¿Es el Servicio Militar justo? Disertación en inglés

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Many of our most heated debates about justice involve the role of markets:

Is the free market fair? Are there some goods that money can’t buy- or shouldn’t? If so, what are these goods, and what’s wrong with buying and selling them?

The case for free markets typically rests on two about freedom, the other about welfare. The first is the libertarian case for markets. It says that letting people engage in voluntary exchanges respects their freedom; laws that interfere with the free market violate individual liberty. The second is the utilitarian argument for markets. It says that free markets promote the general welfare; when two people make a deal, both gain. As long as their deal makes them better off without hurting anyone else, it must increase overall utility.

Market skeptics question these claims. They argue that market choices are not always as free as they may seem. And they argue that certain goods and social practices are corrupted or degraded if bought and sold for money.

In this chapter, we’ll consider the morality of paying people to perform two very different kinds of work—fighting wars and bearing children. Thinking through the rights and wrongs of markets in these contested cases will help us clarify the differences among leading theories of justice.

What’s just—Drafting Soldiers or Hiring Them

In the early months of the U.S. Civil War, festive rallies and patriotic sentiment prompted tens of thousands of men in the Northern states to volunteer for the Union army. But with the Union defeat at Bull Run, followed by the failure the following spring of General George B. McClellan’s drive to capture Richmond, Northerners began to doubt that the conflict would end quickly. More troops had to be raised, and in July 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed the Union’s first draft law. A Confederate draft was already in place.

Conscription ran against the grain of the American individualist tradition, and the Union draft made a striking concession to that tradition: Anyone who was drafted and didn’t want to serve could hire someone else to take his place.

Draftees seeking substitutes ran ads in newspapers, offering payments as high as $1,500, a considerable sum at the time. The Confederacy’s draft law also allowed for paid substitutes, giving rise to the slogan “rich man’s war and poor man’s fight,” a complaint that echoed in the North. In March 1863, Congress passed a new draft law that sought to address the complaint. Although it did not eliminate the right to hire a substitute, it provided that any draftee could pay the government a fee of $300 instead of serving. Although the commutation fee represented close to a year’s wages for an unskilled laborer, the provision sought to bring the price of exemption within reach of ordinary workers. Some cities and counties subsidized the fee for their draftees. And insurance societies enabled subscribers to pay a monthly premium br a policy that would cover the fee in the event of conscription.

Though intended to offer exemption from service at a bargain rate, a commutation fee was politically more unpopular than substitution perhaps because it seemed to put a price on human life (or the risk of death) and to give that price government sanction. Newspaper headlines proclaimed, “Three Hundred Dollars or Your Life.” Anger over the draft and the $300 commutation fee prompted violence against enrollment officers, most notably in the New York City draft riots of July 1863, which lasted several days and claimed more than a hundred lives. The following year, Congress enacted a new draft law that eliminated the commutation fee. The right to hire a substitute, however, was retained in the North (though not in the South) throughout the war.

In the end, relatively few draftees wound up fighting in the Union army. (Even after conscription was established, the bulk of the army consisted of volunteers, prompted to enlist by bounty payments and the threat of being drafted.) Many whose numbers were drawn in draft lotteries either fled or were exempted for disability. Of the roughly 207,000 men who were actually drafted, 87,000 paid the commutation fee, 74,000 hired substitutes, and only 46,000 served. Those who hired substitutes to fight in their place included Andrew Carnegie and J. P. Morgan(p^%#$: nomas hace falta ver lo marranos que eran haciendo negocios), the fathers of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, and Future presidents Chester A. Arthur and Grover Cleveland.

Was the Civil War system a just way of allocating military service? When I put this question to my students, almost all of them say no. They say it’s unfair to allow the affluent to hire substitutes to fight in their place. Like many Americans who protested in the I 860s, they consider this system a form of class discrimination.

I then ask the students whether they favor a draft or the all-volunteer army we have today. Almost all favor the volunteer army (as do most Americans). But this raises a hard question: If the Civil War system was unfair because it let the affluent hire other people to fight their wars, doesn’t the same objection apply to the volunteer army?

The method of hiring differs, of course. Andrew Carnegie had to find his own substitute and pay him directly; today the military recruits the soldiers to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan, and we, the taxpayers, collectively pay them. But it remains the case that those of us who’d rather not enlist hire other people to fight our wars and risk their lives. So what’s the difference, morally speaking? If the Civil War system of hiring substitutes was unjust, isn’t the volunteer army unjust as well?

To examine this question, let’s set aside the Civil War system and consider the two standard ways of recruiting soldiers—conscription and the market.

In its simplest form, conscription fills the ranks of the military by requiring all eligible citizens to serve, or, if not all are needed, by holding a lottery to determine who will be called. This was the system used by the United States during the First and Second World Wars. A draft was also used during the Vietnam War, though the system was complex and riddled with deferments for students and people in certain occupations, allowing many to avoid having to fight.

The existence of the draft fueled opposition to the Vietnam War, especially on college campuses. Partly in response, President Richard Nixon proposed doing away with conscription, and in 1973, as the United States wound down its presence in Vietnam, the all-volunteer military force replaced the draft. Since military service was no longer compulsory, the military increased pay and other benefits to attract the soldiers it needed.

A volunteer army, as we use the term today, fills its ranks through the use of the labor market—as do restaurants, banks, retail stores, and other businesses. The term volunteer is something of a misnomer, the volunteer army is not like a volunteer fire department, in which people serve without pay, or the local soup kitchen, where volunteer workers donate their time. It is a professional army in which soldiers work for pay. The soldiers are “volunteers” only in the sense that paid employees in any profession are volunteers. No one is conscripted, and the job is performed by those who agree to do so in exchange for money and other benefits.

The debate over how a democratic society should fill the ranks of the military is at its most intense during times of war, as the Civil War riots and Vietnam-era protests attest. After the United States adopted an all-volunteer force, the question of justice in the allocation of military service faded from public attention. But the U.S-led wars in Irak and Afghanistan have revived public discussion about whether it is right for a democratic society to recruit its soldiers by means of the market.

Most Americans favor the volunteer army, and few want to go back to conscription. (In September 2007, in the midst of the Iraq War, a Gallup poll found that Americans opposed reinstating the draft by 80 to 18 percent.) But the renewed debate over the volunteer army and the draft brings us face-to-face with some big questions of political philosophy—questions about individual liberty and civic obligation.

To explore these questions, let’s compare the three ways of allocating military service we have considered—conscription, conscription with a provision for hiring substitutes (the Civil War system), and the market system. Which is most just?

1.conscription
2. conscription allowing paid substitutes (Civil War system)
3. market system (volunteer army)

The Case for the Volunteer Arms

If YOU are a libertarian, the answer is obvious. Conscription (policy 1) is unjust because it is coercive, a form of slavery. It implies that the state owns its citizens and can do with them what it pleases, including forcing them to fight and risk their lives in war. Ron Paul, a Republican umber of Congress and a leading libertarian, recently made this claim in opposing calls to reinstate the draft to fight the Iraq War: “Conscription is slavery, plain and simple. And it was made illegal under the 13th amendment, which prohibits involuntary servitude. One may will be killed as a military draftee, which makes conscription a very dangerous kind of enslavement.”

But even if you don’t consider conscription equivalent to slavery, you might oppose it on the grounds that it limits people’s choices, and therefore reduces overall happiness. This is utilitarian argument against conscription. It holds that, compared to a system that permits hiring mutually advantageous trades. If Andrew Carnegie and his substitute both want to make a deal, why prevent them from doing so? The freedom to enter into the exchange seems to increase each party’s utility without reducing anyone else’s. Therefore, for utilitarian sons, the Civil War system (policy 2) is better than pure conscription (policy 1).

It’s easy to see how utilitarian assumptions can support market reasoning. If you assume that a voluntary exchange makes both parties better off, without harming anyone else, you have a good utilitarian case for letting markets rule.

We can see this if we now compare the Civil War system (policy 2) with the volunteer army (policy 3). The same logic that argues for letting draftees hire substitutes also argues for a full-market solution: If’ you’re going to let people hire substitutes, why draft anyone in the first place? Why not simply recruit troops through the labor market? Set whatever wage and benefits are necessary to attract the number and quality of soldiers required, and let people choose for themselves whether to take the job. No one is forced to serve against his or her will, and those willing to serve can decide if military service is preferable, all things considered, to their other alternatives.

So, from a utilitarian point of view the volunteer army seems the best of the three options. Letting people freely choose to enlist based on the compensation being offered enables them to serve only if doing so maximizes their own utility; and those who don’t want to serve don’t suffer the utility loss of being forced into the military against their will.

A utilitarian could conceivably object that the volunteer army is more expensive than a conscript army. To attract the requisite number and quality of soldiers, pay and benefits must be higher than when soldiers are forced to serve. So a utilitarian might worry that the increased happiness of better-paid soldiers would be offset by the unhappiness of taxpayers who now pay more for military service.

But this objection is not very convincing, especially if the alternative is conscription (with or without substitution). It would be odd to insist, on utilitarian grounds, that the cost to taxpayers of other government services, such as police and fire protection, should be reduced by forcing randomly chosen people to perform these tasks at below- market pay; or that the cost of highway maintenance should be reduced by requiring a subset of taxpayers chosen by lottery either to perform the work themselves or hire others to do so. The unhappiness that would result from such coercive measures would probably outweigh the benefit to the taxpayers of cheaper government services.

So, from the standpoint of both libertarian and utilitarian reasoning, the volunteer army seems best, the Civil War hybrid system second best, and conscription the least desirable way of allocating military service. But at least two objections can be made to this line of argument. One objection is about fairness and freedom; the other is about civic virtue and the common good.

Objection 1: Fairness and freedom

The first objection holds that, for those with limited alternatives, the free market is not all that free. Consider an extreme case: A homeless person sleeping under a bridge may have chosen, in some sense, to do so; but we would not necessarily consider his choice to be a free one. Nor would we be justified in assuming that he must prefer sleeping under a bridge to sleeping in an apartment. In order to know whether his choice reflects a preference for sleeping out of doors or an inability to afford an apartment we need to know something about his circumstances. Is he doing this freely or out of necessity?

The same question can be asked of market choices generally— (including the choices people make when they take on various jobs. How does this apply to military service? We can’t determine the justice or Injustice of the volunteer army without knowing more about the background and conditions that prevail in the society: Is there a reasonable degree of equal opportunity or do some people have very few options in life? Does everyone have a chance to get a college education, or is it the case that, for some people, the only way to afford college is to enlist in the military?

From the standpoint of market reasoning, the volunteer army is attractive because it avoids the coercion of conscription. It makes military service a matter of consent. But some people who wind up serving in the all-volunteer army may be as averse to military service as those who stay away. If poverty and economic disadvantage are widespread, the choice to enlist may simply reflect the lack of alternatives.

According to this objection, the volunteer army may not be as voluntary as it seems. In fact, it may involve an element of coercion. If some in the society have no other good options, those who choose to enlist may be conscripted, in effect, by economic necessity. In that case, the difference between conscription and the volunteer army is not that one is compulsory while the other is free; it’s rather that each employs a different form of compulsion—the force of law in the first case and the pressure of economic necessity in the second. Only if people have a reasonable range of decent job options can it be said that the choice to serve for pay reflects their preferences rather than their limited alternatives.

The class composition of today’s volunteer army bears out this objection, at least to some extent. Young people from low- to middle- income neighborhoods (median household income of $30,850 to $57,836) are disproportionately represented in the ranks of active- duty army recruits.8 Least represented are the poorest 10 percent of the population (many of whom may lack the requisite education and skills) and the most affluent 20 percent (those from neighborhoods with median household incomes of $66,329 and above) . In recent years, over 25 percent of army recruits have lacked a regular high school diploma.’0 And while 46 percent of the civilian population has had some college education, only 6.5 percent of the 1 8-to-24-year-olds in the military’s enlisted ranks have ever been to college.

