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I propose to you, then, a definition of exploitation that comes from the writings of William H. Hutt: violence or threat of violence implied in the negotiation of anything affecting the life of a worker or employer.  In that sense, the present system is exploitation.  Workers are robbed of wages.  Employers are robbed of profits.  Poor people and young people especially are robbed of opportunity.
~ Lew Rockwell
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  • Government was instituted for the purposes of common defence, and those who hold the reins of government have an equitable, natural right to an honorable support from the same principle that "the laborer is worthy of his hire."  But then the same community which they serve ought to be the assessors of their pay.  Governors have no right to seek and take what they please; by this, instead of being content with the station assigned them, that of honorable servants of the society, they would soon become absolute masters, despots, and tyrants.  Hence, as a private man has a right to say what wages he will give in his private affairs, so has a community to determine what they will give and grant of their substance for the administration of public affairs.  And, in both cases, more are ready to offer their service at the proposed and stipulated price than are able and willing to perform their duty.
  • The spread-the-work schemes, in brief, rest on the same sort of illusion that we have been considering.  The people who support such schemes think only of the employment they would provide for particular persons or groups; they do not stop to consider what their whole effect would be on everybody.

    The spread-the-work schemes rest also, as we began by pointing out, on the false assumption that there is just a fixed amount of work to be done.  There could be no greater fallacy.  There is no limit to the amount of work to be done as long as any human need or wish that work could fill remains unsatisfied.  In a modern exchange economy, the most work will be done when prices, costs, and wages are in the best relations to each other.

  • All production demands the co-operation of the material and personal factors of production: it is the purposeful union of land, capital, and labour.  How much each of these has contributed physically to the result of production cannot be ascertained.  How much of the value of the product is to be attributed to the separate factors is a question which is answered daily and hourly by buyers and sellers on the market, though the scientific explanation of this process has achieved satisfactory results only in very recent years, and these results are still far from final.  The formation of market prices for all factors of production attributes to each a weight that corresponds to its part in production.  Each factor receives in the price the yield of its collaboration.  The labourer receives in wages the full produce of his labour.  In the light of the subjective theory of value therefore that particular demand of Socialism appears quite absurd.  But to the layman it is not so.  The habit of speech with which it is expressed derives from the view that value comes from labour alone.  Whoever takes this view of value will see in the demand for the abolition of private ownership in the means of production a demand for the full produce of labour for the labourer.  At first it is a negative demand—exclusion of all income not based on labour.  But as soon as one proceeds to construct a system on this principle insurmountable obstacles arise, difficulties which are the consequence of the untenable theories of the formation of value which have established the principle of the right to the full produce of labour.  All such systems have been wrecked on this.  Their authors have had to confess finally that what they wanted was nothing else than the abolition of the income of individuals not based on labour, and that only socialization of the means of production could achieve this.  Of the right to the full produce of labour, which had occupied minds for decades, nothing remains but the slogan—effective for propaganda, of course—demanding that 'unearned' non-labour income should be abolished.
  • Government spending cannot create additional jobs.  If the government provides the funds required by taxing the citizens or by borrowing from the public, it abolishes on the one hand as many jobs as it creates on the other.  If government spending is financed by borrowing from the commercial banks, it means credit expansion and inflation.  If in the course of such an inflation the rise in commodity prices exceeds the rise in nominal wage rates, unemployment will drop.  But what makes unemployment shrink is precisely the fact that real wage rates are falling.
  • In a market-based labor contract, there is no exploitation.  People come to agreement based on their own perceptions of mutual benefit.  A person who believes it is better to work for $1 an hour rather than sit at home doing nothing is free to make that contract.  In fact, a person who works for a negative wage—who pays for an internship, for example—is free to make that deal too.

    I propose to you, then, a definition of exploitation that comes from the writings of William H. Hutt: violence or threat of violence implied in the negotiation of anything affecting the life of a worker or employer.  In that sense, the present system is exploitation.  Workers are robbed of wages.  Employers are robbed of profits.  Poor people and young people especially are robbed of opportunity.

  • The essence of exchange is the transfer of title.  Here's the essence of what happens when I buy a gallon of milk from my grocer.  I tell him that I hold title to these three dollars and he holds title to the gallon of milk.  Then, I offer: If you transfer your title to that gallon of milk, I will transfer title to these three dollars.

    Whenever there's voluntary exchange, the only clear conclusion that a third party can make is that both parties, in their opinion, perceived themselves as better off as a result of the exchange; otherwise, they wouldn't have exchanged.  I was free to keep my three dollars, and the grocer was free to keep his milk.  If you think it's obvious that both parties benefit from voluntary exchange, then how come we hear pronouncements about worker exploitation?

