Date: Mon, 6 May 1996 22:51:35 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: Exploitation and unproductive labor



Well, if you bite the bullet I will have to think of another objection.
Right now I have Property in the morning, I mean my exam, so I can't But I
remind you of a point that may have gotten lost in the shuffle: that there
are other theories of theft and what's wrong with it on which my
objection does stand. You view is, I suspect, at least not widelt held
among Marxists, though maybe it should be. --jks

On Sat, 4 May 1996 PBurns-AT-lmumail.lmu.edu wrote:

>   
> >>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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