Showing papers in "Journal of Social Philosophy in 2019"

Workplace Democracy Implies Economic Democracy

Abstract: This article mounts a defense of economic democracy that piggybacks on argu-ments for workplace democracy. It is addressed to those republicans and egalitar-ians who are committed to workplace democracy. The article argues that those workplace democrats should, first, be opposed to private property, and, second, be committed to economic democracy, or—what amounts to the same thing—so-cialism. Workplace democracy is the idea that workers ought to possess control rights over the conditions of production in their places of work. Socialism is the idea that workers and citizens ought to possess control rights over the conditions of production in the economy as a whole. To be clear: I am not claiming that allrepublicans or democrats are socialists. All I am claiming is that republicans, democrats, and co-travelers who affirm workplace democracy thereby commit themselves to socialism. Those workplace democrats cannot disembark the dem-ocratic train at workplace democracy; they must ride it to the very end, and that end is socialism. Call this the piggyback argument.The piggyback argument proceeds as follows. I begin by identifying the fundamental pro tanto normative principles that ground the main contemporary arguments for workplace democracy: republican (Section 1) and political-egalitarian (Section 2).1 I then argue for two theses. First, that the full realization of these principles is undermined by the existence of private property in the means of production. This is the anti-property thesis. Second, that avowal of work-place democracy on the basis of these principles commits those who avow them to economic democracy. This is the socialism thesis (Sections 3 and 5). I then rebut two influential objections to the piggyback argument. The first draws on an argument due to David Ellerman and Carole Pateman (Section 4) and the second on a time-honored Keynesian stratagem in favor of private investment (Section 6). I conclude by considering some institutional implications, including the old model of worker control based on workers’ councils (Section 7).

Exploitation and Joint Action

Abstract: Recent years have seen a growing philosophical interest in the concept of exploitation as well as in putatively exploitative practices, such as commercial surrogacy, sweatshop labor, and medical research in the developing world. This article contributes to the philosophical debate in this area by focusing on a problem about exploitation that has remained largely unexamined until now. The debate has concentrated on the kind of situation where one party to a transaction or relationship, A, exploits another party, B, and A benefits himself/herself. At the same time, philosophers have for the most part ignored cases where A exploits B, but the gains A extracts from B accrue not (only) to A but (also) to a third party, C . This omission is striking because such cases are easily found in the real world. Clinical researchers and their sponsors may exploit research subjects to advance the interests of future patients. Sweatshops may exploit workers in poor countries on behalf of multinational firms and for the benefit of their customers. In fact, it is plausible to claim that, more often than not, several parties stand to gain from putatively exploitative practices in today’s globalized economy. For example, Iris Marion Young (2011, ch. 5) paints a vivid picture of the complex and multilayered network of actors (i.e., sweatshops, multinationals, intermediaries, distributors, retail and wholesale companies, individual and group customers, and so on) who make up one prominent such practice, the global apparel industry. Therefore, in order to be genuinely practically relevant, exploitation theory needs a better grasp of how third parties can be involved in exploitative transactions and arrangements and of the normative significance of such involvement. Young herself, while emphasizing that the circle of those bearing some (mostly forward-looking) responsibility in connection with such transactions and arrangements is much broader than commonly thought, does not systematically distinguish among different kinds of third-party involvement. Our work undertakes such an analysis. We distinguish between different types of cases corresponding to different kinds of involvement in exploitation by the third party. We also argue that these different types of involvement have different moral implications—especially as regards the remedial duties incurred by the third parties. Our main claim is that in many cases third-party beneficiaries can be properly construed as acting together with exploiters in bringing about and/or maintaining the exploitative relationship or transaction. Establishing joint action in such cases is important because, first,