1. society
2. crime
3. personal offense
4. human trafficking

54
I
-
Chapter Two
that the r ailin _ standards themselves promote exploitation. Goodin is
careful to say that ·a non-standard:observing behaVior does not have to be
uncommon; for people commonly violate standards. Nonetheless,
Goodin' s view does not allow us to say that a person has complied with
the prevailing standards for responding to another person's vulnerability
and yet exploited him.
This is perhaps the most important failing of the views of both
Wertheimer and Goodin. There are cases in which people behave in ways
perfectly in accord with prevailing standards and yet exploit others. This
, is so both for exploitation between strangers and for exploitation between
intimates. In the era of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American
slavery, for example, the standards for responding to the vulnerability of
J slaves were very low. Yet those who complied with them nonetheless
took advantage of the vulnerability of slaves. Similarly, eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century marriage law required, under the doctrine of coverture, that women subsume their property rights under those of their husbands. It was not until the 1840s in the United States (with acts passed by
individual states) and not until 1882 in England (with the passage of the
Married Women's Property Act) that women were legally recognized as
civil individuals .53 Women had very few options for living their lives
outside of marriage, and when they did marry, they gave up their property rights. Marriage under such conditions seems paradigmatically exploitative of women, and yet for many (if not most), it was an improvement relative to spinsterhood . Slavery and coverture were exploitative
even when they were popular, even when they were the law of the land.
Morally bad exploitation can be tolerated and even endorsed by social
conventions. An adequate account of exploitation cannot fundamentally
rest upon an appeal to conventions. And yet, as I shall argue in subsequent chapters, Goodin is right to highlight vulnerability as a key feature
in exploitative interaction.
\
53 . Cf. Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Stanford, Calif. : Stanford
University Press, 1988), 119- 20.
Chapter Three
What Is Bad about Exploitation?
Exploitation, Degradation, and Human Flourishing
In chapter 1, I argued that Alan Wertheimer's account of exploitation is
unsuccessfu_l
several reasons. Wertheimer understands exploitation to
take place m JUSt those transactions that occur at nonstandard market
prices. A person is exploited when she pays more than the standard market price, and a person exploits when she pays less than the standard
market price. Wertheimer's account appears to square with some comof the term ' exploitation,' as well as some of those recognized
by
However, I argued that his account is essentially conm .Its emphasis on a normal or typical market price, and that
W.erthetmer fails to .say what is morally bad about paying nonstandard
pnces. Thus Wertheimer's patterned, market-based account fails to give
us an adequate account of exploitation as an ethically thick notion.
In chapter 2, I argued that Robert Goodin's account is also inadequate.
view suffers from a fatal tension between consequences
as the ultimate moral metric and its insistence that exploitation is a feaof the agent, who seeks to gain advantage from unture of
usual sttuatwns of vulnerability in the exploited party. Goodin fails to
between such taking advanta.'ge [email protected]!ad con:=_provide the
sequences-a lmk that seems unlikely given Goodin ' s claim that expiOTt . .
does . not reqUire harm or overall worse consequences (relative to
nonmteractwn) for the exploited party. Aside from such tensions and
Goodin
not explain why taking unusual advanadvantage of unusual situations, IS
_?ad when no
55
56
Chapter Three
harm is involved. Thus Goodin's historical, vulnerability-based account
fails to give us an adequate account of exploitation as an ethically thick
notion .
In this chapter I defend an alternative account of exploitation I call
Exploitation as Degradation . First, I outline the basic structure of our
ordinary understanding of exploitation and show how Exploitation as
comportSWlth
Degradation reflects that ordinary
;;me-basi c Kantian ideas o(respect for persons, but it is not specifically
Kantian. It is better described as pluralistic yet objectivist about value
and is consistent with the view that human beings have objective an
intrinSic vafe.l argue that by seeing exploitation in terms of respect for
persons, we can see why the structure of our obligation not to exploit has
the contours that it has. Second, I show how some recent work in social
philosophy and development economics can help to flesh out the requirements of nonexploitative interaction. This work does so by defending specific capabilities as constitutive of human flourishing and hence
helps us see what respect for others might require of us. It also helps us
see how a given transaction would count as exploitative in one time and
place and nonexploitative in another. Third, I discuss the putative examples of exploitation that were introduced in chapter 1 and defend an
analysis of which of these cases count as exploitative interaction.
