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Though "unjust" in this sense, the capitalist/wage-labourer relation isn't "unjust" in a juridical or moralistic sense.
It doesn't violate the "laws of property that are based on commodity production."
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J.D. -- This is a different question from a previous thread. That was about the two moments of the capital/labour relationship, one of which, the exchange of equivalents, is said to be fair by e.g. Allen Wood.
Ted seems to be saying the whole relationship is not unjust because it is legal. How about Nuremberg?
I have been arguing that the relationship is an a-moral economic one -- a business, not a charity, as it is defended against moral demands. But Ted's formulation reminds us of the place of the political. The Marxist emphasis on the economic can lead us to be forgetful of the political, which can be the arena of moral class conflict, even over the economic.
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T.W. -- Moralistic judgment is invalid because the "injustice" of the capitalist issues from a lack of the "power" required for fully rational self-determination, a lack for which the capitalist is not "responsible" because it itself issues from the incompatibility of the internal social relations that define capitalism with those required for the development of "complete virtue."
As is claimed in The Holy Family, "the propertied class and the class of the proletariat present the same human self-estrangement." In the case of the proletariat, however, self-estrangement is compatible with, and, indeed, facilitates, the development of the "virtue" required to transform capitalist relations into those from which all barriers to the development of "complete virtue" have been removed.
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/holy-family/ch04.htm>
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J.D. -- The "environmental excuse" should be used on behalf of the oppressed, but not of the oppressor.
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T.W. -- Nietzsche claims the psychological source of the inappropriate moralistic "ought" is unmastered instinctive sadism.
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J.D. -- Nietzsche claims the psychological source of the Golden Rule is unmastered instinctive sadism.