Hi~ Last time we mentioned workers shouldn’t enjoy both stability and high returns. To wit, Nozick said that, compared to everyone being a sole proprietor and taking on risks individually, joining a company and working for an entrepreneur is actually more worker-friendly because workers are risk-averse and seek stability. This brings us back to Nozick’s earlier question: Why do so many workers, who have plenty of money saved up, still choose to work for others rather than start their own businesses? It’s because they prefer stability. This is a choice workers make based on their own risk preferences—they choose to work for an entrepreneur, thereby transferring the risk to the entrepreneur. Although working for a paycheck isn’t as lucrative as a successful startup, it’s more stable. They’re not looking to “bet it all on red,” but rather to “take home a steady paycheck of $5,000 a month, working 9-to-5, and enjoying life after work.” And if the company fails, they don’t lose money; they can just move on to another company. Working for a company is much more secure.
This is Nozick’s critique of the labour theory of value. In simple terms, hard work isn’t worth much; working in the right direction is what’s valuable. And it’s up to the entrepreneur to take on the risk of finding that right direction.
If the labour theory of value is wrong, then the theory of exploitation is fundamentally undermined. If value isn’t created by the workers’ labour, then what exploitation of surplus value is there to talk about? If the labour theory of value is wrong, does Nozick still believe that exploitation exists?
Let’s go back to the two pillars of Marx’s theory of exploitation. Although the labour theory of value is wrong, Nozick still acknowledges that exploitation exists. Actually, Nozick srill believes that forced labour is a form of exploitation, but he argues that exploitation doesn’t occur between entrepreneurs and workers. Real exploitation occurs when the government taxes people, especially when it imposes progressive taxes on the rich to provide welfare for the poor. In Nozick’s view, if a person’s wealth is acquired through legitimate means, based on free choice and voluntary exchange in the market, then this person has the right to own that wealth, and no one—not even the government—has the right to take it away.
Why does Nozick make such a claim? One of the key points of Nozick’s political philosophy is the concept of self-ownership. Self-ownership means that you are the sole owner of yourself. You have absolute ownership over your abilities and the products you create with them; no one else has the right to take them from you.
If you agree with the concept of self-ownership, then when the government taxes you to redistribute your money to others, what does that imply? It implies a form of forced labour, which in turn implies exploitation. Let’s refer back and see how Nozick’s logic is somewhat similar to how Marx calculated surplus value. So, if you, as a Marxist, oppose exploitation, you should also oppose redistributive taxation because it’s a form of forced labour—it’s exploitation.
This is Nozick’s critique of the theory of exploitation. To summarize, Nozick doesn’t endorse exploitation. If you define exploitation as forced labour, then Nozick is against exploitation too, but he opposes Marx’s theory of exploitation. Exploitation doesn’t exist between the entrepreneur and the worker because the worker’s employment is free and voluntary. More fundamentally, Nozick argues that the labour theory of value is wrong. Labour itself doesn’t create value; a company’s profits don’t come from workers’ surplus labour but from the entrepreneur’s willingness to take on risk.
In that case, entrepreneurs are often the ones who face exploitation because their profits are frequently taxed to be redistributed to others. If exploitation is unjust, then redistributive welfare policies are unjust.
After Nozick wrote and published Anarchy, State, and Utopia, his provocative yet seemingly logical arguments sparked a wave of criticism from his peers. Nozick responded by not responding at all—he essentially “logged off” the academic field of the political philosophy and turned to other fields of research, like someone who pulls off a surprise and then runs off.
If you disagree with Dr. Nozick’s views, simply typing “Fuck you” or “幽默老右” on your keyboard won’t solve the problem. You’ll need to come up with more compelling and logical arguments to refute him~
That’s the END of the session “Is exploitation unjust?”. Thanks for your reading!