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free market. In this case the workers are subject to the power of the capitalists indirectly. Their power to extract surplus labor is via the market and not open to view. And the relation between capitalists and workers is one of antagonism; the members of these classes are alienated from one another, and are in an economic system which tends to make individuals mutually indifferent to one another’s concerns.
3. Thus Marx’s claim about the absence of alienation and exploitation in a society of freely associated producers I take to be this: If we survey these four kinds, or aspects, of alienation, then in a society of freely associated producers, alienation disappears, just as ideological consciousness disappears. This is because all may participate in the democratic and public planning process and everyone does their share in carrying out the plan that results.
§5. Absence of Exploitation
1.The second feature of the second requirement of a society of freely associated producers is the absence of exploitation. Recall that for there to be exploitation, it is not sufficient that s/v > 0, where s is surplus or unpaid labor, and v is labor necessary to produce goods for the worker’s own consumption. This is satisfactory in capitalism since capitalists control and benefit from surplus value. But in a society of freely associated producers— a socialist society—there is no surplus or unpaid labor. This is because in a socialist society, as in any just society, there must be a surplus to be used for the benefit of the worker—for social expenses such as public health, education, and welfare. Also, as Marx says: “A definite quantity of surplus labor is required as insurance against accidents, and by the necessary and progressive expansion of the process of reproduction in keeping with the development of the needs and the growth of population” (Capital, Vol. I, Tucker, p. 440). Thus, as we saw, what makes s/v > 0 exploitation is the nature of the basic structure of society within which it arises. The reason there is no exploitation under socialism lies in the fact that economic activity follows a public democratic plan in which all participate equally. This respects the equal claim rooted on Marx’s idea of justice that all have equal access to society’s resources.
2.Recall the main features of the background institutions of capitalism
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that lead to exploitation (make the ratio s/v > 0 an indicator of exploitation). They are simply the prerogatives of private ownership in the means of production, namely:
(a)The aggregate social surplus (total of things produced by surplus labor) falls into the hands of other people (than the workers) who own the means of production (via procedures of the legal order, just contracts, etc.). Thus the owners as a class own the output of production.
(b)The owners of the means of production also exercise autocratic control over the labor process within the firm and industry. They and not the workers decide on the introduction and use of new machinery, the extent and the details of the division of labor, and the rest.
(c)The owners of the means of production also determine the extent and the direction of the flow of new investment; they decide—each firm individually (assuming competition)—where their surplus funds are best invested to maximize long-run profit, etc. Thus, this class determines (as a whole but not jointly) the use to be made of the social surplus, and the rate of growth of the economy.
3. Thus, the upshot is that Marx thinks that when these prerogatives are in the hands of freely associated producers, and exercised through a public and democratic economic plan that all understand, and in the framing of which all may participate, there is no exploitation. Nor is there ideological consciousness or alienation. A society of freely associated producers achieves the “unity of theory and practice.”
Put another way, their shared understanding of their social world, as expressed in the public economic plan, is a true description of their social world. It is also a description of a social world that is just and good. It is a world in which individuals fulfill their true human needs for freedom and self-development, while at the same time recognizing the claim of all to have equal access to society’s resources.
§6. Full Communism: First Defect of Socialism Overcome
1. So far, in surveying the idea of a society of freely associated producers, my aim has been to stress the importance for Marx of the idea of a public and democratically arrived at economic plan, which all understand and in which all participate.
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He believed that if a society of freely associated producers follows such a plan, ideological consciousness disappears and there is no alienation or exploitation. A unity of theory and practice obtains: we understand why we do what we do, and what we do realizes our natural powers under conditions of freedom. In the first stage of communism—following tradition, call this stage “socialism”—however, there is still much inequality, due to the inequality of native endowments and to the fact that labor is rewarded for its duration and intensity in consumption goods. This reward to unequal endowments has been called socialist exploitation.7
There is also still division of labor, since, as Marx suggests (Gotha, Tucker, p. 531), it is only in the higher phase of communist society—again, following tradition, call this “communism”—that division of labor is surpassed. Marx seems to think of these two defects of inequality and division of labor as inevitable in a society that has just emerged after a prolonged struggle from capitalist society, as in the case of the first stage, socialism.
