Exploitation in Marx: what makes it unjust?

Abstract

… the money owner now strides in front as capitalist; the possessor of labour-power follows as his labourer. The one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on business; the other, timid and holding back, like one who is bringing his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but – a hiding. (Karl Marx, Capital ) 1. In the standard Marxist account of capitalist exploitation, workers are constrained by their propertylessness to sell their labour power to capitalists, who own all the means of production. Workers are thereby forced both to submit to capitalists′ directives and to yield some of what they produce to them: the workers keep part of what they produce, and the capitalists take the rest (the surplus product), for no return. Now, there exists a debate about whether or not Marx regarded capitalist exploitation as unjust . Some think it obvious that he did believe it to be unjust, and others think that he patently did not. I shall not pursue that debate here. Here I take for granted, what I have argued for elsewhere, that Marx did think that capitalist exploitation was unjust. That being given, let us return to the standard account of exploitation, sketched a moment ago, in order to ask: where, precisely, did Marx think that the injustice of exploitation lay? For notice that three logically distinct things occur in the Marxist account of exploitation, each of which carries a redolence of injustice.