Abstract

Human history is a history of the domination of some groups by others, sustained in part by the willing subordination of the members of dominated groups. How can this remarkable fact be explained? On Michael Rosen’s telling, some of the best political theorists of the early modern period, from Machiavelli through Rousseau and Hume, grappled with this question. But it was, of course, in Marx’s work that the problem of voluntary servitude received its most philosophically trenchant and historically influential treatment. Rosen’s central claim is that Marx ultimately failed to explain this phenomenon satisfactorily. He does think that at least one self-described Marxist, Walter Benjamin, advanced promising suggestions, and he concludes On Voluntary Servitude with his own sketch of a solution, drawing in part on Jon Elster’s reconstructions of Marxist positions. But, as Rosen makes painfully clear, we are still some way from a full understanding of why people voluntarily accept forms of political domination opposed to their own interests.