Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-16T15:20:27.764Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Marx and Kant on Capitalist Exploitation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2017

Allen Wood
Allen Wood*
Affiliation:
Indiana University Bloomington
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Marx holds that capitalism is exploitative, but not unjust. Kant crafted a theory of right that explains why human beings are treated unjustly when the social system deprives them of the conditions of a free life. This essay attempts to relate Kant’s and Marx’s views to one another and to the capitalist social system, which these two thinkers studied at different stages of development. The economic and social theories of Fichte and Hegel are also employed to help make sense of the points of agreement and of disagreement between Kant and Marx concerning the ways modern capitalism deprives workers of freedom and whether this deprivation should be condemned as unjust.

Keywords

KantMarxexploitationfreedomjusticegeneral injustice
Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 22 , Special Issue 4: Special Issue on Kant and Marx , December 2017 , pp. 641 - 659
Copyright
© Kantian Review 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Blanc, Louis (2012) Plus de Girondins (1851). Boston: General Books.Google Scholar
Nozick, Robert (1969) ‘Coercion’. In Sidney Morgenbesser, Patrick Suppes and Morton White (eds) Philosophy, Science, and Method: Essays in Honor of Ernest Nagel (New York: St Martin’s Press), pp. 440–472.Google Scholar
Roemer, John (1986) ‘Should Marxists be Interested in Exploitation?’. In John Roemer (ed.) Analytical Marxism. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 260–282.Google Scholar
Sample, Ruth (2003) What Exploitation is and Why it is Wrong. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Valdman, Mikhail (2009) ‘A Theory of Wrongful Exploitation’. Philosophers Imprint, 9 (6), 1–14.Google Scholar
Wood, Allen (1995) ‘Exploitation’. Social Philosophy and Policy, 12 (2), 136–158.Google Scholar
Wood, Allen (2008) Kantian Ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wood, Allen (2014) The Free Development of Each: Studies on Freedom, Right and Ethics in Classical German Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar