Two exploitations

Bryan Caplan directs us to John Calhoun's theory of class - which raises a point which should embarrass quite a few people.
Calhoun says:

The necessary result, then, of the unequal fiscal action of the government is, to divide the community into two great classes; one consisting of those who, in reality, pay the taxes, and, of course, bear exclusively the burthen of supporting the government; and the other, of those who are the recipients of their proceeds, through disbursements, and who are, in fact, supported by the government; or, in fewer words, to divide it into tax-payers and tax-consumers.

There's an obvious parallel here with Marx's theory of exploitation.
To Marx, bosses deny workers the full fruits of their labour. To Calhoun and anti-statists, the state does so. Both believe these relations of exploitation are accompanied by relations of domination and loss of freedom for the exploited.
Which raises the questions. Why have Marxists traditionally been relaxed about state exploitation? Why have anti-statists been relaxed about capitalist exploitation? Is the difference a mere empirical one (capitalist exploitation is/is not efficient whereas state exploitation isn't/is)? Or could it be that exploitation isn't an interesting or morally relevant concept? 

Comments

[Kit]

"Why have anti-statists been relaxed about capitalist exploitation?"

Because capitalist exploitation is voluntary.

[Phil Hunt]

"Because capitalist exploitation is voluntary."

So is state exploitation, provided you live in a country that allows people to emigrate.

[mat]

"So is state exploitation, provided you live in a country that allows people to emigrate."

But why should the state have the right to forcibly exploit the person in the first place? Your logic can be used to dismiss almost any complaint about governments.

[Kit]

Phil, your statement should have read:
"So is state exploitation, provided you live in a country that THE STATE allows people to emigrate."
Hardly voluntary when the state decides what is or not voluntary.

[Peter Risdon]

Or perhaps that Marx was entirely wrong to regard capitalism in terms of exploitation rather than facilitation: people provide capital to facilitate entrepreneurs in their activities, in return for which they get a share of the proceeds. As this happens, workers benefit from employment and, albeit indirectly as stakeholders in funds, they gain from the capital return as well, especially in their pensions. Zero exploitation. Outwith these processes, the worker's labour has no value at all. Imagine most employees trying to do their job in complete isolation.

In a reasonable market, the employee can change job without much personal disruption if they aren't happy. To equate this with emigration - the loss of country, family, possibly language, and everything familiar, is genuinely bizarre.

[dearieme]

The state is a monopoly. Lots of anti-marxists disapprove of capitalist monopolies too (while suspecting that few last long without state support).

[Luis Enrique]

capitalist exploitation is not voluntary with imperfect markets, such that excess profits are made.

One problem with the Marxist construction of exploitation (as I understand it from having read half a Roemer book) is that a merchant banker on £500,000 may be exploited if her company makes £1000,000 from her labours, but a factory worker may not be exploited on £13,000 if the factory is only making whatever return you decide qualifies as zero economic profit. So it's not obvious to me how much use exploitation is as a welfare concept, I don't know about moral.

I don't know either what Marxism has to say about excess profit (exploitation) as an engine for growth and hence improved standards of living. Is there a parallel with state 'exploitation', as an engine of improved standards of living too? I guess you can make that argument. Both varieties of exploitation can be judged on how effectively they raise real wages, and there's no reason for private and state exploitation to be equally effective in this regard.

Plus is always struck me that non-capitalist societies would have to extract labour surplus anyway, to pay for the additional state apparatus needed in economic planning and enforcement, to fund investment and to prop up loss making bits of the economy - if so, is it really correct to call exploitation - in the sense of a residual claimant to profits - being a feature unique to capitalism at all?

[Marcin Tustin]

I suspect that it is pure question of sympathy and class interest. I think the real question is whether ethics has any meaning beyond a system preferences, and I say it does not.

[Laurent GUERBY]

capital is 1$ = 1 vote

state is 1 person = 1 vote

Non zero state is a simple mechanism to revert potentially damaging trends in capital concentration.

