Skip to main content
Log in

Should Republicans be Interested in Exploitation?

  • Published:
Res Publica Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Recent work in republican political theory has identified various forms of domination in the structures and relations of capitalist societies. A notable absence in much of this work is the concept of exploitation, which is generally treated as a predictable outcome of certain kinds of domination. This paper argues that the concept of exploitation can instead be conceived as a form of structural domination, understood in republican terms, and that adopting this conception has important implications for republican attempts to theorize modern capitalist societies. Building on existing domination accounts of exploitation, we argue that exploitation is a form of structurally constituted domination that enables a systemic illegitimate extraction of value. However, in contrast to competing accounts, domination is understood here in the republican terms of subjection to arbitrary power. We show that conceiving of domination in these terms not only makes the concept easily accessible from within a republican framework, but has advantages over competing accounts. Our argument also demonstrates why using the concept of exploitation will be useful for republican theorists. We show that a polity based on exploitative relations of production is antithetical to key republican commitments. These asymmetric power relationships undermine the economic and political independence of citizens and, crucially, constrain the political and economic ends that a polity will be effectively able to pursue. As such, exploitation should be a central preoccupation of republican political economy.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. These contributions include: Gourevitch (2018), Casassas and De Wispelaere (2015), O’Shea (2019), O’Shea (2020), Gonzalez-Ricoy (2020), Breen (2015), Claassen and Herzog (2019), and Herzog (2021).

  2. See Roberts (2017), Gourevitch (2015), Muldoon (2019), and Kohn (2019).

  3. See also Taylor (2013, p. 596).

  4. We do not use this definition substantively. We merely use it as a placeholder to facilitate the exposition of the different theories that fill in the terms in normatively different ways.

  5. For a literature review on exploitation see Vrousalis (2018).

  6. See Weirtheimer’s (1996) discussion of ‘transaction-specific fairness’.

  7. This example is offered by Vrousalis (2013).

  8. This is an especially influential critique among Marxists. That said, this critique remains important for all theorists that hold that capitalist production necessarily involves exploitative relations. For a defence of the luck egalitarian view see Warren (2017).

  9. For example, Vrousalis (2013, p. 150) offers the following example in support of this point: ‘Grasshopper spends the summer months singing, whereas Ant spends all his time working. When the winter comes, Grasshopper needs shelter, which she presently lacks. Ant has three options: she can do nothing to help Grasshopper, she can offer her costless shelter, or she can provide the same shelter on the condition that she signs a sweatshop contract’.

  10. See Goodin (1985) and Wood (1995).

  11. This example is problematic as it seems to allow that any time a person can be said to act for a reason other than ‘because they told me to’, we might have to say they are not dominated in the relevant sense. Our exploitation theory avoids this problem because it is based on a republican account of domination. We would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for bringing up this point.

  12. Vrousalis (2020) describes the neo-Aristotelian account of domination as follows: ‘Neo-Aristotelians object not to the existence of arbitrary power, as such, but rather to the nature of the action that power facilitates. Suppose A has power over B and is disposed to use it. These are two power facts. Most social relations involve power facts: a doctor has power over her patient, a teacher over the student, a coach over an athlete, and so on. When things go well, the motivations of the patient (in taking the medicine), of the student (in reading the book), and of the athlete (in running the marathon) do not reflect the power facts. That is, these actions are performed for the sake of values independent of the respective dispositions of powerful doctors, teachers, and coaches’.

  13. One might argue that this is not an important difference as the account will work in the same way regardless of which domination theory one uses. We do not have the space to argue in length for a republican account of domination. Yet, as the doctor example illustrates, the republican theory of domination that deals with tracked interests rather than power facts and reasons for acting avoids the problems associated with neo-Aristotelean account of domination.

  14. Pettit (1997, pp. 52–53).

  15. See Gädeke (2020a), Gädeke (2020b), and Jugov (2020)

  16. See Wollner (2019) and Zwolinski (2011).

  17. Note the similarity to the standard psychological components of domination often highlighted by Pettit (1997, p. 5).

  18. Contributions to critical republicanism include Gädeke (2020a, 2020b), Jugov (2020), and Laborde (2008). Contributions to the radical republican literature include Bryan (2021a), Cicerchia (2019), Gourevitch (2011, 2013, 2015), Muldoon (2019), O’Shea (2019, 2020), White (2011).

  19. Note that the interest that workers hold in being able to produce without selling their labour to a capitalist is a ‘common avowable interest’ of the kind which institutions should aim to promote. In contrast, the interest that capitalists have in being able to exploit workers is not a ‘common’ interest as it is not one which can be held by all citizens by virtue of their joint membership of a political community (Pettit 1997, pp. 198–199).

  20. See Gourevitch (2013) and Gädeke (2020a).

  21. For a historical discussion of this facet of domination with specific focus on patriarchal domination, see Coffee (2012).

