CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2021
| Author | Richard, Stanislas Victor |
|---|---|
| Title | A Liberal Theory of the Exploitation of Labour |
| Summary | This dissertation ties together two different debates. The first concerns the extent to which labour is exploited by capital under capitalism. The second concerns whether, if at all, liberalism can be anticapitalist. Specifically, I seek first to give a liberal answer to the former question, and on the basis of it address the latter. First, I criticise the view that sees exploitation as a form of price disequilibrium, a conception that has been strongly associated with Alan Wertheimer and that is dominating the literature on the topic. I then argue that the account is trapped into a conflict between fairness and efficiency, and the only solution is a redefinition of what bargaining power in capitalist market is. I then use this new conception to defend workplace democracy against its market critiques by showing that ‘voice’ leads to the same efficiency gains than ‘exit’, following Albert Hirschman’s taxonomy of market strategies. Second, I show that the marginal theory of value as well as other assumptions that are consensual in todays’ economics have rendered power-based accounts of exploitation – especially the ones that are dominant in Marxist and socialist philosophy – implausible. Liberalism can however salvage several insights from Marxism to show how the institutions of capitalism are systematically, necessarily and specifically exploitative. I conclude that given their other theoretical commitments, the only way liberals can do this is by abandoning moralised freedom. Liberals committed to moralised freedom will have to criticise capitalism on other grounds than exploitation. |
| Supervisor | Kis, Janos |
| Department | Political Science PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2021/richard_stanislas.pdf |
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