC government first attempted to create a welfare state by providing free housing to the poor in the township communities. There were frequent claims that black people were waiting for the government to do everything for them while remaining idle and free riding on taxpayers’ money. Thus, black entitlement has been used to describe a negative character trait which I believe has been fallaciously attributed to the black poor class. I believe that this concept remembers the past with amnesia by ignoring the economic effects of settler colonialism and racial capitalism. By implying that we are all equals today, it wrongly attributes the continuing economic inferiority of black people to their choice to rely on the government rather than uplift themselves. To date, it is clear that neoliberal policies have not benefited those who need economic reform the most in South Africa: The black poor. In 2016, Aljazeera reporter Sophia Hyatt wrote about the living conditions of a 28-year-old woman from the township of Langa in Cape Town. This woman slept on the floor of a small hostel room with her parents, two sisters, and son, and had to use unhygienic and damaged communal toilets a long distance away from the safety of home (Hyatt 2016). This reality is not just hers, but that of over half of South Africa’s population. This low standard of living is common in most townships and slums all over South Africa, which perversely find themselves cheek to cheek with South African economic hubs - for instance, Alexander township borders Sandton, “Africa’s richest square mile”. Despite the government’s mildly socialist attempt to provide basic services, many poor black South Africans still find themselves living the memory and legacy of Apartheid. It is due to these poor living conditions and the constant reminder of the opulence of white monopoly capital that we have seen a large surge in protest action all over South Africa over the last fifteen years. A service delivery protest is essentially public unrest caused by citizens in response to the government’s failure to address their key welfare concerns. The unrest comes in the form of rioting, marching and the general destruction of normalcy in government operations. In the government’s RDP plan, the ANC promised to provide free water, electricity, housing, and education to the South African poor and to create jobs to decrease the 23% unemployment rate (ISS, 2009). However, the government has proven to be highly inefficient in delivering on these promises, resulting in a disgruntled and disillusioned civil society which seeks to express their grievances the only way they believe they will be heard: through the very language of protest that brought black people political freedom under the ANC. Therefore, there is a certain frustration-aggression as put by Ted Gurr, which arises and brings about behavior that has the propensity to be violent (ISS, 2009). As they did during Apartheid, black poor people still have to find employment in urban areas, thus leaving their families in horrendous conditions in slum townships. These people wake up in the early hours of the morning to commute to city centers where they work predominantly in low skilled labor positions, such as cleaning and gardening. Given that their elected government’s policies have done little to improve their living conditions since the end of apartheid, black poor people are increasingly disillusioned with their political emancipation. It is due to these discouraging conditions that poor black South Africans are angry and protest violently all over the country, with what Carl Death terms the return of the imagination of rolling mass action, as seen in the height of civil disobedience in South Africa in the 1980s (Death, 2010). Poor black people have turned to angered demand and mass mobilization to advance their struggle for economic emancipation, replicating the tactics that secured the victory of political emancipation and the end of Apartheid (Death, 2010). This explains the rioting and protesting around dissatisfaction with democratic South Africa, as seen in the service delivery protests. V. A Small Step Towards Conceptualising Black Entitlement as a Response to Racial Capitalism in South Africa It is worth asserting that black people must be entitled to an equal footing in South African economic life. It is also erroneous to believe that the government has adequately addressed the impact of a historically racially segregated economy, law, and society on black opportunities to participate in economic life. The continued underrepresentation and dispossession of black people validate my claim that it is unfair to use black laziness and incompetence to explain black economic inferiority. Rather, racial capitalism must be identified as the cause. However, it is unlikely that racial capitalism will disappear if we do not start viewing black entitlement as a normative prescription - that black people should be entitled to radical economic redress. Black people should continue to feel entitled to adequate services and economic emancipation, as this is the only remaining fuel to the fire of resistance against racial capitalism. To legitimize the concept of racial capitalism as an explanation for South Africa’s present political economy, I recognize that there is one crucial question that needs to be tackled: Will racial capitalism persist over time or was it an isolated historical occurrence? I believe that racial capitalism can explain how historical disparities in endowments necessary for social mobility have generated economic inequality along racial lines. Since white superiority still remains at the core of resource allocation in our society, it is highly unlikely that race-based inequality will dissipate anytime soon, and thus racial capitalism will remain a relevant and powerful explanatory concept. VI. Conclusion By analyzing the intersection of race and capitalism in South Africa, I have shown that both Marxist and Liberal literature fails to account for the historical commodification of black people through racial inequality. While Liberal scholars state that racism is incompatible with capitalism, Marxist scholars erase black suffering at the hands of settler colonialism. The depiction of racial capitalism offered in this paper better represents the complexities of race relations in neo-liberal South Africa. Furthermore, my paper has challenged fallacies around black entitlement by highlighting that racial disparities in socioeconomic endowments have not been redressed. Thus, I have shown that irrespective of regime type in South Africa, racial capitalism has, and still does, dispossess and disempower the black poor, leaving them to feel that demanding economic emancipation through protest is the only way to make their voices heard. References Biko, Hlumelo. "Racist Stereotyping Threatens SA". The M&G Online, 2017. https://mg.co.za/article/2017-04-18-racist-stereotyping-threatens-sa/. Schneider, Geoffrey. "Neoliberalism And Economic Justice In South Africa: Revisiting The Debate On Economic Apartheid". Review Of Social Economy 61, no. 1, 2003: 23-50. doi:10.1080/0034676032000050257. Hirsch, Alan. "Capitalism And Apartheid Capitalism And Apartheid: South Africa, 1910–1986. By Merle Lipton. Aldershot: Wildwood House, 1986.". The Journal Of African History 28, no. 03 (1987): 450. doi:10.1017/s0021853700030243. MURRAY, COLIN. "DISPLACED URBANIZATION: SOUTH AFRICA's RURAL SLUMS*". African Affairs 86, no. 344 (1987): 311-329. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a097916. "The Path To Power -- Colonialism Of A Special Type". SACP, 1989. http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=2638#3.1. Leong, Nancy. "Racial Capitalism". Harvard Law Review 126, no. 8, 2018: 2151-2226. History, SA. The Reconstruction And Development Programme (RDP). Ebook. Reprint, SA History, 1994. http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/the_reconstruction_and_development_programm _1994.pdf. Reddy, E.S. "Freedom Charter And The United Nations". South African History Online, 2018. http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/freedom-charter-and-%20united-nations-es-reddy. Writer, Staff. "Whites Earn 5 Times More Than Blacks In South Africa: Stats SA". Business Tech, 2017. https://businesstech.co.za/news/wealth/153485/whites-earn-5-times-more-than-blacks-in-south-af rica-stats-sa/. Hyatt, Sophia. "South Africa's Housing Crisis: A Remnant Of Apartheid". Aljazeera.Com, 2016. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/09/south-africa-housing-crisis-remnant-aparth eid-160929094237631.html. "The Reasons Behind Service Delivery Protests In South Africa". Polity.Org.Za, 2009. http://www.polity.org.za/article/the-reasons-behind-service-delivery-protests-in-south-africa-200 9-08-05. Death, C. "Troubles At The Top: South African Protests And The 2002 Johannesburg Summit". African Affairs 109, no. 437 (2010): 555-574. doi:10.1093/afraf/adq039. Osterhammel, Jurgen. Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (Translated By Shelley L. Frisch). Reprint, Princeton: Markus Wiener Pub., 2010.

Transparency and Compliance The Strength of EU Lobbying Regulations Abigail Borges Brown University Author Miles Campbell Audrey McDermott Sydney Munro Editors Fall 2018 This essay discusses the outright robustness of the European Union's lobbying regulations in comparison to the regulations in the EU countries, concluding that it is on par with or surpasses regulatory strength in the states. The interactions between politicians and lobbyists present a challenge to governments’ transparency and accountability, and affect supranational entities like the European Union. Before evaluating a lobby’s influence, it is necessary to understand what exactly defines these groups and how they interact with governments. ‘Lobbyists’, which will be used synonymously with ‘interest groups’, are defined as those seeking to influence the outputs of a given policy-making process. Lobbyists attempt to support their interests by affecting policy outputs through methods like maintenance of a status quo or the implementation of a new policy. In response to lobbyist manipulation, recent policy trends have been in favor of controlling lobbying by creating level playing fields for interest groups to operate. Such policy trends include an expansion of the European Union’s lobbying rules over time. In 1996, the European Parliament introduced provisions for simple yearly passes for lobbyists seeking access to the Parliament building. The European Commission implemented its own rules that likewise lacked teeth in 2008 by instituting a voluntary lobbyist register.[1] The bodies’ recent replacement regulation, the Joint Transparency Register (JTR), has prompted a re-evaluation of the EU’s robustness in terms of lobbying controls, especially when considering the precedents set by national governments. Scholars in the field take robustness to mean “the capacity of the regulation to increase transparency and accountability,” which reflects the rules’ level of usage and reliability.[2] Though there is certainly room to strengthen its provision of regulations regarding lobbyists, the EU is holistically and comparatively more robustly regulatory than EU member nations in managing interest groups. This lead is earned both by having regulations in the first place and by these rules’ ability to equal or surpass the robustness of lobbying regulations in the EU’s member states. First, a brief overview of the implications of the JTR for the EU and its lobbyists is necessary to more clearly understand how the regulations imposed by the JTR compare with the regulations enacted its constituent states. The JTR’s stated goal was to increase transparency, replacing regulatory structures in the Parliament and Commission for a joint registration for all lobbyists.[3] Transparency and accountability are the two main goals associated with lobbying regulation. These standards aim to let voters know who influences whom and allow them to see the degree to which a given politician or lobbyist is responsible for a policy. The EU’s definition of a lobbyist expanded “to include law firms, NGOs, think tanks - indeed any organization or self-employed individual engaged in influencing EU policy making and implementation.”[4] This expansion ensures that no agents seeking to affect policy can find a loophole or excuse to avoid the option of registering for the JTR. The most crucial detail about the JTR in this sense is its voluntary nature: since it allows the option for groups not to register, one can question the extent to which such a transparency register can be effective. Still, the JTR did strengthen disclosure provisions and data accessibility with measures such as necessitating yearly reports on personal and organization information and financial details at the time of register (though notably not in regular reports thereafter). All of this information was then made available to the public online. Finally, registration required compliance with a code of conduct that includes pledges against dishonesty, incentives for disclosure, and mechanisms to handle breaches of the code.[5] Scholars Chari and Crepaz maintain that interest groups have largely complied with the JTR system, suggesting that many of the goals the JTR had in its launch have proven successful.[6] In several ways, the regulations imposed by the JTR are on par with other European countries. In terms of the Centre for Public Integrity’s index of lobbying regulation robustness, the JTR’s regulations fall directly in the middle of the EU nations’ regulation ratings, with a score of 31. Slovenia, Hungary, Lithuania, and Austria received higher scores, and Poland, the UK, France, and Germany received lower.[7] This measure indicates that the JTR is indeed more robust than some, but falls short of others, with almost a twenty-point difference between it and the most regulated European lobby (Slovenia at 49). Notably, the JTR proposes more stringent regulations than the major constituent EU states, suggesting that the EU does more to control the actions of its lobbyists than the national entities that wield much of the power within it. This is especially true for Italy, who has no interest group regulation at all. Additionally, if judging instead by specific provisions of the JTR, the EU’s system again proves to be average in many dimensions. All states mentioned above in the CPI index have a register for lobbyists of some kind, which defines the substance of the JTR. Additionally, provisions like its code of conduct and voluntary nature are mirrored in countries like France and the UK.[8] Like the public lists of lobbyists found in Poland and Germany, the individuals and groups registered under JTR are openly accessible on the internet.[9] These measures all help establish the rules of the game and increase transparency and accountability in the overall process of lobbying. These aims are desirable because they give actors more information and require justification of one’s actions to the public. Thus, the EU and its JTR prove to be just as strong in a range of provisions as the other member states regulating interest groups. As much as the EU is on par with member nations that regulate lobbying, it is distinctly advanced among the other countries in Europe that do not have rules at all. Of the about fifty European nations, including the EU, only nine have enacted laws to regulate lobbying to speak of.[10] Thus, in its implementation of any regulations at all, the EU proves to be ahead of the curve. Some may argue that many of the states lacking lobbying rules do not need them because they do not have the same scope of lobbyists present as those systems with laws; this may be true, but not relevant to the question at hand evaluating outright robustness. Additionally, there have been many calls for increased regulation throughout Europe in general, to achieve the stated aims of increased transparency and accountability. Transparency International, a group centered on fighting corruption, released a 2015 report evaluating lobbying in Europe, its effectiveness, and its future. It concluded that the EU Commission’s rules are among one of only two of the nineteen European entities that score above 50% on its measures of transparency, integrity, and equality of access.[11] The authors also note that only seven of the entities feature any lobbyist-specific regulations, a fact which in the report it finds problematic and wishes to see changed.[12] Hence, the EU already surpasses many nations in its rule robustness simply by having regulations, regardless of what the regulations entail. Still, it becomes clear upon scrutiny that the details of the JTR’s regulation also prove more stringent than those of its European counterparts. This finding is true especially regarding the disclosure of financial information, the level of compliance, and the scope of lobbyists to which the rules apply. The JTR requires an initial submission of information concerning an organization’s spending and activity, and each type of lobbyist must disclose varying levels of financial information at this stage.[13] Though it does not require yearly spending reports, this documenting of finances is equivalent with, or stronger than, all other governments with registers. For comparison, Germany requests no information at all, nor does Poland.[14] Lithuania requires yearly spending and salary reports, which appears more robust than the EU, but compliance with its register is thought to be very low; 2004 estimates place the number of lobbyists registered at about one in seven of those who operate within the state.[15] Austria, too, requests yearly reports, but, similarly, this regulation does not effectively apply to many lobbyists.[16] By these terms, then, the manner in which the JTR requests financial information makes it stronger in interest group transparency, who cannot in theory spend considerable sums of money without at least some documentation. Money often captures influence in government, so it follows that financial disclosures are also significant in terms of accountability at the EU level. The JTR provides an effective medium for this disclosure, unlike most of its peers. Also related to this discussion are issues of compliance levels, for disclosures of any type do not matter if no one complies. In their recent comparative study of the JTR, Crepaz, and Chari found that based on the registration and spending disclosures of the largest corporations seeking to influence the EU, it can be concluded that firms are taking the JTR more seriously, with all examined firms registering and giving seemingly more accurate spending disclosures.[17] Comparatively, this is quite remarkable, as many other registration systems see low levels of compliance. Chari, Hogan, and Murphy find that in Lithuania, Hungary (whose 2003 regulations have been removed), and Poland, regulations are often ignored or maneuvered around, often because the term ‘lobbyist’ retains negative connotations.[18] The 2013 Venice Report on the Role of Lobbying puts forward a similar argument about Germany, explaining that “not being on the register is no real barrier to being in contact with Parliamentary committees or members of the Bundestag.”[19] With ability and ease to get around lobbying regulations, then, the regulations prove somewhat ineffective in Germany as well. Yet, as Crepaz and Chari point out, the JTR has in fact seen increased registration by EU interest groups since its adoption.[20] Low effectiveness in complying with registration could also be related to the scope of lobbyists to which the legislation applies, which in the EU is all activity, but in most other nations is narrowly defined. This scope and compliance indicates success on the part of the JTR in terms of transparency over the aforementioned countries, as it comes closer to the ideal of providing the most information about influence in political systems. Finally, the EU does feature less regulation for lobbyists in some dimensions of transparency and accountability that at first glance makes it seem like the JTR is not very robust, yet in practice this observation proves untrue. The first such category which the JTR lacks is a set of provisions regarding the so-called ‘revolving door’, preventing civil servants from immediately working as lobbyists and vice versa. The JTR fails to prevent such capacity for corruption. However, of the four European nations studied by Chari, Hogan, and Murphy, only Lithuania has these rules.[21] Further, Transparency International explains that most of the countries it studied have some sort of “cooling-off period” for officials, but Slovenia was the only one to implement the period for legislators. And yet, it also reports that none of these countries had “effective monitoring and enforcement of the revolving door provisions,” calling into question the effectiveness of the laws even where they exist.[22] Furthermore, Crepaz and Chari recognize that the EU Commission, top officials, and the EP all have internal revolving door regulations.[23] Therefore, even if the JTR itself does not provide cooling-off periods, the issue is effectively dealt with in other ways, which is not the case for the EU countries that on paper seem more regulated. Despite appearances, then, the EU still emerges with more robust and effective regulations than most, if not all, of its EU counterparts. For its strengths and advances, however, the JTR does have several other comparative drawbacks that leave room for improvement in relation to other European state entities. Primarily, it could make its law mandatory, as Austria and Slovenia have sought to do, to improve relative robustness. Transparency International analyzed the effective impact of Slovenia’s mandatory register and found that it operates on a “wholly inadequate scope covering only a small proportion of lobbyists,” because it defines interest groups so narrowly.[24] An analysis of the Austrian system found similar results.[25] In this way, the EU regulations are still arguably as strong as Slovenia’s and Austria’s laws, because they apply to a much broader scope of lobbyists and are complied with, as evidenced earlier by Chari and Crepaz. This engenders more compliance with and operation within the register in the EU. Aside from implementing a mandatory register, another way the JTR is comparatively less robust involves its sanctions and enforcements, of which it has few. Slovenia, Lithuania, and Austria score higher on the CPI index much for this reason.[26] For example, Slovenia has a Commission for the Prevention of Corruption (CPC) that provides oversight on many types of lobbyists, such as professional, in-house, and lobbyists from private sector interest organizations.[27] Though the JTR has a Secretariat intended to watch activity, its only effective power is naming and shaming, which Crepaz and Chari find especially problematic given the voluntary nature of the register.[28] As always, though, one must keep in mind that although the JTR is less regulated in oversight, its high compliance and the often low enrolment in other countries problematizes deeming the JTR less robust due to its less strict enforcement and sanction rules. Still, in these areas there is room for improvement of the JTR in comparison to other EU nations. Ultimately, on most dimensions the JTR proves generally stronger than, if not at least as strong as, its counterpart laws in EU member nations. In providing a voluntary register, public internet accessibility, and a code of conduct, the EU regulations are in line with the rules of its peers. In fact, in even having a register at all, EU lobbying laws are more robust than the lobbying regulations found in the majority of EU nations. When one examines precedents of financial disclosures, levels of compliance, scope of application, and even revolving door rules, the JTR is arguably strongest among its counterparts in effectively handling them. One must note that the voluntary nature of the JTR and its enforcement mechanisms could be improved considering the rules of countries scoring higher than the EU on the CPI index, even if these rules are not effectively followed. Overall, regardless of the diverse characteristics of distinct regimes, lobbying regulation systems seek to achieve the ideals of transparency and accountability. Considering the totality of the strengths mentioned above, by increasing public access to the entities and insight into their inner workings, the JTR moves the EU much closer to these goals than other regulating systems have proven to accomplish. Still, even if the EU is more regulated, it is not precluded from needing to further strengthen its provisions. A mandatory system of registration, for example, would ensure maximum transparency and accountability through behavioral regulation, as argued by Direnc Kanol.[29] In the realms of financial disclosures and sanctions, too, the JTR could seek improvement by strengthening its policies, further augmenting transparency and accountability. However, the aim of this study was to evaluate comparative, rather than outright, robustness, and by this measure the EU and its lobbying regulations prove decidedly strong. Endnotes [1] Michele Crepaz and Raj Chari, “The EU’s Initiatives to Regulate Lobbyists: Good or Bad Administration?,” Cuadernos Europeos de Deusto 82, no. 5 (2014): 77, accessed December 7, 2016, https://www.tcd.ie/Political_Science/assets/pdfs/eu_lobbyist_regulation_crepaz_ chari_2014.pdf. [2] Crepaz and Chari, “The EU’s Initiatives,” 81-82. [3] European Commission, Commission and European Parliament launch Joint Transparency Register to shed light on all those seeking to influence European policy, 2011, accessed December 7, 2016, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-11-773_en.htm?locale=en . [4] European Commission, Commission and European launch Joint Transparency Register. [5] European Commission, Commission and European launch Joint Transparency Register. [6] Crepaz and Chari, “The EU’s Initiatives,” 89. [7] Crepaz and Chari, “The EU’s Initiatives,” 82. [8] Assemblée Nationale, "Interest Representatives in the National Assembly," Assemblée Nationale, accessed December 7, 2016, http://www2.assemblee-nationale.fr/14/representant-d-interets/repre_interet and UKLR, "About the Register," UK Lobbying Register, accessed December 7, 2016, http://www.lobbying-register.uk/about-.html. [9] Deutscher Bundestag, "Public List of Associations Registered with the Bundestag," Deutscher Bundestag, November 24, 2016, accessed December 10, 2016, http://www.bundestag.de/parlament/lobbyliste/ and OECD, Lobbyists, Governments and the Public Trust, Volume 2: Promoting Integrity through Self-Regulation (OECD Publishing, 2012), 62, accessed December 7, 2016, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264084940-en . [10] Crepaz and Chari, “The EU’s Initiatives,” 82. [11] Suzanne Mulcahy, Lobbying in Europe: Hidden Influence, Privileged Access (Berlin: Transparency International, 2015), 8, accessed December 7, 2016, http://www.transparencyinternational.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Lobbying_web.pdf . [12] Mulcahy, Lobbying in Europe, 8. [13] Crepaz and Chari, “The EU’s Initiatives,” 79. [14] Raj Chari, John Hogan and Gary Murphy, Regulating Lobbying: A Global Comparison (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2010), 61, 173. [15] Chari, Hogan, and Murphy, Regulating Lobbying, 75-76. [16] Peter Köppl and Julia Wippersberg, “The State of Public Affairs in Austria,” Journal of Public Affairs 14, no. 1 (2014): 35-36, accessed December 9, 2016, http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/pa.1503 . [17] Crepaz and Chari, “The EU’s Initiatives,” 88-89. [18] Chari, Hogan, and Murphy, Regulating Lobbying, 76, 80, 84. [19] Venice Commission, Report on the Role of Extra-Institutional Actors in the Democratic System (Strasbourg: Venice Commission, 2013), 16, accessed December 8, 2016, http://www.venice . coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?pdffile=CDL-AD(2013)011-e. [20] Crepaz and Chari, “The EU’s Initiatives,” 90. [21] Chari, Hogan, and Murphy, Regulating Lobbying, 168, 177. [22] Mulcahy, Lobbying in Europe, 9. [23] Crepaz and Chari, “The EU’s Initiatives,” 80. [24] Transparency International Slovenia, Lifting the Lid on Lobbying - Call for Transparent and Ethical Lobbying (Ljubljana: Transparency International Slovenia, 2014), 35, accessed December 1, 2016, http://www.transparencyinternational.eu/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/TI_SLO_LLL_report_ANG_web.pdf . [25] Köppl and Wippersberg, “The State of Public Affairs in Austria,” 36. [26] Crepaz and Chari, “The EU’s Initiatives,” 90. [27] Transparency International Slovenia, Lifting the Lid, 14. [28] Crepaz and Chari, “The EU’s Initiatives,” 80. [29] Direnc Kanol, “Should the European Union Enact a Mandatory Lobby Register?,” Journal of Contemporary European Research 8, no. 4 (2012): 524, accessed December 8, 2016, http://www.jcer.net/index.php/jcer/article/view/460/371 . Works Cited Assemblée Nationale. "Interest Representatives in the National Assembly." Assemblée Nationale. Accessed December 7, 2016. http://www2.assemblee-nationale.fr/14/representant-d-interets/repre_interet. Chari, Raj, John Hogan and Gary Murphy. Regulating Lobbying: A Global Comparison. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2010. Crepaz, Michele and Raj Chari. “The EU’s Initiatives to Regulate Lobbyists: Good or Bad Administration?” Cuadernos Europeos de Deusto 82, no. 5 (2014): 71-97. Accessed December 7, 2016. https://www.tcd.ie/Political_Science/assets/pdfs/eu_lobbyist_ regulation_crepaz_ chari_2014.pdf . Deutscher Bundestag. "Public List of Associations Registered with the Bundestag," Deutscher Bundestag, November 24, 2016, accessed December 8, 2016. http://www.bundestag.de/parlament/lobbyliste/ European Commission. Commission and European Parliament launch Joint Transparency Register to shed light on all those seeking to influence European policy, 2011. Accessed December 7, 2016. http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-11-773_en.htm?locale=en . Kanol, Direnc. “Should the European Commission Enact a Mandatory Lobby Register?” Journal of Contemporary European Research 8, no. 4 (2012): 519-529. Accessed December 8, 2014. http://www.jcer.net/index.php/jcer/article/view/460/371. Köppl, Peter and Julia Wippersberg. “The State of Public Affairs in Austria.” Journal of Public Affairs 14, no. 1 (2014): 31-43. Accessed December 9, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/pa.1503 . Mulcahy, Suzanne. Lobbying in Europe: Hidden Influence, Privileged Access. Berlin: Transparency International, 2015. Accessed December 7, 2016. http://www.transparencyinternational.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Lobbying_web.pdf OECD. Lobbyists, Governments and the Public Trust, Volume 2: Promoting Integrity through Self-Regulation. OECD Publishing, 2012. Accessed December 7, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264084940-en . Transparency International Slovenia. Lifting the Lid on Lobbying - Call for Transparent and Ethical Lobbying. Ljubljana: Transparency International Slovenia, 2014. Accessed December 8, 2016. http://www.transparencyinternational.eu/wp-content/uploads/2014/ 12/TI_SLO_LLL_report_ANG_web.pdf. UKLR. "About the Register." UK Lobbying Register. Accessed December 10, 2016. http://www.lobbying-register.uk/about-.html. Venice Commission. Report on the Role of Extra-Institutional Actors in the Democratic System. Strasbourg: Venice Commission, 2013. Accessed December 8, 2016. http://www.venice . coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?pdffile=CDL-AD(2013)011-e.

