Date: Wed, 1 May 1996 01:07:07 -0700
Subject: Re[2]: Exploitation, unproductive labor


  Just some clarifications about my long post in 
  reply to Justin.  When I, for the purposes of 
  expounding the view I'm criticizing, contrast 
  justice-based versus freedom-based objections to 
  exploitation, I am referring to what Justin 
  usually calls the 'theft' or 'stealing' 
  objections on the one hand, and the objections 
  based on freedom-invoking complaints against 
  coercion.  I.e. I am not referring at all to the 
  non-moral view of exploitation which Justin also 
  mentions and criticizes.  And I am adding this 
  note because at least in one place Justin 
  includes both types of moral objection I discuss 
  under the single heading of justice.  So I am 
  using 'justice' in a more restrictive sense than 
  Justin did.  My main point is thus that 
  exploitation should be criticized on the grounds 
  that it *is* indeed a version of stealing or 
  theft, but that this also involves a degree a 
  coercion.  Justin's account seems to me to rely 
  on the idea that stealing is somehow 
  non-coercive.  And this is what I doubt is 
  right.  Moreover, taxation is clearly different 
  from stealing on my view because it involves 
  taking something which does not by justice 
  belong to the person taxed but to the poor 
  person it supports (although of course, some 
  taxation could in fact be a species of stealing, 
  eg because it is used by a tyrant to enrich 
  himself).
  
  Peter
  pburns-AT-lmumail.lmu.edu


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