In recent years, the most privileged young people in American society have not opted for military service. The title of a recent book about the class composition of the armed forces captures this well: AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America’s Upper Classes from Military Service.Of the 750 members of Princeton’s class of 1956, the majority— 450 students —joined the military after graduation. Of the 1,108 members of Princeton’s class of 2006, only 9 students enlisted. A similar pattern is found at other elite universities—and in the nation’s capital. Only 2 percent of members of Congress have a son or daughter serving in the military. ‘

Congressman Charles Rangel, a Democrat from Harlem who is a decorated Korean War veteran, considers this unfair, and has called for reinstatement of the draft. “As long as Americans are being shipped off to war,” he wrote, “then everyone should be vulnerable, not just those who, because of economic circumstances, are attracted by lucrative enlistment bonuses and educational incentives.” He points out that, in New York City, “The disproportionate burden of service is dramatic. In 2004, 70% of the volunteers in the city were black or Hispanic, recruited from lower income communities.”

Rangel opposed the Iraq War, and believes it never would have been launched if the children of policy-makers had had to share the burden of fighting it. He also argues that, given the unequal opportunities in American society, allocating military service by the market is unfair to those with the fewest alternatives:

‘The great majority of people bearing arms for this country in Iraq are from the poorer communities in our inner cities and rural areas, places where enlistment bonuses of up to $40,000 and thousands in educational benefits are very attractive. For people who have college as an option, those incentives at the risk to one’s life—don’t mean a thing.’

So the first objection to the market rationale for a volunteer army is concerned with unfairness and coercion—the unfairness of class discrimination and the coercion that can occur if economic disadvantage compels young people to risk their lives in exchanging for college and other benefits.

Notice that the coercion objection is not an objection to the volunteer army as such. It only applies to a volunteer army that operates in a society with substantial inequalities. Alleviate those inequalities, and you remove the objection. Imagine, for example, a perfectly equal society, in which everyone had access to the same educational opportunities. In such a society, no one could complain that the choice to enlist in the military was less than free, because unfairly pressured by economic necessity.

Of course, no society is perfectly equal. So the risk of coercion always hovers over the choices people make in the labor market. How much equality is needed to ensure that market choices are free rather than coerced? At what point do inequalities in the background conditions of society undermine the fairness of social institutions (such as the volunteer army) based on individual choice? Under what conditions is the free market really free? To answer these questions, we’ll need to examine moral and political philosophies that see freedom— not utility_—at the heart of justice. So let’s postpone these questions until we turn to Immanuel Kant and John Rawls in later chapters.

Objection 2: Civic virtue and the common good

In the meantime, let’s consider a second objection to the use of markets in allocating military service—the objection in the name of civic virtue and the common good.

This objection says that military service is not just another job; it’s a civic obligation. According to this argument, all citizens have a duty to serve their country. Some proponents of this view believe this obligation can be discharged only through military service, while others say it can be fulfilled through other forms of national service, such as the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, or Teach for America. But if military service (or national service) is a civic duty, it’s wrong to put it up for sale on the market.

Consider another civic responsibility—jury duty. No one dies performing jury duty, but being called to serve on a jury can be onerous, especially if it conflicts with work or other pressing commitments. And yet we don’t let people hire substitutes to take their place on juries. Nor do we use the labor market to create a paid, professional, “all-volunteer” jury system. Why not? From the standpoint of market reasoning, a case could be made for doing s. The same utilitarian arguments raised against drafting soldiers can be made against drafting jurors: Allowing a busy person to get out of jury duty by hiring a substitute would make both parties better off. Doing away with mandatory jury duty would be better still; letting the labor market recruit the requisite number of qualified jurors would enable those who want the work to have it and those who dislike the work to avoid it.

So why do we forego the increased social utility of a market for jurors? Perhaps because we worry that paid jurors would come disproportionately from disadvantaged backgrounds, and that the quality of justice would suffer. But there’s no reason to assume that the affluent make better jurors than those from modest backgrounds. In any case, the wages and benefits could always be adjusted (as the army has done) to attract those with the necessary education and skills.

The reason we draft jurors rather than hire them is that we regard the activity of dispensing justice in the courts as a responsibility all citizens should share. Jurors don’t simply vote; they deliberate with one another about the evidence and the law. And the deliberations draw on the disparate life experiences that jurors from various walks of life bring with them. Jury duty is not only a way of resolving cases. It is also a form of civic education, and an expression of democratic citizenship. Although jury duty is not always edifying, the idea that all citizens are obligated to perform it preserves a connection between the courts and the people.

Something similar could be said of military service. The civic argument for conscription claims that military service, like jury duty, is a civic responsibility; it expresses, and deepens, democratic citizenship. 1rom this point of view, turning military service into a commodity—a task we hire other people to perform—corrupts the civic ideals that should govern it. According to this objection, hiring soldiers to fight our wars is wrong, not because it’s unfair to the poor but because it allows us to abdicate a civic duty.

The historian David M. Kennedy has offered a version of this argument. He argues that “the U.S. armed forces today have many of the attributes of a mercenary army,” by which he means a paid, professional army that is separated to a significant degree from the society on whose behalf it fights.’7 He doesn’t mean to disparage the motives of those who enlist. His worry is that hiring a relatively small number of our fellow citizens to fight our wars lets the rest of us off the hook. It severs the link between the majority of democratic citizens and the soldiers who fight in their name.

Kennedy observes that, “proportionate to the population, today’s active-duty military establishment is about 4 percent of the size of the force that won World War II.” This makes it relatively easy for policy- makers to commit the country to war without having to secure the broad and deep consent of the society as a whole, “History’s most powerful military force can now be sent into battle in the name of a society that scarcely breaks a sweat when it does so.”18 The volunteer army absolves most Americans of the responsibility to fight and die for their country. While some see this as an advantage, this exemption from shared sacrifice comes at the price of eroding political accountability:

“A hugely preponderant majority of Americans with no risk whatsoever of exposure to military service have, in effect, hired some of the least advantaged of their fellow countrymen to do some of their most dangerous business while the majority goes on with their own affairs unbloodied and undistracted.’”

One of the most famous statements of the civic case for conscription was offered by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712—1778), the Geneva- born Enlightenment political theorist. In The Social Contract (1762), he argues that turning a civic duty into a marketable good does not increase freedom, but rather undermines it:

“As soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they would rather serve with their money than with their persons, the state is not far from its fall. When it is necessary to march out to war, they pay troops and stay at home. . . . In a country that is truly free, the citizens do everything with their own arms and nothing by means of money; so far from paying to be exempted from their duties, they would even pay for the privilege of fulfilling them themselves. I am far from taking the common view: I hold enforced labor to be less opposed to liberty than taxes.”

Rousseau’s robust notion of citizenship, and his wary view of markets, may seem distant from the assumptions of our day. We are inclined to view the state, with its binding laws and regulations, as the realm of force; and to see the market, with its voluntary exchanges, as the realm of freedom. Rousseau would say this has things backward-at least where civic goods are concerned.

Market advocates might defend the volunteer army by rejecting Rousseau’s strenuous notion of citizenship, or by denying its relevance to military service. But the civic ideals he invoked retain a certain resonance, even in a market-driven society such as the United States. Most supporters of the volunteer army vehemently deny that it amounts to a mercenary army. They rightly point out that many of those who serve are motivated by patriotism, not only by the pay and benefits. But why do we consider this important? Provided the soldiers (10 their jobs well, why should we care about their motivation? Even as we relegate recruitment to the market, we find it hard to detach military service from older notions of patriotism and civic virtue.

For, consider: What, really, is the difference between the contemporary volunteer army and an army of mercenaries? Both pay soldiers to fight. Both entice people to enlist by the promise of salary and other benefits. If the market is an appropriate way of raising an army, what exactly is wrong with mercenaries?

One might reply that mercenaries are foreign nationals who fight only for pay, whereas the American volunteer army hires only Americans. But if the labor market is an appropriate way of raising troops, it’s not clear why the U.S. military should discriminate in hiring on the basis of nationality. Why shouldn’t it actively recruit soldiers from among citizens of other countries who want the work and possess the relevant qualifications? Why not create a foreign legion of soldiers from the developing world, where wages are low and good jobs are scarce?

It is sometimes argued that foreign soldiers would be less loyal than Americans. But national origin is no guarantee of loyalty on the battlefield, and military recruiters could screen foreign applicants to determine their reliability. Once you accept the notion that the army should use the labor market to fill its ranks, there is no reason in principle to restrict eligibility to American citizens—no reason, that is, unless you believe military service is a civic responsibility after all, an expression of citizenship. But if you believe that, then you have reason to question the market solution.

