The Critique of Exploitation

Abstract

Abstract This chapter offers a normative exploration of what exploitation is and of what is wrong with it. The focus is on the critical assessment of the exploitation of workers in capitalist societies. The chapter argues that exploitation is wrongful when it involves a contra-solidaristic use of power over others to benefit oneself at their expense. Wrongful exploitation consists in using your greater power, and sometimes even in making others less powerful than yourself, in order to get them to give you more than they ought to. The chapter contrasts this account of exploitation with others, and argues that it is comparatively appealing because it simultaneously addresses three morally significant dimensions of exploitation—its material and social background, the relational (interpersonal and systemic) attitudes it enacts, and the final distributive results it generates. Exploitation is indeed a multidimensional social process. The flipside of the proposed critical characterization of this process is a positive ideal of solidaristic allocation and use of economic power, which the chapter articulates in terms of the socialist Abilities/Needs Principle and defends as a fitting response to human dignity.