Vance Kelley Civil Disobedience and Desert Theory of Punishment Vance Kelley I. Introduction In this paper, I discuss how the state ought to punish civil disobedience given a desert theory of punishment. By “desert theory of punishment,” I mean the view that lawbreakers ought to be punished according to what they deserve. Other considerations, such as what would best deter or incapacitate lawbreakers, are to be ignored according to desert theory. Since there are many distinct notions of “civil disobedience,” I will also clarify my use of this phrase. I use “civil disobedience” to mean “breaking the law in order to communicate to the public and the state that a policy violates the lawbreaker’s moral convictions.” My definition leaves aside whether civil disobedience is nonviolent or a last resort (as John Rawls supposes), although these features could marginally affect how civil disobedience ought to be punished (1). Ultimately, I conclude that states ought to punish all civil disobedience less harshly than typical offenses. I arrive at this “mercy for all” view in a roundabout way. In fact, I initially point out a shortcoming with this view in Section III. In Section IV, I examine an alternative view that advocates lesser punishment only for civil disobedience done from correct moral convictions. I argue that this “mercy for correct moral convictions” view is impractical, since the state cannot identify who disobeyed from correct moral convictions and who disobeyed from incorrect ones. This leads me to argue in Section V that the state must punish all civil disobedience uniformly, without regard to the correctness of civil disobedients’ moral convictions. I then conclude that the best uniform punishment is indeed to treat all civil disobedience with mercy, since this avoids over-punishing those who act from correct moral convictions. II. Why Desert Theory? As I have said above, my central claim is that given desert theory of punishment, the state ought to punish all civil disobedience mercifully. Some may find it perplexing that my central claim accepts desert theory as the correct theory of punishment, and indeed this needs to be justified. Simply put, I accept desert theory because it best captures our intuitions about disciplining lawbreakers. Most of us share the intuition that it is wrong to punish innocent people as well as the intuition that it is wrong to over-punish the guilty. Desert theory offers an explanation of these intuitions; it is wrong to punish the innocent and to over-punish the guilty because these conflict with what people deserve . Innocent people do not deserve to be punished at all, and guilty people deserve to be punished in proportion to the severity of their crimes. Yet alternatives to desert theory—such as theories that recommend punishments based on their incapacitation or deterrence value—have a difficult time explaining why we hold the above intuitions (2). In fact, these “consequentialist” theories of punishment would suggest punishing the innocent or over-punishing the guilty if doing so deterred or incapacitated lawbreakers. For example, suppose that by executing a petty thief the state could deter all would-be thieves from stealing others’ property in addition to incapacitating the executed criminal. Consequentialist theories of punishment would recommend executing the petty thief even though this conflicts with our intuition that over-punishing him with death is wrong. Therefore, the problem with consequentialist theories of punishment runs even deeper than what Walen suggests. Not only do consequentialist theories fail to explain our intuitions about punishment; they also render verdicts that directly conflict with these intuitions. Of course, one could write volumes on the merits of different theories of punishment, and what I have written above merely scratches the surface. But I hope to have at least made the argument that desert theory is compelling, and my do- ing so should assuage concerns that I am unduly neglecting what consequentialist theories would say about punishing civil disobedience. Desert theory is the most plausible account of how we ought to punish lawbreakers, and I will now move on to my central concern: how should the state punish civil disobedience? III. The Shortcoming of “Mercy for All” One initially plausible view is that given desert theory, all civil disobedience ought to be punished less harshly than typical offenses. Kimberly Brownlee discusses this “mercy for all” view in her Stanford Encyclopedia entry, writing that civil disobedients deserve mercy because they are motivated by moral convictions. The idea is that lawbreakers generally deserve mercy if obeying the law would have been very difficult for them, and civil disobedients’ moral convictions indeed make obeying the law quite difficult (3). Additionally, perhaps civil disobedients deserve mercy because their motives are less reprehensible than those of typical offenders. Breaking the law because of one’s moral convictions seems far less shameful than doing so out of self-interest, and this has long been held by legal scholars (4). The view that all civil disobedients deserve mercy because they act from moral convictions may therefore seem plausible, but it is not quite right. Surely, granting mercy even to civil disobedients who have incorrect moral convictions is too broad. These misguided disobedients do not deserve lesser punishments than typical offenders, and an example shall make this clear. Suppose a man publicly refuses to obey a law that protects gay citizens from discrimination. Believing that homosexuality is immoral and that the law unjustly protects wrongdoers, the man refuses to serve same-sex couples at his restaurant as a way of protesting the law. Clearly, the fact that his disobedience is done from a moral conviction does not make the man deserve lesser punishment than normal offenders (5). His moral conviction is severely misguided, detestable, and undeserving of mercy. Therefore, it seems that only civil disobedients who act from correct moral convictions deserve reduced punishments. IV. The Impracticality of “Mercy for Correct Moral Convictions” I have just shown that only civil disobedients who act from correct moral convictions deserve mercy. Disobedience done from incorrect moral convictions, on the other hand, deserves no lesser punishment than normal. On desert theory, then, it seems rather straightforward that states ought to punish civil disobedients who hold correct moral convictions less harshly than normal offenders, while those with incorrect moral convictions ought to be punished at the standard level. However, this “mercy for correct moral convictions” view faces a significant problem. In practice, the state cannot administer the different levels of punish- ment that the view calls for. During sentencing, judges would need to discern who disobeys from correct moral convictions and who disobeys from incorrect ones. Yet typically judges will not be able to discern this, and instead they will view both types of civil disobedients as having incorrect moral convictions. This is because all civil disobedience expresses moral convictions contrary to those of lawmakers—that is the entire point of civil disobedience—and typically lawmakers’ convictions will also be held by judges. After all, in most democratic systems, lawmakers choose judges whose views accord with their own. Given that judges’ own moral convictions will agree with those of lawmakers and conflict with those of civil disobedients, judges will regard all civil disobedients as having incorrect moral convictions, for it will not matter that some civil disobedients’ convictions actually are correct and some are not. Admittedly, there may be cases where acts of civil disobedience convince judges that their moral convictions are wrong and that the disobedients’ convictions are correct. In such cases, judges could perceive that civil disobedience is being done from correct moral convictions, since here they do not allow their own moral convictions to cloud their judgment. That said, these cases are rare. Civil disobedients often fail many times before persuading the state that their moral convictions are correct. For example, the civil rights period in the United States lasted many years and required numerous instances of civil disobedience before judges and lawmakers were persuaded to end Jim Crow segregation. Generally, judges will view civil disobedients as having incorrect moral convictions even if some actually are correct; consequently, the state cannot give the different types of civil disobedients the disparate punishments that they deserve. V. “Mercy for All” Revisited So, how can the state punish civil disobedience? It cannot discriminate between disobedients who have correct moral convictions and those who lack them. In- stead, the state must punish all civil disobedience uniformly, without regard to the truth of disobedients’ moral convictions. This may cause us to conclude that desert theory is false if “ought implies can.” If states only have moral obligations to do what is possible, then it is not the case that they ought to give different punishments to civil disobedients depending on the truth of their moral convictions. As I have shown in the previous section, it is generally impossible for the state to assess the truth of these convictions and give out different punishments for them. Yet “different punishments depending on the truth of civil disobedients’ moral convictions” seems to be exactly what desert theory entails. The view claims that states ought to punish lawbreakers according to what they deserve, and civil disobedients deserve different punishments depending on the truth of their moral convictions. Since desert theory seems to entail a false conclusion, it appears to be false. However, there is a way around this problem for the view. We can add a proviso to desert theory that handles cases where the state is unable to give lawbreakers the different levels of punishment that they deserve. According to this proviso, if a state cannot identify and administer these different levels of punishment, then it no longer ought to give lawbreakers these different levels. Instead, the state ought to choose a uniform level of punishment that gives no one harsher punishment than she deserves, even if this lets some lawbreakers receive undeserved mercy (6). One may wonder why this proviso places so much emphasis on treating no one worse than she deserves. But in fact, many people agree with the spirit of the proviso. We often say that it is better to let guilty people go free than to imprison someone who is innocent; this idea was formalized by British jurist William Blackstone and has remained a part of jurisprudence ever since (7). With this proviso added to desert theory, it no longer imposes a moral obligation that violates “ought implies can.” Now, states are simply obligated to impose a uniform level of punishment on civil disobedients, and this should pose no practical difficulties. Given this proviso, what uniform level of punishment does desert theory recommend for civil disobedience? This could take one of two forms (8). First, the state could show no mercy to any civil disobedients and punish all of them at the lev- el appropriate for normal offenders. But this would over-punish those who have correct moral convictions and deserve mercy, so it is ruled out by the proviso. Alternatively, the state could show mercy to all civil disobedients and punish them at the reduced level appropriate for those with correct moral convictions. This under-punishes civil disobedients with incorrect moral convictions (who deserve full punishments), but it avoids over-punishing those with correct moral convictions. Since this second option avoids over-punishment, it is favored by the proviso. Therefore, states ought to show mercy to all civil disobedients and punish them at the reduced level appropriate for those with correct moral convictions. VI. Conclusion I have shown that given desert theory, we ought to punish all civil disobedience mercifully. I began in Section II by justifying and accepting desert theory, which claims that people ought to be punished according only to what they deserve. Then, in Section III, I examined my preferred view that all civil disobedients ought to be punished less harshly than typical offenders. I initially argued that this “mercy for all” view has a shortcoming: civil disobedients with incorrect moral convictions do not deserve mercy. Nonetheless, I returned to this view after recognizing in Section IV that it is impractical to give mercy only to disobedients with correct moral convictions. As I then explain in Section V, punishment of civil disobedience must therefore be uniform with respect to the truth of lawbreakers’ moral convictions. After adding a proviso to desert theory which accounts for this fact as well as our intuition that under-punishing is preferable to over-punishing, I return to the “mercy for all” view and accept it as the only one compatible with justice. Endnotes 1 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice. Harvard Belknap Press, 1971. 320, 327. 135 2 Alec Walen, “Retributive Justice”. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall 2020 Edition. https://plato.stanford. edu/entries/justice-retributive/. Section 1. 3 Kimberlee Brownlee, “Civil Disobedience”. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall 2017 Edition. https:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/civil-disobedience/. Section 4.2. 4 Harrop A. Freeman, “The Right of Civil Disobedience”. Indiana Law Journal, Vol 4 Iss 2, 1966. https://www. repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3628&context=ilj. 228-254. 5 It might be hard to imagine the “normal offender” for this case. Here, it would be someone who refuses to serve gay citizens but does not do so to protest the antidiscrimination law. Perhaps this person thinks that serving gay citizens will cause him to lose the business of homophobic customers. 6 One might question why the new level of punishment must be uniform. For example, perhaps different levels of punishment could be administered on a random or arbitrary basis. But surely, such punishments would be unjust. 7 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1893. 358. 8 It could also take a third form, at a level somewhere between what the two groups of disobedients deserve. But this would obviously over-punish those who have correct moral convictions and be thrown out by the proviso. Previous Next

Georgian-South Ossetian Conflict Is secession a viable solution? Tathyana Mello Amaral Brown University Author Miles Campbell Ryan Saadeh Ethan Shire Editors Fall 2018 This paper assesses the viability of secession as a possible solution for the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulted in the creation of weak and unstable states that sought to establish their identity and place in the world. It triggered a wave of pervasive ethno-nationalism in Eastern Europe, led to a number of lasting military conflicts, and brought about the question of self-determination of minor ethnic groups like the Armenians, Chechens, and Kosovians. The Yugoslav Wars marked an important turning point in the history of the post-Soviet region because it resulted in the secession of Kosovo from Serbia in 2008 and created legal precedent for separatist groups. While the right to secede offers an answer to the resolution of ethnic conflicts, some scholars and theorists find it troubling. [1] The dispute between Georgia and ethnic Ossetians of the Transcaucasian region, now known as South Ossetia, highlights how the right to secede is still a point of controversy in international law. Historical Background: Nature of the Conflict Though the enmity between ethnic Georgians and ethnic Ossetians dates back to the 13th century when Ossetians were driven South from the Northern Caucasus Mountains to Georgian territory, it greatly intensified during the Soviet period.[2] During this period, South Ossetia was an autonomous administrative unit within the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR). As historian George B. Hewitt discusses, language policy was an important point of contention between the ethnic groups since Georgia pursued discriminatory policies against its ethnic minorities.[3] The Soviet Union’s early language policy granted a lot of freedom to ethnic groups as part of a “nativization” effort that sought to liberate and win over oppressed peoples. By the late 1930s, however, fears of emerging nationalism within the federation led to a change in policy to one of “Russification”. Georgia, however, was exempted from such policies until 1953 since its leader Joseph Stalin was a Georgian native. In 1936 Georgian was declared a state language and Georgianization became the policy of the day. In 1938 the state imposed the Georgian alphabet on the Ossetian language and prohibited minority language schooling, causing great tensions between the government and the ethnic minorities.[4] When the Russification policies reached the Georgian SSR, the Georgian Nationalist Movement proposed the 1988 Draft Language Law which aimed to oblige ethnic minorities to master the Georgian language.[5] These Georgian language policies, along with other discriminatory practices, thus created deep resentment among South Ossetians towards Georgians. It is important to note that the small state of Georgia is home to other separatist ethnic minorities, including Abkhazians in the West and Adjarians in the South. Although the Abkhazian-Georgian conflict has paralleled the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict since 1991 when violent conflict first erupted during the Georgian independence movement, this paper will exclusively focus on the South Ossetian conflict. The violent experience of the 1990s was a culmination of hundreds of years of conflict. Political scientist Stefan Wolff writes that “South Ossetians wanted to preserve and remain within the Soviet Union. The Ossetians believed that their survival as ethno-cultural communities distinct from the Georgian majority would be in acute danger in an independent Georgian state.”[6] The relationship between Russia and South Ossetia was reinforced by the fact that ethnic Ossetians had their own autonomous republic within Russia, namely North Ossetia-Alana. With the support of Russia, the South Ossetian separatists managed to put up a strong resistance against the Georgians.[7] In June 1992, shortly after the election of former Soviet Foreign Minister Edvard Shevardnadze as Georgian president, a ceasefire was signed in Sochi under Russian supervision.[8] The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) sent a mission composed of troops from Georgia, Russia, South Ossetia, and North Ossetia to facilitate negotiations toward a political agreement.[9] The OSCE mission successfully maintained peace until 2003 when President Mikhail Saakashvili rose to power through the popular Rose Revolution, and made the restoration of Georgian territorial integrity a major goal of the new government.[10] The administration’s policy led to a violent flare up in 2004 when the government cracked down on a symbol of interethnic cooperation: the Ergneti Market.[11] Though the black market was a major point of contraband trade, the introduction of a harsh taxation system in the market, as a part of Saakashvili’s anti-contraband operation, significantly harmed Georgian relations with Ossetians. The market was one of the only sites of direct interaction between the two ethnic groups. Relations were made even worse by the fact that one of the targeted groups in this operation was comprised of local officials and businessmen who profited from Russian and Ossetian trade connections.[12] Violence erupted during and after the shutting down of the market. Even more detrimental to interethnic relations, in 2006 it became public that the smuggling operation still existed, but that it was now run but the ruling Georgian elite.[13] The closing of the Ergneti Market was labeled a “missed window of opportunity” for conflict resolution by academic Doris Vogl. She argued that “during the rigorously implemented state-building process of the early Saakashvili government, the informal Georgian-Ossetian relations immediately lost momentum.”[14] The events of 2004 polarized and radicalized both Georgians and Ossetians and intensified the clashes between the ethnic groups in the prelude of the war of 2008. Though Georgia offered South Ossetia federal status in 2004, the leadership rejected this possible resolution.[15] Georgian policies in the early 2000s allowed Russia to offer more substantial and public support to the separatist Ossetians. Russia distributed passports to ethnic Ossetians and intensified political, economic and military ties with the separatist region. Arguably even more important, Russia observed growing relations between Georgia and Western powers like the United States. Georgia received 1.3 billion dollars of American financial aid and oversaw the construction of BP operated Baku–Supsa oil pipeline which runs through Azerbaijan and Georgia.[16] As Georgia began to pursue NATO membership, Russia was threatened by the possibility of having the Western coalition present in its own backyard. Svante E. Cornell and S. Frederick Starr comment that before the 2008 war, “Georgia was moving rapidly toward Euro-Atlantic integration, and was doing so at a time when an increasingly assertive Russian foreign policy was being shaped by sphere of influence-thinking.”[17] With fears of further NATO expansion and growing US presence in the Caucasus, Russian policy was driven by global security concerns, dynamics of European and global geopolitical power. Also significant is the fact that dominant Western powers such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and France supported and legitimized the secession of Kosovo from Serbia in February 2008. This allowed President Putin to cite the “Kosovo precedent” when signing a presidential decree on April 16th that established political, economic and social relations with both South Ossetia and Abkhazia.[18] Rising tensions between the two sovereign nations resulted in a five day war in 2008. Controversy surrounds who actually initiated the war on August 7th 2008,[19] as reports by the European Union and the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center agree that while Georgia made the first move, Russia significantly increased the number of troops and armaments in Abkhazia, and later in South Ossetia in the prelude to the war.[20] After five days of violent conflict, Georgia and Russia agreed to sign an armistice and engaged in peace talks sponsored by the European Union, the United Nations and OSCE. Russian military troops remained in South Ossetia in order to prevent Georgia from recovering the territory.[21] On August 25th, Russia recognized the sovereignty of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Western powers and institutions such as NATO, the European Union, and the United Nations strongly condemned this move as they believed it undermined the sovereignty of the Georgian state. In response, Georgia ceased all diplomatic relations with Russia. This made the peace process slow and ineffective as the co-sponsored EU-UN-OSCE talks in Geneva were the only mechanism for multilateral talks.[22] Since 2008, Russia has increased governmental, economic and social ties with the secessionist regions. The administrative border between South Ossetia and Georgia has also been pushed southwards and since the summer of 2015, South Ossetian-held territory includes a section of the Baku-Supsa pipeline. As Andrews Higgins puts it, the secessionist region is part of Russia’s “Frozen Zone”, which includes areas under Russian control that officially belong to neighboring states, such as Georgia’s Abkhazia, Moldova’s Transnistria, and Ukraine’s Crimea. Higgins also adds that these regions are “useful for things like preventing a NATO foothold or destabilizing the host country at opportune moments.”[23] Issues with the Secession of South Ossetia In his essay “The Cracked Foundations of the Right to Secede”, law professor and political scientist Donald Horowitz outlines a set of assumptions that are made about secessionist states which justify the right to secede. This right assumes that secession will produce a “homogenous successor” that will “respect minority rights,” and where “republican democracy is viable.”[24] It also assumes that secession will “result in a diminution of conflict.”[25] The case of South Ossetia can be analyzed as a natural secessionist experiment of history because the region has been a de-facto independent state for many years. The question then arises: have these assumptions materialized in the case of South Ossetia? In short, they have not. As Horowitz points out, secession “merely proliferates the arenas in which the problem of intergroup political accommodation must be faced.”[26] In the case of Georgia, ample evidence shows that ethnic conflict continues to haunt both Georgia and the de-facto independent state of South Ossetia. There were many reports concerning violations of human rights from both sides during the 2008 war. For example, a Human Rights Watch report showed that there was intentional destruction of Georgian villages by Russian-South Ossetian troops.[27] The majority of ethnic Georgians who resided in South Ossetia fled during the August 2008 conflict, but an estimated 20,000 still live in the disputed territory.[28] The Ministry for Internally Displaced Persons from the Occupied Territories, Accommodation and Refugees of Georgia reported that there were 34,274 internally displaced persons (IDPs) from South Ossetia as of October 2014.[29] A UN survey shows that 56.9% of IDPs from South Ossetia are unable, but would like to return to their place of origin in cities like Tskhinvali, Znauri, Java, and Shida Kartli. This demonstrates how interethnic accommodations have failed to unfold with the creation of a separate state. Additionally, with no access to the territory except in preparations for the Geneva Discussions, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and Georgian authorities have been unable to implement conventions regarding rights of refugees, stateless persons, and IDPs.