Abstract:

In this paper I try to respond to a number of questions raised by critics of my book “Global Justice and Avant-Garde Political Agency” (OUP 2012). The book adopts a dialectical approach that sees progress in normative political theory as the outcome of historical learning processes. These processes, I argue, rely on the practice of avant-garde political agents that challenge existing interpretations of the function and purpose of political institutions and expand existing normative repertoires guiding political action. David Miller and Pablo Gilabert have raised epistemic questions about how we can identify in a non-circular way a “global avant-garde” and challenged the criteria I have proposed for doing so. David Owen and Chris Armstrong have raised substantive issues about the nature of the egalitarian commitments central to my account, questioning the relevance of the causal link between equality and sufficiency and the role of global positional goods justified to invoke that link. Finally, Rahul Rao challenged the assumptions on progress upon which the argument relies and raised the question of the level at which the activity of avant-garde agents becomes relevant for purposes of my argument. In the paper I examine these challenges and provide a few clarifications on how we should understand the concept and role of avant-gardes,  why my argument is not elitist and how my claims on global egalitarianism relate to intrinsic defences of egalitarianism offered by other scholars.