Exploitation as Degradation
?·
ur ordinary and general understanding of
al ways proceeds
from a moral po irit ofview. Thos e who make judgments of ex12loitation
ar.e ereby judging that it is wrong. In other words, the ordinary understanding ofexploitation is ethically thick. When interactions or institutions are exploitative, what makes them so, and what makes them have
the kind of disvalue that we think they have? The goal here is to capture
what ordinary moral agents are getting at when they criticize an action or
a_ way. that
irrational ases
institution as
a general notwn snould be equally appltcable
and inconsistencies .
it would be useful if
to impersonal and personal expfoitation. In
this meaning could be
to !lew cases of putative exploitationfor example, the exploitation of animals and the environment. By following this method of Rawlsian wide reflective equilibrium, in which we
reflectively reconcile our considered moral judgments with our principles
.
I
I / 7' T )
I
R
atE xp ' itation as
What Is Bad about Exploitation?
and background theories, we would
57
{\ I
tiOn . The basic idea is that exploitation
inte1 acting with another
or fails to respect
being for the sake of advantage in a way
the inherent value in that being. It is this lack of respect that explains the
badness of exploitation. The consequences of such disrespect are connected to, but not constitutive of, the exploitation . Some exploitative interactions, but not all, are harmful in and of themselves. Much exploitation is, paradoxically, mutually beneficial. This accommodates the fact
that moral a ents can fail to demQlls rate res ect
in the- course of
them,
their si_tuatign
(i .e. , when thes ituation that results is an improvement compared to their
overall situation were no interaction to take place). This is important because many are tempted to defend their exploitative interactions with
others by appealing to mutual benefit. As I shall argue, we rightly acknowledge a higher standard of conduct with our interactors. However,
this account does not appeal to the putative evil of special strategizing
and the violation of conventions regarding interaction. I deny what
Goodin insists upon, namely, that "[e]xploitation is a matter of taking
unusual advantage," even when we understand " unusual" to mean " nonstandard" or "nonparadigmatic" (as opposed to merely "infrequent")?
What motivates this understanding is the following intuition. Other
human beings ossess a value that makes a claim on us. In exploitation,
-----=----. .
we fail- to honor this value in our effort
to Improve our own s1tuat10n.
With respect to humans, we do this in a number of ways. But the various
forms of disrespect we engage in seem to fall into three broad divisions.
First, we can fail to respect a person by neglecting what is necessary for
that person' s well-being or flourishing. Second, we can fail to respect a
person by taking advantage of an injustice done to him. Third, we can
fail to respect a person by commodifying, or treating as a fungible object
of market exchange, an aspect of that person ' s being that ought not be
commodified. My claim here is that a lack of respect for the value i
human beings is what unifies these disparate forms of exploitation
2. Robert Goodin, "Exploiting a Situation and Exploiting a Person," in
1. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University
Press, 1971 ), 48- 50. For a refinement of this idea see Rawls, "The Independence
of Moral Theory," Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical
Association 47 (1974-1975): 5- 22, 8.
Modern Theories of Exploitation, ed. Andrew Reeve (London: Sage, 1987),
166- 97, 170, italics added.
I
n
scrJ
H?
\r
58
Chapter Three
ment, and that it is what motivates the charge of exploitation when th
a
charge is made.
. Of these three forms of disrespect, the last one is the most controver
Sial. Although nearly everyone agrees that human beings may not b
bought and sold, not everyone agrees that the various abilities capacities
Philoso'
talents, and even parts of persons may not be bought and
features of human beings-labor, sexual
pher.s have argued
services, reproductive capacities, and bodily organs, to name a fewsh?uld not be subject to exchange for money or privileges. Still others
ObJect to the consequences of widespread markets in these features . Regard l.ess of whether one finds these anticommodification claims plausi?le, It seems clear that they constitute an important class of putative
JUdgments of exploitation claims.
r=
Person.s can be guilty of
while consciously and deliberdenymg that they engage m It. For persons can engage in unintentiOnal wrongdoing, and in some cases it is culpable wrongdoing.4 Although. a
cannot be accused legitimately of exploitation if she is
not trymg to
an
a person might be accused legitimately. of explOitatiOn even If she does not think her actions are wrong.
