Alienation and Justice in the Market

Abstract

This article elucidates and critically evaluates the Marxian ideas of justice and alienation by distinguishing between the class structure of capitalism and the use of the market as a mode of allocation. The argument is that the social relations of production, not the market mechanism, are primarily responsible for exploitation and alienated labor under capitalism. It follows from this that both the labor theory of value and the marginal theory of productivity, as theories of the market, are consistent with the Marxian theory of exploitation. An additional implication is that market socialism, the use of market arrangements against the background of socialist productive relations, is not only compatible with, but required by, the values that define a socialist society.