On Exploitation In The Perspective Of Distributive Justice

Does exploitation exist in capitalist societies? The existence of exploitation is evident from an examination of reality: the successive strikes caused by exploitation and the growing gap between rich and poor are evidence of this.At the same time,it is exploitation that makes it possible to accumulate the injustices brought about by private ownership of the means of production from one generation to the next,undermining the right to development of the exploited and affecting the achievement of distributive justice,and should therefore be given theoretical attention.For this reason,this paper focuses on the theories of Nochick and John E.Romer,supplemented by discussions of the issue by Schumpeter,Pigou,Elster and others.Nochick,as a representative of ultra-liberalism,defends the idea that exploitation does not exist in capitalist society through the theory of rights and entitlements.Romer,on the other hand,uses an economic model and property relations approach to point out that the existence of exploitation can still be derived even based on Nochick’s premise of eligibility theory.For Nochick,the exploitation revealed by the classical theory of exploitation no longer exists in modern capitalist society: firstly,workers are not forced to sell their labour to the capitalist;they have the right and opportunity to acquire the means of production.Secondly,profit is a reward for the capitalist’s personal ability and willingness to take risks.Nochick offers the argument that in a voluntary competitive market,everything is done at the will of the individual.According to the theory of qualification,the individual has ownership of his or her labour and output.When a worker and a capitalist are in market conditions,both have the same right to access the means of production according to the theory of entitlement,but the worker is neither willing to invest and take risks,nor is he able to start a factory.So when the capitalist invests or opens a factory of his own free will,the worker works in the capitalist’s factory of his own free will,and there is no coercion or violation of his own will.At the same time,it is reasonable that the capitalist,by his ability,skill and daring to take risks,receives a return far above the workers’ labour.For this,Romer argues that exploitation also remains from the approach to property relations,whether or not workers are forced to sell their labour to the capitalist,and that it is not reasonable to consider profit as a reward to the capitalist.Romer’s argument is that exploitation is a loss suffered by a person that arises from different ownership of property-private ownership of the means of production-as a result of an unequal initial distribution of property.Property can be divided into tangible means of production(money,machinery,etc.)and intangible means of production(talents,skills,status,etc.),the difference being that the latter are non-transferable.When the initial distribution of property is unequal,we can say that a person suffers exploitation if the final output he obtains is less than the equal initial distribution kind of the situation.The inequality of distribution leads to unequal opportunities for the capitalist and the worker so that talents that the worker might develop and acquire are not developed and learned,thus creating a difference between the two talents.At the same time,private ownership of the means of production allows the results of this inequality to be passed on from generation to generation,which in turn accumulates and creates greater inequality.A theory of exploitation based on property relations leads to the conclusion that exploitation can exist without regard to individual rights,will and market transactions,i.e.even if the premises of Nochick’s theory of eligibility are acknowledged,it is still possible to reach the exact opposite conclusion to Nochick.Romer’s moral concern with exploitation reveals that it is rooted in the injustice of private ownership of the means of production,an injustice that harms workers at the level of rights and realities,and that it is a technical response to the Noachian interrogation of classical exploitation theory,modelled mathematically and economically,which objectively shows that exploitation exists because it is a sufficient and necessary condition for a positive rate of profit.necessary to generate a positive rate of profit.By showing the encounter between Nochick and Romer on the issue of voluntary labour and the distribution of profits,it is clear that exploitation exists not only in reality but also in theory,and that both the reality and the theory of exploitation call for us to correct the injustice of exploitation and remove the theoretical obstacles on the way to distributive justice.