## 1. Historical Accounts of Exploitation



Although the term "exploitation" appears not to have been
used to describe unfair advantage-taking prior to the 19th
century, there are nevertheless extensive discussions of the themes
and problems that characterize contemporary discussions of
exploitation in the history of philosophy. Those themes include the
notion of justice and injustice in economic exchange, the role of
labor in the creation of value, and the justification and abuse of
private property, especially in capital and land.


### 1.1 Pre-Marxian Accounts of Exploitation and Unjust Trade



Concerns about exploitation often take the form of unfair economic
exchange. Attempts to specify the principles that render an exchange
fair or unfair can be traced back at least as far as Aristotle, who
argued that a just exchange will embody a kind of reciprocity such
that the values of the goods exchanged are proportional
(*Nicomachean Ethics*, Book V, Part V). But while the notion of
proportionality is intuitively appealing, it is somewhat unclear
precisely what Aristotle had in mind by it, or what the most
defensible explication of the idea would be. To borrow
Aristotle's own example, if a shoemaker and a builder trade, how
many pairs of shoes is proportional to a single house?



In the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, we find the beginnings of a
much more sophisticated and promising approach to questions such as
this. In his *Summa Theologiae*, Aquinas sought to answer the
question of "whether a man may lawfully sell a thing for more
than it is worth?" The "worth" of a thing, for
Aquinas, was its just price. And the just price, according to Aquinas,
appears to have been simply the prevailing market price (*Summa
Theologiae*, part 2, second part, question 77; see also de Roover
1958 and Friedman 1980). Rather than relying on some fixed notion of
proportionality, Aquinas' just price will be responsive to
considerations of supply and demand. But not just *any* price
that two individuals mutually agree upon will be deemed just on
Aquinas' standard. Thus, a seller who takes advantage of fraud,
or a temporary monopoly, to charge an excessive price for an item
would be acting unjustly, insofar as his price is in excess of the
price at which similar goods typically sell in the relevant market.
But Aquinas saw nothing inherently sinful in selling a good for more
than one paid for it, or with charging enough to earn a profit, or to
compensate for risks involved in the productive process. Seeking
profit for its own sake may involve a certain sort of
"debasement", but profit can also be sought in order to
fulfill necessary or even virtuous ends.



Later Scholastics would devote considerable attention to developing
and refining the notion of the just price. Of special concern was the
price attached to the lending of money, or interest. Since the
founding of the Catholic church, it was widely regarded as sinful for
lenders to charge interest on their loans, and so-called
"usury" was prohibited by canon and often by secular law.
Much of the concern regarding usury seems to have been driven by the
idea that the charging of interest involves an inequitable
exchange--lenders give something to borrowers, but demand back
more than they have given. But Aquinas seems to have been particularly
concerned that borrowers would often be driven to take out loans out
of necessity, and thus that their consent to the exchange is not fully
voluntary (*Summa Theologiae*, part 2, second part, question
78).



The much later natural law theorist John Locke also took up questions
regarding just and unjust prices, not in either of his well-known
treatises on government but in a lesser known tract titled,
*Venditio*. Locke, even more explicitly than Aquinas, saw the
just price as being equivalent to "the market price at the place
where he sells" (Locke 1661: 340). The relativity of the just
price to the particular market in which the transaction takes place is
important. For Locke argued that if two ships sailed laden with corn,
one to Dunkirk where there is a near famine taking place, and the
other to Ostend where normal conditions obtain, it would not be unjust
for the merchant to sell at a significantly higher price in the former
location than in the latter (so long as the higher price is one that
the buyers can afford). If the merchant did *not* charge a
higher price, Locke argued, then two problems would result. First, it
is likely that the merchant's goods would simply be bought by
speculators and resold on a secondary market, thereby simply
redirecting the profit into somebody else's hands without doing
anything to improve the situation of buyers. And second, if merchants
cannot charge a high price in "good" markets to cover
their losses in "bad" ones, they will soon operate at a
net loss and this will, Locke claims, "quickly put an end to
merchandising" (Locke 1661: 342).



What *would* be unjust would be for the merchant to sell an
item to a particular individual for a price higher than the general
market rate as might happen, for instance, if that individual is in
particular distress. Thus, Locke holds, if anchors typically sell for
a certain price, say 100 pounds, then it would be unjust
(exploitative) to charge the captain of a distressed ship 5000 pounds
for an anchor, simply because one knows he will be compelled to pay
it. The just price is the going market rate, where that rate is
determined by the *general* features of supply and demand, and
not the particular needs or vulnerabilities of any particular buyer or
seller.



Interest in exploitation as a feature of economic exchange is thus
almost as old as philosophy itself. It was not until the
19th century, however, that exploitation as a feature of
*employment* relationships came to be a subject of
philosophical and political concern. In a sense, of course, the
employment relationship is simply another instance of economic
exchange, with the laborer selling his or her work in exchange for
money in the form of wages. But two ideas led many people to think
that there was something special about labor. The first was a belief
that labor is the ultimate source of all economic value. The second
was the belief that labor morally entitles the laborer to the full
value of that which he or she has produced.



More will be said about the first of these ideas in the discussion of
Marx's theory of exploitation, below. The second idea, and its
connection to the idea of labor exploitation, is perhaps best
illustrated by the theory put forth by the 19th century
liberal Thomas Hodgskin. For Hodgskin, as for Locke from whose ideas
he drew heavily, the right of private property is a natural,
pre-political right. That right consists in



> 
> 
> the right of individuals, to have and to own, for their own separate
> use and enjoyment, *the produce of their own industry*, with
> power freely to dispose of the whole of that in the manner most
> agreeable to themselves. (Hodgskin 1832: 24)
> 
> 
> 



But while the natural right of property is based on labor, there is
also an *artificial* right of property that is based on nothing
more than legislative force. That artificial right cements in place,
through the machinery of government, property claims that had their
origins not in labor but in violence, conquest, and theft. And it
thereby enables capitalists to profit without labor, simply by virtue
of their (illegitimate) control of the means of production (Reeve
1987b).



For Hodgskin, capitalists exploit workers in precisely the same way
that landlords exploit their tenants. In both cases, one person is
entitled to a stream of revenue simply by virtue of their legal claim
of ownership (Hodgskin 1832: 97). The money the landlord earns as rent
comes from the wages the tenant earns as a laborer, just as the money
the capitalist earns as profit comes from the sale of products
produced by his laborers. In both cases, one person is able to live as
a parasite off the productive activities of others, all because the
state actively suppresses the natural right of laborers to the full
product of their labor, in favor of the artificial right of property
established by violence. One finds echos of Hodgskin's concern
about harmful parasitism in contemporary discussions of exploitation
as well (van Donselaar 2009).



Even before Marx, then, we see in the 19th century a tight
connection between theories of exploitation and theories of class and
of class conflict. Marx himself credited the "bourgeois
economists" of the French *Industrialist* school with
having pioneered the economic analysis of class struggle (Marx &
Engels 1965: 69). For members of that school, the two great classes
into which society was divided were *productive* laborers and
*unproductive* social parasites. The class of productive
laborers was understood broadly to encompass not only those who
exerted physical labor to create tangible goods and services, but
anyone who worked to make goods more useful than they would otherwise
be--so laborers, yes, but also entrepreneurs,
*arbitrageurs*, and even capitalists in their role as managers
and overseers of investments. The unproductive classes, in contrast,
consisted of those who consume value but do not produce it, such as
the army, the government, and the state-supported clergy (Raico 1977:
395).



According to Industrialists such as Charles Comte and Jean-Baptiste
Say, the unproductive classes are able to maintain themselves by using
the coercive power of government to forcibly extract resources from
the productive. Taxes and tariffs were the most obvious forms such
"plunder" could take, but the same goal could also be
achieved by special protections for favored industries including the
limited conferral of monopoly power (Say 1964: 146-147).



For both Hodgskin and for the Industrialists, then, the state was a
key agent in facilitating the exploitation of one class of individuals
by another, and the most certain way to end exploitation was therefore
to sharply limit the power of the state and to strengthen the
"natural" right of private property. But not all theorists
of the 19th century saw things this way. For Ricardian
Socialists such as John Bray, ending exploitation would require
ensuring that all persons have equal access to the means of
production, and thereby guaranteeing a system of equal exchange based
on the labor theory of value (Bray 1839). While Hodgskin and the
Industrialists sought to purify capitalism from statist interference,
Bray and his fellow socialists sought to eliminate it altogether.


### 1.2 Marx's Theory of Exploitation



By far the most influential theory of exploitation ever set forth is
that of Karl Marx, who held that workers in a capitalist society are
exploited insofar as they are forced to sell their labor power to
capitalists for less than the full value of the commodities they
produce with their labor.



For Marx, however, exploitation was a phenomenon that characterized
*all* class-based societies, not only capitalism. Indeed, it is
feudal society, not capitalism, where the exploitative nature of class
relations is clearest. Under feudalism, it is readily apparent that
serfs use some of their labor power for their own benefit, while
another part (the *corvee*) is used for the benefit of
the feudal lord. In contrast, under slavery workers *appear* to
work entirely for the benefit of their masters (though in reality a
part of their labor goes toward providing for their own subsistence).
And under capitalism workers *appear* to work entirely for the
benefit of themselves, selling their labor to capitalists as free
independent contractors (Cohen 1978: 332-3).



In reality, Marx thought, workers' labor under capitalism is
neither truly voluntary nor entirely for the benefit of the workers
themselves. It is not truly voluntary because workers are
*forced* by their lack of ownership of the means of production
to sell their labor power to capitalists or else starve. And workers
are not laboring entirely for their own benefit because capitalists
use their privileged position to *exploit* workers,
appropriating for themselves some of the value created by
workers' labor.



To understand Marx's charge of exploitation, it is first
necessary to understand Marx's analysis of market prices, which
he largely inherited from earlier classical economists such as Adam
Smith and David Ricardo. Under capitalism, Marx argued, workers'
labor power is treated as a commodity. And because Marx subscribed to
a labor theory of value, this means that just like any other commodity
such as butter or corn, the price (or wage) of labor power is
determined by its cost of production--specifically, by the
quantity of socially necessary labor required to produce it. The cost
of producing labor power is the value or labor-cost required for the
conservation and reproduction of a worker's labor power. In
other words, Marx thought that workers under capitalism will therefore
be paid just enough to cover the bare necessities of living. They will
be paid subsistence wages.



But while labor power is just like any other commodity in terms of how
its price is determined, it is unique in one very importance respect.
Labor, and labor alone, according to Marx, has the capacity to
*produce* value beyond that which is necessary for its own
reproduction. In other words, the value that goes into the commodities
that sustain a worker for a twelve-hour work day is less than the
value of the commodities that worker can *produce* during those
twelve hours. This difference between the value a worker produces in a
given period of time and the value of the consumption goods necessary
to sustain the worker for that period is what Marx called *surplus
value*.