I am going to accept, for our purposes here, Marx’s idea of a public and democratic economic plan. I accept also his thought that such a plan eliminates ideological consciousness as well as alienation and exploitation (except possibly for the socialist exploitation, as defined by Roemer, above). There are many difficulties with the idea of a public and democratic economic plan, and Marx leaves the details extremely vague. He left it as a problem for the future. I shall not discuss those difficulties. Instead, I shall discuss several other questions closer to our concerns with Marx’s ideas about justice and his criticism of the liberal tradition.
2. I start by discussing the first defect of socialism, the inequality of shares of consumption goods that results from unequal individual endowments, which results as a “natural privilege.” Recall the passage from Gotha (Tucker, pp. 530–531):
“Equal right . . . is still in principle bourgeois right.”
“Equal right is still . . . stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation.”
“The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply.” “Equality consists [in applying] an equal standard, labor.”
“But one man is superior to another physically or mentally and so supplies more labor in the same time.”
“Equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor.”
7. See John Roemer, Value, Exploitation, and Class (New York: Horwood, 1986), pp. 77f.
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“Unequal individual endowment and thus productive capacity [are recognized] as natural privileges.”
“It is therefore, a right of inequality in its content, like every right.” “Further, [some have larger families and other differing sound claims].” “To avoid all these defects, right instead of being equal would have to
be unequal.”
3.Marx seems to accept this inequality as something inevitable in the first phase of communist society. He says: “Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby” (Gotha, Tucker, p. 531). So, we have to wait for economic conditions to change.
But why do we simply have to wait for conditions to change? Why, e.g., can’t society, adopting a principle like the Difference Principle,8 impose various taxes etc. and adjust incentives so that the greater endowments of some work to the advantage of those with fewer endowments? Is it simply an oversight on Marx’s part that he doesn’t think of this?
Following G. A. Cohen, let’s say that Marx holds what we may call a libertarian view that may be defined as follows:
(a) “Each person has full self-ownership in his own person and powers; and so each person has the moral right to do what he likes with himself, provided that he does not violate the self-ownership rights of anyone else.” Therefore,
(b) “He may not be required on pain of coercive penalty to help anyone else, unless he has contracted to do so.”
Proposition (b) is viewed as a consequence of (a).9
4.Still following Cohen, libertarianism, so defined, “may be combined with other . . . principles with respect to those productive resources which are not persons”—land and minerals and powers of nature. What we may call right-wing libertarianism (Robert Nozick in Anarchy, State and Utopia) “adds that self-owning persons can acquire similarly strong rights in un-
8.The Difference Principle is the second part of the second of the two principles of justice in justice as fairness, which states that social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society. Rawls, Restatement, pp. 42f.
9.G. A. Cohen: “Self Ownership, Communism, and Equality,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 64 (Supplement), 1990, pp. 1f.
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equal amounts of external natural resources. Left-wing libertarianism is, by contrast, egalitarian with respect to the distribution of raw external resources: Henry George, Leon Walras, Herbert Spencer, and Hillel Steiner have occupied this position.”10
I would not say that Marx is a left-libertarian, as he certainly would not put it this way. But it is a view that fits what he says in several respects:
(a)First, it fits his critique of capitalism as we have surveyed it. That critique bases exploitation on the fact that capitalists own all the means of production. Now, I have suggested that on Marx’s view everyone has an equal claim of access to and use of these resources. It is the class monopoly of the means of production that is the root of exploitation.
(b)Marx does not suggest that the better endowed should be required to earn their greater consumption shares in ways that contribute to the well-being of those less well endowed. Beyond respecting everyone’s equal right of access to external natural resources, no one owes anything to anyone else, other than what they want to do voluntarily. Those less well off don’t lack access to external resources; they are simply less well endowed.
(c)This attitude is in line with Marx’s view in The German Ideology. It is not one in which people are told to help one another; or have impressed on them by its culture various duties and obligations. Rather, it is a society without such moral teaching, a society in which people have no serious conflicts of interests with one another, and may do as they have a mind to do, with division of labor overcome (The German Ideology, Tucker, p. 160).
I conclude that Marx would reject the difference principle and similar principles. As Cohen puts it, he thinks of communism as radical egalitar- ianism—equal access to society’s resources—without coercion. This last means that no one can be required to benefit himself only in ways that contribute to others’ well-being. That would be coercive. It would amount to giving rights to some people (those being aided) as to how other people shall use their powers—granting that all respect the left-libertarian principle of right to equal access. I, on the other hand, think we must introduce principles like the Difference Principle or other such measures to maintain background justice over time.
10. Ibid., p. 118.
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