[Kevin Carson]

The left wing of the free market movement, and the free market wing of the socialist movement, both see capitalist exploitation as fundamentally rooted in and enabled by state exploitation. Economic exploitation takes place within a framework of laws that 1) create market entry barriers for the supply of land and capital, 2) thereby make land and capital artificially scarce, expensive and inaccessible to labor, 3a) enable owners of land and capital to draw scarcity rents backed by state-enforced privilege, and 3b) force labor to sell itself under conditions of unequal exchange.

So contra Kit, "exploitation" by definition is not voluntary. And a free market by definition is non-exploitative. The existence of capitalist exploitation means that we're not dealing with a free market. Hence the distinction that some make between the free market and capitalism--the latter being a system of political economy in which the capitalist controls the state and the state intervenes in the market on behalf of capitalists.

[scumble]

I really don't like that term of "market imperfection", as it's loaded with the idea that someone knows how to make a "perfect market". It also obscures the fact that the reason some people make far more money than they should is not some "natural" phenomenon of the market, but the result of purposeful action by a certain section of the population. At least it seems that way.

[Mark Wadsworth]

Every comment here has a lot of truth in it, but I think Peter Risdon's is probably the best.

[chris]

Surely, the difference between an ability to emigrate and to leave one's company is only a matter of degree. For example, a Dutchman with high job-specific human capital might well find it harder to change jobs than move to Germany or Belgium. Are disagreements about the empirical importance of such cases really what divides Marxists and anti-statists?

[Roger Thornhill]

A matter of degree? Like leaving all your friends, changing currencies, selling your home or having to integrate into new rental regimes, understanding value, cost-benefit of geographies etc etc etc. People find it hard enough to move town in some parts of the UK, so resigning themselves to unemployment. Moving job vs emigration is like comparing a shaving cut with having your throat slit.

Nope, the State is exploiting the power of the majority to exploit the minority.

The problem with Welfarism is it creates an environment of the "right" to State benefits. Any "right" has an "obligation" attached. In Welfarism, the obligation is not on the State, who is merely an aggressive pimp, but on the taxpayer to pay for the "right" of benefits claimed by others they neither know nor have a say over.

It is not tax per se, but the idea that people who receive their income from tax can vote. This was only introduced to the UK in 1911. Before that, recipients of State funds were not permitted to vote as it was considered a form of corruption and vote buying.

It still is. The wisdom to guard against it should be restored.

[Matt Munro]

Workers benefit from employment but only at or slightly above subsistence levels, in other words they are able only to work and consume, not acheive financial security or independence.
I think Marx's point was the EXCESS value of the workers labour - in effect the stock market - is not available to the worker but only the capitalist.

[john b]

Roger, the case Chris cited above is an excellent example of one where moving job is not especially difficult. Many of my colleagues are from the Netherlands; several people who were my colleagues have transferred to the Netherlands.

Central Amsterdam is maybe four hours away from central London by plane; there is a large Dutch community in London and a large English community in Amsterdam, and the cultural differences between London and the Netherlands are real but not an enormous gulf.

I'd much rather move to Amsterdam than, say, Liverpool; I'd also much rather move to Amsterdam than have to do a job where my current skill-set went to waste. If I worked at Barclays, for example, I'd be happy to transfer to the new Dutch HQ.

Sure, if you're an unskilled worker in China/Sunderland and you emigrate to London/Australia, the culture shock is going to be greater and far more dramatic than the shock of losing your job. This merely confirms that sometimes changing state is harder, and sometimes changing job is harder.

Also, there were no major changes to eligibility to vote in 1911. Prior to the Representation of the People Act 1918, men either owning property worth over £10 or paying annual rent over £10 could vote; post-1918, all men could vote. You may be confusing this with some kind of made-up prohibition on voting for recipients of state funds.

[Mark Wadsworth]

Matt Munro, do not forget that half of UK traded shares are owned by pension funds, so a lot of it goes back to the "workers" anyway (albeit to better off workers).

[Peter Risdon]

I think Marx's point was the EXCESS value of the workers labour - in effect the stock market - is not available to the worker but only the capitalist.

