Date: Sat, 4 May 1996 10:26:34 -0700
Subject: Re: Exploitation and unproductive labor


  
>>Where did you go to law school, Peter? And did you finish?
  
Glasgow University, Scotland.  Yes, graduated in 1981, and 
joined the Jesuits later that same year.
  
Justin goes on:
  
>>Unfortunately this will not do. The force-and-freedom independent 
standard of fairness creeps back into (b). Why assume that as the starting 
position? Well, you want to rule out situations where, e.g., brainwashed 
workers toil happily for exploiting bosses, where their consent is 
supposed to give the unequal abalnce of wills the legitimacy that, say the 
democratically elected worker-manager's authority over the direct workers 
is supposed to have in virtue of consent. But this presupposes, in a way 
taht isd either question-begging or drawn from some source other than the 
balance of the wills itself that the first situation, the "happy slaves," 
as my old advisor Don Herzog put it, is unfair. Consent theory of this 
sort therefore cannot ground a theory of justice. (Rawls and HAbermas are 
stucj with this problem.)
  
  Justin, I don't see that we need to presuppose 
  that the "happy slaves" situation IS unfair.  In 
  fact, in my earlier posts I explicitly bit the 
  bullet on this, and said that if freely formed 
  wills consented to "injustice" then it wouldn't 
  *be* injustice.  If people voluntarily, 
  genuinely, and autonomously willed to be slaves, 
  then it wouldn't be unjust.  Of course, that's a 
  big 'if'.  Likewise, if workers freely, 
  genuinely, voluntarily, autonomously willed that 
  the economic surplus generated by their labor 
  should be transferred to capitalists, then this 
  would be a case of donation, not theft, and 
  would not be unjust.  But again, that's a big 
  'if'.  What makes slavery and capitalism unjust 
  *in fact*, is that both are *in fact* based on a 
  failure to preserve balance in the clash of 
  autonomous wills.  I am not, contrary to what 
  Justin alleges, basing my view of what justice 
  requires on some abstract principle about what 
  is a just distribution, such as equal shares for 
  all, independent of what people autonomously 
  will.  (Of course, a bit of abstract ideality 
  does enter the picture because wills are often 
  not in fact autonomously formed, so we ask the 
  hypothetical question, what would they choose if 
  they were autonomous?)  If there is an 
  underlying value here it is that of 
  being/having/exercizing an autonomous will, but 
  this is the *same value* that underlies the 
  objection to coercion.  Justice seeks protection 
  for autonomous willing by promoting a balance of 
  wills in concrete social interactions.  In doing 
  this it sets itself at the same time against 
  coercion.  But autonomous willing involves 
  consent.  Now the question is, why is a 
  distribution not based on consent unfair?  
  Because it fails adequately to value autonomous 
  willing.  But that's what I was saying, that's 
  where I came in.  There is, pace Justin, no 
  standard of fairness operating here that is 
  independent of the force-and-freedom criterion, 
  because what that criterion is about is 
  preserving the value of autonomous, 
  non-dominated willing.
  
  
  Peter


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