Collectivities, that is, groups constituted by some procedure for making group decisions, can be agents. Collectivities can be moral agents if they can appreciate and act upon moral reasons. Collectivities thus can have obligations that are not simply the aggregate of pre-existing obligations of their members. Certain kinds of collective obligation distribute over their membership, i.e., become members' obligations to do a fair share to fulfill the collectivity's obligation. In incremental good cases, i.e., those in which a member's fair share would go part way toward fulfilling the collectivity's obligation, each member has an unconditional obligation to contribute that share. That is to say, in incremental good cases, each member's distributed duty is not conditional upon other members' contributions.States are collectivities, and states can be moral agents bearing obligations. But states are involuntary collectivities, which means that their obligations do not as a general matter distribute to their citizens. But certain states, democratic legal states, express the will of all citizens sufficiently well to count them among collectivities whose obligations distribute over their members. The qualifications to count as a democratic legal state are not as rigorous as those of a fully just state. In particular, a democratic legal state need only guarantee a social minimum, and need not satisfy more plausible but exacting principles of justice, such as Rawls' first-principle guarantee of the fair value of political liberty, or the difference principle.A democratic legal state bears an obligation to be just and to do justice. This includes matters of distributive justice and addresses, in particular, unequal accumulations of wealth. Many existing states are democratic legal states, but none satisfies more rigorous but still plausible requirements of distributive justice (Rawlsian or other). In these states, citizens who hold assets, which are in excess of what is just, bear a distributed duty to donate that excess to benefit those with less. It is an incremental good case, and thus is not conditioned on the conformity of others who are also wealthier than justice allows, nor on the diligence of the state in meeting its obligations. This inconvenient conclusion is not avoidable by complaining of its demandingness, nor by appeal to the abstract possibility that some duties are conditional upon being determined and effectively enforced by the state.

中文翻译：

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分配正义和分配义务

集体，即由某些做出群体决策的程序构成的群体，可以是代理人。如果集体能够理解道德理由并根据道德理由采取行动，它们就可以成为道德主体。因此，集体的义务不仅仅是其成员预先存在的义务的总和。某些类型的集体义务分配给他们的成员，即成为成员的义务，公平分享以履行集体的义务。在增量好的情况下，即成员的公平份额将有助于履行集体义务的一部分，每个成员都有无条件贡献该份额的义务。也就是说，在增量好的情况下，每个成员的分配义务不以其他成员的贡献为条件。国家是集体，国家可以是承担义务的道德主体。但国家是非自愿的集体，这意味着它们的义务一般不会分配给其公民。但是某些国家，民主的合法国家，充分表达了所有公民的意愿，可以将他们算作集体，其义务分配给其成员。作为民主合法国家的资格并不像完全公正的国家那样严格。特别是，民主法治国家只需要保证社会最低限度，不需要满足更合理但更严格的正义原则，例如罗尔斯对政治自由公平价值的第一原则保证，或差异原则。民主法律国家有义务做到公正和伸张正义。这包括分配正义问题，特别是解决财富的不平等积累问题。许多现有的国家是民主合法的国家，但没有一个国家满足更严格但仍然合理的分配正义要求（罗尔斯式或其他）。在这些州，持有资产的公民承担了分配的义务，将多余的资产捐赠给资产较少的人。这是一个渐进的好案例，因此不以比正义允许的更富有的其他人的顺从为条件，也不以国家在履行其义务时的勤奋为条件。这个不方便的结论是无法通过抱怨其苛刻性而避免的，也无法通过诉诸抽象的可能性来避免，即某些义务以国家确定和有效执行为条件。