    Say you offer me a wage of $2 an hour.  I'm free to either accept or reject your offer.  So what can be concluded if I'm seen working for you at $2 an hour?  One clear conclusion is that I must have seen myself as being better off taking your offer than my next best alternative.  All other alternatives were less valuable, or else why would I have accepted the $2 offer?  How appropriate is it to say that you're exploiting me when you've given me my best offer?  Rather than using the term exploitation, you might say you wish I had more desirable alternatives.

    While people might characterize $2 an hour as exploitation, they wouldn't say the same about $50 an hour.  Therefore, for the most part, when people use the term exploitation in reference to voluntary exchange, they simply disagree with the price.  If we equate price disagreement with exploitation, then exploitation is everywhere.  For example, I not only disagree with my salary, I also disagree with the prices of Gulfstream private jets.

    By no means do I suggest that you purge your vocabulary of the term exploitation.  It's an emotionally valuable term to use to trick others, but in the process of tricking others, one need not trick himself.


State Socialism and Anarchism by Benjamin R. Tucker

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First in the importance of its evil influence they considered the money monopoly, which consists of the privilege given by the government to certain individuals, or to individuals holding certain kinds of property, of issuing the circulating medium, a privilege which is now enforced in this country by a national tax of ten per cent. upon all other persons who attempt to furnish a circulating medium and by State laws making it a criminal offense to issue notes as currency.  …  For…if the business of banking were made free to all, more and more persons would enter into it until the competition should become sharp enough to reduce the price of lending money to the labor cost…  This facility of acquiring capital will give an unheard-of impetus to business, and consequently create an unprecedented demand for labor,—a demand which will always be in excess of the supply, directly the contrary of the present condition of the labor market.  Then will be seen an exemplification of the words of Richard Cobden that, when two laborers are after one employer, wages fall, but, when two employers are after one laborer, wages rise.  Labor will then be in a position to dictate its wages, and will thus secure its natural wage, its entire product.  Thus the same blow that strikes interest down will send wages up.
~ Benjamin R. Tucker

Benj. R. Tucker, State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, and Wherin They Differ (10 March 1888), Liberty 5, no. 16, whole no. 120).

  • First, then, State Socialism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by the government, regardless of individual choice.  Marx, its founder, concluded that the only way to abolish the class monopolies was to centralize and consolidate all industrial and commercial interests, all productive and distributive agencies, in one vast monopoly in the hands of the State.  The government must become banker, manufacturer, farmer, carrier, and merchant, and in these capacities must suffer no competition.  …  Society must seize the capital which belongs to it, by the ballot if it can, by revolution if it must.  Once in possession of it, it must administer it on the majority principle though its organ, the State, utilize it in production and distribution, fix all prices by the amount of labor involved, and employ the whole people in its workshops, farms, stores, etc.  The nation must be transformed into a vast bureaucracy, and every individual into a State official.  Everything must be done on the cost principle, the people having no motive to make a profit out of themselves.  Individuals not being allowed to own capital, no one can employ another, or even himself.  Every man will be a wage receiver, and the State the only wage payer.  He who will not work for the State must starve, or, more likely, go to prison.  All freedom of trade must disappear.  Competition must be utterly wiped out.  All industrial and commercial activity must be centred in one vast, enormous, all-inclusive monopoly.  The remedy for monopolies is monopoly.

    Such is the economic programme of State Socialism as adopted from Karl Marx.

    • Page 2, ¶ 11–12.
  • This brings us to Anarchism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the State should be abolished.

    When Warren and Proudhon, in prosecuting their search for justice to labor, came face to face with the obstacle of class monopolies, they saw that these monopolies rested upon Authority, and concluded that the thing to be done was, not to strengthen this Authority and thus make monopoly universal, but to utterly uproot Authority and give full sway to the opposite principle, Liberty, by making competition, the antithesis of monopoly, universal.  They saw in competition the great leveler of prices to the labor cost of production.  In this they agreed with the political economists.  They query then naturally presented itself why all prices do not fall to labor cost; where there is any room for incomes acquired otherwise than by labor; in a word, why the usurer, the receiver of interest, rent, and profit, exists.  The answer was found in the present one-sidedness of competition.  It was discovered that capital had so manipulated legislation that unlimited competition is allowed in supplying productive labor, thus keeping wages down to the starvation point, or as near it as practicable; that a great deal of competition is allowed in supplying distributive labor, or the labor of the mercantile classes, thus keeping, not the prices of goods, but the merchants' actual profits on them, down to a point somewhat approximating equitable wages for the merchants' work; but that almost no competition at all is allowed in supplying capital, upon the aid of which both productive and distributive labor are dependent for their power of achievement, thus keeping the rate of interest on money, of house-rent and ground-rent, and of manufacturers' profits on patent-protected and tariff-protected goods, at as high a point as the necessities of the people will bear.

