Date: Sun, 12 May 1996 21:58:36 -0700
Subject: Re: Exploitation and unproductive labor


  Justin writes:
  
Peter's theory, however, because it appears to have no external 
standard--external to consent--and because it is purely individualistic as 
he dewscribes it (involving the wills of particular individuals), although 
I'm not sure he's wedded to that view, is both overbroad and overnarrow. 
It's overbroad because it will count as theft any nonconsesual taking, 
even, say, of the capitalist's wealth by the workers. It's overnarrow 
because it doesn't pick up adequately on the way that consensual takings 
can be theft, for instance, where people have been ideologically 
brainwashed or induced to accept certain social arrangements that benefit 
them in what appear to be unfair ways.
  
  I don't think that my 'theory' (which is to 
  dignify my views with an air of sophistication 
  they don't merit) is overbroad in the way Justin 
  alleges in this paragraph.  What I argued for in 
  my earlier posts was a set of rules (and 
  implicitly, societal arrangements and 
  institutions) which would promote and preserve a 
  balance of wills and minimise actual and 
  potential domination.  I explicitly pointed out 
  that such a balance of wills would not mean (of 
  course) that no wills ever *prevailed* over 
  others--on the contrary, some wills from time to 
  time prevailing over other wills would have to 
  happen in any society in which conflicts that 
  are not indefinitely sustainable take 
  place--e.g. when two parties are in dispute over 
  a will, or some piece of legislation, or some 
  proposed rule governing the distribution of 
  benefits and burdens.  But just because one side 
  wins in such a dispute, it does not follow that 
  the balance of wills has been violated.  
  Prevailing on an occasion does not entail some 
  new situation characterized by 'structural' or 
  'systemic' or even just 'ongoing de facto' 
  domination.  Just because I, say, lose a legal 
  battle over a contested will, it doesn't follow 
  that thenceforth my will is subject to the 
  domination of another.  I remain free--and I 
  haven't (or needn't have) been stolen from.  
  Just because capitalists as a class are 
  dispossessed unwillingly of their monopolistic 
  control over capital on the occasion of the 
  revolution, it doesn't follow that their wills 
  are thenceforth subjected to the domination of 
  their proletarian expropriators.  Ex-capitalists 
  remain free in a socialist society--and they 
  haven't been stolen from.  Rather, they have had 
  an end put to their own prior stealing.  The 
  thief who is compelled to restore what he has 
  wrongly taken is not stolen from, because what's 
  happening in that case is that the balance of 
  wills is being restored, not a new imbalance 
  being set up.  In the post-revolutionary 
  situation ex-capitalists neither dominate 
  workers nor are dominated by them--they do not 
  become a subjugated class.  (Well, actually, 
  they might, and perhaps something like this 
  happened in certain so-called socialist 
  countries in the past.  One thinks of the 
  'kulaks', one thinks of the rectification 
  campaigns in the PCR, one thinks of the 
  extermination campaigns in Cambodia.  But all 
  this is not, I think, a *necessary*--or 
  desirable--consequence of capitalists being 
  expropriated.)
  
  As for the second objection, 'overnarrowness' 
  due to ideological brainwashing leading to 
  unjust forms of consensual social undertakings 
  or arrangements, I would reiterate what I said 
  in my earlier postings: I insisted that the 
  wills to be balanced be genuinely autonomously 
  formed and exercized, and I insisted that this 
  be treated as an empirical question--one that 
  forming hypotheses about what people would have 
  willed in other circumstances (i.e. ones 
  favoring autonomy) can indeed HELP TO 
  ANSWER--but empirical nonetheless.  Albeit 
  sometimes with great difficulty, we *can* find 
  and point out reasons for believing that wills 
  have not been autonomously formed or are not 
  functioning (fully) autonomously--David Koresh's 
  captives spring to mind, and so do large 
  sections of the contemporary capitalist 
  workforce.
  
  As for Justin's preferred alternative of 
  relativizing justice to class standards, I 
  regard this as representing a considerable 
  weakening of the moral appeal of socialism, and 
  worry about it for that reason.  I don't want 
  the struggle for socialism to be really just 
  about the power of one class prevailing over 
  another's interests; I believe socialism to be 
  morally right in an 'objective' way, i.e. to be 
  justified by moral reasoning, specifically 
  justified by the value of undominated autonomous 
  willing (which I take not to be a value relative 
  to socioeconomic classes, but rather a 
  'universal' value). 
  
This connects to the my second point. I'm not sure that Peter is willing 
to go as far as I am in saying that if slaves really could be happy their 
lot would not be unjust. He retreats from this in saying that well, we do 
want to know what their wills would be if the were uncoerced. This, 
however, just falls back into the theory I attacked as merely ideal and 
question-begging.
  
  This I don't see or accept.  If Justin can use 
  hypothetical reasoning--as he did in this latest 
  post--and not be guilty of being merely ideal 
  and question-begging, why can't I?
  
     Justin, what's your opinion of Rodney Peffer's work, 
     MARXISM, MORALITY AND SOCIAL  JUSTICE (Princeton UP, 
     1990)?
  
  
     Hope the exams went well.
  
     Peter


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