--- Rakesh Bhandari <bhandari at berkeley.edu> wrote:
> very preliminary notes on a paper on what's wrong
> with exploitation,
> not sure how to reference author on this list. And
> haven't had time
> to read it as opposed to get the gist of it.
Thanks for being careful about that. You can refer to the author in the third person.
>
> let's not forget what Marx thought was right about
> capitalist
> exploitation, for this is what is distinctive about
> his position!
I'm sure the author wouldn't disagree; he says that Marx condemns unnecessary unfreedom, and the "unnecessary" is supposed to capture the point taht some of the unfreedom due to exploitation may be in various circumstances historically necessary.
> Indeed that Marx described the relation through what
> was then an
> abstruse French term shows that he was not simply
> condemning
> capitalism for its injustice or unfreedom. The
> negative connotations
> today are largely the result of Marx's usage and
> theory!
Well, as the author notes, Marx uses the German Ausbeutung.
>
> What's right with exploitation? Capital has been
> able to achieve
> historically unprecedented levels of exploitation
> through compelling
> the capitalization of surplus value, the development
> of the
> productive forces, the laying of the basis for a
> higher form of
> society.
Right. But Marx thought that Capital had exhausted its progressive role even in his day. Maybe that was premature, but it's not crazy to think that it has largely done so today.
It's not until that basis has been laid and
> transition is
> itself compelled does Marx argue that exploitation
> can and should be
> eliminated. Unfreedom is not in itself warrant to
> condemn
> exploitation tout court.
No, and the author does not say that it is.
>
> That's just a normative critique repackaged in terms
> of unfreedom
> rather than injustice.
>
It is a normative critique. The author rejects the Woodsian view that Marx is a relativist or an amoralist. The normative "voice" in his writing is inescapable, whatever his official theory of value may have been. Marx, as you noted, made capitalism dirty work and exploitation seem like a bad thing. And he was harshly negative even about necessary exploitation.
> And is it meaningful to rank societies in terms of
> the achievement of
> freedom. Society depends on unfreedom, the question
> is simply which
> kinds are not recognized as such, whose freedom is
> secured at the
> expense of whose. We seem to need a bit more of
> Nietzschean/Foucauldian skepticism here.
This requires some explanation.
>
> Yet Marx was a social scientist (because he was
> not a nice guy, he
> was not a philosopher like Aristotle or Kant);
Agreed.
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