[30] Russian troops regularly detain Georgian civilians for illegal crossings of the “administrative boundary line” (around 320 villagers were detained in 2015 alone).[31] In fact, the Freedom House Organization states that ethnic Georgians are barred from returning to the region unless they “renounce their Georgian citizenship and accept Russian passports.”[32] Therefore, the freedom of movement of Georgian citizens is constantly threatened in South Ossetia. In July 2017, the South Ossetian authorities also shared plans “to abolish the Georgian language schooling in the region’s ethnic Georgian populated areas beginning from the 2017/2018 academic year.”[33] The language policy proposed by the South Ossetian government recalls the discriminatory policies Ossetians were subjected to at the hand of Georgians during the Soviet period. Regarding the meaningful political participation of ethnic minorities, the Freedom House states that ethnic Georgians have refused or been barred from participating in the electoral process.[34] Freedoms of expression and of organization are also threatened.[35] As Horowitz argues, the treatment of this new ethnic minority is highly discriminatory. Therefore, in the case of South Ossetia, secession does not create a homogenous successor nor does it guarantee the respect of minority rights. In the case of South Ossetia, secession does not seem feasible unless the authorities make a commitment to guarantee the rights of its ethnic minorities. But, as Horowitz warns, “guarantees of minority protection in secessionist regions are likely to be illusory.”[36] While South Ossetia is considered a de-facto independent state, the viability of an independent republican democracy in South Ossetia is questionable when considering its high dependence on Russia. Historians Andreas Gerrits and Max Bader argue that “the economic and intergovernmental linkages with Russia … directly undermine the autonomy of the region.”[37] With a dual executive system, South Ossetia maintains political institutions based on those of Russia. The 2011 presidential election demonstrates the grip of Russia on the region’s politics and shows how the South Ossetian political process is highly susceptible to Russian influence. When a candidate who criticized strong ties with Russia won the popular vote, the Supreme Court annulled the results. Elections were repeated in 2012 with four new candidates, all pro-Russia.[38] As a result of the bilateral agreements signed in 2009, 2010, and 2015 that established economic, governmental and military links between Russia and South Ossetia, South Ossetia developed a high level of dependence on Russia.[39] Russia is South Ossetia’s only relevant trade partner, the ruble is the official currency, and South Ossetia’s imports and investments are exclusively from Russia.[40] More significantly, 91% of South Ossetia’s government budget is made up from Russian financial aid.[41] These limitations arguably derive from a lack of international recognition and from the consequences of the 2008 war. However, as Russian economist Mikhail Delyagin states, “South Ossetia does not exist as an independent economic entity due to its small size and extremely low-level management,” as well as due to its reliance on Russia’s long-term military presence to protect its territory.[42] As a result of this significant dependence on Russian aid, South Ossetia does not have a sustainable future as an independent nation. Another assumption that can be contested is that secession will lead to a diminution of violent conflict. This inevitable reality is highly flawed because devolution merely turns domestic conflicts into international ones. While a political divorce has not officially occurred, South Ossetia has been de-facto independent for at least 10 years. Though ethnic enmities linger, the recent history of the conflict shows how ethnic conflicts can mutate into primarily geopolitical ones when separatist movements thrive. University of Edinburgh Professor Emeritus John Erickson writes that the implications of Georgia’s Western push “are consequently dire for those [including high level Russian officials] who insist doggedly that the post-Soviet ‘space’ in its entirety, encompassing the former states of the Soviet Union, is and must remain a closed Russian geopolitical preserve.”[43] For Russia, the possibility of NATO encroachment on the South Caucasus precludes any significant decision concerning the separatist regions. As historian David J. Smith argues, German Chancellor Angela Merkle sealed the region’s fate when she said that the resolution of internal conflict was a prerequisite for NATO membership.[44] From that moment onwards, South Ossetia became a pawn in Moscow’s foreign policy strategy, described by Svante Cornell as a “revival of a classically modern, Realpolitik culture of security.”[45] The South Ossetian “secessionist” experience, along with that of other separatist states in Eastern Europe, illustrates how ethnic conflicts can be used to further geopolitical interests of powers like the Russian Federation in the post-Soviet space. The internationalization of the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict shows how secession does not necessarily lead to a diminution of violence. Therefore, the failure of South Ossetia to protect the minority rights of ethnic Georgians, its continued dependence on Russia, and likely mutation of ethnic conflicts into geopolitical ones suggests that secession is not a viable solution for this conflict. Implications There are no clear answers to Georgian-South Ossetian conflict. Though the director of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies Cory Welt argues that “the reintegration of South Ossetia…poses no challenges to conventional understandings of democracy and human rights,” as time passes, the collective consciousness of both South Ossetians and Georgians acquires increasingly negative perceptions of the opposing ethnic group, making future interethnic cooperation difficult to achieve.[46] Additionally, the social linkage between South Ossetia and Russia continues to grow through the Russian domination of the media, the use of Russian as the lingua franca, and the promotion of educational exchange programs.[47] A symbolic link also comes from the large Ossetian diaspora in North Ossetia, an autonomous region within Russia. Thus, South Ossetia’s reintegration into Georgia becomes more unlikely by the day. With most citizens having dual citizenship to South Ossetia and Russia, further integration of South Ossetia into Russia can be anticipated. While Russia has not stated that it will pursue the annexation of the territory, its aggressive support of South Ossetia has managed to destabilize the region, prevent Georgia from joining Western organizations such as NATO. Moreover, through its involvement in Georgia, Russia has reasserted its influence in the Caucasus region. If secession occurred and South Ossetia was recognized as independent state by the international community, Russia would be encouraged to engage in even more aggressive foreign policy in the post-Soviet sphere of influence, possibly resulting in a domino effect of secessionist movements and a higher occurrence of violent conflicts. Georgia is a multiethnic country with two separatist movements (the experience of Abkhazia is very similar to that of South Ossetia), so the secession of one region would likely lead to that of the other. The disputed territories make up about one quarter of the Georgian territory, which means secession would severely destabilize the already weak country. The fear of a domino effect, not only in Georgia, but in other disputed territories that are currently under Russian control (i.e.: Crimea and Donbass, Ukraine; Transnitria, Moldova), is already a reality shaping international geopolitics. If the right to secede is accepted in relation to the South Ossetian dispute, the legal precedent set by Kosovo’s independence will be reaffirmed. With Russia’s “Frozen Zone” in mind, the emergence and legitimization of separatist movements of small and unsustainable regions can lead to the expansion of Russian sphere of influence in the post-Soviet territory and the further polarization of the present international political dynamics. Conclusion Peace talks and conflict resolution efforts have proven ineffective for almost 25 years, since both sides are committed to achieving predetermined preferential outcomes.[48] Both sides have been haunted by the impatience of political leaders such as President Saakashvili and by a lack of trust from both sides due to the lack of interethnic communication. But, most of all, the sides have been haunted by a pro-separatist Russian mediator. Cory Welt writes that Russia’s “function as a ‘hegemonic balancer’ interposed between conflicting parties resulted in the establishment of a level playing field for negotiations, allowing Abkhazia and South Ossetia to consider themselves equals to Georgia, not subordinates.”[49] While Georgia attempted to reach an acceptable political solution, the support from a major power endowed separatist group with a decisive sense of confidence and security that hindered the resolution of the conflict. Meanwhile, Western states and institutions failed to devise a coherent response to Russian policies that threaten stability and Europe’s own interests in the region. The de-facto independence of South Ossetia encountered a continued threat to rights of ethnic minorities, a strong dependence on Russia, and the quick escalation of violence in 2008 due to the internationalization of the conflict. The region’s experience thus supports the argument that secession is not a viable solution for ethnic conflict in the Caucasus. Endnotes [1] Donald L. Horowitz, “The Cracked Foundations of the Right to Secede,” Journal of Democracy, 11. [2] George Hewitt, Discordant Neighbours: A Reassessment of the Georgian-Abkhazian and Georgian-South Ossetian Conflicts, (Leiden: 2003), 22 -23. [3] Hewitt, 41. [4] Sonya Kleshik, "I Am My Language: Language Policy and Attitudes Toward Language in Georgia" (Master's thesis, Central European University, 2010), 11 - 12 [5] Hewitt, 57 – 58. [6] Stefan Wolff, "Georgia: Abkhazia and South Ossetia," Encyclopedia Princetoniensis. [7] Ibid. [8] Ibid. [9] Marietta Konig, "The Georgian-South Ossetian Conflict ," OSCE Yearbook 2004 (Hamburg: 2004), 242. [10] Ibid, 238. [11] Doris Vogl, "Missed Windows of Opportunity in the Georgian-South Ossetian Conflict – The Political Agenda of the Post-Revolutionary Saakashvili Government (2004-2006)," Failed Prevention: The Case of Georgia (Vienna: 2010), 68 – 71. [12] Vogl, 70. [13] Ibid. [14] Ibid, 72. [15] Wolff. [16] Cory Welt, “Balancing the Balancer: Russia, the U.S., and Conflict Resolution in Georgia,” Global Dialogue 7, no. 3-4 (Summer/Autumn 2005), 24. [17] Svante E. Cornell and S. Frederick Starr, eds., The Guns of August 2008: Russia's War in Georgia (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2015), 4. [18] Ibid, 7 – 8. [19] "The Blame Game," The Economist, October 03, 2009. [20] Ibid; Cornell, Popjanevski and Nilsson, “Russia’s War in Georgia”, 23 – 24. [21] Luke Hardinng and Jenny Percival, “Russian troops to stay in Abkhazia and South Ossetia,” The Guardian, September 09 2008. [22] Wolff, "Georgia”. [23] Andrew Higgins, “In Russia’s ‘Frozen Zone,’ a Creeping Border With Georgia,” The New York Times, October 23 2016. [24] Horowitz, “Cracked Foundations,” 8. [25] Ibid. [26] Ibid, 9. [27] Up In Flames: Humanitarian Law Violations and Civilian Victims in the Conflict over South Ossetia (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2009). [28] "World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples: Ossetians," Minority Rights Group International. [29] UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Intentions Survey On Durable Solutions: Voices Of Internally Displaced Persons In Georgia, June 2015. [30] UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Submission by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees For the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights' Compilation Report Universal Periodic Review: Georgia, January 2015. [31] Vicenews, The Russians Are Coming: Georgia’s Creeping Occupation, VICE News, November 04, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv00Weif0Sw . [32] “Freedom In The World: South Ossetia," Freedom House, 2016. [33] Georgian Schools to be Abolished in S. Ossetia," Civil.Ge, July 28, 2017. [34] “Freedom In The World: South Ossetia”. [35] Ibid. [36] Horowitz, 6. [37] Andre W. M. Gerrits and Max Bader, "Russian Patronage Over Abkhazia and South Ossetia: Implications for Conflict Resolution," East European Politics 32, no. 3 (July 19, 2016). [38] “Freedom In The World: South Ossetia”. [39] Gerrits and Bader, “Russian Patronage”. [40] Ibid. [41] Paul Rimple, “Economics Not Impacting Russian Support for Georgian Separatists,” Eurasianet.org, February 13, 2015. [42] Mikhail Delyagin, "A Testing Ground for Modernization and a Showcase of Success," Russia in Global Affairs, March 8, 2008. [43] John Erickson, “Russia Will not be Trifled With: Geopolitical Facts and Fantasies,” in Geopolitics: Geography and Strategy, ed. Colin S. Gray and Geoffrey Sloan (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 1999), p. 260. [44] David J. Smith, "The Saakashvili Administration’s Reaction to Russian Policies Before the 2008 War," in The Guns of August 2008: Russia's War in Georgia (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2015), 126. [45] Cornell and Starr, The Guns of August 2008, 196. [46] Cory Welt, “Balancing the Balancer: Russia, the U.S., and Conflict Resolution in Georgia,” Global Dialogue 7, no. 3-4 (2005), 12. [47] Gerrits and Bader, “Russian Patronage”. [48] Oksana Antonenko, "Failures of the Conflict Transformation and Root Causes of the August War," Failed Prevention: The Case of Georgia (Vienna: National Defence Academy and Bureau for Security Policy at the Austrian Ministry of Defence, 2010), 83. [49] Welt, “Balancing the Balancer,” 2. References Antonenko, Oksana. "Failures of the Conflict Transformation and Root Causes of the August War." In Failed Prevention: The Case of Georgia, 79-93. Vienna: National Defense Academy and Bureau for Security Policy at the Austrian Ministry of Defense, 2010. "The Blame Game." The Economist. October 03, 2009. http://www.economist.com/node/14560958 . Cornell, Svante E., and S. Frederick Starr, eds. The Guns of August 2008: Russia's War in Georgia. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2015. Cornell, Svante E., Johanna Popjanevski, and Niklas Nilsson. Russia’s War in Georgia: Causes and Implications for Georgia and the World. Singapore: Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, August 2008. Delyagin, Mikhail. "A Testing Ground for Modernization and a Showcase of Success." Russia in Global Affairs. March 8, 2008. Accessed August 19, 2017. http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/number/n_12538. Erickson, John. “Russia Will not be Trifled With: Geopolitical Facts and Fantasies.” Geopolitics: Geography and Strategy. Colin S. Gray and Geoffrey Sloan ed. (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 1999). "Freedom In The World: South Ossetia." Freedom House. 2016. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2015/south-ossetia. "Georgian Schools to be Abolished in S. Ossetia." Civil.Ge. July 28, 2017. http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=30309. Gerrits, Andre W. M. , and Max Bader. "Russian Patronage Over Abkhazia and South Ossetia: Implications for Conflict Resolution." East European Politics 32, no. 3 (July 19, 2016): 297-313. Goble, Paul A. "Russian 'Passportization'." The New York Times. September 09, 2008. Accessed August 17, 2017. https://topics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/09/russian-passportization/?_r=0. Hardinng, Luke and Jenny Percival. “Russian troops to stay in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.” The Guardian. September 09 2008. Hewitt, George. Discordant Neighbours: A Reassessment of the Georgian-Abkhazian and Georgian-South Ossetian Conflicts. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Higgins, Andrew. “In Russia’s ‘Frozen Zone,’ a Creeping Border With Georgia.” The New York Times. October 23 2016. Jentzsch, Greg. "What are the main causes of conflict in South Ossetia and how can they best be addressed to promote lasting peace." The BSIS Journal of International Studies (2009). Kleshik, Sonya . "I Am My Language: Language Policy and Attitudes Toward Language in Georgia." Master's thesis, Central European University, 2010. Konig, Marietta . "The Georgian-South Ossetian Conflict ." OSCE Yearbook 2004 (Hamburg: 2004). Rimple, Paul. “Economics Not Impacting Russian Support for Georgian Separatists.” Eurasianet.org. February 13, 2015. UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Intentions Survey On Durable Solutions: Voices Of Internally Displaced Persons In Georgia. June 2015. http://www.refworld.org/docid/55e575924.html UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Submission by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees For the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights' Compilation Report Universal Periodic Review: Georgia. January 2015. Up In Flames: Humanitarian Law Violations and Civilian Victims in the Conflict over South Ossetia. New York: Human Rights Watch, 2009. Vicenews. The Russians Are Coming: Georgia’s Creeping Occupation. VICE News. November 04, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv00Weif0Sw. Vogl, Doris. "Missed Windows of Opportunity in the Georgian-South Ossetian Conflict – The Political Agenda of the Post-Revolutionary Saakashvili Government (2004-2006) ." In Failed Prevention: The Case of Georgia, 59 - 77. Vienna: National Defence Academy and Bureau for Security Policy at the Austrian Ministry of Defence, 2010. Welt, Cory. “Balancing the Balancer: Russia, the U.S., and Conflict Resolution in Georgia.” Global Dialogue 7, no. 3-4 (Summer/Autumn 2005), 22-36. Wolff, Stefan. "Georgia: Abkhazia and South Ossetia." Encyclopedia Princetoniensis. "World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples: Ossetians." Minority Rights Group International. http://minorityrights.org/minorities/ossetians/.

The Duty to Use Drones The Duty to Use Drones In Cases of National Self-Defense Lina Dayem University of Chicago Author Ginevra Bulgari Vance Kelley Galen Hall Naima Okami Editors Spring 2019 Download full text PDF (14 pages) Introduction Since the tactic was first implemented, targeted killing by drones has been associated with political secrecy, dubious legality, and unsavory practices, and has thus garnered a negative reputation. In this essay, I endeavor to vindicate the use of drones, if only under the constrained circumstances of national self-defense. I argue the following: If a state can permissibly carry out targeted killings for the purpose of national self-defense, then it ought to do so with drones because of the minimized risks to soldiers and civilians. To argue this position, I first demonstrate that we should think of targeted killing as fitting into the self-defense paradigm, rather than military or law enforcement paradigms. I explain that states may permissibly engage in targeted killing when it is justified in terms of national self-defense. Next I explain how drones minimize risk to both soldiers and civilians. By combining the logic of self-defense with the principle of risk minimization, I arrive at the conclusion that in circumstances where targeted killing is necessary for national self-defense, states have a duty to use drones. Finally, I respond to potential objections about the use of drones, all of which can be addressed by improved drone policy. Military and Law Enforcement Paradigms Provide Inadequate Justification for Targeted Killing Targeted killing is a practice in which many governments engage. To justify targeted killings, theorists and politicians generally invoke one of two paradigms that permit the use of deadly force: the military paradigm and the law enforcement paradigm. These paradigms act to orient government policy—they direct how we may morally and legally behave towards our enemy. Targeted killing remains controversial because it cannot be clearly endorsed by either paradigm. The Military Paradigm The military paradigm activates the laws and conventions of war. Enemy combatants are the only parties liable to death. According to the jus in bello[1] convention, combatants can permissibly be killed during wartime without punishment (with some exceptions). Hostile treatment towards a combatant is permissible simply by virtue of combatant status, rather than any actions taken by the individual in question. In other words, a combatant’s liability to death derives precisely from assumption of the role of a soldier. In this paradigm, identifying an enemy terrorist as a combatant engaged in acts of war could enable the state to justify permissibly killing him without a trial. So, the fact that targeted killings of terrorists occur without trial suggests potential use of the logic of the military paradigm. Furthermore, in the case of the United States’ conflict with Al-Qaeda, we notice that the military paradigm seems to underlies the operative language of both parties, although it does not fully account for the conflict’s operative logic. Declaring a “War on Terror” and Jihad (Holy War)[2], respectively, implies at least nominally that each side considers the other’s fighters to be enemy combatants. The problem, of course, is that under international law a private citizen (such as Osama bin Laden) cannot declare war as that is a right granted only to sovereign states.[3] Conversely, under international law, a state cannot declare war against a non-state actor.[4] We may doubt the applicability of the military paradigm to targeted killings for several other reasons. First, terrorists willingly forgo the conventions that govern combatant status. The convention states that combatants wear the insignia of their country and carry their weapons openly.[5] Terrorists, however, do not wear uniforms, and hide amongst civilians. Of course, the main tactic of terrorists—targeting civilians—violates the jus in bello convention of noncombatant immunity. It is not only the status of the terrorists that is unclear; the status of those who carry out targeted killing is equally blurry, as civilian leaders often order targeted killings. In the United States, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), a civilian organization, has the authority to command drone strikes.[6] CIA control over drone strikes blurs the line between combatant and civilian, since civilians do actively engage in hostile conduct. This further complicates traditional boundaries of warfare with respect to justice and permissibility. Finally, naming someone in advance to be placed on a hit list runs counter to the very idea of status-based liability. In war, individual soldiers on the battlefield are not identified by the enemy and specifically targeted. Rather, a soldier is attacked by another soldier as part of a relationship of hostility qua soldier.[7] In other words, a soldier is liable to be killed due to his status as a soldier, rather than because of his actions. The practice of naming a target in advance singles him out qua individual. Therefore, the naming practice is fundamentally at odds with the status-based logic of legitimate military hostility. The Law Enforcement Paradigm Political theorists and governments have also justified targeted killing under a law enforcement paradigm. These parties maintain that terrorists should be considered criminals, rather than combatants. However, the goal of law enforcement is to arrest—not kill—the criminal. By the law enforcement paradigm, it is wrong to deprive a suspected criminal of due process by killing him before a trial. Indeed, the instances where law enforcement officers can permissibly kill are restricted to cases wherein a criminal resists arrest by putting the life of officers or others at risk. In this situation, liability to death is action-based rather than status-based. In other words, the criminal has effectively forfeited their right to life by initiating an attack. Liability to death may also come after the trial as retributive justice. So in certain cases, certain crimes may be punishable by death. While the death penalty is controversial, in cases where it is legal, it also represents an instance of action-based liability as punishment for a past action. However, by its very nature, targeted killing skips the fundamental steps of arrest and trial. Placing a name on a hit-list presumes guilt, and the individual listed becomes liable to instantaneous death by drone strike without being afforded due process. Under the law enforcement paradigm, this would be considered an extrajudicial execution, tantamount to murder.[8] Invoking the Principle of Self-Defense to Justify Targeted Killings The Self-Defense Paradigm In this discussion, I will draw from the work of several authors, such as McMahan, Gross, and Finkelstein, who analyze targeted killing as an act of self-defense. The self-defense paradigm better addresses the conceptual lacunae in the military and law enforcement paradigms as they concern targeted killing, and thus maps more clearly onto the practice of targeted killing. The basic premise of the self-defense paradigm is that when there is a threat to national security, a state has a right to protect itself. Self-defense can be considered a special offshoot of the law enforcement paradigm because, as described above, it is sometimes permissible for law enforcement officers to engage in certain self-defensive practices involving lethal force.[9] This paradigm deals with the threats that terrorists pose to national security and so is preemptive in nature. In this way, the killing of a terrorist should not be conceived of as punishment or retributive justice, since the paradigm does not deal with past actions. Instead, under the self-defense paradigm, someone who has never committed an attack could be just as liable as someone who has already committed several, provided that they pose the same current threat. Indeed, under this framework, a terrorist’s past crimes only serve as an epistemic gauge for predicting the likelihood that the individual will strike again.