According to Marx, then, it is as though the worker's day is
split into two parts. During the first part, the laborer works for
himself, producing commodities the value of which is equal to the
value of the wages he receives. During the second part, the laborer
works for the capitalist, producing surplus value for the capitalist
for which he receives no equivalent wages. During this second part of
the day, the laborer's work is, in effect, unpaid, in precisely
the same way (though not as visibly) as a feudal serf's
*corvee* is unpaid (Marx 1867).



Capitalist exploitation thus consists in the forced appropriation by
capitalists of the surplus value produced by workers. Workers under
capitalism are compelled by their lack of ownership of the means of
production to sell their labor power to capitalists for less than the
full value of the goods they produce. Capitalists, in turn, need not
produce anything themselves but are able to live instead off the
productive energies of workers. And the surplus value that capitalists
are thereby able to appropriate from workers becomes the source of
capitalist profit, thereby "strengthening that very power whose
slave it is" (Marx 1847: 40).



In the first volume of *Capital*, Marx presents a series of
formulas representing a tight relationship between labor,
exploitation, and capitalist profit. According to Marx, the value of a
commodity is a function of three factors: constant capital (\(C\)),
i.e., the labor value of nonlabor means of production such as
machines, buildings, and raw materials; variable capital (\(V\)),
i.e., the labor value of the labor power of workers involved in
production), and surplus value (\(S\)). Since surplus value comes from
the exploitation of labor (rather than machines or land), Marx defined
the *rate of exploitation* as the ratio of surplus value over
variable capital \((S/V)\). Of course, different industries will
employ different mixes of labor and other factors of
production--of variable and constant capital. Marx referred to
this mixture as the *organic composition of capital*, and
defined it as \(C/V\). But since capitalist profit is generated by the
exploitation of labor, it seems to follow that industries that employ
a greater proportion of labor (of variable over constant capital)
should therefore earn a higher rate of profit. Thus, Marx defined the
*rate of profit* as \((S/(C+V))\), which is equivalent to the
rate of exploitation divided by the organic composition of
\(\textrm{capital} + 1\). This last proposition has been referred to
by Jon Elster as the "fundamental equation of Marxian
economics" (Elster 1986a: 67).



Marx's analysis of the rate of profit seems to entail that
labor-intensive industries will be more profitable than industries
that rely to a greater extent on constant capital. But this conclusion
is clearly empirically false (Bohm-Bawerk 1898), and moreover
incompatible with Marx's assumption of a competitive economy in
which investments will adjust so as to equalize the rate of profit
between industries (Arnold 1990: Ch. 3; Buchanan 1985: Ch. 3). Marx
himself recognized this fact, and sought to address it in the third
volume of Capital by dropping the assumption of volume 1 that
*value* and *price* are equivalent, and showing instead
how value can be *transformed* into price through some more
complicated process. Whether Marx's attempted solution to this
"transformation problem" was successful, however, is a
matter of great controversy (Arnold 1990: Ch. 3; Samuelson 1971;
Kliman 2007).



Marx's theory of exploitation appears to presuppose that labor
is the source of all value. But the labor theory of value to which
Marx and early classical economists subscribed is subject to a number
of apparently insurmountable difficulties, and has largely been
abandoned by economists in the wake of the marginalist revolution of
the 1870s. The most obvious difficulty stems from the fact that labor
is heterogeneous. Some labor is skilled, some labor is unskilled, and
there does not appear to be any satisfactory way of reducing the
former to the latter and thereby establishing a single standard of
measure for the value of commodities. Moreover, the labor theory of
value appears to be unable to account for the economic value of
commodities such as land and raw materials that are not and could not
be produced by any human labor. Finally, and perhaps most fatally,
Marx's assumption that labor has the unique power to create
surplus value is entirely ungrounded. As Robert Paul Wolff has argued,
Marx's focus on labor appears to be entirely arbitrary. A
formally identical theory of value could be constructed with
*any* commodity taking the place of labor, and thus a
"corn theory of value" would be just as legitimate, and
just as unhelpful, as Marx's labor theory of value (Wolff 1981).
Therefore, if, as some have alleged, Marx's theory of
exploitation is dependent on the truth of the labor theory of value,
then a rejection of the labor theory of value should entail a
rejection of Marx's theory of exploitation as well (Nozick 1974;
Arnold 1990).



Not everyone agrees, however, that Marx's theory *is*
dependent on the labor theory of value in this way. G.A. Cohen, for
instance, argues that Marx's theory of exploitation is not only
independent of the labor theory of value, but *incompatible*
with it (Cohen 1979: 345-6). Marx's account of
exploitation is premised on the claim that value created by workers is
appropriated by capitalists. But the labor theory of value holds that
the value of an object is a function of the labor that would be
*currently* required to produce it, regardless of how much
labor actually went into producing it. Paradoxical as it may seem, the
labor theory of value is incompatible with the claim that labor alone
creates value.



The real problem with exploitation, on Cohen's view, is not that
capitalists appropriate *value* that is created by labor. It
is, rather, that capitalists appropriate some of the value of the
*products* that are created by labor. Labor may not produce
value, but it is the only thing that produces what *has* value,
and this is all Marx needs to get his account of exploitation off the
ground (Cohen 1979: 354).



But even if Cohen's account of exploitation avoids commitment to
the labor theory of value, it nevertheless remains committed to the
Marxian idea that exploitation should be understood as the forced
appropriation of surplus value. And there are at least two respects in
which this commitment is problematic. First, it is unclear whether
exploitation necessarily involves the *forced* transfer of
surplus value. Marx's account asserts that the laborer is forced
to work for capitalists because the only alternative is starvation.
But suppose the government provides a safety net sufficient to ensure
that workers' subsistence needs are met. If someone chooses to
work in order to earn discretionary income, it still seems possible
that they could be exploited by a capitalist who appropriates some of
the value of the product the laborer creates (Kymlicka 2002: 179). A
laborer can be exploited, we might think, by being paid an
*unfair* wage even if that laborer is not *forced* to
work.



Second, it is unclear whether all cases involving the forced transfer
of surplus value are necessarily exploitative, at least in the
ordinary sense of involving a moral wrong. Suppose that governments
tax workers and use some of the proceeds to provide support for
children or the infirm. If it is exploitative for capitalists to
appropriate some of the value of the objects produced by workers, is
it not also exploitative for government to do so through the mechanism
of taxation? Some libertarians have argued that this is precisely how
we should understand the coercive power of government. For Cohen,
however, the fact that Marx's account of exploitation appears to
be committed to the libertarian idea of that workers own their labor
and the products they produce with that labor--that is, to the
libertarian idea of self-ownership--is deeply problematic (Cohen
1995: Ch. 6).


### 1.3 Neoclassical Accounts



The idea that workers have rights to the contributions their labour
makes to the production of a social surplus is, we noted, common to
both Marxist and Libertarian theories. Yet, the widespread rejection
of the labour theory of value apparently undermines (Cohen's
arguments notwithstanding) of Marx's classical account of
exploitation. Neoclassical economists subsequently developed an
account of exploitation that incorporates this concern for an
input's contribution to the productive surplus that is
compatible with the subjective theory of value that replaced labour
theories in mainstream economic thinking. This account claims "a
factor of production is exploited if it is employed at a price which
is less than its marginal net productivity" (Robinson 1933:
281).



The neoclassical account was first fully developed by A. C. Pigou in
*The Economics of Welfare* (1920) and was refined by Joan
Robinson in *The Economics of Perfect Competition* (1933),
though Reiff (2013) identifies both Alfred Marshall and John Bates
Clark as influences on Pigou's approach. Neoclassical accounts
are, in many ways, precursors to contemporary market-based accounts of
exploitation. Their move away from the labour theory of value allows
them to escape some of the technical problems that the classical
Marxist definition encounters. However, they face their own technical
and moral objections. Here we discuss three.



First, according to the neoclassical account, exploitation is
impossible under perfect competition. Whether this aspect of the
neoclassical account is a bug or feature depends on whether one thinks
that competitive markets and the pressures they can place on
individuals--or the capitalist system, for Marxists--can be
exploitative. A point against the neoclassical account is that it
seems that conclusions about whether or not competitive markets can be
exploitative should be the result of substantive moral argument and
not merely settled by stipulative definition. On the other hand, the
idea that market competition precludes at least certain causes of
exploitation is compelling. Perfectly competitive markets exclude
abuses of power by monopolists and monopsonists and the abuse of
informational asymmetries (Wertheimer 1996). A competitive market is a
context in which the price that one pays for goods and services is
shaped by the availability of these resources (supply) and the degree
to which others need or want them (demand).



Second, the neoclassical account does not limit exploitation to
labour. The account also allows for the exploitation of other factors
of production. Factors of production--which classically comprise
land, labour and capital--are those resources used to produced
outputs. The returns to any of these factors can be less than their
marginal product and when they are, on the neoclassical account, they
are exploited. As with views about whether markets are exploitative,
whether *capital* can be exploited should be the conclusion of
substantive moral argument and not settled by a definition. One might
argue that the neoclassical account provides a technical and
nonmoralised account of exploitation and further, that only the
exploitation of labour is morally important. In this case, the
neoclassical account would be an incomplete account of wrongful
exploitation that requires supplemental arguments about the moral
importance of labour (like those advanced in Cohen 1979).



Finally, and arguably most problematic, associating fair pay with
workers' marginal productivity means giving different workers
different pay for the same work. Decreasing marginal productivity
means that the productivity associated with each additional laborer
decreases as more workers are added. Early hires will be associated
with greater marginal productivity than those who join later, even if
they all perform identical tasks. This also means that if an
'early' employee quits, the nonexploitative wage of an
employee hired later increases (because their *marginal*
contribution has increased). Thus, the neoclassical account cannot
satisfy the intuition that fair employment requires equal remuneration
for equal work. This problem can be avoided by modifying the
neoclassical account so that exploitation consists in paying labour
less than its *average* product. Yet the average product
approach still cannot accurately track the contributions to output of
*individual* workers if some are more productive than
others.



Each of the historical approaches surveyed here--Pre-Marxian
accounts, Marx's account, and neoclassical accounts--have
influenced and, to some degree, been incorporated into the
contemporary accounts that we cover in the following section.


## 2. The Concept of Exploitation



Philosophical analyses of exploitation are broad and varied. As is
often the case with such analyses, there is no widespread agreement
about what, precisely, exploitation is. However, consensus has emerged
around some of the domain conditions for exploitation. Most--
though not all--philosophers agree that exploitation involves
taking unfair advantage, though, of course, they disagree about what
exactly this involves. And most, but not all, philosophers also agree
that in order to be an exploiter, \(A\) must benefit and this benefit
must come at \(B\)'s expense. We think few philosophers would
deny that exploitations can be all- things-considered harmful.
However, much more philosophical attention has been given to mutually
beneficial exploitations, in which the exploited benefits from the
interaction, albeit in a morally problematic way. The reason for this
focus is that harmful exploitations are less ethically puzzling than
mutually beneficial exploitations. The wrongs of harmful exploitation
are more familiar, often over determined, and usually coextensive with
fraud and coercion. Harmful exploitations are also likely to be
non-consensual and, of course, the harm itself may also be sufficient
to explain the wrongfulness of these cases.



There is far less consensus about another domain condition: whether
exploitation is a structural feature of social systems, a property of
discrete individual transactions, or both. Philosophers also disagree
about more substantive features of exploitation, such as how we should
understand the unfairness present in exploitations, about whether
exploitation also requires something more than unfairness, such as
morally problematic motives or attitudes on the part of the exploiter,
and about what Alan Wertheimer (1996: 279) has called the 'moral
weight' (exploitation's permissibility or
impermissibility) and 'moral force' of exploitation
(whether third parties should intervene in exploitations).



In the rest of this section, we discuss exploitation's various
domain conditions before surveying debates about unfairness, and other
possible necessary conditions. Exploitation's moral status is
covered in section three.


### 2.1 Domain Conditions



This section examines three possible components of exploitation:
differences between transactional and structural accounts of
exploitation, the benefit that exploitative transactions confer upon
A, the harm they cause to B.


#### 2.1.1 Structural and Transactional Exploitation



Many authors have pointed out that exploitation can be a structural
phenomenon. What it means for exploitation to be
'structural' differs from account to account. For Matt
Zwolinski (2012: 155) exploitation is structural when it is brought
about by unjust "conditions that lie in the background of the
exchange". For Maeve McKeowan (2016) exploitation is structural
when social systems structure and limit the options of disadvantaged
groups to the advantage of more powerful groups. Gabriel Wollner
(2019: 157) argues that structures exploit by making an
individual's "position within the structure... such that
in order to optimize or maximize economic revenue she has to take
unfair advantage of others." Finally, Marxists often point out
that although Marx's technical definition of exploitation
(outlined in section 1) can be stated in transactional terms, Marx
also conceived of exploitation "as a property of the economy as
a whole, not just individuals" (Elster 1986b: 176). Indeed, in
Roemer's (1982a) unequal exchange account and later work by
Roberto Veneziani (2007) and Naoki Yoshihara and Veneziani (2018)
exploitation is not defined as a relational predicate at all. Instead,
only the predicates '...is exploited' and
'...is exploiter' are defined. On these
non-relational accounts, whether agents are exploited depends on
whether the total labour they perform in the economy is greater than
the labour embodied in the total bundle of goods they consume.



Structural exploitation in Zwolinski's, McKeowan's, and
Wollner's senses and transactional exploitation are not mutually
exclusive. This is quite clear in Zwolinski's definition, which
directly references an exchange. But both McKeowan and Wollner's
accounts are also compatible with exploitation being a relational
property of transactions. One distinction that is sometimes elided in
these discussions is between the sources of exploitable vulnerability
and those who benefit from this vulnerability. That social systems,
norms and institutions make certain groups vulnerable while advancing
the interests of others does not entail that these systems themselves
benefit from the vulnerability (a feature of exploitations we discuss
in the next section). By structuring interactions in such a way that
group or individual \(A\) can take unfair advantage of \(B\), they
create the conditions that allow \(A\) to exploit \(B\). However, to
say that the systems *themselves* gain from, and thereby
exploit \(B\) involves a different (and less plausible) claim.



In contrast, non-relational forms of structural exploitation are
conceptually distinct from transactional accounts. We surmise that
'exploitation' in ordinary use hews closer to the
transactional model because accusations of exploitation often target
discrete interactions between groups, such as the exploitation of
sweatshop workers by multinational corporations; the exploitation of
the elderly by con artists; or the exploitation of children by
parents. However, note that the common use does not undermine the
value of the non-relational conception as a tool for making moral and
political critiques of social systems. Our point is merely that two
different conceptions exist and should not be confused. The
transactional model has, arguably received a greater amount of
attention in contemporary moral and political philosophy and we will
focus primarily on it in the sections that follow.


#### 2.1.2 Exploitation and Benefit



When \(A\) exploits \(B\), \(A\) gains some *benefit* from
interacting with \(B\). We can see the relevance of the "benefit
to \(A\)" by contrasting exploitation with other forms of
wrongdoing, such as discrimination, abuse, and oppression. Let us say
that \(A\) discriminates against \(B\) when \(A\) wrongly deprives
\(B\) of some opportunity or benefit because of some characteristic of
\(B\) that is not relevant to \(A\)'s action. There was a period
in American history in which many women became public school teachers
because they were denied the opportunity to enter other professions
such as law and medicine. To the extent that society benefitted (in
one way) from the pool of highly qualified public school teachers, the
discrimination may have been exploitative, even if unintentionally so.
But if \(A\) refuses to hire \(B\) solely because of \(B\)'s
race, then it would be odd to say that \(A\) exploits \(B,\) for \(A\)
does not gain resources from the wrong to \(B\).



Consider abuse. It has been alleged that medical students are
frequently abused by verbal insults and denigration and that this
abuse may leave long-lasting emotional scars. It is also sometimes
claimed that medical interns are exploited, that they work long hours
for low pay. The contrast is just right. There is no reason to think
that anyone gains (in any normal sense) from abuse, but it is at least
plausible to think that the hospitals or patients gain from the
exploitation of interns.



Let us say that \(A\) oppresses \(B\) when \(A\) deprives \(B\) of
freedoms or opportunities to which \(B\) is entitled. If \(A\) gains
from the oppressive relationship, as when \(A\) enslaves \(B\), then
\(A\) may both oppress and exploit \(B\). But if \(A\) does not gain
from the oppression, the oppression is wrong but not exploitative. We
might say that the unemployed are oppressed, but unless we could
specify the ways in which some gain from their lack of employment, the
unemployed are not exploited. Marxists would claim that capitalists
pay exploitative wages to the employed precisely because there is a
"reserve army" of the unemployed with whom the employed
must compete. But that merely confirms that they are exploited because
the oppression generates a gain to the capitalist class, and it is the
employed who are exploited and not the unemployed that make such
exploitation possible.



Clearly, an exchange still counts as exploitative even if \(A\) does
not benefit *on net*. If \(A\) derives unfair benefit from his
interaction with \(B\), but suffers unforeseen costs such that she
ends up worse-off after the interaction than she was before, then
\(A\) has still exploited \(B\). Less clear is the question of whether
\(A\) must derive any actual benefit at all, or whether it is enough
that \(A\) merely intend to benefit. Suppose a sweatshop owner works
his employees ruthlessly in order to extract as much profit as he can
from the workers' labor, but that the product the laborers
produce turns out, due to an unforeseen turn of events, to have zero
market value. Have the sweatshop workers nevertheless been
exploited?



Related to the question of whether \(A\)'s intent to benefit is
sufficient for exploitation is the question of whether \(A\)'s
intent to benefit *unfairly* is *necessary* for
exploitation. Is it possible to exploit someone by mistake? Can one
foresee that one's interaction will be exploitative without
intending it to be so? If so, is \(A\) still culpable? (Ferguson
2016b)


#### 2.1.3 Exploitation and Harm



Exploitation thus involves \(A\) unfairly benefitting from an
interaction with B. But what exactly does it mean to benefit
*unfairly*? One natural response to this question is to
conceive of unfairness as benefitting \(A\) *at* \(B\)'s
*expense*. Perhaps exploitation advances the interests of \(A\)
while harming \(B\). Exploitation, thus understood, is a kind of
parasitism. Or, as Allen Buchanan defines it, exploitation is
"the harmful, merely instrumental utilization of him or his
capacities, for one's own advantage or for the sake of
one's own ends" (Buchanan 1985: 87).



Certain paradigmatic cases of exploitation clearly fit this analysis.
Slavery is an exploitative relationship, and one that clearly harms
slaves for the benefit of their masters. But as Alan Wertheimer has
noted, some exploitation appears to be mutually advantageous rather
than harmful (Wertheimer 1996: 14). Someone who charges a hiker lost
in the desert $1,000 for a bottle of water takes unfair advantage of
her. Nevertheless, the transaction is one from which both parties
emerge better off relative to how they would have been, had the
transaction not taken place. The seller has traded away something she
values less (the bottle of water) for something she values more
($1,000). But so has the buyer. If the water is necessary to save her
life, and if she values her life more than the $1,000 she gives up to
save it, then she too is better off with the transaction than without
it.



There is, however, one important sense in which even an exploiter
could be said to harm her victim. Even if relative to a baseline of no
transaction at all, exploitation often makes its victim better off,
relative to a baseline of a *fair* transaction, exploitation
leaves its victim worse off. In this sense, an exploiter's gain
does, contra Joel Feinberg, come at the victim's expense
(Feinberg 1988: 178). For even when both parties gain from the
transaction, the victim of exploitation gains less than she should
because some of the "cooperative surplus" (to which she is
by fairness entitled) has been captured by the exploiter.



Exploitation therefore does not necessarily harm its victim in the
sense of making her worse off than she would have been, had the
exploiter never interacted with her at all. Rather, it makes its
victim worse off than she should have been, had she been treated
fairly. As with similar cases involving coercion, the precise details
of our analysis thus depend on the relevant baseline against which we
choose to compare \(B\)'s situation after the interaction. But
these details probably do not matter much as far as our
all-things-considered moral evaluation is concerned. Whether we choose
to say that exploitation involves \(A\) making \(B\) better off, but
not as much better off as \(A\) *should* have made \(B\); or
whether we say that it involves making \(B\) worse off than \(B\)
should have been, the final verdict is the same (Wertheimer 1996:
22-23).


### 2.2 Unfairness



In the sense in which most philosophers use the term, exploitation
necessarily (conceptually) involves unfairness. This sense of
exploitation is thus a *moralized* term. To judge that someone
is engaged in exploitation is already to pass a moral judgment on
them--to say that they are acting wrongly (at least in a *pro
tanto* sense). Not all uses of "exploitation" are
moralized in this way. As we noted at the beginning of this entry,
some ordinary language use of the term implies no moral judgment
whatsoever. And it is possible to develop a philosophically
sophisticated account of exploitation that is *relevant* to
moral judgment, without being moralized (Goodin 1987), and indeed
without referencing fairness (Vrousalis 2013).



Still, even if exploitation is not conceptually unfair, it is
characteristically so. In some cases, this unfairness is the result of
some procedural defect in the transaction--call this
*procedural unfairness*. In other cases, the unfairness is a
feature of *what* is agreed to, rather than how the agreement
is reached--call this *substantive unfairness*.


#### 2.2.1 Substantive Unfairness



Substantive accounts of (un)fairness specify how certain goods (the
*distribuenda*) ought to be distributed by appealing to various
distributive criteria. Accounts differ according to how they specify
both the distribuendum and the distributive criterion.


##### 2.2.1.1 Equality



One of the most intuitively appealing criteria of fairness in exchange
is *equality*. A fair exchange, it is tempting to say, is an
equal exchange. But equal in terms of what?



Although Marx took pains to deny he was giving an account of justice
(let alone fairness), much of the intuitive force of his account of
labor exploitation seems to rely on the idea that a fair exchange will
embody *equal transfers of socially necessary labor*. It is
because the objects produced by the worker embody more socially
necessary labor than the wages he receives in exchange for producing
those objects that the laborer is exploited. And other
late-19th century theorists such as Josiah Warren and
Stephen Pearl Andrews made this moral claim explicit. "It is
clear", wrote Andrews,



> 
> 
> if [an] exchange is not equal, if one party gives more of his own
> labor--either in the form of labor or product--than he
> *gets* of the labor of the other...that he is oppressed,
> and becomes, so far as this inequality goes, the slave or subject of
> the other. (Andrews 1852: 52-53)
> 
> 
> 



But even though a theory of labor-time as the basis of fair exchange
is in principle distinguishable from a labor theory of economic value,
the former is subject to many of the same problems as the latter. How,
for instance, should the difference between skilled and unskilled
labor time be accounted for in determining a fair exchange? Between
easy and difficult labor? Labor is not homogenous, and this makes it
ill-suited to serve as a currency of fair exchange.



If labor is problematic as a distribuendum, perhaps *economic
value* would work better. A fair trade, on this view, involves the
exchange of equally valuable goods or services. And an unfair trade
involves the exchange of goods or services of unequal value. To return
to an earlier example, someone who sells a bottle of water to a hiker
stranded in the desert for $1,000 takes unfair advantage of her. And
part of what makes the exchange unfair is that the bottle of water
simply isn't worth nearly $1,000. \(B\) is giving up far more
than she gains in exchange.



Or is she? Once we give up on the 19th century notion that
economic value is an objective property of commodities, and embrace
instead that value is a function of the subjective preferences of
economic agents, the problem with this analysis becomes readily
apparent. Economic exchange is only possible precisely because
different agents assign different values to the same object. I sell
you my old television for $75 because I've bought a new set, and
to me, the old television is worth less than the $75. You pay the $75
because you just moved into a new place and, to you, the $75 is worth
less than the television. Neither of our valuations is the
"right" one. Our preferences simply differ, and so it is
possible for us to both walk away from the deal
believing--correctly!--that we have gotten more than we have
given up.



Cooperative exchanges create what economists call a "social
surplus". Suppose, to continue the television example, that
I'd be willing to take anything equal to or greater than $50 in
exchange for my television, and that you'd be willing to pay
anything equal to or less than $100 for it. If, after bargaining, we
arrive at a sale price of $75, then I give up something I value at $50
in exchange for $75, and come away $25 richer, and you give up $75 in
exchange for something you value at $100 and walk away $25 richer.
*All together*, we're $50 richer. That's the social
surplus.



This suggests one final possible distribuendum that could be paired
with an egalitarian distributive criterion. Perhaps what makes an
exchange is fair is not that the objects traded have equal economic
value, but rather an exchange is fair when the social surplus created
by the exchange is equally distributed. Exploitative exchanges, in
contrast, are those in which one party commands a disproportionately
large share of the social surplus, leaving the other party with an
unfairly small share. For example, suppose that an employer gains $10
per hour worth of value from an employee's labor. An employer
like that could afford to pay its workers $9 per hour and still make a
profit. But if potential employees have nowhere else to go, why should
the employer pay that much? Why not pay employees as little as she can
get away with--maybe $3 an hour, just barely over the subsistence
level of $2? In this case the employment relationship would generate a
social surplus of $8. But $7 of that surplus would go into the pocket
of the employer, while only $1 goes to the laborer. Might not that
lopsided division of the social surplus be precisely what's
unfair, and thus exploitative, about this kind of labor?



Perhaps. But the unequal division of the social surplus cannot explain
all cases of exploitation--including some of the most
paradigmatic. To see this, let us return once more to the case of the
lost desert hiker. \(A\) offers to sell \(B\) a bottle of water for
$1,000. This would appear to be a clear instance of an exploitative
proposal. But it is not, as suggested above, because the water bottle
is worth *less* than $1,000 to \(B\). Indeed, it is probably
worth far more! Most people put a fairly high value on their continued
existence. So, suppose \(B\) values not dying at $1 million. In that
case, \(B\) gives up something he values at $1,000 in exchange for
something he values at $1 million. \(A\), in turn, gives up something
he values at close to $0 in exchange for something he values at
$1,000. The exchange creates a social surplus of $1 million, but fully
*99.9% of that surplus* goes to \(B\), leaving \(A\) with a
mere .1%. If exploitation consists of grabbing the lion's share
of the social surplus of an exchange, then we are forced to conclude
that thirsty \(B\) is actually exploiting water-selling \(A\)--an
unlikely result!


##### 2.2.1.2 Sufficiency and Basic Needs



It is thus difficult to specify an egalitarian criterion of fairness
that explains the wrongfulness of exploitation across a range of
cases. For this reason, few current theories of exploitation use an
egalitarian distributive criterion. One alternative is a
sufficiency-based criterion, according to which exchanges are fair
when the parties gain sufficiently from them. The crucial question
here is what qualifies as gaining 'enough'?



The most common response, endorsed by both Ruth Sample (2003) and
Jeremy Snyder (2008), is that parties gain enough when what they gain
is sufficient to ensure their *basic needs* are met. More
specifically, both authors argue that exploitation involves a failure
to respect the value of those with who we transact. When we encounter
others whose basic needs are unmet, we should help them because of the
inherent value they possess as a human being. In contrast, exploiters
see in the unmet basic needs of others not a cry for help but as an
opportunity for profit. When they enrich themselves without ensuring
these basic needs are met, they transact unfairly with them.



Although appeals to basic needs make sense intuitively, it is not
clear that meeting basic needs is necessary or sufficient for an
exchange to be fair. Two very poor persons who engage in an exchange
are not necessarily exploiting each other even if they are incapable
of meeting the other's basic needs. Transactions can be fair
despite basic needs being unmet. Conversely, two rich persons can
still engage in a transaction in which the social surplus is unfairly
distributed between them. \(A\) could buy \(B\)'s yacht for an
unfairly low price. Such cases are certainly of less moral concern
than unfair and exploitative exchanges between, say, a rich and a poor
person, but this does not entail that the terms of the exchange are
fair. Transactions can be unfair despite basic needs being met.



The basic needs account is relatively straightforward to interpret in
the context of salary negotiations: it suggests that whatever the wage
employers offer their employees, it should at least be sufficient to
ensure the needs of these workers are met. But suppose \(A\) buys an
apple from \(B\)'s stand: what, in this case, does the basic
needs account identify as a fair price? Must \(A\) pay a price that
meets \(B\)'s basic needs for a year? Surely not. A day?
Perhaps, but what if \(B\) sells many apples? Does this mean \(A\)
should pay less? The degree to which \(B\) is able to meet her needs
via her apple stand depends on the market she finds herself
in--the supply and demand for apples--as well as features
about herself, such as how long or hard she works. One consequence of
this observation is that the basic needs approach may be impossible to
instrumentalize in discrete cases. A second consequence is that, since
\(A\)'s meeting \(B\)'s basic needs depends, in part, on
\(B\)'s own choices, a moral hazard problem arises (Ferguson
2016b). Indeed, this problem confronts all accounts of exploitation
that are not responsibility sensitive.



Suppose that \(A\) knows that, should he become vulnerable for
whatever reason, \(B\) will be obligated to constrain \(B\)'s
advantage over \(A\)--perhaps by selling \(B\) goods for less
than the normal market price. Given this knowledge, \(A\) might be
tempted to take a risky gamble, knowing that if it doesn't turn
out well, \(B\) will be obligated to partly subsidize \(A\)'s
loss. In effect, \(B\)'s obligation toward \(A\) puts \(B\) in a
position of vulnerability, a vulnerability that \(A\) has the
potential to unfairly take advantage of. In other words, \(A\)'s
obligation not to exploit \(B\) renders \(A\) vulnerable to
exploitation *by B*! To avoid this difficulty, it seems
necessary to limit the kinds of vulnerabilities that trigger the
obligation to constrain one's advantage, perhaps by ruling out
vulnerabilities for which agents are themselves morally
responsible.



The moral hazard objection, problems with instrumentalising the
approach and especially the insufficiency and non-necessity of the
basic needs account suggest it is not very plausible as an account of
fair exchange. However, this does not mean that basic needs and
exploitation are unrelated. Exploitations that affect those who are
very poor are, quite plausibly, morally worse than those affecting the
rich. We can appeal to welfare levels to justify placing a greater
concern on the exploitations of certain persons; those exploitations
that leave persons unable to meet their basic needs are arguably the
most pressing cases.



The basic needs approach is one of many *possible* accounts
that appeal to sufficientarian distributive criteria. For the basic
needs approach, the distribuendum is welfare and the distributive
criterion requires that welfare is sufficient to meet basic needs. One
could argue for an alternative version of a sufficiency-based
distributive criterion, for example, by claiming that fairness
requires greater levels of welfare than that which is sufficient to
meet basic needs. Alternatively, one could argue for a different
distribuendum, for example, by claiming that the social surplus, or
embodied labour, or some other good must pass a certain threshold in
order for the transaction to be fair. However, while these
alternatives are conceptually possible, the basic needs approach
remains the only widely defended sufficiency based account.


##### 2.2.1.3 Bargaining Solutions



A third family of substantive accounts of fairness are those that
appeal to various rational bargaining solutions, such as the Nash
(1950) solution. For these accounts, the distribuendum is the social
surplus generated by exchange and the fairness criteria are those
distributions that rational agents would agree upon.



Bargaining problems are a form of two person cooperative game,
characterised by (i) the status quo point, that is, what bargainers
would receive in the absence of an agreement; (ii) the feasible set of
Pareto improving points, which is shaped by the transactors utility
functions, and (iii) a solution concept, which selects a (usually
unique and Pareto optimal) point in this set as the rational
distribution. Nash's solution is the unique point in the
feasible set that maximises the product of the agents utility gain
compared to the status quo point for a particular distribution. For
example, suppose \(A\) wants to buy \(B\)'s phone and the two
are bargaining over the price. \(B\)'s reservation price might
be $100--she won't sell her phone for less. \(A\)'s
reservation price might be $200--he won't pay any more than
this for the phone. In this case, \(A\) and \(B\) are bargaining over
a $100 surplus. For simplicity, let's also make the (usually
unrealistic) assumption that the transactors utility gains are linear
with respect to money. In this case, \(A\) gains 100 utils if he gets
the phone for $100 dollars and \(B\) gets 100 utils if she sells the
phone for $200. The Nash solution is the price at which the value of
multiplying \(A\)'s utils by \(B\)'s utils is maximised.
As we can see in the following simplified table, in this case the Nash
solution happens to also involve an equal split of the utility: when
both gain 50 utils (which by our simplifying assumption is also $50)
the product of the agents utilities is maximised.




| Utility Gain | \(B\)'s Utility Gain | Product \((A\times B)\) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 0 | 100 | 0 |
| 10 | 90 | 900 |
| 20 | 80 | 1600 |
| 30 | 70 | 2100 |
| 40 | 60 | 2400 |
| 50 | 50 | 2500 |
| 60 | 40 | 2400 |
| 70 | 30 | 2100 |
| 80 | 20 | 1600 |
| 90 | 10 | 900 |
| 100 | 0 | 0 |



Note that the Nash solution does not always select an equal
distribution. If \(A\)'s utility increased linearly with his
monetary gain, while \(B\) placed greater weight on the first $10 than
she did on the next $10, a different distribution would result.



Nash argued that his solution was the *rational* solution to
bargaining problems because it is the only solution that satisfies
four axioms that, he argued, any agents not involved in a bargain
would select as desiderata for a bargaining problem: Pareto
optimality, utility invariance, symmetry, and independence. An
alternative justification is provided by Brian Barry who argued that
if the bargaininers were to hire an independent arbitrator to
determine how gains should be distributed, "each side will
refuse to accept any arbitrator whose decision it expects to be less
favourable than the outcome of direct bargaining ...[A]n arbitrator
who is acceptable to both sides must be one whose decisions
approximate the Nash solution" (Barry 1991: 26--27).



Bargaining solutions, such as Nash's, might identify outcomes
that agents would be rational to agree upon, but are these
distributions also *fair*? One concern is that they take the
pre-bargaining status quo as given. Yet, the context that leads up to
a transaction might play some role in what kinds of outcomes are fair.
For example, suppose in our phone sale case that \(B\) is selling her
phone because her hotel room was burgled while on holiday. \(B\) needs
money *now* and the only item of value remaining in her
possession is her phone. So, while \(B\) might, if given more time, be
able to sell her phone for much as much as $1000, \(A\) is the only
buyer she can find on short notice. \(B\)'s desperation lowers
her reservation price and, consequently, alters the Nash solution as
well. It isn't necessarily the case that the outcomes of
bargains resulting from circumstantial pressures are unfair, but when
these pressures result from identifiable injustices, as in
\(B\)'s case, the bargaining outcome appears unfair. This
contextual insensitivity to the sources of bargaining power undermines
the sufficiency of bargaining solutions as criteria for fair
transaction.



There are also reasons to think that bargaining solutions are
unnecessary as criteria for fair transaction. Suppose that the
transactors' status quo points *are* morally acceptable
(so that there is nothing morally suspect about the Nash solution
itself), but the transactors (irrationally) agree to an outcome that
is not Pareto *optimal*. For example, it might be that 100
utils are up for grabs and the Nash solution dictates both receive 50%
of the gains but both transactors irrationally 'burn' the
same portion of their gains, each taking only 40 utils. This behaviour
would be odd and, by definition, against each agent's interests,
but it does not seem that the distribution would be unfair. The point
is that *rationality* may require optimisation, but fairness
does not. Non-optimal distributions that preserve the proportionality
of the Nash solution remain fair. If this is the case, arriving at the
Nash solution is not strictly necessary for a fair transaction.


#### 2.2.2 Procedural Unfairness



Problems with substantive accounts of fairness in transactions have
led many philosophers to adopt procedural accounts, which, recall,
identify unfairness with some procedural flaw in the transaction
rather than with a particular transactional outcome. Here we survey
three: Wertheimer's (1996) fair market value account,
Roemer's (1982a,b) property relations account and
Steiner's (1984, 1987) historical rights-based account.


##### 2.2.2.1 Fair Market Value



There are good reasons to think that markets can tell us something
about fair prices. A fair price, it seems should reflect how rare
something is and how much others would like to have it. There are some
goods, such as air or water, that are--at least in high-income
countries--in abundant supply. Even though our demand for these
goods is high, the supply of these goods is also considerable, meaning
that they command relatively low prices on the market. In contrast,
goods like a particular child's primary school artwork may have
low supply (perhaps only a few of little Jane's or Tom's
Turkey-hand-collages exist in the world), but since demand for these
goods is limited to the child's parents, the price these goods
would fetch on the market is low. Those goods that are both rare (low
in supply) and popular (high in demand), like prime real estate, are
expensive. Acquiring them requires giving up a greater amount of those
resources we already have. And since there are many others who would
like to have these rare goods, it is, intuitively, fair that one
should have to give up more to obtain them.



However, fair prices cannot be associated with *actual* market
prices because we often want to claim that actual market prices are
unfair. Thus, while markets' ability to make prices reflect
goods' scarcity and others demand for them may take us some way
towards a procedure for generating a fair price, it seems that the
conditions in which markets operate must also be fair themselves. Alan
Wertheimer (1996) has argued that the fair price is the price that
goods would fetch in a hypothetical competitive market that excludes
asymmetries of information and undue pressure. Wertheimer argues that
"fair market value" prices are prices at which neither
party takes *special* unfair advantage of the other
party's decision-making capacity or special vulnerabilities in
the other party's situation (232). Such a price, he notes,
"may or may not be a 'just price', all things
considered, but it may well be a non-exploitative price" (232).
Although the fair market value approach enjoys some intuitive appeal,
it is unclear that Wertheimer's conditions of pressure and full
information are required for fair prices.



Consider full information. Information is a good that can be traded on
the market itself. Obtaining information can be costly and time
consuming. Indeed, information is the main commodity that universities
trade in: students pay tuition in order to obtain information about
their topics of study. The fair price for a university education may
indeed differ from that which we find in current markets, but this
does not mean that professors' cannot profit from their own
informational endowments. Of course, some informational asymmetries
are indeed unfair. Asymmetries introduced by deception, for example,
are characteristic of fraudulent transactions. There may also be moral
limits on the returns one can enjoy from informational asymmetries.
But the point is that mere asymmetries of information are not always
unfair.



Now consider pressure. Suppose \(B\) forgot her lunch at home. Her
willingness to buy a sandwich from \(A\) is now greater than it would
have been had she not forgotten her lunch; she'll pay more for a
sandwich given than she's forgotten her lunch than she would had
she remembered it. In this case, \(B\)'s hunger exerts a
pressure on her that causes her to pay \(A\) a higher price for a
sandwich. But there's nothing *unfair* about having to
pay for (or pay more for) lunch because you forgot your lunch.
Pressure does not necessarily make a transaction unfair. Yet, like
asymmetries of information, pressure *can* lead to transactions
that are, intuitively, unfair. If \(B\) is drowning and \(A\) offers
to save her only if she pays him $100,000, many would say
\(A\)'s offer takes unfair advantage of the undue pressure that
the threat of drowning places on \(B\).



In situations involving informational asymmetries and pressure both
the *degree* and *source* of these factors influences
our willingness to say that effects they have on the terms of a
transaction are unfair. We are less willing to say that \(B\) paying
\(A\) more for a sandwich is unfair if the source of the pressure is
such that it arises from \(B\)'s own choices. It is more
plausible to say that \(B\)'s paying \(A\) more is unfair if the
reason she is hungry is that \(C\) has stolen her sandwich. Similarly,
the *degree* of pressure or asymmetric information also
influences whether we are willing to say these factors give rise to
unfair terms. The higher price \(B\) might pay given that she forgot
her lunch might be fair while the price she might be willing to pay if
she were starving might not be fair.



One way to capture these rough intuitions about the degree and source
of factors that influence prices is to appeal to antecedent notions of
justice. In other words, whether influence of pressure, information
and other factors on price is fair depends on whether the
distributions of information and pressure among the parties are just.
In this case, the fair price would not be that which excludes all
influence from pressure or informational asymmetries, but instead the
price that we would find in a *just* market. Of course, there
are many competing conceptions of justice. However, the next
procedural account offers structural conditions that are, in
principle, compatible with a wide range of approaches to justice.


##### 2.2.2.2 Unjust Property Relations and Historical Injustice



Many have found plausible Marx's claim that employment
relationships under capitalism are exploitative. But perhaps Marx was
wrong to locate that exploitation in the particular details of the
capitalist-employee relationship. After all, what makes exploitation
possible at all on Marx's view is a feature of the macro level
distribution of property in society--specifically
capitalists' monopoly over the means of production. Marx's
formal theory of exploitation, however, makes no explicit mention of
this property relation, focusing instead entirely on the interaction
between capitalists and laborers at the point of production. The
result, according to John Roemer, is a theory that is focused too much
on the micro level of particular employment relationships and not
enough on the macro level background of inegalitarian property
distribution against which those relationships take place (Roemer
1982a,b).



On Roemer's analysis, capitalist exploitation is essentially a
form of social parasitism. One group (the capitalists) are made better
off by the existence of a second group (workers), but that second
group is made *worse* off by the existence of the first. More
formally, according to Roemer's account (1982b, 194--95),
we may say that a group \(S\) in a larger society \(N\) is exploited
by its complement group \(S'\) (relative to \(N\)) if and only 
 if:[1]


1. There is an alternative, which we may conceive of as
hypothetically feasible, in which \(S\) would be better off than in
its present situation [by withdrawing from society].
2. Under this alternative, the complement group \(S'\) relative to
\(N\) (i.e., \(S' = N - S\)), would be worse off than at present.
3. \(S'\) is in a relationship of dominance to \(S\).



Later, in order to ensure that \(S'\) gained at the expense of \(S\),
Roemer added the condition,


4. If \(S'\) were to withdraw from society with its *own*
endowments, then \(S'\) would be worse off than at present.



Roemer's account clearly separates the structure of exploitation
from the particular content that gives rise to exploitation claims.
Different specifications of the withdrawal conditions in (1) yield
different accounts of exploitation. For example, a relation that
Roemer terms 'feudal exploitation' occurs when \(S\) would
be better off withdrawing with their own endowments. Historically,
feudal serfs were required to perform corvee labour on
lords' lands and/or required to pay rents in exchange for
'protection'. Under the assumption that such
'protection' was not of real value, this arrangement was
exploitative. Serfs would be better off withdrawing with their own
labour and land and not paying the lords. Having lost the value of
this labour or rent, lords would be worse off. Roemer identifies
capitalist exploitation as a situation in which \(S\) is allowed to
withdraw with their per capita alienable assets and socialist
exploitation as a situation in which they withdraw with their per
capita alienable and inalienable assets (such as skills and talents).
Many other forms of exploitation are possible under the Roemerian
structure. For example, \(S\) might be 'Rawls Exploited'
if they would be better off withdrawing with the basic liberties and
primary goods required by Rawls's two principles of justice.



The separation of the structure of exploitation from its ethical
content helps to clarify disagreement about whether a particular
situation is exploitative. Two parties might disagree about whether
capitalism is exploitative, for example, because they disagree about
whether productive assets ought to be distributed in an egalitarian
manner, while agreeing that exploitation does require something like
the conditions Roemer outlines. On the other hand, parties might
*agree* about the theory just distributions that informs
Roemer's forms of exploitation while disagreeing about whether
Roemer's conditions are necessary and sufficient for
exploitation.



Note that Roemer's definition is a partition of \(N\) into two
mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive subset groups. As such, it
precludes the possibility of a third group with neutral exploitation
status. This feature might not be particularly odd if we think that
society divides rather crudely into two groups: exploiting capitalists
and exploited workers. However, Roemer himself allows for and
theorises the existence of more than two classes. One explanation for
this feature of the definition is that it simply arises from
Roemer's coalitional approach.



Here we outline two critiques that have been raised against
Roemer's structural conditions: first, that an antecedent unjust
distribution is not necessary for exploitation; second, that
Roemer's appeal to domination in condition (3) is ad hoc and
unsatisfactory. (Note that Roemer does not explicitly state that the
difference between the actual and hypothetical alternative is an
injustice. Rather, this is an implicit assumption based on one's
selection of the hypothetical baseline. Nevertheless, many of
Roemer's critics have attributed to Roemer the assumption that
the actual distribution is unjust. See, for example, Vrousalis 2013:
131.)



