Abstract
No thinker is more associated with the concept of exploitation than Marx. However, contemporary theorists do not tend to look to Marx for an account of what exploitation in general is, or why it is bad. This article addresses that neglect. It argues that The German Ideology formulates a general conception of exploitation as instrumentalization, whose harm may be construed by appeal to the test of contradiction in conception belonging to Kant’s Formula of the Law of Nature. The Grundrisse links Marx’s value-theoretic account of capitalist labour-exploitation to this general conception of exploitation as self-seeking action that fails the contradiction in conception test. Exploitation can then be rejected on grounds of community, rather than on autonomy-related grounds, as G.A. Cohen and Allen Wood favour. It also suggests a non-contradictory maxim principle of justice that counts against capitalism, while avoiding utopian appeal to equal rights.
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Notes
The Marx 1981 rendering, ‘exploitation and appropriation of the unpaid labour of others’, loses Marx’s appositional form, and mistranslates fremder as ‘of others’. Capital’s phrase Ausbeutung fremder Arbeit suffers a similar fate (MEW 23, p. 792/Marx, 1976, p. 931). Marx’s concept of ‘estrangement [Entfremdung]’ only adds to the importance of not misquoting or mistranslating fremd-. Marx used both terms together, e.g. to theorize money in Notes on James Mill (MEW 40, p. 446/MECW 3, p. 212).
German does not have separate words for freedom and liberty. The ‘Freiheit... proclaimed by the French revolution’ is liberty. The Marx 1973 rendering, ‘freedom’, is not optimal.
The final sentence appears in the accompanying footnote.
MECW 5 renders Selbstbetätigung as ‘spontaneous activity’. However, Selbstbetätigung includes the pronoun ‘selbst [self]’, which should be retained (cf. MEW 3, p. 72/MECW 5, p. 82). MECW 5 also unhelpfully renders fremd here as ‘extraneous’.
The Marx 1976 translation of Arbeitermaterial as ‘workers’ loses the connotation of instrumentalization.
The quantitative side of capitalist labour-exploitation is beyond this article’s scope. It is false, however, that ‘Marx dubs the ratio of surplus value to variable capital the “rate of exploitation” ’ (Wood, 2004, p. 250). The ‘degree of exploitation [Exploitationsgrad]’ (MEW 23, p. 232/Marx, 1976, p. 326) is measured in time, not value; Das Kapital never refers to a ‘rate of exploitation’.
By construction, Ausbeutung (exploitation) is related to Beute (loot), an exclusive advantage.
If exploitation has several beneficiaries, must each, or just one, cause harm? The first-person perspective of Marx’s phrase cannot cope with this question. The causal condition could be restated: harm is caused by a beneficiary, their agent or discretion-bearing intermediary. There is no space to pursue this issue here.
To say that action causing harm is an intended means for the benefit is not to say that harm is intended.
Wood (2004), Chapter 2, discusses this claim astutely. However, it plays no part in Wood’s discussion of exploitation in Chapter 16.
GI’s dismissal of Kant’s conception of ‘human will’ (MEW 3, p. 176/MECW 5, p. 195) is not incompatible with use of the CC test (as it is with appeal to FH, or use of the CW test).
It is better to translate will as ‘wills’, not ‘wants’ (MECW 5). Only ‘wills’ suggests a double standard between two types of ‘relat[ing]’.
The Marx 1976 translation of Motiv as ‘force’ is poor. An elemental movement can have force. A Motiv is an attribute of action performed for a reason.
The Marx 1973 rendering of the bracketed phrase, ‘the worker would be employing means which absolutely contradict their purpose’, is inaccurate. Aufheben is not widersprechen (to contradict). ‘Contradict their purpose’ can convey a mistake in a choice of means to a possible goal, instead of an unachievable end. Moreover, eignen (own), in ‘their own end’, i.e. the means’ own end, is not translated. These inaccuracies disguise the Grundrisse’s use of the CC test, for example, from Elster (1985, p. 26).
An ends-based argument against capitalist exploitation also applies irrespective of ‘control by workers’ (Sensat, 1984, p. 37) in their immediate production process.
For further thoughts on recognition in Marx’s communist society, see Furner, 2011.
Translations of Bazard, Honneth and Marx are by the author. Important nuances are explained. Double references are first to the original language, then a translation. Volumes/page numbers for Kant citations accord with (1902-) Immanuel Kants Schriften. Berlin: de Gruyter.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to Lawrence Hamilton and Thad Metz, who commented on previous drafts, as well as the editors and four anonymous referees. Early versions were presented at the PSSA conference in Cape Town, January 2011; the ‘Marx on Freedom and Community’ workshop, University of Sussex, April 2011, organized by Andrew Chitty; and the Historical Materialism conference in London, November 2012.
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Furner, J. Marx with Kant on exploitation. Contemp Polit Theory 14, 23–44 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/cpt.2013.49
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/cpt.2013.49