[10] The self-defense paradigm bypasses the military paradigm’s murky combatant-noncombatant distinctions because its liability criterion centers on action rather than status. If someone poses a threat to a state, the actions a state may take against the individual are not constrained by their status. Rather, the individual’s status is irrelevant both to their liability to death as well as our ability to retaliate. The self-defense paradigm also circumvents the law-enforcement paradigm’s crucial steps of arrest and trial because it operates on the logic of preemptive justice rather than retributive justice. Like the law enforcement paradigm, the self-defense paradigm uses the logic of action-based liability to death, but in a less evident manner. A terrorist’s liability to death derives from the notion that in planning an attack, a terrorist wrongs innocent people by increasing their likelihood of harm.[11] Thus, the harm caused by the terrorist’s death would need to be proportional to the harm prevented by protecting innocents from the attack. In other words, if their death would not disrupt realization of that harm, the targeted killing is not justified. Finally, it must also be considered whether or not the targeted killing could result in dangerous unintended consequences.When these criteria are met under the self-defense paradigm, the result would be that targeted killing is permissible as an act of self-defense. In the next sections, I argue that in the cases where targeted killing is permissible, states have a duty to use drones to carry them out because drones reduce risk to both civilians and soldiers. The Duty to Minimize Risk in Cases of Self-Defense: Individual Cases To demonstrate the duty to minimize risk to civilians and soldiers in cases of national self-defense, I will employ an analogy involving individual self-defense. Imagine that an individual is attacked in a way that threatens their life. It is uncontroversial that they have the right to defend themselves against the attack. By initiating the attack, the attacker has forfeited their right not to be harmed. Because the victim’s life is threatened, responding proportionally to the attack means that they may permissibly kill the attacker, if that is the only way to thwart the attack. However, imagine that the attack occurs in a crowded location. While the victim still has the right to defend themselves, they would wrong bystanders by inflicting harm on them, or risking their harm. The bystanders, detached from the conflict, have done nothing to make themselves liable to harm. Consequently, they must minimize the harm to which bystanders are exposed. Therefore, the means by which one may defend themselves in this crowded location are constrained. For instance, while the victim may shoot the attacker in the open, the victim many not shoot indiscriminately into the crowd in order to scare the attacker away. Similarly, if the attacker hides within the crowd, it would be wrong to simply aim at the group of people if there existed high likelihood that a bystander would be harmed. Furthermore, imagine the victim had the choice between two weapons that each afford equal capabilities to thwart or end the attack. One of the weapons is more precise than the other. For example, consider a handgun in comparison to a large vehicle (to be used as a deadly weapon). By aiming a gun at the attacker, they have a lower chance of accidentally hitting a bystander than if they were to drive the vehicle into the crowd. Because the victim has the choice between the two weapons, it would be wrong to choose the car, because it poses higher risk to bystanders. These two examples demonstrate that even in the presence of bystanders the victim retains the right to self-defense, yet has a duty to minimize the risk they pose to the innocent. For the bystanders simply have the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and have done nothing to make themselves liable to harm. The duty to minimize risk even when acting in self-defense is not only a consideration which must be undertaken with respect to bystanders, but at the state level also stretches to the defensive capabilities afforded by the state to its soldiers. Consider an analogy offered by Bradley Strawser. He imagines a commander who orders their troops to take off their bullet-proof vests and run at the enemy, and concludes that the commander wrongs the troops by ordering them into a dangerous situation without the normally available protection.[12] In doing so, the commander unjustly increases their risk to harm. While there may exist important moral differences between denying defensive capability to soldiers and aiming a weapon at a crowd of bystanders, Strawser’s analogy highlights the fundamental idea that it would be wrong to increase the possibility of harm to a soldier, or civilian, through deprival of defensive capability. Applying a Duty to Minimize Risk to Cases of Self-Defense: State-Level The duty to minimize harm to bystanders in the individual case can be extended to situations of state-level self-defense as a duty to minimize the risk of harm to civilians and soldiers. If under reliable intelligence a state discovers an imminent threat to its national security, the state has a right to defend itself against that threat. But at the same time, the means available to the state for the purpose of self-defense must be bound by a duty to minimize risk to civilians and to soldiers. If a state can justifiably respond to an imminent threat of a terrorist attack, it does not have a carte blanche to employ any weapon in its arsenal. For instance, a state could launch a nuclear bomb on the city where the attacker is hiding. While this would certainly be an effective method to kill the attacker, it is a grossly disproportionate and as such obviously unjust. Instead, the state might instead choose a “boots on the ground” mission to find the individual, or any number of other more precise strategies. Any kind of armed engagement involves risk to both civilians and to the soldiers involved. As in the case of individual self-defense, it is the state’s duty to employ a strategy that offers the least risk to all parties involved. I will now explain how drone technology seems to be the obvious choice for risk reduction in such a scenario. Risk Reduction Through Use of Drones Undertaking targeted killing with drones reduces the risk of harm to a state’s own soldiers, as well as foreign civilians, in several ways. For pilots, the remote operation of unmanned weapons dramatically reduces chance of harm: drone pilots can operate from a base thousands of miles away from the conflict zone. They personally face no threat of harm, retaliation, or retribution. In contrast, engaging in a “boots on the ground” mission puts the soldiers involved at an increased risk because they are directly exposed to the hazards of a hostile territory, which leaves them open to the possibility of attack. The remote aspect of drone strikes may also reduce harm to civilians in the conflict zone. Journalist Michael Lewis perceptively reasons that because drone pilots feel secure, they are surprisingly less likely to initiate a strike out of fear or anxiety for their personal safety.[13] What Lewis articulates is that the mistakes frequently made by soldiers in the “fog of war” can be minimized by drones.[14] Moreover, drones themselves can act as intelligence-gathering machines. A target may be surveyed for months before an attack is carried out. This has several benefits. First, it confirms that the target is actually involved in terrorist activities, reducing the chance of targeting an innocent person. If the suspect is the right person, then the extensive intelligence allows the pilot to identify a pattern in the subject’s daily life so that the subject may be targeted at times when they are more likely to be alone. Furthermore, when operated with due care, drones are precise, capable of striking only a single person. As journalist Mark Bowden notes, “[A drone’s] extraordinary precision makes it an advance in humanitarian warfare. In theory, when used with principled restraint, it is the perfect counterterrorism weapon. It targets indiscriminate killers with exquisite discrimination.”[15] To ensure that its deployment is as precise as possible, operators have adopted measures to minimize civilian risk. For example, a recent review of drone procedures by the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan recommended that strikes occur while the target is in a vehicle, rather than in a compound. This is because it is easier to keep track of those entering and exiting vehicles than those entering and exiting compounds, reducing the likelihood that a target’s family member or close associate will also be hit. In addition, the strike could take place on an isolated road, further reducing the risk to bystanders.[16] Even under unideal operation conditions, drone strikes are generally less deadly to civilians than other available means, such as ground strikes or piloted airstrikes.[17] Finally, the practice of targeted killings itself can reduce a conflict’s escalation and thus its casualties. Targeted killing, when justified as preemptive action as described above, functions to avoid prolonged engagement or full-scale war. Comparing the civilian casualties of war to drone strikes demonstrates clearly that conventional warfare is the deadlier of the two.[18] Thus, for the aforementioned reasons, when states can permissibly carry out targeted killing for the purpose of national self-defense, they have a duty to do so with drones because they minimize risk of harm for civilians and soldiers alike.This duty to employ drones should be understood as prima facie, a strategy that should be adopted unless specific circumstances require the use of other measures. In other words, the duty stands as long as using drone technology will minimize risk to bystanders and soldiers involved in the operation. If in a given operation, certain material limitations, geographical specificities, or procedural carelessness will cause an elevated risk of harm, the duty no longer stands. Objections Many critics object to drones on the grounds that civilians sometimes are killed in drone strikes—because of this unjust risk to civilians, they argue that the use of drones cannot be justified. I will first respond by emphasizing that my argument deals with minimizing risk, not eliminating risk altogether. To eliminate risk completely would be to advocate for pacifism. We need to compare the risk that drones pose to civilians to the risk that other weapons and armed operations pose to civilians. Recent figures indicate that in comparison to conventional measures, drone strikes have ranged from slightly to far less lethal in producing collateral damage.[19] The above objection can take on a more nuanced character, deserving a different response. Perhaps critics feel an intuitive discord between the very precise capability of the drone and the fact that it nevertheless produces civilian collateral, damage which seems to imply carelessness in drone operations. To respond to these critics, I argue that their concern has more to do with mishandling and reckless use of the technology than with a problem with the technology itself. This kind of criticism is not unique to drones; any weapon can be used well or poorly. However, I contend that because drones are known for their precision, concern over rates of collateral damage may be even more relevant than in the case of use of other weapons. As such, elevated numbers of civilian casualties may be an indication of faulty intelligence or careless policy. I reiterate that the duty to use drones is only prima facie: if drones cause or exacerbate harm—either as a result of material factors or policy faults—then the duty to use them is dissolved. Indeed, I would agree with critics that these cases call for rigorous reassessment of policy and procedure. However, I would highlight that by focusing on drone technology in discussing this problem we misplace responsibility by blaming the weapon for the faults of its operators. In his 2006 essay “Terrorism and Just War,” Michael Walzer advocates for targeted killing as a counterterrorism measure. He acknowledges that counterterrorism occurs in the grey area between war and law enforcement, and usually away from active war zones. In his view, to keep the effects of counterterrorism from resembling the effects of terrorism, it is the duty of counterterrorist fighters to take extensive measures to prevent civilian casualties. For it is the care and protection of civilians that distinguishes legitimate counterterrorist activities from the illegitimate engagement of terrorists, as terrorists do not operate with similar notions of “collateral damage.” Walzer believes this care for civilians should be upheld even more so in the case of targeted killings because they are activities outside of wartime. He concludes that “what justice demands is that the army take positive measures, accept risks to its own soldiers, in order to avoid harm to civilians.”[20] While I believe that the motivation for Walzer’s argument is noble, it rests on a false premise. For, when read carefully, we observe that Walzer takes risk as a sort of sliding scale oscillating between the two extremes of risk to soldiers or risk to civilians. Rather, it is possible to work to minimize risk for civilians without this occurring at the expense of soldiers, minimizing risks for both parties. Walzer does not seem to entertain this possibility. However, when used with due care, the drone is the most precise weapon that we have in our arsenal. Its use would minimize risk to civilians while simultaneously eliminating risks to soldiers as well. If this is truly the case, then there does not seem to be a reason that, by his criteria, Walzer would object to their use. It does not seem that acknowledging the duty to avoid harming civilians would necessarily preclude the duty to avoid harm to soldiers. Again, however, my argument for the use of drones is only a prima facie. If it is indeed the case that more civilians would be harmed by the use of drones, either due to material limitations or reckless policy, then they should not be used. Many critics argue that if drones make targeted killing easier and less risky to soldiers, states will undertake more targeted killings than they would otherwise. They worry that the easy, efficient, and asymmetric nature of drone engagement may cause operators to ignore or forget that killing is only permissible when absolutely necessary to prevent greater harm. In turn, criteria for appearing on a hit-list for such targeted killings could become weaker and weaker. Walzer expresses this concern in his essay “Targeted Killing and Drone Warfare.” He writes, “why should we think it different from the sniper’s rifle? The difference is that killing-by-drone is so much easier than other forms of targeted killing. The easiness should make us uneasy. This is a dangerously tempting technology. It makes our enemies more vulnerable than ever before, and we can get at them without any risk to our own soldiers” (italics added).[21] Therefore, he and likeminded observers assume that when there is lower risk to military personnel, the “necessity” threshold for pursuing a targeted killing would be lowered. My immediate response to such an objection is to specify that I do not argue for a blanket duty to use drones. My argument only pertains their use in justified instances of self-defense. Just because drones are tempting to overuse or abuse, it does not follow that they will definitely be misused. In a similar vein to my previous responses, I emphasize that the key is a consistent and honest drone policy, with transparency and accountability. If states consistently hold themselves to a high bar of certainty required to permissibly engage in a targeted killing, then temptation does not have to materialize into a dubious precedent. Similarly, some critics contend that the remote warfare aspect of drones will create a “video game mentality” in its operators, emboldening them to undertake even more risks. This notion, however, is simply untrue. According to a 2011 Department of Defense study, drone operators experience depression, anxiety, and PTSD at rates similar to combat pilots.[22] In the Atlantic article “The Killing Machines,” Mark Bowden, after conducting interviews with drone pilots, describes why these pilots experience such emotional distress. Combat pilots are not responsible for long-term intelligence collection, and are trained to leave the scene as soon as their missions are complete. On the other hand, a drone operator is responsible for collecting intelligence. This operator may observe the same person for months, becoming intimately familiar with the target’s daily life after seeing him with his friends and family. What’s more, the drone’s camera feed continues after a missile is launched. Drone pilots witness “the carnage close-up, in real time—the blood and severed body parts, the arrival of emergency responders, the anguish of friends and family…War by remote control turns out to be intimate and disturbing.”[23] One might also worry that justifying targeted killing with the logic of preemptive self-defense fails to address the combatant-noncombatant ambiguity previously discussed in reference to the military paradigm. For, if someone is killed before he commits a wrongful action, doesn’t that indicate that his killing could have only been status-based? I respond to this objection by reiterating that self-defense operates on the logic of action-based liability. While not immediately obvious, planning a deadly attack is a type of wrongful action severe enough to warrant liability to death, as it increases the likelihood of harm to a innocent people.[24] In this way, the assailant’s status is irrelevant; it is the nature of the threatening action that allows permissible retaliation. However, because of the preemptive nature of the response, there will always remain some uncertainty—indeed, the assailant could have had a change of heart and not followed through with the planned attack. Given this uncertainty, it is necessary to set the epistemic bar rather high when assessing the true likelihood that a suspected assailant will follow through with the threat. Indeed, extended surveillance should be used to ensure—to a degree of near certainty—that the targeted individual’s outward behaviors definitively imply intention to carry out an imminent attack. This would be possible with use of a drone, since it carries intelligence gathering capabilities. Ultimately, we should make quite certain that the assailant is truly preparing an attack for which killing them would be proportional to prevent the harm to innocents. In sum, my responses to these five objections follow a specific trend, emphasizing the need for stringent procedural constraints in use of drones, a high epistemic bar for identifying targets who pose a threat before proceeding to killing, and conducting the strikes with tremendous care for the welfare of civilians. I believe that if the policy for targeted killings was transparent, rigorously regulated, and strictly followed, the objections discussed above would be void. Conclusion In this essay, I have demonstrated that whenever targeted killing is permissible as an act of national self-defense, states have a duty to use drones to carry out the attack. In support of this argument, I have explained that the logic of self-defense is better applicable to targeted killings than either the logic of military conduct or of law enforcement. As the self-defense paradigm requires use of means which reduce risk to all parties involved, drones stand out as the obvious choice—precise, remote weapons which reduce the risk of harm to both soldiers and civilians. Finally, I responded to several objections to drone technology, ultimately concluding that strict and thoughtful procedures with regards to the technology’s use could allay critics’ overarching unease. Endnotes [1] Term of art meaning “just conduct during war.” [2] This is not to conflate the version of jihad that means “holy war” with its broader meaning: that is, a spiritual struggle within oneself against sin. [3] Jeff McMahan, “Targeted Killing: Murder, Combat or Law Enforcement?” in Targeted Killings: Law and Morality in an Asymmetrical World, eds. Claire Finkelstein, Jens David Ohlin, and Andrew Altman, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 142. [4] McMahan, “Targeted Killing,”142. [5] This is a long-standing military convention, explicitly defined in by the United States’ “Military Commissions Act of 2006,” to respond to the lack of its explicit codification under the Geneva Convention. [6] Under the Obama administration, this power was transferred to the Pentagon, thereby placing drone strikes under military jurisdiction. However, this policy was reversed in March 2017 by the Trump administration, placing drone strikes in the jurisdiction of civilians again. See Mark Bowden, “Killing Machines,” The Atlantic, and “Trump Gives CIA Authority to Conduct Drone Strikes,” Reuters. [7] Thomas Nagel, “War and Massacre,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 15, no. 6 (July 1972): 123-44. [8] Michael L. Gross, “Assassination and Targeted Killing: Law Enforcement, Execution or Self-Defence?” Journal of Applied Philosophy 23, no. 3 (August 2006): 325. [9] McMahan, “Targeted Killing,”135; Claire Finkelstein, “Targeted Killing as Preemptive Action,” in Targeted Killings: Law and Morality in an Asymmetrical World, eds. Claire Finkelstein, Jens David Ohlin, and Andrew Altman, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 179. [10] McMahan, “Targeted Killing,” 139. [11] McMahan, “Targeted Killing,” 139 [12] Bradley Jay Strawser, “Moral Predators: The Duty to Employ Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles,” Journal of Military Ethics 9, no. 4 (December 2010): 346-7. [13] Michael W. Lewis, “Drones: Actually the Most Humane Form of Warfare Ever,” The Atlantic, August 21, 2013, accessed November 20, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/drones-actuallythe-most-humane-form-of-warfare-ever/278746/. [14] Lewis, “Drones: Actually the Most Humane Form of Warfare Ever.” [15] Mark Bowden, “The Killing Machines,” The Atlantic, September 15, 2013, accessed November 20, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/09/the-killing-machines-how-to-think-aboutdrones/309434/. [16] Lewis, “Drones: Actually the Most Humane Form of Warfare Ever.” [17] Bowden, “Killing Machines.” [18] Daniel L. Byman, “Why Drones Work: The Case for Washington’s Weapon of Choice,” Brookings (blog), November 30, 2001, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-drones-work-the-case-for-washingtons-weapon-ofchoice. [19] Bowden, “Killing Machines,” The Atlantic. [20] Michael Walzer, “Terrorism and Just War,” Philosophia 34, no. 1 (2006): 9. [21] Michael Walzer, “Targeted Killing and Drone Warfare,” Dissent Magazine, January 11, 2013, accessed November 20, 2018, https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/targeted-killing-and-drone-warfare. [22] James Dao, “Drone Pilots Are Found to Get Stress Disorders Much as Those in Combat Do,” The New York Times, February 22, 2013, accessed November 20, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/us/drone-pilotsfound-to-get-stress-disorders-much-as-those-in-combat-do.html. [23] Bowden, “Killing Machines.” [24] McMahan, “Targeted Killing,” 139. References Bowden, Mark. "The Killing Machines." The Atlantic, September 15, 2013. Accessed November 20, 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/09/the-killing-machines-how-to-think-about-drones/309434/ . Byman, Daniel L. “Why Drones Work: The Case for Washington’s Weapon of Choice.” Brookings (blog), November 30, 2001. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-drones-work-the-case-for-washingtons-weapon-of-choice/ . "Charter of the United Nations: Chapter VII." United Nations. Accessed November 20, 2018. http://www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/chapter-vii/ . Dao, James. "Drone Pilots Are Found to Get Stress Disorders Much as Those in Combat Do." The New York Times, February 22, 2013. Accessed November 20, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/us/drone-pilots-found-to-get-stress-disorders-much-as-those-in-combat-do.html . Finkelstein, Claire. "Targeted Killing as Preemptive Action." In Targeted Killings: Law and Morality in an Asymmetrical World, edited by Claire Finkelstein, Jens David Ohlin, and Andrew Altman, 156-82. Oxford University Press, 2012. Gross, Michael L. “Assassination and Targeted Killing: Law Enforcement, Execution or Self-Defence?," Journal of Applied Philosophy 23, no. 3 (August 2006): 323-35. Lewis, Michael W. "Drones: Actually the Most Humane Form of Warfare Ever." The Atlantic, August 21, 2013. Accessed November 20, 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/drones-actually-the-most-humane-form-of-warfare-ever/278746/ . McMahon, Jeff. “Targeted Killing: Murder, Combat or Law Enforcement?” In Targeted Killings: Law and Morality in an Asymmetrical World, edited by Claire Finkelstein, Jens David Ohlin, and Andrew Altman, 135-55. Oxford University Press, 2012. Nagel, Thomas. "War and Massacre." Philosophy and Public Affairs 15, no. 6 (July 1972): 123-44. Strawser, Bradley Jay. "Moral Predators: The Duty to Employ Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles." Journal of Military Ethics 9, no. 4 (December 2010): 342-68. Singh, Kanishka. "Trump Gives CIA Authority to Conduct Drone Strikes." Reuters, March 13, 2017. Accessed November 20, 2018. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-cia-drones-idUSKBN16K2SE . U.S. Congress, House. Military Commissions Act of 2006. HR - 6166, 109th Congr., 2nd sess. Introduced in Senate September 22, 2006. https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/150084.pdf . Walzer, Michael. "Targeted Killing and Drone Warfare." Dissent Magazine, January 11, 2013. Accessed November 20, 2018. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/targeted-killing-and-drone-warfare . Walzer, Michael. "Terrorism and Just War." Philosophia 34, no. 1 (January 2006): 3-12.

