Another thing I was wondering about, DM, is that you keep mentioning "charity" in your comments to the last post, which you also mentioned in regards to Rorty earlier, and I'm wondering, who said anything about charity, anyways? Is this the neo-Marxist pejorative for liberal redistributive policies?
Charity is, of course, the right wing answer to poverty: No need for the government to help the poor, churches will take care of them, thousand points of light and all that. But it's not an argument that I've ever really seen made by the progressive left.
Typically, the arguments made for redistribution of income/efforts to decrease inequality are that I see getting made are:
1. A social justice argument: The wealth of this country isn't the sole result of any individual capitalist or manager's decisions. Whatever wealth they make is made possible by the people who do the work and all the people (teachers, policemen, construction workers, etc) who make this a functioning society with educated citizens, (mostly) fairly enforced laws and solid infrastucture. Without this social capital, capitalism wouldn't be able to function, so whatever wealth is created needs to be shared by everyone that made it possible.
2. A social compact/fraternity argument: We're all Americans, part of a community, and just like a family has obligations to care for the other members of their family as members of that family, so too all Americans have obligations to care for other Americans as members of their community. A lot of us progressives would like to see that sense of community eventually extended to all people in the world, obviously a tall, maybe impossible, order. And...
3. a utilitarian argument (the flip side of the social justice argument): Society functions better when inequality is minimized and you don't have some groups resenting the wealth or opportunities of others and possibly plotting to take that wealth by force; business does better and more innovation occurs when you've got a healthy, happy, well educated population; it's more cost effective to pay for health care, education, etc. up front for everyone than to pay to incarcerate people, treat the diseases of poverty, etc. down the road.
Of these, I think that the first comes pretty close to saying the same thing, in the end, as your description of Marx in your comment on the last post. While it arrives at this conclusion somewhat differently, the conclusion is still that the capitalist is not entitled to the value created by the laborer. The second argument comes closest to being "charity" but also has, I think, the strongest emotional appeal. This is important as the more we think of and feel ourselves to be "all in this together," the harder it is to think of ourselves as isolated individuals competing for limited resources and thus entitled to whatever we can acquire through this struggle. The third argument has the advantage of being empirically verifiable in a lot of ways: We can actually do research that shows how redistributing resources leads to less crime, greater productivity, better health, etc. down the line.
I don't know how you would evaluate these arguments "on the basis of the degree to which they eliminate the exploitative relationship between owner and worker" but I think that they provide a solid basis on which to argue and develop policies against inequality in our society without bringing in Marx and all the negative baggage that Marxism carries with it. Which, again, is why I'm still unclear on what, exactly, Marx is supposed to provide that I can't get elsewhere.
2 comments:
TN: I agree that the first of these arguments most closely resembles a Marxist perspective and I think it is also the most effective if one’s goal is to reduce inequality. The first argument implies that the worker has a right to the profits that are usually seen as being the rightful property of the owner. I believe this has important implications in that it supports policies that go further in cutting into the profits of owners and redistributing that wealth to workers.
As TN notes, the second option, that is based in empathy, seems very much like what I refer to as charity. I’m not sure if it makes a difference if I choose to give ten percent of my income to an organization that helps the poor or if the government takes this income from me and devotes it to programs dedicated to helping the poor. In both cases the poor are being helped because someone feels bad for them. There is nothing wrong with empathy and charity. They are responsible for much of what is good in the world. However, in practice I don’t think charitable redistribution goes far enough. TN points out that who is included in that group that we feel sorry for is extremely flexible and that can often cause some people to be left out of charity. Empathy also generally involves offering a person what I think they need, rather then giving them the resources to determine and meet their own needs. Most importantly, there is no basic standard for what is enough if redistribution is based on empathetic charity. We can raise the minimum wage, but this does nothing eliminate the gap between the rich and the poor. As long as the rich pay the poor 50 cents more per hour they are entitled to all of the profits they earn through working class labor. If, as the first perspective posits, the poor are responsible for the profits of the rich, then redistribution must be based on these profits, not some minimum standard. In other words, a minimum wage is not based on what is determined by an outside authority, but on the profits generated by the workers. The first perspective promotes something like a worker’s cooperative while the second does not.
The third perspective that uses empirical arguments to argue for redistribution is flawed for the same reason – it sets only a minimum standard for the rights of workers and this standard is detached from the profits they generate. Perhaps more important, it is an open question as to whether redistribution is actually in the interests of the wealthy. Maybe this would reduce the potential for civil unrest, but it will definitely reduce the size of your bank account. It is quite possible for empirical research to show that for many people it is not in their interests to support redistributive policies.
TN also asks is Marx really necessary for all of this? That’s a difficult question. First, as I mentioned elsewhere the stronger presence of Marx in European political thought is likely a major factor behind the existence of the sort of social welfare policies that we would like to see enacted here. You might argue that the symbolic legacy of Marx in the US is different than Europe and is not so effective here, and I might agree with you. I guess the main thing for me is that many of people I read who discuss Africa, economic globalization, and inequality have a solid background in Marxian thought. They don’t always discuss surplus value, commodity fetishism, or any of Marx’s other concepts, but I tend to associate Marx with solid analyses of contemporary political economy. Even if you throw out the sort of vaguely Marxist argument that I make above, there is something about Marx that seems to encourage careful, empirically based critiques of inequality. In other words his legacy generates exactly the sort of narratives that Richard Rorty seems to think we need, which is I why I have questioned Rorty’s dismissal of his current value for pragmatic political change.
Just to throw in here, I think that (2) is the only really good argument for the type of redistribution of wealth I think everyone here probably desires. (1), I think, is flawed because it only provides justification for distributing wealth to those people who help to produce wealth. Not everyone is in a position to produce wealth, but I think we still ought to distribute some of the wealth to those people. (I do think this type of argument can provide decent grounds for doing things like raising some people's wages, though.) (3), I think, is flawed because, as DM points out, it could be the case that more even distribution of wealth does not produce more wealth.
Which leaves (2). DM suggests several reasons that he thinks it is flawed. One is that it is based on empathy, which, while a generally admirable trait, tends to be fickle and not impartial. I agree that that can be a problem, but unless you are a moral realist I think you'll have to depend on something like empathy to motivate (1) as well (why care about justly distributing wealth to other people if you don't care about other people?). Another reason DM gives against (2) is that he thinks empathy "generally involves offering a person what I think they need, rather then giving them the resources to determine and meet their own needs." This may be true as well, but it's not necessary that empathy lead to this sort of behavior. If you really care about the object of your empathy, and consider how best to help that person, you may conclude that you should give that person the resources to get to a position where help is no longer needed. Maybe this isn't the most common case, but it's not uncommon either: There are plenty of charitable organizations that make an effort to help people by teaching them to fish rather than giving them fish on a plate. Finally, DM suggests that "there is no basic standard for what is enough if redistribution is based on empathetic charity." Again, true, but not a knock-down argument against (2). How and how much capital should be redistributed doesn't seem to me to be something that has to be accounted for by an argument for _why_ we should redistribute wealth. Unless I'm missing something, I don't see (1) offering a solution to this problem either. (3) does, of course: It says redistribute just as much wealth as is necessary to meet your own goals. But that's a pretty morally heinous way of going about things: It could lead one to let a family starve just as easily as it could lead one to feeding that family.
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