Many theorists agree that an antecedent injustice is necessary for
exploitation. For example, Hillel Steiner's account of
exploitation holds that exploitation occurs when \(A\) gains more from
an interaction, and \(B\) gains less, than they would have were it not
for the existence of a prior injustice (Steiner 1984). So, for
example, if \(A\) hires \(B\) as a laborer and is able to pay \(B\) a
low wage of $2 per hour only because \(A\) (or someone else) has
previously unjustly deprived \(B\) of alternative sources of labor,
then \(A\) has exploited \(B\). If, on the other hand, the explanation
for \(B\)'s earning only $2 does not involve injustice--if
\(B\) simply does not have very valuable skills, or if there is a
large supply of (not unjustly) unemployed laborers, then a $2 wage, no
matter how insufficient it might be to meet \(B\)'s needs, and
no matter how much more \(A\) could afford to pay, is not
exploitative. Like Roemer's account, Steiner's has the
advantage of being a structural account. Indeed, the two bear much in
common. Roemer's account is focused on "macro"
issues pertaining to the distribution of property in society, while
Steiner's focuses on "micro" issues regarding how
individuals treat each other within the framework created by that
distribution (Ferguson and Steiner 2016: 545-546).



Like Steiner and Roemer, Ruth Sample agrees that exploitation can take
the form of taking advantage of past injustice (Sample 2003: 74). If
\(A\) uses the fact that \(B\) is disadvantaged as a result of past
injustice for his own profit then, Sample argues, \(A\) has failed to
treat \(B\) with respect and has exploited him for his own gain.



On the other hand, some theorists have argued that the source of
vulnerability is irrelevant to the exploitative nature of a
transaction. Robert Goodin, for instance, argues that exploitation
consists in "playing for advantage in situations where it is
inappropriate to do so", and involves a violation of the moral
norm of "protecting the vulnerable". Importantly, Goodin
holds that this norm applies "regardless of the particular
source of their vulnerability" (Goodin 1987: 187). Thus, whether
a worker is economically vulnerable because of a past injustice or
whether her vulnerability derives from a normal fluctuation of the
business cycle is irrelevant. To use that vulnerability to press
one's own advantage is exploitative. Wertheimer claims that
"even in a reasonably just society, people will find themselves
in situations in which they can strike an agreement that will produce
mutual gain, and some of these cases will give rise to allegations of
exploitation" (Wertheimer 1996, 9). Similarly, Nicholas
Vrousalis *rejects* the claim that "\(A\) exploits \(B\)
if and only if the exchange in which they are engaged occurs against
the background of an unjust distribution", and he concludes that
"asset injustice furnishes no necessary condition for
exploitation" (Vrousalis 2013: 148--149). Matt Zwolinski
echoes these concerns, arguing that the kinds of background injustice
to which Roemer's conditions appeal is not necessary. Zwolinski
claims that, "Offering to rescue an individual who became
stranded in the desert because of her own poor planning in exchange
for her entire net worth is wrongfully exploitative because of the
unfairness of the terms of the transaction, not because of the history
or institutional background to that transaction" (Zwolinski
2012, 171) (Vrousalis uses as similar case to motivate his objection).
Zwolinski also argues that historical injustice is also not a
sufficient condition, for we can imagine cases where parties gain from
past injustice without thereby engaging in exploitation. If
\(B\)'s home is unjustly burned to the ground by an arsonist,
and a contractor \(A\) charges \(B\) a normal market price to rebuild
it, then \(A\) has not exploited \(B\), despite the fact that \(A\)
has profited from the injustice suffered by \(B\) (Zwolinski 2012:
172).



There are two ways Roemer--and those theorists who appeal to
antecedent injustice in 'historical' accounts of
exploitation--might resist the objections advanced by Vrousalis,
Zwolinski and others. First, one could expand the scope of injustice
(Ferguson 2020); alternatively, one could bite the bullet and attempt
to explain why such cases are not, in fact, instances of exploitation
(Ferguson 2016a). Let's examine each in turn.



It is natural to restrict 'injustice' to actions caused by
other persons. So, we might think that if \(B\) is drowning because
\(A\) pushed her overboard, \(B\) is the victim of injustice; whereas,
if she accidentally fell overboard, \(B\) is the victim of natural
misfortune. Some philosophers (such as libertarians) have argued that
these natural misfortunes do not trigger duties of justice for others.
However, this position is far from universally accepted. Others, like
Goodin, argue vulnerability triggers duties of justice regardless of
the source of the duress. So, even if \(A\) is not responsible for
\(B\) being in the water, justice may require that he provide her with
aid. If \(A\) has such a moral duty to aid \(B\), but threatens to
withhold aid in order to induce \(A\) to pay him, he coerces her
(according to many prominent analyses of coercion) and when \(A\)
benefits from this coercion, he exploits \(B\).



The extension of duties of justice to duress or vulnerability caused
by natural misfortune handles some cases that motive a rejection of
the claim that antecedent injustice is not necessary for exploitation,
but this move is less appealing for cases in which a person's
disadvantage is *self-caused*. Suppose that rather than \(A\)
pushing her or the sea rocking her overboard, \(B\) jumped into the
ocean on purpose. Suppose that she immediately regrets her decision
and asks \(A\) for rescue. While we might accept that \(A\) may be
permitted to charge her more for rescue in this case than in
situations involving natural disadvantage, many still believe fairness
places some limit on the gains \(A\) can extract. Consequently, as
Wertheimer, Vrousalis, and Zwolinski have argued, it appears that
\(A\) can still take unfair advantage of \(B\) despite the absence of
any antecedent injustice. One might continue to resist by arguing that
\(A\)'s self-harm constitutes an injustice to herself, yet such
a position is difficult to maintain and would certainly stretch the
ordinary understanding of the scope of justice.



At this point, defenders of historical accounts might opt for an
alternative defence, arguing that if the disadvantage that B uses to
exploit \(A\) is indeed one that she is responsible for bringing
about, then \(B\) does *not* exploit her when he benefits from
this disadvantage. Support for this position is provided by the moral
hazard objection, mentioned above: if \(A\) knows the consequences of
her actions will be subsidised by \(B\) (by placing a constraint on
the advantage \(B\) can reap from his future interactions with \(A\)),
then \(A\) has an incentive to take risks, the consequences of which
are at least partly borne by \(A\) (Ferguson 2016b). There is also an
intermediate position available here. We might acknowledge that if
\(B\) is responsible for her plight, then \(A\) is permitted to gain
from \(B\)'s disadvantage, while also placing limits on the
amount of gain that \(A\) can extract in such circumstances. As Serena
Olsaretti has argued, the grounds of responsibility, which concern
"the features of people that we can ... hold them
responsible for" differ from the fairness of the
'stakes' of their choices, the costs "attach[ed] to
whatever features constitute the justifiable grounds of
responsibility" (Olsaretti 2009: 170). An account of just stakes
may therefore be used to make space for this intermediate position,
where \(A\) can gain from \(B\)'s self-caused vulnerability, but
only within certain limits.



Whether historical injustice is necessary for exploitation remains an
open debate amongst exploitation theorists, with the main points of
contention centred around scope of justice and the plausibility of any
proffered bullet biting response (possibly tempered by the
intermediate position).



The second objection to Roemer's account is that his domination
condition is *ad hoc* and unsatisfactory. As Kymlicka points
out, the condition is *ad hoc* since it is "disconnected
from the 'ethical imperative' [the distribution of
productive assets] that [Roemer] identifies as the basis of
exploitation theory" (Kymlicka 2002: 204 n. 13). And Roemer
himself admits that lack of clarity regarding the concept of dominance
prevents his account from being a "satisfactory analytical
account of exploitation" (Roemer 1982b: 304 n. 12).



The motivation for the addition of a domination condition comes from
cases like the following, from Jon Elster:



> 
> 
> Consider a hypothetical society in which there are two groups of
> people, of equal size and with equal assets. They do not interact
> economically, that is, they produce and consume in isolation from each
> other. But they interact ideologically in the following way. Group
> \(R\) has a puritan religion that makes the members work long hours
> and produce much, but the religion only motivates them to work if they
> have before their eyes the lazy group \(S\) whom they smugly believe
> to be condemned to eternal suffering. Group \(S\) members work short
> hours, because they wrongly think that the rigid and to them abhorrent
> life style of group \(R\) is due to the long working hours, not to the
> religion. (Elster 1982: 369)
> 
> 
> 



As Elster points out, \(S\) would be better off if they withdrew with
their per capita assets, and R would be worse off. Thus, group \(R\)
exploits \(S\). Yet, this appears to be the wrong result. The
intuitive result to such cases is that the interaction between the
groups isn't of the right sort for it to count as a case of
exploitation. It appears that we need something like a domination
condition to qualify the kinds of behaviour that are appropriately
described as exploitation. If one assumes that exploitation is a
purely distributive phenomenon, then Roemer's account, sans
domination fails. Indeed, it is unclear how cases like Elster's
could be handled by tweaking the distributive conditions alone.



Yet, we needn't accept the assumption that exploitation is
purely distributive. We might, instead, adopt a two-factor account,
where exploitation requires both the presence of unfairness and the
presence of something like domination.



Indeed, as Benjamin Ferguson has argued, the most prominent accounts
of fair transaction make unfair transactions pervasive. If
exploitation is tantamount to unfair transaction, then exploitations
are pervasive too. Yet, as he argues, if nearly all transactions are
exploitative, "then what is the point of singling out particular
practices, such as commercial surrogacy, sweatshops, and price gouging
as wrongfully exploitative?" (Ferguson 2020: 536). Furthermore,
the problem isn't merely that exploitation might be
widespread--after all, he notes, many other wrongs might also be
widespread. Rather, the pervasiveness of unfair transaction is such
that we can have good evidence to believe that a transaction is unfair
(and thus, for purely distributive accounts exploitative) without
knowing which party benefits unfairly. In such cases it would be
inappropriate to blame either of the transactors, which, he argues,
"conflicts with the ordinary intuition that exploiters are
morally responsible and blameworthy for exploiting" (Ferguson
2020: 537). Ferguson argues that these problems can be overcome by
appending a second condition that refers to exploiters'
attitudes to the standard requirement that exploitations are unfair.
In the next section we consider three 'attitudinal
conditions' that might be appended to the unfairness
requirement.


### 2.3 Attitudinal Conditions



Accounts of exploitation that depart from the traditional analysis
that relies only on unfairness generally append one of three
attitudinal conditions. They claim that in addition to, or in place of
unfairness, exploitation involves either domination, disrespect, or an
awareness of one's unfair advantage. In this section we survey
each of these approaches.