In this essay, I engage with G.A. Cohen’s argument by analogy that proletarians are individually free. I grant that Cohen’s analogy successfully represents the world. I disagree, however, with his conclusion, and use Philip Pettit’s conception of freedom as non-domination to demonstrate that proleta The Individual Unfreedom of the Proletarian Cal Fawell University of Chicago Author Marko Winedt Hanci Lei Neil Sehgal Matthew Dowling Editors Spring 2019 Abstract In this essay, I engage with G.A. Cohen’s argument by analogy that proletarians are individually free. I grant that Cohen’s analogy successfully represents the world. I disagree, however, with his conclusion, and use Philip Pettit’s conception of freedom as non-domination to demonstrate that proletarians are individually unfree. Specifically, I argue that even though fewer proletarians leave the proletariat than possibly could, they are nonetheless “dominated”—and thus, each is individually unfree. This essay grants the accuracy of Cohen’s analogy, and from this assumption draws the conclusion that proletarians are individually unfree. In drawing this conclusion, this essay follows the style of modus ponens. It first argues for the conditional: if Pettit’s notion of freedom holds, then the conclusion Cohen draws must fail. It then argues that Pettit’s notion holds, showing that it accurately captures our intuitions on the subject. In arguing for the conditional, this essay contends that Pettit’s criteria for unfreedom are satisfied for each individual proletarian. In arguing for the antecedent, it demonstrates a number of intuitive considerations which support Pettit’s conception of freedom. From this, it concludes that each character in the room of Cohen’s analogy is unfree. Combined with the original hypothetical stance that Cohen’s analogy accurately relates to the world, it follows that proletarians are individually unfree. Download full text PDF (12 pages) In The Structure of Proletarian Unfreedom , G.A. Cohen addresses the status of wage-earners whose only available resource is their potential to work for a salary; they are unable to produce the necessities of life themselves. These people are known as proletarians; the class of all such proletarians is known as the proletariat. Cohen begins with the view that since only a few proletarians are able to advance from the proletariat, proletarians—taken as a whole—are forced to sell their labor power. He denies, however, that this conflicts with his claim that “most proletarians are not forced to sell their labor power,” justifying this denial with an analogy: Ten people are placed in a room the only exit from which is a huge and heavy locked door. At various distances from each lies a single heavy key. Whoever picks up this key—and each is physically able, with varying degrees of effort, to do so—and takes it to the door will find, after considerable self-application, a way to open the door and leave the room. But if he does so he alone will be able to leave it. Photoelectric devices installed by a jailer ensure that it will open only just enough to permit one exit. Then it will close, and no one inside the room will be able to open it again.[1] The structure of this analogy is relatively simple. A group of people are imprisoned, all are initially able to escape, but ultimately only one is allowed to do so. He draws out the significance of this analogy by saying that: Whomever we select, it is true of the other nine that not one of them is going to try to get the key. Therefore it is true of the selected person that he is free to obtain the key, and to use it. He is therefore not forced to remain in the room. But all this is true of whomever we select. Therefore it is true of each person that he is not forced to remain in the room, even though necessarily at least nine will remain in the room, and in fact all will.[2] Here, Cohen alludes to the crucial assumption that whoever attempts to exit the room will not be interfered with from this task by the other occupants (elsewhere: “…each is free to use [the means of egress], since, ex hypothesi, no one would block his way”[3]). Cohen uses this analogy to argue that every individual in the proletariat is free to leave it. He neatly introduces this line of thought by saying that “there are more exits from the British proletariat than there are workers trying to leave it. Therefore, British workers are individually free to leave the proletariat.”[4] He calls this “argument 7.” Analogously: just as any chosen member of the room is able and free to leave it, Cohen believes that this same freedom applies to any—and therefore every—member of the proletariat. Yet, Cohen understands that “there is a great deal of unfreedom in their situation.”[5] He invents a term for this unfreedom, naming it “collective unfreedom,” which describes the case in which “not more that one can exercise the liberty they all have.”[6] Cohen uses this device to explain our intuitions about the unfreedom of this situation, ultimately claiming that “there are very few exits from the British proletariat and there are very many workers in it. Therefore, British workers are collectively unfree to leave the proletariat.”[7] He calls this “argument 8.” Cohen means to hold argument 7 (that proletarians are individually free) and argument 8 (that proletarians are collectively unfree) together in a state of non-contradiction in order to satisfy our intuitions about freedom on both collective and individual levels. It is the aim of this essay to show that, on the contrary, argument 7 fails. To do this, Philip Pettit’s conception of liberty as non-domination is enlisted. In short, Pettit holds that X dominates Y if X has the capacity to interfere on an arbitrary basis in certain choices that Y is in a position to make. There are three components to Pettit’s view of domination: one is dominating if they have (a) a capacity to interfere, (b) on an arbitrary basis, (c) in certain decisions another is able to make. Critically, domination is an inherently potential characterization of unfreedom. It is the capacity for a certain kind of interference, not the interference itself. With respect to (a), the capacity to interfere, Pettit claims that this interference must be intentional and must worsen the other’s situation. He claims as much when he says that “when I interfere I make things worse for you, not better. And the worsening that interference involves always has to be more or less intentional in character: it cannot occur by accident.”[8] Thus, in situations where only accidental or positive interference is possible, it violates Pettit’s view to say that there is domination. In describing how a choice situation may be worsened, Pettit provides three variables: options, expected payoffs, and outcomes. Understanding the idea of worsening options is pretty straightforward—Pettit explains this as “changing [for the worse] the range of options available.”[9] For our purposes, the elimination of options fits this criterion. By “worsening the expected payoffs,” Pettit means the attachment of punishment to a certain course of action in order to discourage it. By “worsening the outcomes,” Pettit means attaching punishment to a course of action that has already occurred in order to negatively affect the actual payoffs. Pettit qualifies (b), the condition of arbitrariness, by studying the relative locations of the agent deciding and the person affected (“the other”). He understands an act to be arbitrary if “it is subject just to the arbitrium, the decision or judgment, of the agent,” and moreover, that the action is done “without reference to the interests, or the opinions, of those affected.”[10] In other words, an arbitrary action is one which denies the status of the affected party as a meaningful human being by disregarding their wants and needs. On the other hand, Pettit sees non-arbitrary decisions as those which track, or take into account, the preferences and welfare of the people liable to interference. Pettit explains (c), or “certain decisions the other is able to make,” as a way of compartmentalizing different domains of freedom and domination. He says that the most salient aspect of this clause “is that it mentions certain choices, not all choices. This highlights the fact that someone may dominate another in a certain domain of choice, in a certain sphere or aspect or period of their life, without doing so in all.”[11] In other words, the other can be dominated at work while free in the home, or vice versa; the other can be dominated politically or socially, but not in their decisions of which music to listen to, etc. Pettit holds that domination—and therefore, freedom—can vary in extent, intensity, and across different domains. Domination can be in the form of absolute power over another in many critical domains, limited ability to interfere in largely inconsequential domains, and everything in-between. The intensity of domination varies along both of these dimensions, and though Pettit fails to give an explicit framework for determining an order of severity, he acknowledges, at the very least, that loose hierarchies exist. It is critical to understand that Pettit’s conception of domination is such that interference does not need to be actual in order for there to be unfreedom. At the heart of this view is the fact that the mere ability to interfere engenders unfreedom through domination. He writes that: The possession by someone of dominating power over another—in whatever degree—does not require that the person who enjoys such power actually interferes...it does not require even that the person who enjoys that power is inclined in the slightest measure towards such interference. What constitutes domination is the fact that in some respect the power-bearer has the capacity to interfere arbitrarily, even if they are never going to do so.[12] Here, Pettit explains that unfreedom can occur even without actual interference. Not only does he believe this, but also that unfreedom can occur even where actual interference seems very unlikely. He strongly emphasizes that the mere ability of arbitrary interference, however “small” that interference may be, causes a proportional amount of unfreedom. It is now possible to apply Pettit’s view to Cohen’s analogy. In Pettit’s view, any one person in the room is dominated by any other person in the room. This is true because each person has the relevant capacity to interfere in the relevant way with every other person. Suppose we initially select one person from the hypothetical room, as Cohen does. It is true that they have the capacity to interfere in the relevant sense—intentionally and harmfully. This person could choose to leave the room, thus rendering every other inhabitant finally trapped. In Pettit’s terminology, this certainly worsens their choices, since it removes their choice to leave the room. It is especially clear that this is a worsening of their choices when one recalls that the room stands for the proletariat, and exiting it stands for ascending to a higher class. It is further possible that this person could make their exit in order to intentionally worsen the lives of the other occupants. There is nothing stopping the person from growing resentful of their peers, and seeking to harm them by leaving the room for the sake of finally imprisoning them. Even if this sounds unlikely, it is important to remember that “what constitutes domination is the fact that in some respect the power-bearer has the capacity to interfere arbitrarily, even if they are never going to do so.”[13] Domination is not a question of probability, but rather capacity. Thus, by having the ability to leave the room, the selected person has the ability to intentionally interfere in the lives of the others for the worse. Second, this person may perpetuate this act on a totally arbitrary basis. Nothing forces the person to track the interests of the other occupants of the room when deciding whether or not to leave. They are free to make their decision to leave without any regard for the wants or needs of the others, and can reason purely from their own preferences and needs. Thus, the selected person has the capacity to interfere arbitrarily. Finally, their interference is, indeed, in “certain choices that the others are willing to make.” It is a real decision whether or not the others choose to leave the room. The capacity to arbitrarily interfere centers on this very locus of choice, and thus meets the third criteria for domination. Therefore, the selected person has the capacity to interfere—on an arbitrary basis—in certain choices that the others are in a position to make. But this is just the definition of domination—thus, the selected person dominates the others, which means that each of the others is in a position of domination. In Pettit’s view, this amounts to saying that each of the people in the room is unfree. But as Cohen writes, all this is true of “whomever we select.”[14] Thus, each person in the room dominates all the others, which means every person in the room is in a position of domination. Therefore, every person in the room is individually unfree. This conclusion is the negation of Cohen’s in his “argument 7.” It is worth briefly noting that Pettit generally formulates the dominating relationship between persons. He says that “while a dominated agent, ultimately, will always have to be an individual person or persons, domination may often be targeted on a group or on a corporate agent: it will constitute domination of individual people but in a collective identity or capacity or aspiration.”[15] Thus, the fact that the chosen agent is able to arbitrarily interfere in the same particular domain of choice for multiple other people does not mean it is not domination. A more serious objection to the claim that each person in the room is dominated and therefore unfree, however, is the thought that reciprocal domination over an identical domain of choice is impossible. It seems, prima facie, that because each person is dominating all the others just as much as the others dominate them, all have the same choice options; since the idea of domination seems to intuitively rely on asymmetrical relationships, it would seem that the idea of reciprocal domination is internally inconsistent. This worry may be mitigated in a number of ways. First, it is important to keep in mind the precise definition of domination: X dominates Y if X has the capacity to interfere, on an arbitrary basis, in certain choices Y is in a position to make. There is nothing in this definition which logically excludes it from being a reflexive two-place relation. The intuitive connection with asymmetry can be explained by the fact that the capacity for arbitrary interference is often made possible by asymmetries such as wealth, power, status, and others. Though this is the case, Pettit explicitly mentions that reciprocal power to interfere may be used as a strategy for achieving non-domination. He mentions two possibilities: defense and deterrent. He writes that “the strategy of reciprocal power is to make the resources of dominator and dominated more equal so that, ideally, a previously dominated person can come to defend themselves against any interference on the part of the dominator.”[16] In other words, the dominated party would be able to use their resources to counter the arbitrary interference of the other, and thus, this very possibility would eliminate the capacity of arbitrary interference and dissolve the dominating relation. However, it is not clear how this defensive interference would be possible in Cohen’s analogy, since he assumes that if one tried to leave, “no one would block his way,” and once the original person left the room, no one else could leave in order to finally imprison them.[17] By the very nature of this particular kind of interference, defensive interference—within Cohen’s analogy—is impossible. Pettit himself admits that the “ideal” of defensive interference will rarely materialize. Instead, he discusses retaliation as a second way of using reciprocal power to reduce domination. He says that the dominated agent may be able “at least to threaten any interference with punishment and to impose punishment on actual interferers.”[18] Cohen’s analogy, however, does not speak to such retaliatory interference. Given that the others would be locked in the room, it is hard to see how they would be able to affect the escaped person. Here, though, the analogy breaks down, since there is nothing necessarily physically separating someone who “recently exited the room” (e.g., joined the corporate workforce, or gained control of a company) from the wrath (e.g., physical attack) of their previous fellows. Still, it is not the original situation of reciprocal domination which engenders the possibility of retaliation. The relevant kind of domination—that is, leaving the room and trapping the rest—does not enable retaliation. Ultimately, then, this response has no bearing on the claim that the reciprocal domination must be self-annihilating, since it is not in virtue of this that retaliation is possible. For example, suppose that A and B work in a factory. A hates B, and so A decides to harm B by getting promoted to become the owner of the factory—eliminating B’s ability to do so. B cannot retaliate by also coming to own the factory. The job has been filled; the “room” has been “exited.” Yet, B can destroy A’s property, harass A’s person, or even threaten A’s life. This retaliation does not stem from the original position of reciprocal domination. Thus, Pettit’s only two ways that reciprocal domination might eliminate itself do not find application in Cohen’s scenario. We may safely conclude, then, that all the people in the room are dominated by at least one (and in fact all) of the others, which just means—in Pettit’s view—that each person in the room is individually unfree. It will now be the aim of this essay to motivate Pettit’s view independently from its application to Cohen’s argument. I shall do this by arguing that, even on the negative view of liberty, it is intuitively desirable to expand the horizon of freedom from mere non-interference to non-domination in Pettit’s sense. To begin with, certain kinds of obvious unfreedoms cannot be recognized as such under a negative conception of liberty which only recognizes interference as unfreedom. For instance, consider a slave whose master has not exercised their capacity to arbitrarily interfere in the slave’s life for the worse, and gives no indication that they ever will. Obviously, the slave is unfree, for the slave is a slave. Pettit remarks that: The observation that there can be domination without interference connects with the theme highlighted in the last chapter, that slavery and unfreedom is consistent with non-interference: that it can be realized in the presence of a master or authority who is beneficent, and even benevolent.[19] In other words, the example of the slave under a benevolent (non-interfering) master shows first that a strictly negative view of liberty fails to account for this obvious instance of unfreedom. The strength of Pettit’s view lies in the fact that the reasons we conclude this slave to be unfree are simply that the criteria of domination are met—and this shows the intuitive strength of his view. In elucidating these intuitions, Pettit quotes Richard Price as saying that “individuals in private life, while held under the power of masters, cannot be denominated free, however equitably and kindly they may be treated.”[20] Like Pettit, Price focuses on the persons “under the power of masters,” though not actively interfered with. Being under the power of another, in Price’s sense, certainly seems to imply the master’s capacity to arbitrarily interfere. Analyzing the unfreedom of the slave leads Price to conclude that it is this capacity to be arbitrarily interfered with which engenders unfreedom. Pettit himself characterizes domination as leading to this kind of slavish relationship. In domination, he says, “the powerless are at the mercy of the powerful and not on equal terms. The master-slave scenario will materialize, and the asymmetry between the two sides will become a communicative as well as an objective reality.”[21] Pettit also finds examples of this intuition in Machiavelli and Montesquieu. Machiavelli describes the power of a free community as “the power of enjoying freely his possessions without any anxiety, of feeling no fear for the honor of his women and his children, of not being afraid for himself,” and Montesquieu defines liberty as the “tranquility of spirit which comes from the opinion each one has of his security, and in order for him to have this liberty the government must be such that one citizen cannot fear another citizen.”[22] In both characterizations of freedom, the common denominator is that when the conditions of domination are met—that is, when one has to “bow and scrape,” appease their dominator, and maintain “eternal discretion”—there is personal unfreedom (and vice versa). In other words, it is strongly intuitive to claim “freedom if and only if non-domination.” What Pettit’s definition does is make this intuition explicit. Pettit’s view is further strengthened by accounting for the intuition that a state of freedom should foment equality among the agents by whom it is enjoyed. Pettit often alludes to this intuition by showing the converse: in a dominating relationship, the individuals are not able to look each other in the eye. The dominated person may only assert their equality on the pain of being interfered with, which is to say, they cannot. Similarly, the dominating agent’s power suggests a condescending mindset. More to the point, it seems that domination dehumanizes the dominated, while non-domination forces the would-be dominator to see the other as a person. Pettit says that in a state of non-domination, You do not have to live either in fear of that other, then, or in deference to them. The non-interference you enjoy at the hands of others is not enjoyed by their grace and you do not live at their mercy. You are a somebody in relation to them, not a nobody. You are a person in your own legal and social right.[23] Here, Pettit argues that when one is free from domination, one secures one’s personhood. By this argument, Pettit seeks to directly align non-domination with freedom, as opposed to appealing to the converse, as above. Non-domination seems to imply fundamental equality and restores the relationship to that which holds between equal persons, instead of that which holds between master and slave. Because non-domination shares this intuitive property of freedom, and because of the (above) strong intuitions that the conditions for freedom are those of non-domination, Pettit’s view of freedom of non-domination ought to be accepted. Finally, it should be noticed that the intuitive support for Pettit’s conception of freedom does not trivially apply to the people in Cohen’s analogical room. Since the people in this room are on equal standing, it may seem like there is no room for the master-slave relationship to emerge, that people will be able to meet each other in the eye, and that there can be no degradation of personhood as there is when the domination is truly one-sided. A thought experiment will make clear how the intuitive strength of Pettit’s view holds, even in contexts like Cohen’s analogy in which there is reciprocal inter-domination. Imagine the following situation: persons A, B, and C are in the room. Person A wishes to have an affair with person C and afterwards leave the room. However, person B is jealous of this, and plans to leave the room as soon as the affair commences—if it does—in order to forever imprison A, denying A’s ultimate wish for escape. B makes this known to A. Now, A must appease B by not having an affair with C in order to fulfill their ultimate wish to leave the room. Thus, B dominates A, as A is unable to exercise their individual freedom: in order to exit the room, A must “bow and scrape” to B’s preferences. The mere fact that A also dominates B does not mean that A does not acutely feel the unfreedom of their domination by B. A cannot look B in the eye, because B stands between A and A’s desires. B’s whim determines the fate of A’s life. That A may leave the room, forever trapping B and C, does not negate this fact. All this thought experiment seeks to demonstrate is that the intuitions which locate freedom with non-domination are still present in Cohen’s analogy. Succinctly, these intuitions are first that someone is free if they are able to exercise their freedoms without the approval of another, and unfree if not (which is equivalent to defining freedom as non-domination). This is exactly the case in the analogy of the room: person A is unable to exercise their freedoms because they lack the approval of person B. Backtracking for a moment, the second intuition is that freedom as non-domination accords with the intuition that freedom produces equality. The inverse, that unfreedom induces inequality, also holds in Cohen’s room: precisely because of the possibility of situations such as the above thought experiment, the people in the room will be unable to look each other in the eye. Since this is the inverse, it is hardly a rigorous proof; however, even the inverse demonstrates a correlation between equality and non-domination which certainly does not malign the suggestion that they are equivalent. Suppose instead that the people in the room were individually free, as Cohen claims. Then they would enjoy equality amongst themselves, according to the rule: if there is freedom, then there is equality. When Cohen speaks of the possibility of solidarity among the members of the room—for instance, those who want to rise, not out of the proletariat, but with the proletariat—he asserts the possibility of the consequent, implying the situation is one of genuine freedom. However, two considerations must be noticed. First, the above thought experiment is meant to show that this possibility is nontrivial, and must be argued for. As the experiment shows, there is also a great possibility that there is profound inequality—an inability to “look each other in the eye”—amongst the members of the room. Insofar as this denies the consequent, it speaks to the possibility of the original situation being one of unfreedom. Second, it is important to remember that even if Cohen were able to succeed in proving the possibility of equality amongst the members of the room, it would be fallacious to conclude from this that they were free. Therefore, both of the original intuitions which support Pettit’s particular notion of freedom (respectively, the potentiality of interference and the relationship between freedom and equality) remain relevant to Cohen’s analogy of the room. Since these intuitions remain intact, Pettit’s concepts should still be held in the analogy of the room. Thus the individuals in Cohen’s analogy are individually unfree. Before concluding, it is worth noting that Cohen modifies his analogy in the same paper: in the modified analogy, exactly two people may leave the room. However, this modification leaves the above arguments unaffected. Indeed, as long as there are fewer exits than people in the proletariat, nothing changes. This is because the above arguments remain unchanged if we select two people at random, treat them as a single agent, and then in a similar manner proceed to show that the others are dominated by them, concluding that since they were chosen at random, all are dominated. Pettit has no problem with this kind of strategy, saying that “while a dominating party will always be an agent…it may be a personal or corporate or collective agent: this, as in the tyranny of the majority, where the domination is never the function of a single individual’s power.”[24] Thus, considering the dominating agent as an arbitrary group of people (the exact count of which equals the number of exits from the proletariat) rather than a single individual does not threaten any of the above conclusions. In conclusion, this essay first demonstrated that on Pettit’s view of freedom as non-domination, Cohen’s analogical backing for “argument 7” fails to prove that any proletarian is individually unfree. This is precisely because in this analogy, every person in the room is individually dominated. Assuming, with Cohen, that this analogy accurately represents reality, it is useful to step out of the analogy and towards what it depicts: Cohen begins by saying that there are more exits from the proletariat than proletarians leaving, and thus that any proletarian is individually free to leave the proletariat. Pettit’s view, however, shows how proletarians can hardly be said to enjoy freedom, since they are constantly threatened with losing it based on the arbitrary whims of their peers. Thus, holding Pettit’s view entails rejecting Cohen’s. This essay then argued for the intuitive strength of Pettit’s view, showing first that Pettit’s formulation of freedom matches with common, intuitive formulations, and then showing how the claim that ‘freedom is non-domination’ accurately tracks our intuitions about the relationship between equality and freedom. From this, in the style of modus ponens, it follows that the people in the room are individually unfree. Once again stepping out of the analogy, it follows that proletarians are each and all individually unfree. Endnotes [1] Cohen, G. A. “The Structure of Proletarian Unfreedom.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 12, no. 1 (1983): 9. [2] Cohen, “Proletarian Unfreedom,” 10. [3] Cohen, “Proletarian Unfreedom,” 10. [4] Cohen, “Proletarian Unfreedom,” 13. [5] Cohen, “Proletarian Unfreedom,” 11. [6] Cohen, “Proletarian Unfreedom,” 11. [7] Cohen, “Proletarian Unfreedom,” 14. [8] Pettit, Philip. Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government. (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2010), 52. [9] Pettit, Republicanism, 53. [10] Pettit, Republicanism, 55. [11] Pettit, Republicanism, 58. [12] Pettit, Republicanism, 63. [13] Pettit, Republicanism, 63. [14] Cohen, “Proletarian Unfreedom,” 10 [15] Pettit, Republicanism, 52. [16] Pettit, Republicanism, 67. [17] Cohen, “Proletarian Unfreedom,” 10. [18] Pettit, Republicanism, 67. [19] Pettit, Republicanism, 64. [20] Pettit, Republicanism, 64. [21] Pettit, Republicanism, 61. [22] Pettit, Republicanism, 71. [23] Pettit, Republicanism, 71. [24] Pettit, Republicanism, 52. Bibliography Cohen, G. A. 1983. “The Structure of Proletarian Unfreedom.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 12 (1): 3–33. Pettit, Philip. Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government. Oxford Univ. Press, 2010.