She might, for example, be acting without respect for another in a way
A person who unintentionally
that merely happens
benefits from such. an m.teractwn might be called unintentionally disrespectful, but not unmtentwnally exploitative.
is
c:xploitation possible? First, exploiters may be.
that their
are not deserving of respect. (Indee , e exbeheve that she is not deserving of respect.) ExplOiters might thmk, for example, that women or members of minorities
really are inferior in ways that would justify treating them as Jess than
fully human . Or they might think that only sentient beings deserve respect, and deny (as did Descartes) that animals are sentient beings. Such
persons do not recognize the value of their interactors, and hence it does
not constrain their actions. s .ec
ex loiters may
of what respect requires. They might think, for example, that as
long as we do not h<;1rm others in our interactions in the sense of making
them worse off than they would otherwise be, we are treating them respectfully. Or they might believe that it is acceptable to harm their interactors in this sense, believing that the value of others does not imply a
3.
are some who think that selling oneself into slavery could be morally permiSSible. See, for example, Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia
(New York: Basic Books, I 974), 33 I.
4. I am indebted to Ruth Chang for focusing my attention on the issue of
exploitation.
What Is Bad about Exploitation?
o:
59
r
I "'
· tion on harming them. In other words, these unintentional exploitrestnc
.
·
m genera1. requires.
ers are mistaken about what
. respectful
.
.treatment
. .
k
Third, exploite s rna
aken m
ment
what tah_ e.s t.Q
fujfitl the re uirement of res
even when they un
h"":' akt hre=-- t more generally requires. For example, an employer m1g t t m t at
I· b ·
spec
respect requires paying a person en?ugh so that he can meet us as1c
needs, but she might mistakenly believe .that a person could meet those
Such a person may
needs on one dollar per day in a developmg country.
.
,
be genuinely and innocently ignorant of what It takes
meet one s
ds- although in many cases the ignorance may be self-mterested selfnee
· 1 s· ·
deception or based on lack of interest .in t.he question
y.
larly, a person might thmk that a transaction IS unproblematic when It m
fact involves the illegitimate commodification of some aspect of a person' s being. If persons are responsible for their mistaken beliefs, we , ,._ "
might hold them culpable for their wrongdoing.
t.his way, persons (
oweye
might be guilty of unintentional yet wrongful
s ould allow for the existence of noncul able ex I
This approach to exploitation could be extended to n?nhuman aml
\'\
mals and the environment. If nonhuman animals exert a claim on us, then
rwe can fail to respond to their inherent value as we seek to benefit from
our interaction with them . Similarly for ecosystems and other parts of
nature. This contradicts the view that " it is only as applied to our treatment of people that ' exploitation' acquires inevitably pejorative connotations."6 Most people now accept that our behavior toward at least s.en- ;
tient animals, and possibly other beings, .is subject to
_} v.,"
that depend upon the interests and well-bemg of those
Seein
as a failu,!e t?
ect. q_ther bem s --:-as _e.grad tion-has a number of advantages. Ftrst, It sat1s es the r u1 e
of an \.!)
thick inter
ofthe
Those who accept the de- mands of morality as binding upon them generally
an obligation to respect other persons. This is at the core of our.
moral
understanding and generates the consequence that explOitatiOn IS some-
5. There is no reason to think that this would be an easy thing to sort out. In
addition to the problem of those who intend to do no w:on.g and yet do so,
is the problem of those who believe that what they do IS nght a?d yet do gnevous wrong, as well as that of those who think that what
do IS wrong but are
mistaken that it is wrong. Jonathan Bennett, "The Conscience of Huckleberry
Finn," Philosophy 49 (I 974): I23-34.
..
,
6. Goodin, "Exploiting a Situation
a Person,
while 1 believe that his account of explOitatiOn IS mcorrect, Goodm s view also
could be extended to animals and ecosystems, among other things.
60
Chapter Three
thing that we have an obligation to avoid. econd, this account is consis( 1,. tent witil.a..moderate
the
n.es,Lo_!' f12._0ral obliga"':)"
Most people reJect the view that morality reqmres
we subordii f,r -?nate our own interests and projects to the task of advancmg the wellbeing of others. The duty not to exploit allows us to say.that some for.ms
of beneficent interaction are not beneficent enough, without collapsmg
into the view that universal and total beneficence is required of us. This
is not simply a call for practicality, stability, or a moral system that the
average person can live up to. Rather,
[a]n accommodation of this kind is itself part of the morality of individual conduct, rather than the result of a conflict between self-interest
and morality, or an exemption of individuals from moral requirements.