    • Pages 2–3, ¶ 18–19.
  • First in the importance of its evil influence they considered the money monopoly, which consists of the privilege given by the government to certain individuals, or to individuals holding certain kinds of property, of issuing the circulating medium, a privilege which is now enforced in this country by a national tax of ten per cent. upon all other persons who attempt to furnish a circulating medium and by State laws making it a criminal offense to issue notes as currency.  It is claimed that the holders of this privilege control the rate of interest, the rate of rent of houses and buildings, and the prices of goods,—the first directly, and the second and third indirectly.  For, say Proudhon and Warren, if the business of banking were made free to all, more and more persons would enter into it until the competition should become sharp enough to reduce the price of lending money to the labor cost, which statistics show to be less than three fourths of one per cent.  In that case the thousands of people who are now deterred from going into business by the ruinously high rates which they must pay for capital with which to start and carry on business will find their difficulties removed.  If they have property which they do not desire to convert into money by sale, a bank will take it as collateral for a loan of a certain proportion of its market value at less than one per cent. discount.  If they have no property, but are industrious, honest, and capable, they will generally be able to get their individual notes endorsed by a sufficient number of known and solvent parties; and on such business paper they will be able to get a loan at a bank on similarly favorable terms.  Thus interest will fall at a blow.  The banks will really not be lending capital at all, but will be doing business on the capital of their customers, the business consisting in an exchange of the known and widely available credits of the banks for the unknown and unavailable, but equality good, credits of the customers, and a charge therefor of less than one per cent., not as interest for the use of capital, but as pay for the labor of running the banks.  This facility of acquiring capital will give an unheard-of impetus to business, and consequently create an unprecedented demand for labor,—a demand which will always be in excess of the supply, directly the contrary of the present condition of the labor market.  Then will be seen an exemplification of the words of Richard Cobden that, when two laborers are after one employer, wages fall, but, when two employers are after one laborer, wages rise.  Labor will then be in a position to dictate its wages, and will thus secure its natural wage, its entire product.  Thus the same blow that strikes interest down will send wages up.  But this is not all.  Down will go profits also.  For merchants, instead of buying at high prices on credit, will borrow money of the banks at less than one per cent., buy at low prices for cash, and correspondingly reduce the prices of their goods to their customers.  And with the rest will go house-rent.  For no one who can borrow capital at one per cent. with which to build a house of his own, will consent to pay rent to a landlord at a higher rate than that.  Such is the vast claim made by Proudhon and Warren as to the results of the simple abolition of the money monopoly.
    • Page 3, ¶ 24.
  • Third, the tariff monopoly, which consists in fostering production at high prices and under unfavorable conditions by visiting with the penalty of taxation those who patronize production at low prices and under favorable conditions.  The evil to which this monopoly gives rise might more properly be called misusury than usury, because it compels labor to pay, not exactly for the use of capital, but rather for the misuse of capital.  The abolition of this monopoly would result in a great reduction in the prices of all articles taxed, and this saving to the laborers who consume these articles would be another step toward securing to the laborer his natural wage, his entire product.
    • Page 3, ¶ 26.

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The problem of ideology ... has especially to do with the concepts and the languages of practical thought which stabilize a particular form of power and domination; or which reconcile and accommodate the mass of the people to their subordinate place in the social formation. ~ Stuart Hall
 
In the sense used by Marx and Engels, the concept of ideology was intended to mean forms of social consciousness which prevent people from realising that their thinking about the world is determined by some conditions which do not depend on them and which are not themselves ingredients of consciousness. In ideological thinking, people imagine that the logic of thinking itself rules their consciousness and they are organically incapable of being aware of the social situations and of the interests which mould their mental work. ~ Leszek Kolakowski
 
Ideologies involve a mistake about their origin: agents think that the ideology arose because of its responsiveness to epistemically relevant considerations (e.g., evidence, reasons, etc.), when, in fact, it arose only because it was responsive to the interests of the dominant economic class in the existing economic system. ~ Brian Leiter
  • The problem of ideology ... has especially to do with the concepts and the languages of practical thought which stabilize a particular form of power and domination; or which reconcile and accommodate the mass of the people to their subordinate place in the social formation.
    • Stuart Hall, "The Problem of Ideology-Marxism without Guarantees," in Marx:100 Years On (London: 1983), p. 59
  • In the sense used by Marx and Engels, the concept of ideology was intended to mean forms of social consciousness which prevent people from realising that their thinking about the world is determined by some conditions which do not depend on them and which are not themselves ingredients of consciousness. In ideological thinking, people imagine that the logic of thinking itself rules their consciousness and they are organically incapable of being aware of the social situations and of the interests which mould their mental work.
  • Ideologies involve a mistake about their origin: agents think that the ideology arose because of its responsiveness to epistemically relevant considerations (e.g., evidence, reasons, etc.), when, in fact, it arose only because it was responsive to the interests of the dominant economic class in the existing economic system.
    • Brian Leiter, “Morality Critics,” The Oxford Handbook of Continental Philosophy (2007).
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