Exploitation and rule (original) (raw)
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Karl Marx argued that capitalist economies are necessarily exploitative. Nineteenth century classical liberal political economists agreed that exploitation was rampant, but blamed government grants of privilege rather than capitalism. This chapter argues that while both schools of thought produced genuine insights into exploitation in markets and politics, neither developed a tenable account of what exploitation actually is. Understanding exploitation in terms of the more basic concept of fairness allows us to appreciate when wage labor and government transfers are exploitative, and when they are not. The chapter concludes by arguing that exploitation is probably a permanent feature of a free society because the moral costs of attempting to eliminate it will often prove unacceptable. In particular, it might be impossible to ensure that a government invested with the power to stamp out one form of exploitation does not become a tool for an even more troubling form of exploitation itself.
EXPLOITATION VIA LABOUR POWER IN MARX
"Marx’s account of capitalist exploitation is undermined by inter-related confusions surrounding the notion of “labour power.” These confusions relate to [i] what labour power is, [ii] what happens to labour power in the labour market, and [iii] what the epistemic status of labour power is (the issue of “appearance and reality”). The central theses of the paper are [a] that property ownership is the wrong model for understanding the exploitation of labour, and [b] that the concept of exploitation is linked more fruitfully to a conception of distributive injustice than to Marx’s theory of surplus value."
Exploitation as Violence: Marx’s Objection to Capitalist Exploitation
The aim of this essay is to defend two minority positions respecting the proper interpretation of Marx’s critical theory of capitalism, and in such a way, hopefully, as to make Marx’s theory more interesting to non-Marxists. The first position defended is that Marx is better read as an heir to the pre-modern tradition of objective natural right than as a proponent of the radical Enlightenment claims on behalf of the rights of man, as an Aristotelian rather than as a Jacobin. The second position defended is that, despite its Aristotelian heritage, Marx’s critical theory does not rest upon a metaphysically suspicious account of the telos of human being. Threading this needle – Marx’s position is Aristotelian, but does not rely upon claimed insight into the purpose of human existence – will also give rise to some novel side-claims: that capitalist exploitation is a violation of the nature of the labour process; that Marx criticizes only capitalist exploitation, not exploitation in general; and that Marx is so idiosyncratic a socialist as to make his assimilation to that party more misleading than enlightening. The hope is that this combination of minority and novelty will be intriguing enough to sustain the reader through a return to the crags, thickets, and arid stretches of Marx’s Capital. The upshot is a renovated Marx, neither an economist whose insights were constrained by the industrial capitalism of his day, nor a prophet who saw into the future, but a moral and political theorist who attempted to get to the bottom of what is wrong with capital.
The Theory of Exploitation as the Unequal Exchange of Labour
Economics and Philosophy, 2018
This paper analyses the normative and positive foundations of the theory of exploitation as the unequal exchange of labour (UEL). The key intuitions behind all of the main approaches to UEL exploitation are explicitly analysed as a series of formal claims in a general economic environment. It is then argued that these intuitions can be captured by one fundamental axiom-called Labour Exploitation-which denes the basic domain of all UEL exploitation forms and identies the formal and theoretical framework for the analysis of the appropriate denition of exploitation.
Marx with Kant on Exploitation
Contemporary Political Theory, 2015
[A runner-up in the Contemporary Political Theory Annual Prize of 2015.] No thinker is more associated with the concept of exploitation than Marx. However, contemporary theorists do not tend to look to Marx for an account of what exploitation in general is, or why it is bad. This article addresses that neglect. It argues that The German Ideology formulates a general conception of exploitation as instrumentalization, whose harm may be construed by appeal to the test of contradiction in conception belonging to Kant’s Formula of the Law of Nature. The Grundrisse links Marx’s value-theoretic account of capitalist labour-exploitation to this general conception of exploitation as self-seeking action that fails the contradiction in conception test. Exploitation can then be rejected on grounds of community, rather than on autonomy-related grounds, as G.A. Cohen and Allen Wood favour. It also suggests a non-contradictory maxim principle of justice that counts against capitalism, while avoiding utopian appeal to equal rights.
Exploitation and Economic Justice in the Liberal Capitalist State
Oxford University Press , 2013
This book develops the first new, liberal theory of economic justice to appear since John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin proposed their respective theories back in the 1970s and early 1980s. It does this by presenting a new, liberal egalitarian, non-Marxist theory of exploitation that is designed to be a creature of capitalism, not a critique of it. Indeed, the book shows how we can regulate economic inequality using the presuppositions of capitalism and political liberalism that we already accept. In doing this, the book uses two concepts or tools: a re-conceived notion of the ancient doctrine of the just price, and my own concept of intolerable unfairness. The resulting theory can then function as either a supplement to or a replacement for the difference principle and luck egalitarianism, the two most popular liberal egalitarian theories of economic justice of the day. It provides a new, highly-topical specific moral justification not only for raising the minimum wage, but also for imposing a maximum wage, for continuing to impose an estate tax on the wealthiest members of society, and for prohibiting certain kinds of speculative trading, including trading in derivatives such as the now infamous credit default swap and other related exotic financial instruments. Finally, it provides a new specific moral justification for dealing with certain aspects of climate change now regardless of what other nations do. Yet it is still designed to be the object of an overlapping consensus—that is, it is designed to be acceptable to those who embrace a wide range of comprehensive moral and political doctrines, including not only liberal egalitarians, but right and left libertarians too.
Marx, Morality and Exploitation
Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory, 2001
Marx, Morality and Exploitation The tension between Marx's historical critique of political economy and his transhistorical critique of capitalism reaches its apotheosis in his theory of exploitation. This manifests itself in the contradiction between an exchange-based and a production-based version of property rights. Looked at from the (historical) standpoint of exchange, workers receive a value equal to the value of the commodity they sell to capital. Looked at from the (transhistorical) standpoint of production, workers are paid less than the value they produce for capital. Consequently, while capitalism appears just from the standpoint of exchange, it appears unjust from the standpoint of production. At the heart of Marx's theory of exploitation lies his labour theory of value. As we have seen, Marx is concerned both to retain Ricardo's theory of value and reformulate it in accordance with production for exchange. This requires him to steer a perilous path between a transhistorical account of labour that is vulnerable to his critique of political economy and an historical one that threatens to dissolve labour into capital. In order to square that particular circle Marx offers a variety of overlapping formulations concerning the relationship between labour and value. These range from the transhistorical materialism of Ricardo to the historical hegemony of exchange-value found in Say. Natural versus social property rights Marx's decision to base his critique of capitalism on a labour theory of value was undoubtedly influenced by the work of Ricardian 67