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Exploitation, Alienation, and Injustice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Allen Buchanan
Allen Buchanan*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
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Extract

The concept of exploitation plays a key role in Marx's attack on capitalism. No one denies this. Yet there is much confusion as to just what Marx's concept of exploitation is.

Recent discussions tend to fall into two groups. In the first are those which offer extensive analyses of Marx's concept of alienation, but seldom mention ‘exploitation’. When writers in this first group do mention ‘exploitation’ they mistakenly assume that the concept is transparent and unproblematic.

The second group has little to say about alienation, but does attempt an account of exploitation. These writers mistakenly confine Marx's concept of exploitation to the labor process itself. Both approaches fail to articulate important connections between alienation and exploitation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , March 1979 , pp. 121 - 139
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1979

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References

1 See, for example, Avineri, S. The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), especially pp. 96–117Google Scholar; and Oilman, B. Alienation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971).Google Scholar

2 See, for example, Blaug, M. Economic Theory in Retrospect, rev. ed. (Homewood, III.: Richard Irwin, 1968), p. 245Google Scholar; Samuelson, P. Economics, 9th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973), pp. 542-43Google Scholar; and Holmstrom, N. “Exploitation,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 7 (1977), pp. 353-69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 The most thorough attempt is by Wood, A. “The Marxian Critique of Justice,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1972), pp. 244-82.Google Scholar

4 Holmstrom distinguishes between (a) and (b), but because she confines Marx's attack on exploitation to the labor process itself, she overlooks (c).

5 By ‘the labor process of capitalism’ I mean the dominant or characteristic labor process, i.e., the wage-labor process of commodity production.

6 Marx uses the term ‘commodity’ as a technical term to signal that the item in question is produced for exchange rather than for immediate consumption.

7 Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (New York: International Publishers, (1975), pp. 207-9.Google Scholar

8 Holmstrom, pp. 358–59.

9 My account here follows Holmstrom's but avoids the error of equating ‘exploitation’ with ‘exploitation in the labor process’.

10 Littres’ Dictionnaire de Ia Langue Française, the standard multi-volume French dictionary for the nineteenth century, includes the following entry under ‘exploiter’ (to exploit):

Terme d'agriculture et d'industrie. Faire valoir, tirer le produit. Exploiter un brevet, un théâtre. Par extension, tirer profit ou bon parti de quelque chose considéré comme objet d'exploitation ….II se dit aussi des personnes. Exploiter une dupe. Cet entreppreneur explote ses ouvriers (Dictionnaire de Ia Langue Française, Par É. Littré de I'Académie Francaise, Libraire Hatchette et Cie, Paris, 1873).

The part of .this entry which defines ‘exploitation’ as applied to persons is virtually identical with Marx's general characterization in The German Ideology.

11 Marx, (and Engels, ), The German Ideology, ed. Arthur, C.J. (New York: International Publishers, 1974), p. 110.Google Scholar It is interesting to note that Holmstrom erroneously implies that Marx first introduced the term ‘exploitation’ in Capital, vol. 1.

12 Marx, also sometimes refers to the exploitation of natural objects, but apparently in a non-pejorative sense. See, for example, The Poverty of Philosophy (New York: International Publishers, 1963), p. 101.Google Scholar

13 Marx, Excerpt-Notes of 1844, in Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy ·and Society, ed. L.|Easton and Guddhat, K. (New York: Doubleday, 1967), pp. 278-79.Google Scholar

14 Marx, On the Jewish Question, in Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, pp. 245–48.

15 Marx, Excerpt-Notes of 1844, p. 269.

16 Marx, The German Ideology, p. 110.

17 Marx, The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, ed. Strink, D. (New York: International Publishers, 1973), pp. 150-51.Google Scholar

18 It is interesting to note that Marx contends that the bourgeois utilizes his wife by treating her as a mere instrument of production (The Communist Manifesto, in Marx and Engels: Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy, ed. Feuer, L. (New York: Doubleday, 1959), p. 25).Google Scholar

19 See, for example, Avineri, pp. 51–52; and Raico, R. “Classical liberal Exploitation Theory,” Journal of Libertarian Studies I (1977), pp. 179-80.Google Scholar

20 Marx, The Communist Manifesto, p. 9.

21 Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, pp. 177–90.

22 Marx, Selected Works of Marx and Engels (New York: International Publishers, 1972), pp. 170-71.Google Scholar

23 Marx, Selected Works, p. 171.

24 Marx, Selected Works, p. 293.

25 See Capital, vol. 1, p. 256, for example.

26 Though I will not argue the point, here, it also seems clear that even according to the view that the state is a tool of the bourgeoisie, the exploitative functions of the state are not confined to the labor process.

27 Holmstrom (p. 365) says that her account makes the connections between exploitation and alienation obvious. Unfortunately, this is not the case, since her account mistakenly confines exploitation to the labor process. This limits her to sketching a connection between the exploitation of the worker in the labor process and those forms of alienation which are present in that process.

28 Marx, Precapitalist Economic Formations (excerpted from the Grundrisse), ed. Hobsbaum, E.J. (New York: International Publishers, 1975), pp. 104-8.Google Scholar

29 Marx, On the Jewish Question, p. 248.

30 Marx, Precapitalist Economic Formations, p. 104.

31 Marx, Excerpt-Notes of 1844, p. 269.

32 Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844), in Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, pp. 287–89.

33 For a detailed account of Marx's use of the theory of alienation to describe the bureaucratic state, see Avineri, pp. 17–24.

34 R. Nozick, Anarchy State, and Utopia (Basic Books, New York: 1975), p. 253.Google Scholar

35 Blaug, p. 245; Samuelson, pp. 542–43.

36 Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, in Marx and Engels: Basic Writings on Politics and Society, pp. 116–17.

37 Wood develops this aspect of Marx's polemic against conceptions of Justice in considerable detail in “The Marxian Critique of Justice”.

38 Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, p.116.

39 Holmstrom's account seems to assume that Marx's concept of exploitation in the capitalist labor process and the labor theory of value are inextricably intertwined.

40 Nozick, p. 252.

41 Marx, Capital, vol.1, p. 218.

42 Wood, p. 266.

43 Wood. p. 265.

44 Wood, pp. 261–62.

45 Holmstrom, p. 267.

46 Holmstrom, p. 268.

47 Holmstrom, p. 368.

48 Wood, pp. 271–72.

49 See, for example, Capital, vol. 1, p. 176.

50 Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 271.

51 For a recent discussion of the circumstances of Justice, see Rawls, J. A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971 ), pp. 126-30.Google Scholar

52 Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, p. 119.