Two generations after ending the draft, Americans hesitate to apply the full logic of market reasoning to military service. The French Foreign Legion has a long tradition of recruiting foreign soldiers to fight for France. Although French law prohibits the Legion from active recruiting outside of1France, the Internet has made that restriction meaningless. Online recruiting in thirteen languages now attracts recruits from throughout the world. About a quarter of the force now comes from Latin America, and a growing proportion comes from China and other Asian countries.

The United States has not established a foreign legion, but it has taken a step in that direction. Faced with difficulties meeting recruiting goals as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched on, the military has begun recruiting foreign immigrants currently living in the United States on temporary visas. The inducements include good pay and a fast track to American citizenship. About thirty thousand noncitizens now serve in the U.S. armed forces. The new program will extend eligibility from permanent residents with green cards to temporary immigrants, foreign students, and refugees.

The recruitment of foreign troops is not the only way the logic of the market plays out. Once you view military service as a job like any other, there is no reason to assume the hiring must be done by the government. In fact, the United States now outsources military functions to private enterprise on a large scale. Private military contractors play an increasing role in conflicts around the world, and form a substantial part of the U.S. military presence in Iraq.

In July 2007, the Los Angeles Times reported that the number of U.S. -paid private contractors in Iraq (180,000) exceeded the number of U.S. military personnel stationed there (160,000)23 Many of the contractors perform non-combat logistical support—building bases, repairing vehicles, delivering supplies, and providing food services. But about 50,000 are armed security operatives whose work guarding bases, convoys, and diplomats often draws them into combat.24 More than 1,200 private contractors have been killed in Iraq, though they do not return in flag-draped coffins, and their numbers are not included in the U.S. military’s casualty count.

One of the leading private military companies is Blackwater Worldwide. Erik Prince, the company’s CEO, is a former Navy SEAL with an ardent faith in the free market. He rejects the suggestion that his soldiers are “mercenaries,” a term he considers “slanderous.”26 Prince explains: “We’re trying to do for the national security apparatus what Federal Express did for the postal service “Blackwater received over $1 billion in government contracts for its services in Iraq, but has often been at the center of controversy. Its role first came to public attention in 2004, when four of its employees were ambushed and killed in Fallujah and two of the bodies were strung from a bridge. The incident led President George W Bush to order the Marines into Fallujah in a massive and costly battle with insurgents.

In 2007, six Blackwater guards opened fire on a crowd in a Baghdad square, killing seventeen civilians. The guards, who claimed they had been fired upon first, were immune from prosecution under Iraqi law because of rules laid down by the American governing authority after the invasion. The contractors were eventually indicted for manslaughter by the U.S. Justice Department, and the incident led the Iraqi government to demand the withdrawal of Blackwater from the country.

Many in Congress and in the public at large object to the outsourcing of war to for-profit companies such as Blackwater. Much of the criticism focuses on the unaccountability of these companies, and their involvement in abuses. Several years before the Blackwater shooting incident, private contractors from other companies were among those who abused detainees at Abu Ghraib prison. Although the army soldiers involved were court-martialed, the private contractors were not punished.

But suppose Congress tightened regulations on private military companies to make them more accountable and to hold their employees to the same standards of behavior that apply to U.S. troops. Would the use of private companies to fight our wars cease to be objectionable? Or is there a moral difference between paying Federal Express to deliver the mail and hiring Blackwater to deliver lethal force on the battlefield?

To answer this question, we have to resolve a prior one: Is military service (and perhaps national service generally) a civic obligation that all citizens have a duty to perform, or is it a hard and risky job like others (coal mining, for example, or commercial fishing) that is properly governed by the labor market? And to answer this question, we have to ask a broader one: What obligations do citizens of a democratic society owe to one another, and how do such obligations arise? Different theories of justice offer different answers to this question.

Sacado del capítulo 4: “HIRED HELP: MARKETS AND MORALS”, del libro: ”Justice: What’s the right thong to do?”, de Michael J Sandel. Pag. 75-91.
Michael J Sandel, ”Justice: What’s the right thing to do?”, First paperback edition, Nueva York, FSG, 2010. [308 páginas]