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The Captain and the Doctor: On the Enchantment of Modern Men George LeMieux Author Alexander Gerasimchuk Fatima Avila Editors Though we be on the far side of the world, this ship is our home. This ship is England. Introduction Modern man is lost. He is not home to himself. He lacks the longings that great men once had. While Nietzsche, Rousseau, or Burke might better articulate or explore this problem, I intend to explore how it might be remedied, a possible antidote to our modern poison. From the Western canon, I have identified three such antidotes or rather three figures who might re-enchant the modern man, the man of the democratic age. They are the vanguard of Marx, the conqueror of Nietzsche, and the disciple, which is first constituted Biblically but later in Toqueville among others. I shall conduct this search through the metaphor of a ship’s captain, in this case, Captain Jack Aubrey as depicted in the celebrated series and film Master and Commander , which I will briefly outline. Before that outline is given, I will first justify this metaphor by the virtue of captaincy itself (despite the fact I would shoehorn this favorite film of mine into anything). Then in the aftermath, I will examine these three figures as our “captains.” In this examination, I hope to reveal that modern man may only be enchanted, or at least enchanted to humanity’s benefit, by a disciple. For our captain, only the disciple offers a path that does not self-destruct and looks beyond worldly motivation. A Metaphor Since there is a long and storied history of philosophers making use of the ship and other nautical nomenclature as metaphor for their sophisticated views on man, government, and what other nonsense comes to their minds, I see no reason to deviate from the tradition. For what is better than a ship with captain and crew? She, like her nation, must suffer through trial and tribulation, storm and battle. She must adjust her sails so that she catches the wind but not let loose so much as to rip her masts apart. She must have a rigid hull built to withstand cannon and carronade, but she must also have flexibility, lest the changing temperatures and humidity crack her hull. She must be led by a captain, strong and decisive in his command. Yet he must not be a tyrant. He must court the hearts of his men so that he may win their will. If not, his men will mutiny. The uninspired crew would have no other reason to entertain the otherwise insufferable conditions of life at sea. Indeed, I do think this will be a fitting metaphor. The Captain Captain Jack Aubrey of His Majesty's Royal Navy is a man caught between two worlds, between two times. Behind him is the aristocracy of old: kings, queens, lords, ladies, and government by the few for the many, at least ideally. In front of him stands modernity: merchants, naturalists, revolutions, counter-revolutions, Napoleon, the new world, America, and democracy. Such is the world of Captain Aubrey as depicted in Patrick O'Brian's novel and Peter Weir’s film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Jack is a man of tradition. He respects the Crown. He reads his scripture. He loves his country. Jack’s hero is none other than Duke and Admiral Horatio Nelson, a brave and sturdy man who dies defending his love of king and country. And yet Jack sees his idols, his pillars crumbling. He has witnessed the chaos of the revolutions in France. He holds the Burkean sentiment that it is the modern radicals that “despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered men; [...] they have wrought underground a mine that will blow up, at one grand explosion, all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters, and acts of parliament. They have ‘the rights of men.’” It is this modern threat with its rights and revolutionaries that is epitomized by the two foils of the film. The first foil is the Acheron —the ship of the modern age. She is at the forefront of naval technological advancement. Her hull is braced by three layers of live oak and white oak, making her near impenetrable for any ship of her class. She is the largest of any frigate built, able to carry more guns, yet also more aerodynamic, “heavier, but faster spite it” (Weir, Collee). In every way, she outclasses the H.M.S Surprise , Jack’s nimble but aging frigate. And where is the Acheron built? Boston. While Peter Weir had the financial sensibility to make the antagonist of the film French, i.e. Acheron , Patrick O’Brian’s ship was called U.S.S Norfolk . It is with this name that the dichotomy O’Brian intended is much clearer. It is the new world and the old world, His Majesty and Mr. President. And the new world is winning. The second foil is not a figure of oak and iron but of flesh and bone. Doctor Stephen Maturin is the ship’s surgeon and a savant of a surgeon he is. He is also a naturist, collecting, diagraming, and recording the various species he encounters on the ship’s voyages. Upon the ship’s travel to the Galapagos Islands, the parallels to the young Darwin are evident. More important, however, than any of this, he is Jack’s best friend. Despite sharing little common interest, much less a common worldview, Jack confides in Stephen what he confides in no one else. Stephen, in turn, voices his dissent to Jack, when no crew member nor officer would otherwise dare. He is both his greatest ally and greatest challenger. He is the check to Jack’s ambition and the prosecutor of his reason. He is the liberal to Jack’s conservatism. He echoes the voices of democracy, of the social contract, and the danger of tyrants. His respect for Jack comes not from his title or station but from how he leads, how he governs. It is Stephen who most quickly becomes the radical, the revolutionary, when Jack steps out of line. The Jack we see at the film’s beginning is willing to die on the hill of order and naval tradition. He is unable to see anything but the objective of his mission. Stephen and even the other officers are unable to go as far. To Jack’s credit, it is his daring and force of will, despite insurmountable odds, that makes him a great captain. In his pursuit of the Acheron , Jack takes risks that make his moves unpredictable and effective; his crew calls him Lucky Jack for a reason. But those risks do not come without their costs, even if Jack is lucky more often than he is not. Eventually, Jack carelessly pursues the Acheron into a storm and loses a man and a mast in the process. Still, Jack does not turn tail, despite Stephen’s pleas. He refits and refocuses. Only by the film's end does Jack reform and he does so not through reasoning but out of his friendship with Stephen. When Stephen is injured in an accident on board (a marine shoots him while aiming for a bird), Jack sends his ship ashore to one of the Galapagos islands instead of continuing his pursuit, likely to his detriment. This act of compassion, as it turns out, is the saving grace of the Surprise. Not only is the Acheron spotted on the far side of the island, but Stephen inspires Jack on how to capture her. While Jack's act of compassion does not separate him from his ideology, it reveals a complexity in his nature. In not letting his warrior-like nature subjugate the other parts of his conscience, Jack demonstrates his command of self, making him a good captain in more ways than one. His compassion for Stephen, despite their differences, allows him to occupy a middle ground between old and the new, between those of high and low station, between those conservative and radical. Despite their differences, Jack and Stephen end their days together with music, with a duet, playing the cello and violin as the Surprise sails into the sunset. Looking at this time and this day, in this new world, one must wonder if such bonding, such good feeling, such balance between the conservative and the liberal is possible. Every day the position of the radical, of the accelerationist, becomes more compelling even to the conservative. In America, the rigging and line that once held hull and sail together have frayed and torn, not in the harshest winds but in their daily use. The physical lines that once held men together are now virtual, connections in the cloud and the internet. These lines between men were once tangible things; now, there are few of these left. The conservative now must ask himself what he intends to conserve and if he is capable of such conservation. With conservatives far to the right, liberals far to the left, and a confused chasm in between, can those old ropes hold society together any longer? Perhaps, it is time to cut the rope. Perhaps, it is time for both right and left to become radical. Or, perhaps, there is faith to be had in those old ropes. Perhaps, there could be a man to renew their strength, reorganize them, and apply a fresh coat of tar to protect them. Perhaps, there might be a man who could tie new ropes without cutting away the old. Is there such a captain for this ship of modernity? Is there a Jack who can reason with the moderns, take heed of their desires but not be dragged off course? What does such a captain look like? The Captain’s Virtue Before one can talk of any mystical quality a good captain must have, one must first talk about his primary obligation, his duty, his vocation. For if this station is not sound in virtue, the metaphor is not fit for its goal. A captain, such as Jack, is the leader of a warship and of its crew. He would not be a good captain if he could not sail, navigate, or command the ship in battle. He must understand every part of his command and responsibility. It was for such reasons that those men who became captains most often started their time at sea from their early teens as Midshipmen, who were responsible for commanding gun crews of sailors twice their age. It is this good practice, of physical strain and tangible purpose, that makes the vocation virtuous. Virtue is not found in sophistry or the professing of morality but in good works and deeds. Both Rousseau and Marx recognized that the “sensible” men of the world are not the magistrates but the “workers” and the “people.” In this way, the captain is a unique station. It is a position that reaches downward to the grit and servitude that is required but reaches up toward order and inspiration. On one hand, a captain must stand amongst his sailors and with his marines facing the enemy, taking with them every shot fired, equally as likely to be impaled by shrapnel and splinter, equally as likely to take grapeshot from a swivel gun, equally as likely to take a cannonball straight through his gut. On the other hand, a captain must reach upward. He must engage in strategy, diplomacy, and negotiation. He takes his orders from admirals, parliament, and the King. He must, with his officers, stand apart and govern the crew, making sure he does not fraternize with them or become too social. He must whip those who are insubordinate. And it is he who gives the parting sermon after his men die in battle. The captain is both above and below, a man who mediates between king and country, between God and his men. Vanguard For Marx, the nature of our captain is clear. He must be a vanguard, a man who can reach from the high to the low, from bourgeois to proletariat, a man who has the means to lead the proletariat to “acquire political supremacy” and “ constitute itself the nation” (Marx 488). The vanguard can not be of the lower classes as they do not hold the means of production or own sufficient property. The vanguard will not be the bourgeois socialist who wants “all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting from them.” That man would not lead nor fight in the “impending bloody conflicts” that the revolution requires. But the captain might. He, by virtue of his practice, gains access to the epistemic standpoint of the working man. He can call his men into battle because he will be in that battle himself, because he will stand in front, with pistol and cutlass in hand, because he knows their plight and their struggle. Yes, the captain might be the perfect vanguard, if he had the disposition and the courage required to lead the revolution. But no vanguard will heal or reinspire the whole nation. He will take the radicals he agrees with and burn the rest. The ideal vanguard may be the captain, the general, or some other man of higher but not so noble station, that comes down to act on behalf of the proletariat. But the unifying captain is, in the root of his position, opposed to such a severing. More fit, would be the treasonous first officer who leads a mutiny against the captain and the remaining loyal officers. To be a vanguard is to be a “slash and burn” farmer who wreaks devastation on the present vegetation so that the soil may be made fertile again. There will be no healing, under the vanguard. Conqueror Then perhaps the captain, who must fight to re-enchant our new world, must be a conqueror. The conqueror does not require a revolution, or at least not an ideological one, for the conqueror has no need for the traditional radical who operates on moral principles. He is not the vanguard who cries out to the poor that they must liberate themselves. The conqueror only asks for good men, inspired to fight for their home and fatherland, inspired to make something more of what they have been given. The conqueror rises in rank and comes to lead a nation because of his proven success on the battlefield. This captain inspires not because of his pleasant sailing or wise words but because he sinks ships. Nietzsche asks “[m]ust the ancient fire not some day flare up [...] More: must one not desire it with all its might.” Is it not blood that would surely wake the modern man from his slumber, wake the animal instinct inside of him? Perhaps the true conservative can only believe that “antiquity incarnate” arises through a conqueror, a superman, a Napoleon. And yet one must ask of Nietzsche, what is to happen after the conquest? What is to happen after one has conquered all he can or has been defeated? What was Napoleon to do, having failed in Russia? What was Alexander to do when he lay sick and dying in his bed? What is left to hold a nation together when the expansion has stopped and the wars have come to an end? How is a conqueror to at last govern his people? If the measure of man’s vitality is only to be strength and victory, then there will be no man who finds purpose in times of peace. When the soldier again becomes the carpenter after his service is done, he must now aspire to be the superman of carpentry. He must strike down all other table builders and door makers in his path if he is to achieve vitality. He will feel not for his fellow man, now that he does not need him to protect his flank or cover his advance. He will be a frustrated and lonely man, who, in his attempted rationalization to maximize his will and vitality, will frantically look around every corner to become the carpenter of all carpenters, betraying every man who gets in his path. Nietzsche might retort that one should not care for the carpenter, for all carpenters are weak men who failed to rise to a higher station. But if one is to build a society, does one not need the carpenter? Would it not be better to be his friend so that he may more willingly and caringly craft one’s furniture? Perhaps Nietzsche thinks that forcing the carpenter to build a chair would be better to maximize the will than to engage in normal transaction or to politely ask him. Society needs carpenters; a ship needs sailors. Neither will run well if every request is made out of threat or a difference in power. Sure power may be unequally distributed among men, and men will surely wield that power to their advantage, but every interaction need not be a Melian Dialogue . No unification of society, no mending of wounds, could ever take place in such a one-dimensional existence. Even if, for but a fleeting moment, conservative and liberal may be united by the fires of war, such a state is only temporary. While the ancient fires may rise again, they may just as quickly die. For all Napoleon was, how many more revolutions and fragile republics followed? There was no remnant of antiquity to build upon. Instead, it was democratic man who, upon the rubble of Europe, raised his new throne. In his time, Tocqueville correctly surmised that democracy would be here to stay: “I think that in the long run, government by democracy shall increase the real strength of society.” While “slave” in its morality, democracy is dominant in its presence. Its practitioners are no longer just the carpenters or even the priests; they are the captains, the generals, the senators themselves. While European antiquity lay unaware, the strength and size of America, of democratic power, grew. “Something that passed unnoticed a century ago now strikes the attention of all.” Now, antiquity not only lacks the popular momentum to overcome the democratic age, but it lacks the strength. If there is to be a man who rekindles the flame of the West, he will not be a conqueror who slays democratic man. He will be a democratic man himself. And What for God? Purposely absent from the mind of Marx’s vanguard and Nietzsche’s superman is the Kingdom of God. Nietzsche and Marx are the archetypes of, as John Courtney Murray would categorize them, “the postmodern atheist”. The post-moderns not only leave God out of their government, philosophy, and science as the moderns do; they actively strike Him out, act against Him, and demonstrate how He cannot exist. The postmodern is offended that a God could exist and (in Marx’s case) allow for so much scarcity, so much evil, or (in Nietzsche’s case) deprive man of his freedom, the will, that makes man human. God, if he exists, is either a tormenter, imprisoner, or both. Nietzsche further declares that the morality man claims to have derived from God, the morality of the Christian and the Jew is the greatest perversion of the natural order: strength and weakness. Good and evil, concepts of vengeful weaklings, invert the true “morality” by which man once lived and should live again. Of Marx’s and Nietzsche’s cases, Nietzsche’s is the stronger. When one eliminates God from the worldly equation, one must also eliminate the morality that came with Him. Marx may claim scarcity is the great evil, but this concept of evil only comes through sympathy for the suffering of others. What is the evil of inequality or greed or a dominant bourgeois class if there is no concern for fellow man? From where does the humanist goodness, ascribed by Marx to the elimination of suffering, originate? Without an order, ordained above and outside by divine authority, there can be no objective good. No worldly cosmodicy is sufficient to prove an objective good. If one’s ultimate goal is “good” for the nation, one cannot look to Nietzsche for a cure; the concept of good is, in fact, part of the disease. But if one looks to Marx, one cannot find a source of good. Therein, the postmoderns are fruitless. And democratic man seems to agree. The true moral plague is that democratic man is not looking for goodness but instead assumes it. The modern atheist does not kill God but walks away from Him. In His absence, he does not search for truth or morality but merely replicates the idea of good that was passed down to him. He imitates, but his imitations, as they are not rooted in the source, are imperfect: bastardized (Murray and Nietzsche agree). He might even hold some personal religious sentiment but will not act on religious conviction. He does not mix the personal with the external world. He will work, govern, and wage war but will never do so in the name of God. He lives as if God does not exist. This … breed says in effect that, since he cannot know what God is, he will refuse to affirm that God is. But this stupidity, one may well think, surpasses that of the idolater. It is not merely an implicit refusal of God; it is an explicit denial of intelligence. The essence of God does indeed lie beyond the scope of intelligence, but his existence does not. It is this modern man—the man who does not deny God but shoves him aside—that has become commonplace. This modern man feels neither the warm light of heaven nor the scorching hellfire below. He wanders in a cold fog, blind, deaf and dumb. He lingers in the cave only seeing shadows of the truth. Because he does not see the source of the light, he assumes there is no source and does not search for it. It is this modern man who must be re-enchanted. Disciple So how is our captain to deal with the moderns, with the Dr. Maturins that now sail aboard every ship? What is he to do with those who synthesize values of democracy and the equality of man but do not acknowledge the creator who created them equally? Thankfully, the modern agnostic, despite his lack of reason in comparison to the Nietzschean, has not yet thrown off his moral yoke. In some ways, he still feels a connection to the world beyond the material. There are yet some embers left to kindle. There are yet men left to kindle them. There is hardly any human action, however private it may be, which does not result from some very general conception men have of God, of His relations with the human race, of the nature of their souls, and the duties to their fellows. Nothing can prevent such ideas from being the common spring from which all else originates. If man is to truly be re-enchanted—to be inspired and given lasting direction—he must look to that only thing which is transcendent, that is not merely of time and matter. If there is ever again to be unity amongst men, there must be unity with their creator. There must be disciples to show us the way. When man has been enchanted, even democratic man, it has been with and through religious spirit, fostered by disciples and prophets. These men once walked among us. These were the men in between God and humanity, Heaven and Earth, men who heard His voice and acted on His will. They were Moses and Abraham and David and Paul and Peter. God even revealed Himself to man in mortal form, in and through man’s pain and flesh. And yet, despite all of these, man’s faith remains weak. The disciples' task is never finished. He may never stop, for if he does, man is quick to forget and quick to lose his way. He will lose himself in the desert, and never find the promised land, his true home, his self. The disciple must be an ever-present and ever-constant reminder of God. The captain, disciple in his most righteous form, has some divine spark, some glint in his eye, some Promethean fire in his bosom that animates bravery and fortitude. The captain calls his men to voyage into the unknown, across the far side of the world. He calls his men to fight for a home that long disappeared behind a horizon last seen thousands of miles ago. He brings together those born across the empire, those who share little, and those who resent much. The duty the captain must call his men to cannot be incentivized with the stuff of the earth. He can promise them no amount of riches or glory among men to keep them steadfast. There is something the captain must awaken in his men that moves their spirits, their souls, guiding them toward something not here attainable. Only manna sent down from upon high can quell a spiritual hunger. And so the Captain must be like Moses, the interlocutor between man and God—newly the interlocular between conservative and liberal. He does not make the manna nor the law in the heavens, but he does transmit them. He walks down from Sinai to deliver to those below. He understands the plight of his crew, the doctor, and the common man, but he does not let them build golden calves. He has ambition but he does not raise towers of Babble; he does not push onward without cause. Where have these disciples gone? Where is Moses to be seen? Who upholds the commandments given from on high? Might it not be the lack of disciples but man who is the problem? Have there been one too many golden calves built in town squares, one too many towers of Babylon raised to the mockery of Heaven? Are there enough ears today willing to hear a sermon, enough lips willing to say a prayer? I contend there are. While the world may not be presently enchanted, there have been moments, glimpses, of enchantment. There was Reagan who stood in the way of the communist threat with his quick wit but mild manner. There was Dr. King who appealed to the heavens, preached to the masses, and marched hand in hand with the persecuted. There was Churchill who looked the devil right in the eye and spat back at him. There was Lincoln who looked over a battlefield and made a promise those men would not die in vain. There was Washington who led his soldiers, served his time, and ceded his throne. It was these disciples that reminded man of himself, of his nature, of his longings. They called upon God, evoked a higher duty, and bound men to each other. They knew that “[r]eligion [...] imposes on each man [...] obligations toward mankind, to be performed in common [...] and so draws him away from thinking about himself.” Like a captain, those disciples, who were fit to suffer, suffered in common with their men when they could have stood afar. Dr. King marched with his men, was imprisoned for them, and died for them. Reagan too took a bullet for his nation, although he fortunately survived. Lincoln, in his service and his stress, aged himself twenty years in the span of four and was assassinated shortly thereafter, giving the last full measure of his devotion. Washington lost battles for months on end in the bitter cold until he found success in a Christmas night attack. Oh, the joy nations will feel when leaders acquire such courage again when they call upon the heavens as they did not so long ago. Oh, they will know that feeling that gathered hundreds of thousands on the National Mall, that mustered the men who crossed the Delaware, that had black and white Union soldiers singing “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah” as they marched surely to their deaths at Fort Wagner. Only then can man come home to himself. Conclusion Who is our captain to be? What direction would we have him take our ship? Must he not be both a man of the people and a man of the elite, a democratic man who still has a touch, a memory in him, of that antiquity, that nobility, that honor of old? Still, he is not the vanguard of the proletariat, for the vanguard is a mutineer hellbent on revolution, not a captain. Neither is he the conqueror, for the captain must govern his ship beyond the rush of battle. He must lead his crew through those many times at sea which are dull and mundane. He must care for his men beyond their use in warfare. He must be selfless because that is what God calls him to be in times of struggle, a disciple who looks upward before he looks onward. But if those fires are ever to rise again, if the trumpet must once again cry its song of battle, the captain must be ready. He must again be simply a man of his trade, a good seaman and a good officer. He must dexterously maneuver his ship, out-sail, and outsmart his opponents. And when he must call for cannon fire, he must know what to cry to his men. He must have their best, not just for him, but for their God, their nation, and their fellow man. JACK - Want to see a guillotine in Piccadilly? CREW- No! JACK- Do you want to call Napoleon your king? CREW- No! JACK- Want your children to sing The Marseillaise? CREW- No! JACK- Mr. Mowett, Mr. Pullings, starboard battery! References Burke, Edmund, et al. Select Works of Edmund Burke: A New Imprint of the Payne Edition. Liberty Fund, 1999. Marx, Karl, et al. The Marx-Engels Reader. Norton, 1978. Murray, John Courtney. “The Problem of God Yesterday and Today.” Georgetown University Library, 1963, library.georgetown.edu/woodstock/murray/1964c. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. On the Genealogy of Morals. Translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, Vintage Books, 1989. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Major Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Two Discourses and the Social Contract. Translated by John T. Scott, The University of Chicago Press, 2014. Tocqueville, Alexis De, et al. Democracy in America. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006. Weir, Peter, and John Collee. Master and Commander: Far Side of the World. Twentieth Century Fox, Aug. 2001.

