--- Michael Dawson <MDawson at pdx.edu> wrote:
> If it's not theft, then what makes it unjust?
There is a lot that is unjust that is not theft. Discrimination, for example.
In the case of exploitation, I have explained at least one non-theft sense of injustice, namely Rawls' theory. According to Rawls, economic injustice is roughly a situation in which there are inequalities that do not benefit the least well off. Inequalities produced by capitalist exploitation would qualify. Yet it seems wrong to describe such inequalities as involving theft. Part of the reason is that Rawls thinks there are no pre-existing entitlements to property. Note that you, like the libertarians, assume the contrary.
Another theory is lack of reciprocity -- exploitation is wrong because it involves some benefiting ath the expense of others without giving anything (or enough) back. Taht si also not theft.
My theory is a bit different. I think there is no single principle of justice. Justice rather a a blance of burdens and benefits that represents a sort of compromise ion the class struggle, what the rulers can enforce versus what the workers will put up with.
There is a ruler's justice and a worker's justice -- if the workers get around to formulating it. That is called class conciousness. A distribution of property is unjust for one group or the other of it violates that compromise.
Btw, there may be no acceptable compromise -- if the workers have a revolutionary consciousness, they will want all the property, with none for the bosses.
It will occur to you that this raises problems about how to tell which is the correct justice. I have a theory about this, never mind that now.
The point is that however you tell which is right, violating the correct compromise about the proper distribution of bebefits and burderns is not theft. But it is, in my account, unjust.
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