  22. See Herzog (2021) and Preiss (2021).

  23. Note that this will be true for any account of exploitation.

References

  • Anderson, Elizabeth. 2017. Private government: How employers rules our lives (And why we don’t want to talk about it). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Arneson, Richard. 2016. Exploitation, domination, competitive markets, and un-fair division. Southern Journal of Philosophy 54 (S1): 9–30.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Breen, Keith. 2015. Freedom, republicanism, and workplace democracy. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 18 (4): 470–485.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bryan, Alexander. 2021a. The dominating effects of economic crises. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 24 (6): 884–908.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bryan, Alexander. 2021b. The material conditions of non-domination: Property, independence, and the means of production. European Journal of Political Theory. https://doi.org/10.1177/14748851211050620.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Casassas, David, and De Jurgen Wispelaere. 2015. Republicanism and the political economy of democracy. European Journal of Social Theory 19 (2): 283–300.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Claassen, Rutger, and Lisa Herzog. 2019. Why economic agency matters: An account of structural domination in the economic realm. European Journal of Political Theory. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474885119832181.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cicerchia, Lillian. 2019. Structural domination in the labor market. European Journal of Political Theory. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474885119851094.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Coffee, Alan. 2012. Mary Wollstonecraft, freedom and the enduring power of social domination. European Journal of Political Theory 12 (2): 116–135.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, G. A. 1979. The labor theory of value and the concept of exploitation. Philosophy and Public Affairs 8 (4): 338–360.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, G. A. 1988. History, labour, and freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Corvino, Fausto. 2019. Republican freedom in the labour market: Exploitation without impersonal domination. Theoria 66 (158): 103–131.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gädeke, Dorothea. 2020a. From neo-republicanism to critical republicanism. In Radical republicanism: recovering the tradition’s popular heritage, ed. Bruno Leipold, Karma Nabulsi and Stuart White, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Gädeke, Dorothea. 2020b. Does a mugger dominate? Episodic power and the structural dimension of domination. Journal of Political Philosophy 28 (2): 199–221.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gonzalez-Ricoy, Inigo. 2020. Ownership and control rights in democratic firms—A republican approach. Review of Social Economy 78 (3): 411–430.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodin, Robert. 1985. Protecting the vulnerable. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gourevitch, Alex. 2011. Labor and republican liberty. Constellations 18 (3): 431–454.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gourevitch, Alex. 2013. Labor republicanism and the transformation of work. Political Theory 41 (4): 591–617.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gourevitch, Alex. 2015. From slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth: Labor and republican liberty in the nineteenth century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gourevitch, Alex. 2018. The right to strike: A radical view. American Political Science Review 112 (4): 905–917.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Herzog, Lisa. 2021. Global reserve currencies from the perspective of structural global justice: Distribution and domination. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 24 (7): 931–953.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jugov, Tamara. 2020. Systemic domination as ground of justice. European Journal of Political Theory 19 (1): 47–66.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kohn, Margaret. 2019. Radical republicanism and solidarity. European Journal of Political Theory. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474885119881313.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Laborde, Cecile. 2008. Critical republicanism: The Hijab controversy and political philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Laborde, Cecile. 2010. Republicanism and global justice: A sketch. European Journal of Political Theory 9 (1): 48–69.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lovett, Frank. 2010. A general theory of domination and justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Marx, Karl. Capital, Vol 1. London: Penguin Books.

  • Muldoon, James. 2019. A socialist republican theory of freedom and government. European Journal of Political Theory. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474885119847606.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • O’Shea, Tom. 2019. Are workers dominated? Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 16 (1): 1–24.

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Shea, Tom. 2020. Socialist republicanism. Political Theory 48 (5): 548–572.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pettit, Philip. 1997. Republicanism: A theory of freedom and government. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pettit, Philip. 2012. On the people’s terms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Preiss, Joshua. 2021. Did we trade freedom for credit? Finance, domination, and the political economy of freedom. European Journal of Political Theory 20 (3): 486–509.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Roberts, William C. 2017. Marx’s inferno: The political theory of capital. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roemer, John. 1985. Should marxists be interested in exploitation? Philosophy and Public Affairs 14 (1): 30–65.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sample, Ruth. 2003. Exploitation: What it is and why it is wrong. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, Robert. 2013. Market freedom as antipower. American Political Science Review 107 (3): 593–602.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thompson, Michael J. 2013. Reconstructing republican freedom: A critique of the neo-republican concept of freedom as non-domination. Philosophy & Social Criticism 39 (3): 277–298.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vrousalis, Nicholas. 2013. Exploitation, vulnerability, and social domination. Philosophy & Public Affairs 41 (2): 131–157.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vrousalis, Nicholas. 2017. Freedom and republicanism in Roberts’ Marx. Capital & Class 41 (2): 378–383.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vrousalis, Nicholas. 2018. Exploitation: A primer. Philosophy Compass 13 (2): e12486.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vrousalis, Nicholas. 2020. The capitalist cage: Structural domination and collective agency in the market. Journal of Applied Philosophy. https://doi.org/10.1111/japp.12414.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Warren, Paul. 2017. Karl Marx and Wilt Chamberlain, or: Luck egalitarianism, exploitation, and the clean path to capitalism argument. Res Publica 23 (4): 453–473.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wertheimer, Alan. 1996. Exploitation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • White, Stuart. 2000. Rediscovering republican political economy. Imprints 4 (3): 213–235.

    Google Scholar 

  • White, Stuart. 2011. The republican critique of capitalism. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 14 (5): 561–579.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wollner, Gabriel. 2019. Anonymous exploitation: non-individual, non-agential and structural. Review of Social Economy 77 (2): 143–162.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wood, Allen. 1995. Exploitation. Social Philosophy and Policy 12: 136–158.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zwolinski, Matt. 2011. Structural exploitation. Social Philosophy and Policy 29 (1): 154–179.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alexander Bryan.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Bryan, A., Kouris, I. Should Republicans be Interested in Exploitation?. Res Publica 28, 513–530 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-021-09542-z

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-021-09542-z

Keywords

Navigation