In the past year or so, I have written several posts (here and here) on the problem posed by exploitation, one of the Marxist critiques of capitalism. Initially I believed exploitation could be easily dispensed with through instituting a universal basic income; I later came to believe exploitation was more serious than this and could not be simply done away with. Now, I have come to believe that exploitation is not an issue that can be dealt with independently of one’s theory regarding distributive justice. I have come to hold this view largely due to my reading of Jerry Cohen, both in his critiques of Marxism and as presented in his briefly outlined new exploitation argument.

In Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality, Cohen is largely concerned with the issue posed by accepting the thesis of self-ownership (i.e. each person is the sole owner of their self) and its consequences on the views Marxists hold regarding equality. If one accepts the self-ownership thesis, Cohen believes that in certain situations it plainly conflicts with equality. This is most prominent in the case of persons who are not able to provide for themselves – equality demands that they are provided for by those who are capable while self-ownership dictates each person has jurisdiction over their person, including their labour. If for any fraction of time I must work for another, I lack some amount of self-ownership as the person I am working for is in essence entitled to that portion of my time.

Further, there is a paradox that may arise regarding self-ownership and exploitation. Cohen considers the case of ‘clean capitalist relations’ in which a society begins with an equal external resource distribution and through self-ownership affirming moves, there arises a capitalist economy with relationships of exploitation. This arises not due to any sort of injustice, but as a result of the brute fact of differential talent distributions and decisions made by individuals. It then becomes in some individuals best interests to labour for a capitalist, although doing so results in their exploitation. In order to condemn the exploitation, the Marxist must accept the self-ownership principle as without it, it is unclear what grounds they have to stand on in condemning the relationship. However, when they accept the self-ownership principle, it results in the paradoxical result of not being able to condemn the exploitation as it arose only through self-ownership affirming steps (Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality, 161-2). Thus, the Marxist is at a crossroads – they want to condemn relationships of exploitation but cannot do so unless they accept the self-ownership principle which results in the exploitation being just.

In another article, Cohen provides an attempted workaround for this issue. Excluding the principle of self-ownership, he provides the following argument:

The laborer is the only person who creates the product, that which has value The capitalist receives some of the value of the product Therefore, the laborer receives less value than the value of what they create The capitalist receives some of the value of what the laborer creates Therefore, the laborer is exploited by the capitalist (from The Labor Theory of Value and the Concept of Exploitation)

However, the problem implicit here is the question of why the exploitation is unjust – if we discard the self-ownership principle in order to hold onto equality and avoid paradox (as Cohen does), on what grounds is the labourer entitled to the full value of his creations?

A potential answer is some sort of appeal to the first premise, that the labourer is the only person who creates the product, that which has value. On the basis of this brute fact of creation, if the value is to be assigned anywhere, it ought to go to the worker. However, this appears simply to be a convoluted appeal to the self-ownership principle. If the self-ownership principle is discarded, the worker is not clearly entitled to what they created and instead the appeal must go to a further level of distributive justice.

This leads to my main thought in this post: that exploitation is not worth worrying about. In order to answer the question regarding the distribution of the value of the product the worker creates, one can simply appeal to the distribute principles underlying the society. Given a set of principles that are egalitarian in nature, this results in the diminishing the exploitation as the worker will be compensated much more handsomely than they would be in a more exploitative, laissez-faire economy. While the exploitation will not be fully diminished (if we assume all capitalists are lazy and produce nothing, as well as accept the existence of those in society who are unable to produce such as those with varying disabilities there will still be exploitation as some of the value of the products created by workers will be re-assigned to these folks), the resulting distribution of wealth in the society will be much more acceptable than something like our current distribution.

While Marxists may be keen to hold onto the exploitation thesis, given the acceptance of the fact that there is incongruence between the sect of the population that produces and the sect that suffers or is in need of assistance, it may be preferable to dump the exploitation thesis in lieu of equality. Cohen believes that Marx saw workers and needy folk as perfectly congruent categories; this made it easy for him to appeal to both equality and condemn exploitation as those who were being exploited were the ones most in need of a levelling up. However, as previously noted, there exists a sect of the population that is both in need of assistance but is not itself productive. So, for Marxists to hold on to the exploitation thesis would require an appeal to individual charity not dissimilar to the reply offered by many libertarians when their welfare-less societies are condemned. Given the reality of our world in which many still suffer and are not adequately cared for by charity, this is not a strong respite for Marxists to fall back on. As well, by holding on to a strict exploitation thesis, things that do not appear unjust, such as taking to provide for those needing assistance, must be condemned as such and provides counterintuitive results. Since Marxists can avoid this and achieve better results by simply appealing to equality, it appears foolhardy for them not to do so.