I'm sure that was his point, but it's such a trivial and mistaken idea it's hard to see how it could have become so influential. Take the worker out of the (capitalist) system and his labour has a different value, one that is close to zero for many people. Obviously, it is open to every worker to take themselves out of the system - by quitting their job - and if this resulted in them getting more money, everyone would do it.

The idea that a business is the sum of its workers' efforts with no value at all residing in the capital that facilitates their work is just silly.

But then, zero sum errors are a characteristic of this way of thinking.

[Mark Wadsworth]

Roger, would you seriously suggest disenfranchising pensioners and all public sector workers? I can see some ideological merit in it, but it'd be a bit of a hard sell politically.

[Roger Thornhill]

john.bM/b>, Chris's example does not prove the point. The issue is because the State has a geographical monopoly. Companies may have geographical monopoly to an extent, but States ALWAYS have it and in much broader terms, e.g. tax and law, backed up by force. Companies tend not to have that - you work for them freely, but a State taxing you gives you no options but submit, leave or die.

Mark I think pensioners should be taxed very lightly anyhow and I can see the rationality behind the fact they have paid their dues. Public sector workers are unlikely to vote for a government likely to threaten their ricebowls and as such it is undemocratic and corrupt. The point is valid, even if it is currently impractical as a policy. The fact is it exposes the core problem with allowing such people a vote - the tyranny of the many.

[john b]

"Companies tend not to have that - you work for them freely, but a State taxing you gives you no options but submit, leave or die."

A company gives you no options but submit, leave, or die either.

You were suggesting that the crucial difference was that leaving would always be harder for a state than for a company; Chris and I were pointing out examples where this might not be the case.

[Planeshift]

There is an obvious point to make here: not all states behave in the same way, and not all companies treat their workers in the same way.
The state in Europe for example doesn't behave in the same way that it does in Burma. Similarly companies in europe don't treat their workers the same way as they do in the developing world. No company in Europe would require its workforce to slave 16 hour days in unsafe sweatshops until they end up in an early grave, but such conditions are not uncommon elsewhere.

On a seperate matter its worth pointing out that not everyone receiving benefits is going to stay that way for life. I was unemployed a few years ago, now I have a job and everything I received from the state back then I have subsequently paid back several times over. I doubt I am an exception in this, cut the demonisation of welfare recipients please...

[Roger Thornhill]

john.b, as I said, examples of where you can move country easily does not deal with the issue that if it is the State, you have no option BUT to move. If it is the company, there is always the potential of the option of another company down the road, another town, city or even country if that works for you. You could even change profession. Changing profession, city, town, district, company does nothing for you if it is the State that is the issue. If you think of Europe, you will have to leave that entire region soon if harmonisation occurs.

Planeshift: Some entities might mistreat if they could get away with it (cockle pickers...). I don't believe it is done out of some meta-class "war", but just selfishness, ignorance or greed. As for welfare, of course people are not always entirely on welfare, but many are now into their 3rd generation. It is not "demonisation", just stating the fact that it distorts democracy to let those receiving money influence the policy that sets that level of money. I personally think that a massive majority (guess - 90%) of people imprisoned in multi-generational welfare hell will self-reform rapidly if the welfare state was itself reformed. It is Welfarism, not welfare claimants.

p.s. further to pensioners, I would prefer that the State is not the one providing pensions except in extremis as it is all part of the infantilisation of the population.

[Planeshift]

"those receiving money influence the policy that sets that level of money"

Except they are the demographic least likely to vote. Indeed the idea that welfare policy is set by those claiming them in the UK is laughable. The policy agenda is far more driven by daily mail style attacks on the recipients, who have to jump through ever increasing and pointless hoops to recieve benefits from a bureacratic system of questionable sanity. New labour's first act was to cut benefit for single parents and force the long term unemployed onto the new deal training or jobs with the threat of benefits to be withdrawn without compliance. Hardly the policy one would expect to be designed by those receiving it.

[dsquared]

did you not read Lenin in the Militant then Chris?