Author Name < Back Unwitting Wrongdoing: The Case of Moral Ignorance Madeline Monge Should we blame and praise people for actions which they are ignorant of performing or which they take to be morally neutral? There are two competing theories for the moral assessment of ignorant agents. Capacitarianism focuses on whether an agent could have to have done something to not be ignorant but instead acquire moral knowledge. Valuationism determines an ignorant agent’s blameworthiness by looking at their values. Someone is blameworthy if they act within their values and still commit the harmful act. My paper makes three points. First, I examine how thought experiments revolving around moral issues are either written in support of, or as counterexamples to, the two theories of moral responsibilities. The description of these thought experiments causes the reader to lean in favor of what the theorist is trying to argue. In other words, these thought experiments function as intuition pumps. Second, reflection on the thought experiments used in support of the two theories of moral responsibility reveals that these theories, rather than being rivals, are two sides of the same coin. In this paper, I presuppose ignorance is a lack of knowledge. Knowledge I take to be a composite state that consists at the very least of three necessary conditions: truth, belief, and justification. This view, which can be traced back to Plato’s Theaetetus , claims that what distinguishes knowledge from mere true belief and lucky guessing is that it is based on some form of justification, evidence, or supporting reasons. The truth condition of the justified-true-belief analysis of knowledge states that if you know that p, the p is true. The truth condition need not be known; it merely must be obtained. The belief condition claims that knowing that p implies believing that p. Finally, the justification condition demands that a known proposition is evidentially supported. he justification condition prevents lucky guesses from counting as knowledge when the guesser is sufficiently confident to believe their own guess. Given that ignorance is the lack of knowledge and given that knowledge has at least three necessary conditions, there are many different sources of ignorance: lack of belief, lack of truth, and lack of justification. There are numerous psychological factors that can give rise to each of these three conditions. Among these psychological factors are forgetting, cognitive biases, miseducation, or lack of exposure. I presuppose this ignorance to be lacking knowledge. There is not only one type of ignorance, rather, there are two main classes of such: factual ignorance, and moral ignorance (Rosen, 64). There are various sources of ignorance from where factual and moral ignorance arise. When someone does not know, forgets, is lacking exposure to, is miseducated, does not retain, or misunderstands a given fact that cannot be disputed under any circumstance, they can become either factually or morally ignorant. These sources can be relieved with conscious effort, or by external involvement (Rosen, 302). Ultimately it is up to the agent to recognize errors that result from their ignorance. A debate surrounding the exculpating factors of moral or factual ignorance is important to understand. It is generally thought that immoral actions can only be exculpated by factual ignorance, but not moral ignorance. Factual ignorance hinges around objects of descriptive facts. I will be using an example of slavery in ancient slave-times to illustrate this concept. Let’s suppose someone lives next door to someone who has slaves but also does not know they are living next door to slaves. This would be a situation of factual ignorance because the neighbor does not know the fact that there are slaves living next door (Rosen, 72). It could be because they are unobservant, or because the slaveholder does a good job of keeping the slaves quiet; there is also the chance that the neighbor doesn’t care, is distracted by their own life, or denies their worry of believing that there are slaves. The slaveholder hiding slaves is an objective/descriptive fact that cannot be disputed. Even if they deny it, the slaveholder would still have slaves, and the descriptive fact would not change. On the other hand, moral ignorance arises when someone is ignorant of a moral fact. Moral facts are normative, and they prescribe courses of actions that are true simpliciter (Rosen, 64) . If the neighbor to the slaveholder knows that they are living next door to slaves, but does not know the slaveholder is harming them, this wouldbe moral ignorance. It is morally impermissible for the slaveholder to have and harm slaves. The neighbor should know the slaveholder is acting immorally by keeping and harming the slaves. Moral ignorance does not stop at the fact that the neighbor does not know it is morally wrong to harm people, but they may also not know they should do something about the harm. This ignorance of harm can be defined as, not knowing that an action may cause pain (harm) when one should know it does so. They also ought to know that, without good reason, harming people should be avoided at all costs because it is morally impermissible (Biebel, 302). Should the neighbor be exculpated because of factual or moral ignorance? If the neighbor does not know that having and harming slaves is morally impermissible, this could not be factually exculpated. This is a case of moral ignorance. The neighbor would be morally exculpated for their ignorance in this scenario because they are unaware that having and harming slaves is impermissible by moral standards (Rosen, 66). There is no opportunity for the neighbor to be factually ignorant. What prompts this type of ignorance? Perhaps the neighbor does not care that the slaves are being harmed, is distracted by other events, or is afraid of the repercussions that will incur because of speaking out against the moral injustice. The most important aspect of moral ignorance is to remember that it is prescriptive, and not descriptive. The argument of moral ignorance and blame revolves around what should or shouldn’t be done because of lacking knowledge. This is largely in part to the distinction between factual and moral ignorance. Factual ignorance may sometimes exculpate an immoral action, but it is ultimately moral ignorance that will exculpate an individual (Sliwa, 6). I. Capacitarian and Valuationist Assessments of Moral Responsibility: There are now several theories that concern moral ignorance: volitionist, attributivist, capacitarian, valuational, parity, and pragmatic. While all differ from one another in how they attribute blame to cases of moral ignorance, capacitarian, parity/pragmatic, and volitionism share a disposition of blame that focuses on someone’s capacity of knowledge (Biebel). Valuationalism and attributivism respond to blameworthy actions as being dependent on the personal volition of the agent. I’d like to classify these two categories as capacitarian and valuational. I will occasionally refer to specific points that individual theories make, but with the example of the slaveholder, I will continue the conversation with the two main theories. The capacitarian theories revolve around the counterfactual capacity that an individual has when deciding which action to take in a morally relevant situation that could’ve been prevented. They look at situations where someone is blameworthy. They want to know if it was in the agent’s capacity to correct or avoid being ignorant, and if this would have prevented them from performing the immoral action. Capacitarians consider people responsible for their actions if they are responsible for their capacity of behavior. People who lack the capacity for knowing what is morally permissible, say children, or people who are mentally incapable of retaining information relevant to moral standards, are not culpable for their immoral actions. They can be corrected, and may learn afterwards, but they are not blameworthy. They lack the ability to retain vital moral considerations. Capacitarians do not skip over the fact that people’s ignorance may be the reason they are acting immorally. If someone believes from their ignorance that what they did was the most rational and correct method of handling a situation of moral relevance, then they may be exculpated. However, this justification is only one part of the knowledge needed to have an accurate and knowledgeable conclusion. How a morally significant situation should be handled depends on someone’s capacity to know whether they had the opportunity to do something differently. This difference in choice may have changed someone’s ignorance into knowledge and prevented the immoral action. When someone is not aware why they are ignorant, they are also unaware of how they can resolve their lack of knowledge. This is the way capacitarian’s view moral ignorance to be exculpable, and encapsulates much of capacitarians’ concern. How can someone be blamed for not knowing a moral standard if they have never been socially conditioned or taught what the moral standard is? When I go over the varying vignettes that hone in on how the capacitarian theory can be utilized I will be able to further demonstrate the degrees of internal and external factors that influence moral ignorance, conveying how someone might come into the position to remedy their ignorance but lack the awareness or determination to do so. Arguing against the capacitarian theory is the valuationist theory. Valuationism responds to capacitarianism with a specific criticism. Capacitariansim uses immoral ignoramus as a clear reason to excuse someone from an immoral action, but valuationists believe that the capacitarian theory is too easily applied to every case of immorality. They do not think it is wise to exculpate someone who has forgotten or is unknowledgeable about morality. Valuationism approaches the topic of blame and exculpation surrounding immoral actions by looking at omission and forgetfulness. The theory considers omission and forgetfulness to lead to potentially harmful instances of ignorance. Harmful ignorance is when someone consistently shows blameworthy immoral actions. Valuationists trace the value systems and the past actions of agents to see what led them astray towards immoral actions. They look at recidivism rates, as well as values and virtues. Valuationalism investigates how people are held accountable for their actions and believe someone is only deserving of moral praise if they have reason to act morally. Moral responsibility is the condition of whether someone is praiseworthy, blameworthy, or excused from the former two because of their involvement in a moral act. Someone could also fail to act or omit an action. This is potentially why someone deserves a moral reward or punishment. Valuationists agree that psychological states may affect someone’s behavior to act accordingly during a moral situation. They see this as one component in the person’s link to act or neglect to act. Therefore, valuationists think it can only serve as a partial excuse for someone and is not a strong enough argument to exculpate them from a morally relevant situation. Psychological states in a valuationist framework does not make someone incapable of moral knowledge, nor does someone’s emotional attachment serve as a reason for someone to act immorally. Whether someone cares about an action does not render them more or less blameworthy. It may affect how much or little they will react, but it should not affect their moral assessment. Therefore, valuationalist’s believe that most people are, more often than not, blameworthy for their moral ignorance. If they have not responded in a morally kind manner to a situation, it’s because their values align with preconceived notions of their background. These preconceived notions are often the fundamental reasons for why someone acts immorally. Capacitarians avoid looking at an agent’s value system because they want to know if the immoral act could have been avoided, and if the agent could have prevented themselves from being ignorant in the first place. When we look at somebody's capacity to act, we are tracing their past actions and whether or not they had the ability to change their moral knowledge. Capacitarians rely on a history of someone’s actions. The values that arise from somebody's capacity to act are decided through the person's past actions from the moment they are born. Capacitarians look at past actions carefully because the culmination of them sets up the targeted subject that a valuationist uses to counter their argument. Values are deeply seated through someone’s past actions. The more they are reinforced through choice of action and external influences, the more established they become. The deeply seated beliefs that someone has grown into values are important for evaluating the response a person has to a morally loaded situation. We saw examples of this in the altered versions of the vignettes. Without the added context, a reader wouldn’t have been able to tell what the characters valued, nor what their guiding principles were. When we manifest actions as guiding principles, we are acting from a result of our values. These have been established by our capacities to act in the past. The values we are focusing on in this paper are intrinsic. For example, valuing education leads to being more productive in helping your children with their schoolwork and helping them improve when they need it. Valuing health means you likely eat a balanced diet and exercise regularly. These specific examples of intrinsic values provide a foundation for readers to rest on when making their own evaluative judgments. These intrinsic values lead to other good things, like, your children getting into a good school, and you living a life with bountiful opportunities because of your health. The Valuationist Theory focuses on such intrinsic values, and are meant for the valuationist to rationally conclude whether the characters in the vignettes are blameworthy or not. Values directly shape what people do and say. Their actions are subsets of behavior, and their behavior is a combination of capacities for potential action and values. Action is intentional behavior. Guiding principles of values will manifest as actions. The way we act is a subset of our values and that action is intentional. Each subset, whether planned or an unconscious reaction, is a value in disguise.Our actions are mostly intentional and based on our values, but sometimes they can be accidents due to forgetting. They may also be from a lack of capacity to change behaviors in the past and potentially due to a lack of values. II. Perspectives on the Assessment of Moral Responsibility with Respect to Capacitarian and Valuationist Approaches: In this next section, I will review various vignettes that scholars have introduced into the conversation of moral ignorance, discussing how our theory of moral responsibility will change depending on how the stories are described. I will be using a vignette from Alexander A. Guerrero’s 2007 article, “Don’t Know, Don’t Kill: Moral Ignorance, Culpability, and Caution”, which discusses the moral ramifications of poisoning someone with cyanide. I will also incorporate a recent, original vignette about the moral culpability of leaving a dog in a hot car. Both cases convey how the same set of events may be narrated in a way that supports the C or the V theory. . The support from these different theories is not derived from the event themselves but in how their contexts are described. Omitting and highlighting certain features will change which theory best explains whether someone should be blamed or praised. It is impossible to give a complete account of these theories in these vignettes, but we will be careful in fully describing each theory and embellishing. This will show which theory best explains each vignette. Both what could have happened and what is described will show whether one is morally blameworthy in the capacitarian sense. If a vignette lends itself to the capacitarian theory, it will focus on possible actions that could have changed depending on the capacity of the protagonist’s acknowledgement to do something differently. If the vignette falls towards the valuationist perspective, it is because of the protagonist’s present character traits and values. A. Case One: Guerrero’s Poison Let’s consider the case of Anne, who poisons Bill by spooning cyanide into his coffee. Anne believes she is spooning sugar, and she is blameless for her false belief. Is Anne blameless for poisoning Bill? Rosen concludes that an action done from ignorance is not a locus of original responsibility. This means Anne is only responsible for poisoning Bill if she is responsible for her ignorance about the fact that she is poisoning Bill. Guerrero has constructed a vignette that partially supports a theory where ignorance can be morally exculpated. What happens when details of the character’s capacities and values are introduced? I’m going to reintroduce Guerrero’s story with these details added to demonstrate the effectiveness of manipulating the story so the capacitarian or the valuationist theory provides a better explanation and justification of our natural inclination to blame the protagonist. B. Case Two: Guerrero’s Poison (modified) Let’s consider again the case of Anne, a single mother who is Bill’s girlfriend. Bill regularly comes over in the morning to share a cup of coffee because he has been dating Anne for a few months. After a long night of helping her children prepare for an important exam, Anne believes she is spooning sugar into Bill’s morning coffee and is unaware that she is poisoning him with cyanide. Anne does not know that last night after she went to bed exhausted from tutoring her children, she had a sleepwalking incident where she mistakenly poured out the sugar in the sugar dish and replaced it with cyanide. Afterwards, Anne went back to bed and did not remember what she did in the middle of the night. That morning while Anne was spooning poison into Bill’s coffee, he innocently read the morning news on his phone and did not give the sugar a second thought. Was it in Anne’s capacity to make sure she was spooning sugar and not cyanide into Bill’s coffee? If Anne does not regularly sleepwalk then we cannot expect it to be within her capacity to know that she ought to check the sugar dish just in case she had tampered with it the previous night. What about Anne’s values? We know that Anne values relationships and caring for others, as well as education. This is why she stayed up to help her children prepare for an exam, and also why she regularly invites her boyfriend over for coffee. Here Anne is not blameworthy for her ignorance, nor has she acted within a set of immoral values that would prompt her to poison Bill. This has never happened before to Anne. Anne has never sleepwalked a day in her life and has a consistent record of showing Bill hospitality and care. Under a valuationist’s account of moral blame, Anne would not be considered blameworthy because her actions do not align with her values, and after the incident, she continued to grieve and disapprove of her ignorance. She did not intend to cause suffering, nor does she value suffering. Anne unfortunately is the cause of Bill's death because she had a momentary lapse in her sleep routine which caused her to act involuntarily on account of ignorance. In this case, Anne would not be blameworthy by capacitarian standards, nor by valuationist standards. Anne is not originally responsible for poisoning Bill, and she would be considered morally exculpated. Based on what the story tells us about Anne’s character traits and values, one can see that she did not act with malicious intent. It was an honest mistake, and a serious accident. Even though Anne has never sleepwalked before, would it be reasonable to expect her to check her sugar before she gives it to Bill? I think it would be considered unreasonable for anyone to expect Anne to check her sugar because Anne does not have a past history of swapping out her sugar with other substances. If it were the case that Anne has sleepwalked before, and she has a past history of replacing her sugar with other substances, like salt, powder bleach, or baby powder, then it would be reasonable to expect her to check. If Anne had a history of swapping substances, then her negligence to check on the sugar dish would be an involuntary act in ignorance. In this vignette, how a capacitarian and a valuationist consider someone to be morally blameworthy or exculpated is revealed through the protagonist’s capacity and character traits. This example shows us that the capacity of memory to prevent a potentially harmfully ignorant situation is a mitigating factor in someone’s judgment of immoral behavior. Anne did not willfully act immorally and is not blameworthy for her involuntary action done out of ignorance (Alvarez & Littlejohn, 8). Both theories attribute a small degree of responsibility to the harm Anne has done, but not enough to judge her as being willfully ignorant nor morally culpable. Capacitarian and valuationist theories agree with each other in how they assess this vignette due to Anne’s isolated incident. Let us take another vignette to compare capacitarian and valuationist theories. In this next scenario we have the unfortunate event of a dog dying after being left in a hot car unattended for some time. C. Case Three: Hot Dog Imagine Mrs. Crawford is out running errands with her medium sized cocker-spaniel in the back seat. The dog is in good health, well-groomed and fed, and Mrs. Crawford sees to it that he is well taken care of. Today of all days Mrs. Crawford pulls into a parking lot with no shade to block out the sun from her car. There is no breeze, and it is ridiculously hot outside. Instead of bringing her dog into the store with her, Mrs. Crawford decides to leave her dog in the car with the windows rolled up. She reasons that the air-conditioner was on during the drive to the store, so the car is not muggy or hot. She also reasons that she will not be in the store for a long time because she has a list of things she wants to purchase. At this point in her decision, Mrs. Crawford locks the car and leaves for the store. Suppose Mrs. Crawford is making good time in the store. She is almost done picking out everything on her list and is careful not to get sidetracked. However, Mrs. Bailey sees Mrs. Crawford in the aisle over and makes her way to talk to her about some important matters. Mrs. Crawford is delighted to see and talk to Mrs. Bailey, and easily becomes swept up in her conversation. She remembers her dog is in the car but does not remember how hot it is outside because the store is well air-conditioned, aiding to Mrs. Crawford’s choice to talk to Mrs. Bailey for longer than expected. Now the dog is still outside in the hot car, and because it is not properly ventilated or shaded, the car quickly becomes extremely hot inside. The dog is soon unable to withstand the heat and becomes sick and passes out in the back seat before Mrs. Crawford returns from the store. Mrs. Crawford is mortified. She had no idea that leaving her dog unattended for as long as she did would result in its sickness. She quickly takes her dog to the vet. Here we have a vignette that sets up Mrs. Crawford to be morally exculpated by her ignorance if we are not considering her values or capacity to have made changes in favor of the dog’s life. We are now going to see another representation of this vignette with both capacity and values of Mrs. Crawford included. Within this next vignette, I will provide more background information that will show how someone's capacity can prevent ignorance from occurring or may cause someone's ignorance to flourish. I will also be including Mrs. Crawford's values, which will show whether-or-not by the valuation as to perspective that Mrs. Crawford is in fact acting in line with her values. D. Case Four: Hot Dog (modified) Imagine Mrs. Crawford is a steady workaholic. Mrs. Crawford decides to skip her dog’s walk and bring them to the store with her. She is alert, and well aware that bringing her dog with her might be a hinderance, but she does it anyway. Today of all days Mrs. Crawford pulls into a parking lot with no shade to block out the sun from her car. There is no breeze, and it is ridiculously hot outside. Instead of bringing her dog into the store with her, Mrs. Crawford decides to leave her dog in the car with the windows rolled up. She thinks she is doing the right thing by leaving her dog behind in the car and reasons that the air-conditioner was on during the drive to the store, so the car is not muggy or hot. At this point in her decision Mrs. Crawford locks the car and leaves for the store, confident that her decision was the right one. Suppose Mrs. Crawford is making good time in the store. She is almost done picking out everything on her list and is careful not to get sidetracked. However, Mrs. Bailey sees Mrs. Crawford in the aisle over and makes her way to talk to her about some important matters. Mrs. Crawford suddenly forgets about her need to complete her shopping trip in a timely manner. She forgets her dog is in the car, nor does she remember how hot it is outside because the store is well air-conditioned. Now Mrs. Crawford’s dog is still outside in the hot car, and because it is not properly ventilated or shaded the car quickly becomes extremely hot inside. The dog is soon unable to withstand the heat and becomes sick and passes out in the back seat before Mrs. Crawford returns from the store. When she returns, Mrs. Crawford is mortified. She had no idea that she had been talking to Mrs. Bailey for so long. She did not even think about her dog, or the possibility that leaving her dog unattended for as long as she did would result in its death. She quickly takes her dog to the vet. What can we understand about this scenario that is different from the original? With this new perspective, we can see that Mrs. Crawford was completely forgetful in the care of her dog. While she is a workaholic with a one-track mindset, her decision to bring her dog along seems out of the ordinary and not in line with her normal character traits. We can tell by this story that Mrs. Crawford values social relationships, which is why she stopped to talk to Mrs. Bailey, independence, which is why she went out to the store in the first place, and the well-being of others, hence her decision to leave her dog in the car. Did Mrs. Crawford have the capacity to change her course and make sure she took measures that would secure the safety of her dog? I believe so. She was not tired; she was not overcome with thoughts of work that would normally cause her to forget other obligations. She was distracted, but by something that she had the capacity to say no to. Here I would like to point out that Mrs. Crawford was in her right mind and within the right capacity to know that talking to Mrs. Bailey would disrupt her schedule of running errands. This change of schedule had the potential to possibly upset or cause extreme distress to her dog that she left in her car. Mrs. Crawford ought to have known that the dog in the car was the most precedent of her concerns. She knows that by moral standards her dog has moral worth and is a moral responsibility that she has tasked herself with. Mrs. Crawford is someone that knows the difference between morality and immorality, and she is fully aware that her dog has a right to life. By placing her own dog within harm's way, Mrs. Crawford showed not only ignorance of fact but moral ignorance as well. Since she did not know that she was possibly harming her dog by talking to Mrs. Bailey and staying within the store for an extra length of time. Mrs. Crawford would be considered morally blameworthy. She knew that her dog was in the car. Even though she may not have known that by leaving them in the car she was potentially endangering her animal, this shows moral ignorance because she did not consider her dog’s life to be worthy enough to take extended measures that would have ensured survival. From the capacitarian theory she is considered blameworthy, but considered innocent from the valuationist perspective. III. Capacitarianism and Valuationism are Two-Sides of the Same Coin: Before we start to cut deeper into each of the theories independently, I would like to point out that these vignettes show us how different theories about moral ignorance are more accurate attributions of blame, depending on how the story is told. The way an author prescribes a vignette will directly affect the way a reader chooses to apply a theory. The author’s choice to write objectively or subjectively will also affect whether a reader will approach the ignorant action with a mind of blame or exculpation. This mode of thinking is something we see in moral realism. There are two positions in moral realism that we might be able to categorize the capacitarian and valuationsist theories under. First, normative realism posits that ethical sentences describe positions that are grounded in objective features. Some of the objective features may only be true in that they report the descriptions accurately, such as “killing someone is bad”. These descriptions do not contain subjective opinions, which aids in their accuracy and helps to establish moral truths. Second, the version of metaethical realism that can be used to look at these theories states that, in principle, it is possible to know about the facts of actions that are right and wrong, and about which things are good and bad (Copp, 2007). This position depends on the subjective opinions of others to determine these aforementioned facts. Metaethical realism takes a more common-sense approach to ask questions like “should we reasonably expect someone to check the sugar dish before serving sugar?” The reason why we need to keep moral realism in mind while assessing capacitarianism and valuationism is because it directly affects our assessment of them. We can see that assessments about moral responsibility are sensitive to additions and omissions of information regarding capacities and values of the agents. With the incorporation of certain details about an agent’s past actions and value systems, a reader can be swayed to agree or disagree with certain theories of moral assessment. Certain details require someone to be objective or subjective in their interpretation of the events (Baumann, 2019). This can greatly affect how a story is understood by various readers. However the story is told, whether narrow or elaborate, the rationale behind omitting and adding detail will always have a direct effect on the reader’s intuition of the story. Depending on how the vignette is written, the reader can be manipulated to believe that certain events will result in one theory being more conclusive than another. What this shows us is that the philosophers who wrote the vignettes wrote them in a way to prove the point of their own theories. These vignettes function as intuition pumps. Anything the philosopher wants to say activates a reader’s intuitive approach to assessing a situation. While the capacitarian and valuationist theorists may focus on different characteristics of someone’s motivation, their approaches to assessments of moral responsibility are similar. Both look at the contexts in which the act was performed; however, they differ in which part of the context they think to be relevant in their assessments. Capacitarians consider the most relevant point of context of behavior and compare it to be the behavior leading up to the harmful act. The capacity of the agent is also dependent on their knowledge of their wrongdoing. Capacitarians ask whether or not agents could’ve done something differently in the past to prevent their immoral act from taking place. If they engage in a harmful immoral act, then it is a result of their ignorance. Whether to attribute blame to the agent who acted out of ignorance would depend on their capacity to know that there was some way they could have prevented themselves from doing so. If they did not have the capacity to know they were acting immorally, or that they could’ve prevented themselves from acting as such, then they would not be considered blameworthy. Thus, an agent acting out of ignorance without the capacity to know they are doing so would be morally exculpated. Valuationists choose not to look at the behaviors preceding the events and instead examine the value system of the agent. They do this because they think the value system of a person should be considered the relevant context of the moral assessment of an act (Arpaly, 2004). The community of moral theorists has situated these two theories in contexts of past actions or value systems. Up until this point, we have discussed these two theories independently, however, I would like to show how they are closely related. If a vignette focuses on the capacity or the value system of a person, then readers will be persuaded to agree with the theory that provides a better explanation of moral judgements concerning actions. For instance, the more detailed the information regarding the context of the agent, the easier it will be for us to apply a theory that best suits the framework. The information needs to highlight either the agent’s value system or the agent’s past actions. If the information in the vignette does not include any context for the reader, then it is natural for them to assume and fill it in themselves. The various assumptions that arise from different readers’ perspectives have the ability to lead to a deep disagreement about the moral assessments of actions. An under-described thought experiment gives you inconclusive information to fill in gaps that a narrow story leaves out. Without enough information, a reader must add their own information. When a reader substitutes the information missing in the vignette, it can pull people into a deep disagreement about the moral assessment of the agent. This makes it easy for a reader to feed into their own thoughts. A reader is then foolish for reading into the story what they hope to get out of it. This creates circular reasoning on the reader’s part. In all cases, different people will have different assumptions while reading the under-described thought experiment, which will inevitably lead to problems applying certain theories to each one. Unfortunately, there is no way to halt varying interpretations because it is unreasonable to expect anyone to be able to provide every possible angle that a situation can have. In other words, there is no way for the author to close the room for interpretation entirely. If a deep disagreement arises, then this must be a result of an author’s manipulation of the vignette. For a deep disagreement to form, the vignettes would need to have an unclear description of an agent’s past actions and capacity or an unclear description of their value system because this would pin the capacitarian and the valuationist standpoints against each other. When the contexts of the past actions and value systems are clear and detailed in a vignette, it is unlikely that a deep disagreement will occur. Rather than finding a clash of theories, the verdicts would be expected to converge due to their connection. Throughout this paper I have been providing a route to view the literature of moral assessment to show how the valuationist and the capacitarian approaches are in competition with each other. However, I think this view wrongly pins the two theories against each other. The values that a person has will manifest itself in their actions, likewise, their actions are guided by their values, whether consciously or unconsciously. When we lay out this connection, we can see how someone’s past actions and value system are actually connected. With that said, I think it would be in our best interest not to play the two against each other, and instead show they are dependent on one another. This holistic/detached perspective demonstrates how these two theories are two sides of the same coin. IV. Conclusion: The more a vignette spells out a history, the more we get a sense of the value system of the person involved. Any value system shapes how people perceive information and influences their decisions. This means it also influences their intuitions and builds peoples’ overall foundations for actions. How a person has acted up to the point of the scenario usually tells us the story of the person's value system. Here we get a better sense of how they would act in future situations based on how they have acted prior. If a vignette is written in detail, spelling out a person’s capacities, values, or both, then the competing theories proposed by valuationists and capacitarians will likely converge. However, if it's sparse with little to no information, then the two rival theories may clash. They will seemingly work against each other because the readers are left to fill in the details. Without an established history or value system described, readers do not have anything prescribing their thoughts. Clashing is due to the under-description of the vignette and not used to interpret theories. I think this is where a lot of the deep disagreement stems. In this conversation about the moral assessment of blame, we have two theories that are seemingly different but work in tandem. They have a great opportunity to change the way that we, as philosophers, attribute blame, especially since wishful thinking does not give moral valence. If readers can speculate the history and the potential for a person based on their capacity to potentially act out their value systems, then they will not need to speculate on what the author meant. After all, it is not the job of a reader to fill in the blanks, it is up to the author/philosopher to explain a thought experiment in full to establish their theory (Baumann, 2019). Any description that influences a perspective is an important factor, but we need to decide whether someone is or is not morally culpable in a particular situation. To do this, it is necessary to know all the past relevant information. Swapping things around, omitting necessary information, and changing the context to fit someone else’s narrative of events is not an effective way to correctively assess the morality of an agent, nor is it conducive to figuring out whether they are morally exculpable. Withholding information is one way to prevent knowledge, and if we are concerned with knowing whether someone has performed an immoral action, then the truth is of utmost importance (Baumann, 2019). This is the way things become known. When looking back at the argument between the valuationist and capacitarian, knowledge of the subject’s past is necessary for determining if someone should be considered morally blameworthy. For determining both a person’s capacities and values in the present, it is vital to investigate their past. A person’s past determines their values just as much as it determines their capacities. A person’s past values can be written off due to their present capacities; likewise, a person’s past capacities can be written off because of their present values. The present moment is a culmination of all the previous values an agent has upheld. Valuationists point out how a person’s values are a result of what they did or didn’t do in the past. These values are determined on the agent’s capacity to understand and act on those values. Similarly, capacitarians see capacities as manifestations of value systems. The key to finding out someone’s capacities and values is buried in their past. What is the difference between these two theories if they both require knowledge of the person’s past behavior? Are they distinct theories that have similar foundations, or are they two sides to the same theoretical coin? Since both theories require the past to determine their present conditions, it’s possible that proposing these two ideas as distinctly different theories does not hold up to scrutiny. This is because values are conditions that people think should be upheld and reinforced, while capacities are behaviors of what people are capable of doing. Values are conditions that people strive for, give people numerous filters for actions, and are considered valuable in the social world. Once someone has a set of values, their subsequent actions are determined. When capacitarians look at capacities of individuals, they are looking at what actions would have been expected to perform given their capabilities. These actions are expected to be performed because of individual values. This is where we see the two theories speaking a similar language. If we need to know as much information about an individual’s past to form a coherent judgment of blame, then it’s possible these two theories are derived from the same theoretical foundation grounded in the past. The past is important to these two theories as a person’s past actions are suggestive of their values, and the person’s past values are suggestive of what actions someone can do based on their capacities. At this point, to look further into this topic I think it is indispensable to ask, how do we know what someone’s past values or capacities are, and how can we tell if they have led to present conditions? References Aristotle. 2011. Nicomachean Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Arpaly, N. 2004. Unprincipled Virtue: An Inquiry Into Moral Agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Baumann, M. 2019. "Consequentializing and Underdetermination" Australasian Journal of Philosophy , 511-527. Bernecker, S. 2011. The Epistemology of Fake News. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Biebel, N. 2017, October 12. Epistemic justification and the ignorance excuse. Retrieved from Springer Link: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11098-017-0992-4 Copp, D. 2007. "Introduction: Metaethics and Normative Ethics" The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory . Harmen, E. 2011. "Does Moral Ignorance Exculpate?" Ratio, XXIV , 443-468. M. Alvarez, &. C. 2017. "When Ignorance is No Excuse" Responsibility: The Epistemic Condition , 1-24. Rosen, G. 2003. "Culpability and Ignorance" Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 103 , 61-84. Rosen, G. 2004. "Skepticism About Moral Responsibility" Philosophical Perspectives, 18 , 295-313. Sliwa, P. 2020. "Excuse without Exculpation: The Case of Moral Ignorance" Oxford Studies in Metaethics , 72-95.