#### 2.3.1 Disrespect and Domination



Although many accounts of exploitation reference disrespect,
relatively few characterise disrespect as an independent condition for
exploitation. For example, Ruth Sample has argued that there are three
ways we might fail to respect the value another person: "by
neglecting what is necessary for their wellbeing...by taking
advantage of an injustice...and by commodifying, or treating as a
fungible object of market exchange, an aspect of that person's
being that ought not to be commodified" (2003:57). Later Sample
acknowledges that, on its own, improper commodification does not lead
to exploitation. Rather, improper commodification is one
characteristic consequence of a prior vulnerability. Thus, her forms
of disrespect reduce to taking advantage of past injustice and failing
to meet basic needs.



While these two behaviours are no doubt disrespectful, they are also
forms of transactional unfairness (discussed in section 2.2). In this
case, an appeal to disrespect offers a deeper analysis by explaining
what is wrong with the unfairness involved in exploitation, but it
does not act as an additional necessary or sufficient condition for
exploitation.



Similarly, Jonathan Wolff has argued that "to exploit someone is
to make use of their circumstances in a way which fails properly to
acknowledge their standing as an end in themself" (1999: 113).
He then points out that the different traditions in moral
philosophy--Kantian, Aristotelian, and Utilitarian--offer
different accounts of what it means to treat others as ends in
themselves. Yet, on Wolff's analysis, each of these accounts
ends up returning to fairness. For example, Wolff argues that "A
Kantian interpretation of the baseline for
exploitation--motivated by taking a Kantian interpretation of
what it is to be an end in itself--leads us to a
'fairness' norm. Kantian exploitation ... is to use
another person's vulnerable circumstances to obtain their actual
compliance with a situation that violates norms of fairness"
(1999: 114). Both Wolff's and Sample's analyses of the
relationship between exploitation, unfairness, and disrespect are
plausible, but neither characterizes disrespect as an
*additional* condition that limits the scope of exploitation.
If we want to avoid the problems for purely distributive accounts that
Elster and Ferguson raise, we require conditions that do more than
characterise exploitation as a distributively unfair transactional
outcome.



An account that clearly distinguishes disrespect and unfairness is
Nicholas Vrousalis's domination-based account of exploitation.
For Vrousalis, disrespect involves acting towards another in a way
that is not "dialogically endorsable" that is, acting in a
way that gives one "reason to feel shame or guilt for putting or
allowing a particular form of justification for some putative act on
the table of discourse" (2013: 140). Domination is a subset of
disrespect that involves "\(A\) getting \(B\) to take
[\(A\)'s] power over \(B\) as a reason for \(B\) to perform the
power-directed act" (2021: 110). And exploitation is a subset of
dominating acts that "obtains when the power-directed act,
performed for the power-given reason, is geared towards \(A\)'s
enrichment" (2021: 110). Thus, exploitations involve domination
and domination disrespect. But crucially, for Vrousalis, unfairness is
not a necessary condition for exploitation because fairness "is
responsibility constrained equality", but "exploitation
can arise from *any* material inequality" (2013: 149,
emphasis added). For Vrousalis, exploitation is a dividend of
domination induced servitude, though not necessarily unfair.



Unlike Sample's and Wolff's appeals to disrespect,
Vrousalis's domination condition is distinct from the unfairness
condition. However, it is unclear that Vrousalis's account can
do a better job of capturing intuitions about the scope of
exploitation because, as Richard Arneson (2016) points out, it is
difficult to see how the use of others' vulnerabilities for
self-enrichment is wrong if such use is not also unfair. He argues
"One can readily identify examples in which people exploit the
weaknesses of others--use these vulner- abilities to secure
advantages for themselves--but in which there is no unfair
division of advantages from the interaction and so nothing that
qualifies as morally objectionable exploitation" (2016: 10). For
example, suppose \(A\) is selling sandwiches and \(B\) is hungry. In
such a case, \(B\) is vulnerable to \(A\): \(A\) controls a good that
\(B\) desires and which contributes to her wellbeing. \(A\) can take
advantage of this vulnerability to make a profit by selling \(B\) a
sandwich. If \(B\) had her own sandwich with her she would not be
willing to pay \(A\) for one of his, thus \(A\) can make use of
\(B\)'s hunger to get her to pay him for the food. But unless
the price \(A\) charges is also unfair--perhaps because \(A\) is
the only seller, perhaps because \(B\) lacks a sandwich due to
injustice, and so on--it is hard to see how \(A\)'s
sandwich sale is wrong. Contrary to Vrousalis's claims, it seems
that unfairness is a necessary condition for exploitation.


#### 2.3.2 Awareness



Although exploitation requires unfairness, it also seems to involve
more than unfairness. As Wolff puts it, "somehow, there just
seems to be more to exploitation than unequal exchange" (1999:
107). Benjamin Ferguson has argued that exploitation is best
characterised by a two factor account, such that \(A\) exploits \(B\)
in a transaction iff \(A\) gains unfairly from \(B\) in the
transaction *and* \(A\) believes, or ought to have believed,
that the gains he receives wrong \(B\) (2020: 535). Ferguson argues
that this two-factor account solves two problems for existing accounts
of exploitation. The first, which we have already seen, is the scope
problem: if exploitation is merely tantamount to unfair transaction,
then it seems that the scope of exploitation is too broad. The second
problem is the blame problem. Ferguson argues that the best accounts
of transactional fairness entail that *unfair* transactions are
pervasive: the next transaction that you or I engage in is likely
unfair. However, in most transactions we don't know which party
is gaining too much and which party is gaining too little. This
epistemic consequence of pervasive unfairness means that we have no
reason to *blame* either party of the transaction. Yet, blame
typically accompanies charges of exploitation. To say that \(A\)
exploits \(B\) is to say that \(A\) has done something for which he
can be blamed.



Ferguson points out that in the subset of unfair transactions where
\(A\) gains unfairly from \(B\) and \(A\) *knows* he gains
unfairly from \(B\), we can blame \(A\) because \(A\) satisfies
epistemic conditions for moral responsibility. And, of course, the
scope of exploitation is constrained by the addition of this knowledge
requirement. However, knowledge may be *too* restrictive for
two reasons.



First, if knowledge requires something like justified true belief,
\(A\) can believe he gains unfairly from \(B\) and his belief can be
true, *without* \(A\) knowing he gains unfairly if
\(A\)'s belief isn't properly formed, that is, if his
belief is unjustified. Suppose \(A\) thinks his transaction with \(B\)
is unfair because he mistakenly accepts a false account of
transactional fairness. Further, suppose that the true account of
transactional fairness--whatever it may be--and the false
account both entail that \(A\)'s transaction with \(B\) is
unfair. If \(A\) believes the transaction is unfair on the basis of
the false account, he lacks justification for this belief and so does
not *know* that the transaction is unfair. If exploitation
requires \(A\) to know the transaction is unfair, but \(A\) does not
have this knowledge he does not exploit. Yet, intuitively, such cases
still seem exploitative--indeed, it still seems appropriate to
blame \(A\) for engaging in a transaction he believed was unfair (and
that was unfair, albeit for different reasons than those \(A\) thought
made it unfair).



Second, in some cases \(A\) may fail to form the belief that a
transaction is unfair due to bias in his selection of evidence or how
he weighs evidence. For example, consider slavery. If any kind of
relation is exploitative, surely slavery is. Some slave holders surely
knew slavery was unfair and yet continued to engage in the practice.
But suppose some held false beliefs about a 'natural'
hierarchy of races. In such a case they might fail to believe their
interactions were unfair. Yet, their holding these false beliefs
amounts to negligence: they were surely presented with evidence that
contradicted them.



Changing the condition from knowledge to belief and making room for
negligence addresses these problems, but even this relatively weak
condition encounters problems, as Ferguson shows in the following
case:



> 
> 
> Suppose \(A\) believes exploitation does not involve unfairness, but
> only domination tout court. \(A\) believes he dominates \(B\), he
> believes transacting with her will exploit her, but as a domination
> theorist, he does not believe the transaction will be unfair. Suppose
> that \(A\) nevertheless transacts with \(B\) and his belief that it is
> a fair transaction is false. (2020: 542-43)
> 
> 
> 



It is hard to deny that \(A\) exploits \(B\) in such a scenario, yet
he does not believe the transaction is unfair, and so does not satisfy
the belief-or-negligence condition. This counterexample can be
addressed by modifying the proposition that \(A\) is required to
believe. We needn't require \(A\) to believe (or be negligent in
failing to believe) 'that the transaction is unfair' but
only the more general proposition 'that the gains he receives
wrong \(B\)'. Thus, Ferguson argues we can appropriately
restrict the scope of purely distributive accounts and ascribe blame
to exploiters if we understand exploitation as: \(A\) exploits \(B\)
iff (1) \(A\) transacts unfairly with \(B\) and (2) \(A\) believes the
gains he receives in the transaction wrong \(B\).


## 3. The Moral Weight and Force of Exploitation



The primary task of a theory of exploitation is to set forward the
truth conditions for the claim, "\(A\) exploits \(B\)".
Beyond this purely conceptual project, however, there remain two more
straightforwardly normative tasks. Adopting terminology from Alan
Wertheimer, we can describe the first of these tasks as providing an
account of the *moral weight* of exploitation, where moral
weight refers to the intensity of exploitation's wrongness. The
second task is to provide an account of the *moral force* of
exploitation, where moral force is understood to refer to "the
various moral upshots of reasons for action that exploitation might or
might not involve for parties to the transaction or for society"
(Wertheimer 1996: 28).



When exploitation is harmful and nonconsensual, issues of both moral
weight and force are relatively unproblematic. Whatever the added
moral importance of the gain to \(A\) from the harm to \(B\), it is
certainly at least *prima facie* wrong for \(A\) to harm \(B\)
and it seems that the state is at least *prima facie* justified
in prohibiting or refusing to enforce such transactions. But
exploitation that takes place in the context of mutually advantageous
and consensual transactions presents a more difficult set of problems.
First, regarding the issue of moral weight, it might be thought that
even if a transaction between \(A\) and \(B\) is unfair, there can be
nothing *seriously* wrong about an agreement from which both
parties benefit, particularly if \(A\) has no obligation to enter into
any transaction with \(B\). At the very least, it seems difficult to
show how a mutually advantageous (but unfair) interaction can be
morally *worse* than no-interaction at all since, *ex
hypothesi*, there is no party to the transaction for whom it is
worse. In the recent literature on exploitation, this thought has been
formulated more precisely as the "non-worseness
claim":



NWC: Interaction between \(A\) and \(B\) cannot be worse than
non-interaction when \(A\) has a right not to interact with \(B\) at
all, and when the interaction is mutually advantageous, consensual,
and free from negative externalities (Wertheimer 1996, 2011; Zwolinski
2009; Powell and Zwolinski 2012).



Most exploitation theorists are skeptical that the NWC is correct
(Wertheimer 1996; Bailey 2010; Arneson 2013; Barnes 2013; Malmqvist
2016). For if it were, then it would seem to be a mistake to blame
individuals who engage in certain forms of mutually beneficial
exploitation--for example, those who engage in "price
gouging" by selling electrical generators to victims of natural
disasters at inflated prices. (Zwolinski 2008). After all, we usually
would not blame those individuals if they stayed home and did nothing.
But, so long as people are willing to pay the high prices (and no
coercion or fraud is involved), both parties are better off with the
transaction than without it. So how could it be morally worse to
provide those customers with *some* benefit than it is to
provide them with *no benefit at all*?