Anna Savo-Matthews The Unchurching of Black Lives Matter: The Evolving Role of Faith in the Fight for Racial Justice Anna Savo-Matthews The Black church was at the center of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. In the early 1990s, American society began a trend in secularization, whereby many Americans began to identify less with religious institutions. This societal shift, coupled with the rise of social media, has had a marked impact on racial justice movements. To illustrate how secularization has affected protest, this work compares the Civil Rights Movement with Black Lives Matter and specifically examines the decline of the Black church’s organizational capacity in Jacksonville, Florida. Faith has long been closely intertwined with racial justice movements. Scholars of Black liberation theology believe that Jesus is the God of the oppressed, someone who stands with those struggling for freedom. This religious movement was born from civil-rights activism of the 1960s, and it continues to inspire activists to this day (1). Furthermore, the Civil Rights Movement’s close relationship with the Black church has been well documented, as the church provided organizational support that was crucial for the movement’s success (2). When comparing the Civil Rights Movement to more recent racial justice movements, more specifically the Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of 2020, the Black church has had a less prominent role in organizing and mobilizing protestors. However, spirituality still had a great influence over the content of the protests, as protesters often draw from a greater plurality of religious inspiration than the Civil Rights Movement did (3). In line with findings on a national scale, local reporting has found that spiritual rituals were incorporated into the Black Lives Matter protests in Jacksonville. Prayer, vigils, and altars were incorporated into the protests, and the rhetoric used by many organizers and protestors reflected common religious tropes. The Civil Rights Movement and the Black Church The impact of religion on the Civil Rights Movement has been well documented. Both in terms of organization and content of protests, the Black church had an enormous effect on the Civil Rights Movement. The Black church was an autonomous sphere, owned and controlled by Black people, within a larger societal context where Black people were excluded economically, socially, and politically. As a result, in terms of structure, the Black church was the primary organizational center for the Civil Rights Movement (4). The church provided a network of charismatic clergymen who were “economically independent of the larger white society,” a regular meeting place free from surveillance, and a membership that was united by a rich culture and similar political aims (5). As a result, the Black church gave the Civil Rights Movement many resources crucial for a successful social movement. Additionally, the content of the protests themselves were often based on religious teachings from the Black church; one would have to look no further than Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches to see its influence. In one of his most famous speeches, “Eulogy for Martyred Children,” King draws upon Christian notions of martyrdom and applies these sentiments to the fight for racial equality. Older martyrdom accounts—like those of Perpetua and Felicity, or animal sacrifices found in Leviticus—speak of suffering and death transformationally powerful, sometimes for entire communities. King employs a similar theme in his speech, claiming that the children who lost their lives “died nobly,” and that “the innocent blood of these little girls may well serve as a redemptive force that will bring new light to this dark city” (6). Furthermore, King’s speeches often explicitly draw connections between his faith and the modern-day fight for racial justice, saying “They did not die in vain. God still has a way of wringing good out of evil. History has proven over and over again that unmerited suffering is redemptive” (7). When an innocent life is lost due to senseless violence, it can be a rational response to try to make sense of the tragedy. In this way, martyrdom accounts serve an important social function, allowing communities to grapple with tragedy in a meaningful way. Furthermore, these tragedies can be leveraged politically. Many sociologists consider martyrs to be “tangible cultural resources” that can be used to motivate social and political movements. The violence inflicted on a martyr can “galvanize a course of action” and rally a community around their cause (8). Black Lives Matter and Secularization Originally founded in 2013 following the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the Black Lives Matter movement began to build a more prominent national profile in the wake of the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, who were both killed by police in the summer of 2014 (9). The Black Lives Matter movement reached a new level of public support following the murder of George Floyd, and it is estimated that tens of millions of people participated in protests across the country in 2020 (10). As a result of its large and diverse membership, the movement is very decentralized; however, the general aims of the movement include police reform and reallocating police department funds to invest in Black communities directly. In contrast to the powerful, direct influence the Black church had on the Civil Rights Movement, Black Lives Matter’s religious influences are far less straightforward, and this is especially apparent in the movement’s organization. Sociologists and political scientists have contended that the Civil Rights Movement and Black Lives Matter movement have markedly different structures. Professor of political science Dewey Clayton has noted that the leadership structure of the two organizations are “vastly different,” describing Black Lives Matter’s structure as “highly decentralized and unstructured” (11). He suggests that, rather than the Black church, social media is the new movement center for Black Lives Matter, contributing to its decentralized nature. Other scholars and researchers have confirmed that social media has played a “core role” in the proliferation of the movement, as platforms like Twitter and Instagram allow for the “documentation of cases of police violence” against both “individual African Americans” and “BLM protests,” which can draw emotional responses from casual users of social media (12). Because of its heavy use of social media, Black Lives Matter “does not want one leader,” but rather encourages leaders from all over the country to “engage in grassroots organizing in their local communities” (13). Jamal Bryant, a clergyman who spoke at Freddie Gray’s funeral, acknowledged this shift in leadership and noted that his role in Black Lives Matter is more limited, saying, “The difference between the Black Lives Matter movement and the civil-rights movement is that the civil-rights movement, by and large, was first out of the church. The Black Lives Matter movement, largely speaking, is not” (14). However, despite the Black church’s receding role in the organization of the movement, the influence of religion and spirituality on the Black Lives Matter movement is still apparent on a national scale. Founders of the movement, like Patrisse Cullors for example, practice Ifà, a religious tradition from Nigeria. She describes her spirituality as having a huge influence on her protests, saying that , “seeking spirituality had a lot to do with trying to seek understanding about [her] conditions… and how [she understands] them as part of a larger fight, a fight for [her] life.” In Black Lives Matter more broadly, researchers have found that protests often incorporate a wide variety of religious rituals, from invoking “the names of abolitionist ancestors'' to “the creation of sacred sites and alters at locations of mourning” to “purification, protection, and healing practices'' like burning sage (15). Overall, Black Lives Matter has incorporated rich religious pluralism into the national movement, as it draws inspiration from Native American, Buddhist, and African religious traditions, in addition to Black Protestant traditions (16). Scholars have found that Black Lives Matter draws from a broader source matter than the Civil Rights Movement did, and others argue that “the Black church is not the only religious well from which Black movements have historically drawn,” and Black Lives Matter is no different (17). Given the broad variety of faiths that Black Lives Matter draws inspiration from, Erika Gault argues that “we are actually seeing more religion, not less” (18). Younger activists from Baltimore described their own beliefs similarly; they did not necessarily have a diminished sense of spirituality, but they felt a need to express their religious beliefs outside of formal institutions. Brion Gill, a 25-year-old organizer, recounted that many of her friends within Black Lives Matter identify as “spiritual but not religious” and claim that they want “a relationship with the Creator” but don’t wish to manifest that “within the church space” (19). BLM’s move away from formal religious organizations fits within social trends more broadly. Around the turn of the century, sociologists began to describe a new theory of secularization, which emphasized that faith is still a “powerful force at the individual level” despite a decline in religious institutional authority (20). Theorists from this newer perspective, sometimes called neosecularization theorists, emphasize that religion is not necessarily “declining… They believe that it is changing” (21). These findings are similar to those articulated in a major study by Hout and Fischer, who found that the number of Americans who identified themselves as having no religious preference increased significantly in the late nineties. From the early ‘90s to the early 2000’s, the number of adults who reported having no religious preference doubled, from roughly 7 percent, to 14 percent (22). However, despite this increase, a significant portion of the population still retains spiritual beliefs: “Over two-thirds (68 percent) of adults with no religious preference expressed some belief in God or a higher power in 1998 or 2000; one-fourth said they do not doubt that God really exists” (23). Thus, the decrease in identification with formal institutions is not driven largely by a decrease in religious sentiment, but rather a stronger desire to disassociate from organized religion. This urge to express religious beliefs often originates from a desire to distance oneself from the conservative political views often associated with religious institutions (24). The sudden decline in religious identifications correlated with the rise of the Religious Right, as “religious conservatives definitely received more attention in the press in the 1990s than during earlier years” (25). Therefore, the authors argue that the rise of the Religious Right initiated dissociation with religious institutions among left-leaning individuals. Hout and Fisher stress that a decline in religious identification is most attributable to a dislike of the Religious Right, and not a result of a decline in religious sentiment or ideas: “The key fact, in sum, about people who express no religious preference is that most are believers of some sort, and many are quite conventional” (26). One of the most commonly used metrics to gauge the religiosity of an individual is the frequency with which they pray. This metric was cited by the authors of this study, and they noted that of the respondents who claimed no religious preference, “Relatively few are secular, agnostic, or atheist; most actually pray. Their most distinguishing feature is their avoidance of churches” (27). Therefore, we may expect contemporary activists to still express religious beliefs and participate in religious rituals in protest, even though they may not be guided by any specific institution. The authors of this article actually raise concerns regarding the future of religious institutions and their connections to social and political movements, asking the question of how the “spiritual but not religious” trend will affect new social movements (28). Overall, secularization in the Black Lives Matter movement seems to be widely consistent with a general nationwide trend towards secularization. While formal religious institutions have less power in influencing behavior and social movements, religious beliefs are still held by a majority of those who participate in the BLM movement. This seems to be the general consensus among scholars who have studied the movement; that, while the movement is no longer organized through the church, spirituality still has a great influence on the movement, and at times, protest can even be a spiritual act. To examine these claims, I will take a closer look at one specific city. To get a sense of how the shift from ‘churched’ social movements to a decentralized movement plays out in a specific city, I will compare Jacksonville’s Civil Rights Movement to its Black Lives Matter movement. Jacksonville and Racial Justice Jacksonville has an extensive history with the Civil Rights Movement. For a considerable portion of time, the primary method of challenging segregation in Jacksonville was through litigation. The City Council segregated numerous public services: streetcars, saloons, theaters. There were long, drawn-out attempts to overturn these and other segregation policies like unequal pay, and an “all-white Democratic primary” (29). However, the courts ruled against African American attorneys seeking to challenge segregationist policies. As a result, civil rights activists turned to civil disobedience. One of the most well-known events in the history of civil rights activism in Jacksonville occurred on August 27, 1960, when a group of African American men staged a sit-in to protest segregation in local businesses and lunch counters (30). The group of protestors were attacked by a group of over 200 Ku Klux Klan members, armed with baseball bats and axe handles. The lunch counters were desegregated in the months following this protest. Although African American communities in Jacksonville had pushed for desegregation in the past, many locals see Axe Handle Saturday as the true start of the Civil Rights Movement in Jacksonville. A first-hand account from protestor Rodney Hurstdetails the planning that went into this protest. His account demonstrates the importance of the Black church. In Hurst’s view, the Black church was a lifeline for the Civil Rights Movement: “the civil rights movement in Jacksonville would not have survived without the support of Black pastors and their churches” (31). Along with providing a support network for protestors, Black churches were the meeting place for the NAACP meetings during the fifties and sixties, providing resources for a legal organization responsible for many local civil rights victories (32). The NAACP’s efforts were crucial in desegregating businesses and public services in Jacksonville. In the months following Axe Handle Saturday, the NAACP Youth Council continued a boycott of downtown merchants, and in the following year the NAACP and business leaders reached an agreement to desegregate the lunch counters (33). Turning to the Black Lives Matter protests that took place decades after the Civil Rights Movement, it is apparent that Jacksonville mirrors national religious trends. While Jacksonville’s Civil Rights Movement used the Black church as its main movement center, taking advantage of its resources and member base, the Black Lives Matter protests were organized in a more decentralized manner, often relying on social media to spread awareness of police violence and information about upcoming events and protests. Over the course of the summer of 2020, several waves of protests were held in Jacksonville; from May 30th to June 8th, the city saw thousands of protestors participate in marches in the downtown area (34). Smaller marches occurred sporadically throughout the greater Jacksonville area in the subsequent weeks. A smaller march took place near Atlantic and Neptune Beach on June 28th. An inter-faith group held a Juneteenth celebration live stream discussing racial injustice on June 19th, and a group of Black ministers hosted a press conference in front of the Duval County Courthouse on June 8th (35). Another wave of protests occurred on July 10th, as protestors blocked off portions of highways around the downtown area (36). Consistent with findings on a national scale, the Jacksonville protests were largely organized through social media; websites like Twitter and Instagram played a crucial role in spreading information throughout the Jacksonville community. Social media accounts were started at several Duval county high schools to document instances of racial profiling; the accounts generally followed a similar format: “they’re titled “Black At [the respective school]” and allow students, parents, and faculty to submit posts where they document racist experiences they’ve had at their respective high school, which are shared publicly on the Instagram account (37). Kiara Alexis, a young community organizer born and raised in West Jacksonville, described the crucial role Twitter played in diffusing information throughout her community, saying “Twitter has become this hub… the news won’t tell you what’s going on, but people on Twitter, they’re gonna come up there and they’re gonna give it to you” (38). Diversity in Spirituality Again, in line with findings on a national scale, although the church was not the main avenue through which protests were organized, religion and spirituality still had a notable impact on the content of the protests. Moments of prayer were incorporated into many of the protests that took place in Jacksonville. One notable example took place on June 3, outside of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, where faith leaders led a prayer before a press conference on police accountability (39). Rituals and prayers were not only seen in smaller protests: one of the largest rallies that took place in Jacksonville was the “Reflective Walk” for Floyd in which over 1,000 participants prayed before marching throughout Jacksonville’s San Marco business district and residential areas (40). Even protests that were planned by secular organizations, like The Women’s March Jacksonville Chapter, involved spiritual ceremonies. The Women’s March held a two-hour long remembrance ritual on June 4, where “candles were lit in memory of those who died by police or racial brutality, plants watered on a table as each was remembered.” Participants at this protest were encouraged to express their “sorrow and disgust over the racial division in this country” (41). Jacksonville’s protests often seem to embody what sociologist Emile Durkheim would identify as “collective effervescence,” referring to the emotional effect experienced by individuals when they collectively perform religious rituals; when people come together and perform the same action together, they may feel ‘outside of themselves.’ Durkheim describes this process in Elementary Forms of Religious Life, saying that “When collective life reaches a certain degree of intensity it awakens religious thought… vital energies become overstimulated, sensations stronger; there are even some that are produced only at this moment” (42). In this moment, collective effervescence then strengthens group identity. The common usage of prayer in protest likely serves a similar function; overall, rituals like group prayer serve an important, unifying force during protests, allowing the protester to step outside of themselves and feel a greater sense of unity with those they are protesting with. Aspects of the Jacksonville protests encourage such an experience. For example, Chapter President Bonnie Hendrix was reported as saying “I felt it was time for black people to have the podium to raise their voice, to be heard, to let the pain and anguish of years of oppression, out,” acknowledging the heightened emotional experience that was produced by the remembrance ritual (43). Even disregarding the use of rituals like prayer and reflection, protests exhibited religious characteristics in other ways. When activists described their motivations for protesting, they often directly or indirectly referenced their religious beliefs, often echoing sentiments in speeches from the Civil Rights Movement. On June 8th, several dozen ministers from local Black churches read a letter addressed to Jacksonville mayor Lenny Curry, Sheriff Mike Williams, and various other city and state officials. The letter called for a variety of reforms that asked for increased transparency and communication between police and community members. Some of the demands included roundtable discussions with black officers, increased sensitivity training, and increased diversity in leadership (44). Martyrdom narratives were incorporated into the minister’s press conference as well, as one minister was quoted as saying “It was as a result of George Floyd that all of a sudden a choir began. A choir of people from all across this nation have come together to lend their voices together in harmony for the express purpose of making sure that people can be treated fair.” In a similar manner to how martyrdom narratives were used during the Civil Rights Movement, the pain and suffering inflicted upon George Floyd can be the impetus for social change. In the quote from Rev. Williams, there are themes of unity and healing, demonstrating similar themes to those used by Martin Luther King Jr. in his “Eulogy for Martyred Children” as well as older martyrdom accounts, like those in Leviticus, where the loss of innocent life has the power to transform an entire community. In honor of Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the end of slavery, the Interfaith Center of Northeast Florida held a livestream, connecting the protests that took place this summer to the fight for equality during the Civil War. Religion again played a large role in the motivations for those participating in the conversation. In describing her motivations for fighting for justice, Rev. Juana Jordan referenced Matthew 10 as an inspiration for resilience in her activism, saying “[Jesus] says people are gonna harass you, and he talks a lot about… using your voice. If you are a part of the family, if you are gonna do what I’m doing, people are gonna come against you. But there’s some responsibilities that you have” (45). In a later comment, Rev. Juana again connected the notion of equal rights to Scripture, saying “I believe in communion, there is more than enough at the table. When Jesus laid out the table, he stretched the table to make sure everybody could come around” (46). This livestream reiterated a common theme from Hurst’s personal account, where faith gives activists resilience in their work. Conclusion In conclusion, faith still plays a prominent role in Black civil rights movements, but its role has been complicated due to recent trends in secularization and the rise of social media. Although social media has replaced the Black church as the organizational center of the movement, spirituality has proved itself to be indispensable to the movement due to its ability to unify protesters through rituals. Finally, spiritual beliefs also seem to be a powerful source of motivation for those who participate in protest, providing inspiration to continue persevering when met with opposition. With this sudden shift towards a more decentralized movement center, it will be interesting to see if Black Lives Matter will be able to achieve the same legislative successes as the Civil Rights Movement. Endnotes 1 “Black Liberation Theology, in its Founder’s Words,” NPR, 2008. 2 Morris, Aldon D , The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change, (The Free Press, 1986). 3 Gleig, Ann and Farrag, Hebah, “Far from Being anti-religious, faith and spirituality run deep in Black Lives Matter,” The Conversation. 4 Morris, Aldon D , The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change, 4. 5 Ibid. 6 King, Martin Luther, “Eulogy for the Martyred Children,” Carnegie Mellon University. 7 Ibid, 221. 8 DeSoucey et al, “Memory and Sacrifice: An Embodied Theory of Martyrdom,” ( Cultural Sociology, 2008), 114. 9 Luibrand, Shannon, “How a death in Ferguson sparked a movement in America,” 2015. 10 Buchanan, Quoctrung, and Patel, “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History,” 2020. 11 Clayton, Dewey M, “Black Lives Matter and the Civil Rights Movement: A Comparative Analysis of Two Social Movements in the United States,” Journal of Black Studies , Vol. 49 no. 5, 2018. 12 Bolsover, Gillian, “Black Lives Matter discourse on US social media during COVID: polarised positions enacted in a new event,” The University of Leeds, Centre for Democratic Engagement, 2020. 13 Clayton, Dewey M, “Black Lives Matter and the Civil Rights Movement: A Comparative Analysis of Two Social Movements in the United States.” 14 Green, Emma, “Black Activism, Unchurched,” The Atlantic, 2016. 15 Gleig, Ann and Farrag, Hebah, “Far from Being anti-religious, faith and spirituality run deep in Black Lives Matter,” The Conversation. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Green, Emma, “Black Activism, Unchurched.” 20 Yamane, David and Roberts, Keith A, “Secularization: Religion in Decline or Transformation?” Religion in Sociological Perspective, (SAGE Publications, 2015), 25. 21 Ibid. 22 Hout, Michael and Fischer, Claude, “Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Politics and Generations,” American Sociological Review , vol. 67, no. 2, pp. 165-190, (April 2002), 166. 23 Ibid, 173. 24 Ibid, 168. 25 Ibid, 179. 26 Ibid, 175. 27 Ibid, 175. 28 Ibid, 178. 29 Crooks, James B, “The history of Jacksonville race relations. Part 2: Struggling for equality,” The Florida Times-Union, 2021. 30 Ibid. 31 Hurst, Rodney L, “It was never about a hotdog and a Coke,” Wingspan Press, 2008. 32 Ibid. 33 Woods, Mark and Soergel, Matt, “Ax Handle Saturday: The segregated lunch counters are gone, but the ‘Jacksonville Story’ continues,” 2020. 34 Avanier, Erik, “Thousands march through San Marco during peaceful demonstration,” 2020. 3 5 “The Spirit of Juneteenth,” YouTube, Uploaded by Interfaith Center of Northeast Florida, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flDBJx_HWhM&feature=youtu.be 36 Cravey, Beth R. and Patterson, Steve, “Black Lives Matter protesters march through downtown Jacksonville; 3 arrested,” The Florida Times-Union, 2016. 37 Bloch, Emily, “Students at Jacksonville’s elite schools discuss racism — often anonymously,” The Florida Times-Union, 2020. 38 “The Spirit of Juneteenth,” YouTube, 50:13. 39 “Photos: Jacksonville Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death,” The Florida Times-Union, 2020. 40 Ibid. 41 Scanlan, Dan, “Jacksonville Residents continue protests in support of black lives,” The Florida Times-Union. 2020. 42 Durkheim, Emile, “The Elementary Forms of Religious Life,” ( Oxford University Press: 2001), 317. 43 Scanlan, Dan, “Jacksonville Residents continue protests in support of black lives.” 44 Savo-Matthews, Anna, “Black ministers call for Jacksonville reforms amid unrest,” The Florida Times-Union , 2020. 45 “The Spirit of Juneteenth,” YouTube, 61:28. 46 Ibid, 66:54. 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