Of course, the NWC need not lead to a deflationary account of the
wrongness of exploitation. It could, instead, lead to an
*inflationary* account of the wrongness of non-interaction. In
other words, we can account for the NWC's claim that mutually
beneficial exploitation is not worse than non-interaction
*either* by saying that mutually beneficial exploitation is
less wrong than we thought it was, *or* by saying that
non-interaction is worse than we thought it was: by saying that price
gougers are less blameworthy than we thought, or by saying that those
who stay home and do nothing to help victims of disaster are
*more* blameworthy than we thought.



Even if mutually beneficial exploitation really is a serious moral
wrong, however, it might not be a kind of wrong that can justify state
intervention (Wertheimer 1996: Ch. 9). In other words, the question of
the moral force of exploitation cannot be settled entirely by
reference to its moral weight. Suppose \(A\) is a price gouger who
sells bottles of water to disaster victims for $12 each. Even if \(A\)
acts wrongly or fails to act virtuously, it is arguable that \(A\)
does not harm anyone or violate anyone's rights, and only harm
or rights violations justify state intervention. If the state cannot
force \(A\) to sell the water to \(B\), it might be thought completely
*irrational* for the state to prohibit \(A\) and \(B\) from
entering into a consensual and mutually advantageous transaction.



Moreover, there is a real danger that preventing mutually beneficial
but exploitative transactions will wind up "consigning the
vulnerable person to an even worse fate than being exploited"
(Wood 1995: 156). After all, persons who are exploited are taken
advantage of because of some antecedent vulnerability--a lack of
access to clean drinking water, in the example above. Preventing
exploitative transactions *by itself* does nothing to alleviate
this vulnerability. Indeed, by depriving vulnerable parties of one
possibility for *improving* their situation by engaging in a
mutually beneficial transaction, such interference might actually
exacerbate it.



Perhaps this view is correct. Bracketing arguments based on
externalities, it seems perfectly plausible to maintain that the state
is justified in interfering with transactions only if one party is
violating the other's rights. That said, those who invoke the
concept of exploitation frequently maintain that such exploitation
provides a reason for state intervention. For example, when it is
claimed that commercial surrogacy exploits the birth mothers, the
critics typically argue that surrogacy contracts should be
unenforceable or entirely prohibited. Similar things are said about
the sale of bodily organs. Those who make such arguments do frequently
claim that the transactions are nonconsensual or harmful, but they
seem prepared to make such arguments even if the transactions are
consensual and mutually advantageous.



On what grounds might we justify interfering with consensual and
mutually advantageous exploitative transactions? It might be thought
that we could interfere on paternalistic grounds. A paternalistic
argument could not justify interfering with exploitative transactions
if the exploitative transaction is advantageous to \(B\) and if
interference is not likely to result in a transaction that is more
beneficial to \(B\). For paternalism justifies interfering for
someone's good, and this interference would not be to the
target's benefit. But there might be situations in which \(B\)
knows enough to agree only to those exploitative transactions that are
beneficial (as compared with no transaction), but does not know that
less exploitative transactions are available. And so there may be a
"soft paternalist" justification for interference with
some mutually advantageous exploitative transactions.



We might also justify interfering with exploitative transactions on
strategic grounds. Suppose that \(A\) enjoys a monopoly position, say,
as a potential rescuer of \(B\). If we prohibit \(A\) from charging an
exorbitant price for his services, then \(A\) might offer his services
for a reasonable price. This argument would not justify interfering in
a highly competitive market, for, under such conditions, \(A\) would
not and could not offer his services for a better price. But there may
be numerous situations in which such strategic arguments can work
(Wertheimer 1996).



It is worth noting, however, that prohibiting exploitative
transactions is not the only way in which the state or other moral
agents might attempt to respond to its wrongful nature. Prohibition is
an example of what Allen Wood describes as "interference".
But in addition to interference, Wood suggests that we can think of
*redistribution* as a way in which third parties such as the
state might attempt to prevent exploitation (Wood 1995: 154). After
all, exploitation is only possible because \(B\) is in a position of
vulnerability relative to \(A\) . One way to prevent exploitation,
then, is to address this vulnerability directly--to channel
resources to \(B\) so as to remove the hardship that makes him
vulnerable to exploitation in the first place. If workers in the
developing world had an adequate social safety net to fall back on,
for instance, they would be less inclined to accept a job with the
harsh conditions of a sweatshop, and therefore less vulnerable to
exploitation by their employers.


## 4. Applied Issues in Exploitation Theory



Questions about exploitation arise in a wide variety of different
contexts, not just in the domain of political philosophy but in
various areas of applied ethics as well such as business ethics,
biomedical ethics, and environmental ethics. In addition to the topics
discussed briefly below, the concept of exploitation has played a
central role in debates over payday lending (Mayer 2003), clinical
research in the developing world (Hawkins and Emanuel 2008), markets
for human organs (Hughes 1998; Taylor 2005), guest worker programs
(Mayer 2005), and price gouging (Zwolinski 2008).


### 4.1 Universal Basic Income



Some theorists, such as Philippe van Pairjs, have argued that justice
requires that the state institute a universal basic income (UBI). A
UBI is a cash transfer, funded by taxes, that would be paid to all
citizens regardless of need, and regardless of whether they are
working, or even willing to work (van Parijs 1995). Against this, some
critics have charged that a basic income would facilitate a form of
exploitation. As Stuart White argues,



> 
> 
> where others bear some cost in order to contribute to a scheme of
> cooperation, then it is unfair for one to willingly enjoy the intended
> benefits of their cooperative efforts unless one is willing to bear
> the cost of making a relevantly proportionate contribution to this
> scheme of cooperation in return. (White 1997: 317-318)
> 
> 
> 



As is so often the case in dealing with exploitation claims, assessing
this objection requires us to grapple with a complicated mix of
empirical and normative claims. On the empirical side, for instance,
we might ask whether a basic income really *would* lead to a
net increase in reciprocity-violating transfers. Some theorists have
argued that a basic income would actually increase incentives to work
relative to currently existing welfare programs, by lowering the
effective marginal tax rate faced by low-wage workers (Tobin 1966).
Others have emphasized the role of unpaid labor in the economy, such
as domestic labor, and argued that a basic income would lead to a
fairer application of the reciprocity principle than welfare systems
that condition benefits on doing paid work (Pateman 2004).
Normatively, the objection challenges us to think about both what the
ideal of reciprocity requires and how it fits within a system of
broader distributive justice. Some advocates of basic income have
argued that a liberal-egalitarian theory of justice is correct and
requires an equal distribution of scarce resources such as land rent
and the rent component of wages (van Parijs 1997: 329). Reciprocity
may be an important political value, such theorists argue, but it is
one that is to be applied only *after* people have been given
what they are due at the basic level of justice.


### 4.2 Sweatshop Labor



The term "sweatshop" is usually used to refer places of
employment that utilize low-skill workers, often in the developing
world, and that are characterized by low wages, long hours, and unsafe
working conditions. In many cases, sweatshops produce goods on
contract for large, multinational enterprises, who then sell those
goods to customers in wealthier societies.



Many critics see sweatshop labor as highly exploitative. A large part
of the debate over this claim has focused on the issue of wages.
Critics claim that sweatshops have a moral obligation to pay a living
wage to their workers. This duty is grounded in the extreme need of
sweatshop workers, the fact that sweatshops and the multinational
enterprises with which they contract rely on them to produce the goods
that they sell, and the fact that the multinational enterprises are
profitable enough that they can afford to increase workers'
wages without jeopardizing the health of their business (Meyers 2004;
Snyder 2008). Some critics, however, see sweatshops' low wages
as merely one symptom of a broader failure to respect workers as
persons who are ends in themselves. That failure of respect manifests
itself in sweatshops violation of legal labor standards, their
exposure of workers to physically dangerous conditions, and their
abuse and coercion of workers on the job (Arnold and Bowie 2003:
227-233).



Once again, a number of difficult empirical and normative issues come
out in this debate. The empirical issues include not only questions
about what conditions in sweatshops are actually like--how low
wages actually are relative to other firms in the developing economy,
for instance--but what effects various attempts to remedy
sweatshop conditions would actually have. Would a higher legal minimum
wage improve workers' overall well-being, or would it instead
lead to layoffs and plant relocations (Powell and Zwolinski 2012)? On
the normative side, the Non-Worseness Condition seems to pose an
especially significant challenge to critics of sweatshop labor. If
sweatshops, by providing jobs and capital infusion in the developing
world, provide *some* benefit to workers there, how can they be
acting in a morally worse way than wealthy firms that do not outsource
their production at all, and thus provide *no* benefit to needy
workers abroad (Zwolinski 2007; Preiss 2014)? Another question: even
if we grant that sweatshops exploit their workers, and that
exploitation is a significant moral wrong, might it be a wrong that is
all-things-considered justifiable if sweatshop labor nevertheless
confers considerable benefits on current workers, and plays an
important role in economic growth? In other words, how much weight
should a valid claim of exploitation have in our overall judgment of
the justice of a practice or of a set of institutions that permit that
practice?


### 4.3 Commercial Surrogacy



Commercial surrogacy is a practice in which a woman is paid to become
pregnant as a result of either artificial insemination or the
implantation of an already fertilized egg, and to surrender her
parental rights to the intended parent(s). In the United States, most
surrogacy arrangements are purely domestic affairs (with both the
intended parents and the surrogate being citizens of the United
States), but a significant number are international, in which the
surrogate mother is often a citizen of a much poorer country.



Both types of surrogacy arrangement have been subjected to criticism
on a number of distinct grounds. Some have argued that surrogacy
involves an objectionable form of "commodification", while
others have argued that the practice is harmful to children, or to
women as a class. But many have also argued that the practice exploits
the women who serve as surrogates. In the case of international
surrogacy, this charge is usually based on the bad circumstances and
low pay of the women who serve as surrogates. The lack of alternative
sources of employment has been said to undermine women's
consent, and the compensation they receive is often extremely low
compared to the pay received by American surrogates for the same
service--sometimes as low as 10%.



In the case of domestic surrogacy, critics charge that surrogate
mothers are young and do not fully understand the physical and
psychological risks that attend the services they are agreeing to
provide. As a result, the arrangement might be harmful on net to them
despite the fact that they consent to it. Or, even if it is not
harmful on net, the payment they receive might be inadequate
compensation for the costs they incur, thus rendering surrogacy a case
of mutually beneficial but unfair and exploitative exchange (Tong
1990).



Questions of fair compensation for surrogates raise many of the same
issues, and give rise to many of the same debates, as are found in the
literature on sweatshop labor (Wilkinson 2003). But unlike the sort of
labor that takes place in sweatshops, some critics believe that
commercial surrogacy arrangements are *intrinsically* wrong. If
women's reproductive labor is not the sort of service that
should be sold at *any* price, then commercial surrogacy may
involve a kind of exploitation insofar as it entices women to engage
in an activity that is harmful to their moral character (Anderson
1990; Wertheimer 1996: Ch. 4).