Morality allows compartments for individual pursuits, while defining
7
their boundaries by general standards.
It is a requirement that our account of moral rights and wrongs reflect
our ideas about what reasons we have to act.
Thus this account allows that showing respect for other persons requires more than refraining from harming them but does not require \as
with strict consequentialism) that we promote the best state of affairs
from an impartial perspective. This does, however, have the effect of
providing an account of at least part of our moral landscape that is more
practical, more stable, and easier to live up to . But this is a welcome consequence. A requirement to do more than refrain from harm, but not necessarily to perform acts of heroic self-sacrifice, would be a requirement
that is more likely to be lived out than one that from the start demands
8
too much .
Third, because this is a nonconsequentialist account, it ex lains why
we often regard exploitation as-worse than neglect, even when the conseOf neglect are worse. Neglect is simply not interacting with
other person when we could do so. A person's suffering from malnutntion because I fail to send him relief is a bad thing. But a worker's
7. Thomas Nagel, Equality and Partiality (Oxford: Oxford
1991), 25. See also Bernard Williams, "Persons, Character, and t:torahty: Ill
Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973-1980 (Cambridge: Cambndge Umversity Press), 1981; and Susan Wolf, "Moral Saints," Journal of Philosophy 79
(1982): 419-39 . .
8. The problem of the demandingness of morality (as opposed to the complete dominance of moral reasons) is discussed
Li_am Murphy, Moral Demands in Nonicleal Theory (New York: Oxford Umverstty Press, 2000); and also
Samuel Scheffler, Human Morality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
What Is Bad about Exploitation?
61
(j
suffering malnutrition because I choose to pay her less than is necessary
to meet her basic needs-when I could have paid her more-seems
worse. And yet the end result is the same. While many philosophers have
questioned whether killing really is always worse than letting die, the
basic distinction between the two continues to motivate our idea that exploitation is particularly bad.
_E
·
count we can tal
eanin full about xploitative
systems in add' · to exploitative transactions. An exploitative system is _-n'>f'
one in which exploitative interactions are systematically favored and C; r
promoted . Such systems can and do exist within societies that regard
them as normal. Exploitation can be routine. Thus this account does not
require that we see exploitation as something unusual: either as unusual
behavior on the part of the exploiting agent, or as taking advantage of an
unusual situation. The behavior of an agent may be ordinary, and the circumstances may be typical, and yet exploitation may occur.
Wertheimer's claim that exploitation is a "micro-level wrong to
crete individuals in distinct relationships and transactions" is misleading.
·J
In some instances it is indeed a micro level wrong, and this explains why 'J
"people who can accept an unjust set of aggregate resources with considerable equanimity will recoil when they feel exploited in an individual or
local transaction." 9_J3ut exploitation should also be understood as a macthat accounts for why peop e can
'cro,.,.
level transactio ns as faif'Wfie n they ultimately are not. More interesting
are those case s in which people do not feel exploited in a particular I,\
transaction when they actually are being exploited-largely because
macrolevel system that is unjust in virtue of its exploitative features l
Wertheimer's account allows us to say that nonexploitative interactions
have occurred in the context of injustice, but not that those interactionJ
are themselves exploitative.
\
Exploitation as Degradation can account for why it makes sense to
say that people are exploited even in transactions at typical competitive
market prices, even when both parties feel that the transaction is fairand it does so without imputing false consciousness to victims of exploitation, undermining the voluntariness of their consent. This is not to deny
that there may be genuine issues of free agency. But there seem to be
many cases in which exploitation occurs between consenting adults even
when the charge of false consciousness cannot be made out. In some
cases, the background institutions themselves explain why people would
9. Alan Wertheimer, Exploitation (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1996), 8.
62
Chapter Three
knowingly and willingly consent to exploitative interactions. Not only
are there exploitative interactions, but there are exploitative systems and
institutions that make exploitative interactions a reasonable choice. An
exploitative system could be, all in all, the best system available to a
given group of people. It may in fact be impossible to have any social
system that is entirely free from exploitation. In our response to it, the
badness of exploitation must be balanced against other moral evils.
Nonetheless, those ways of organizing, sanctioning, and controlling human behavior that encourage such interactions beyond a certain level can
be rightfully deemed exploitative.
The Structure of Respect for Persons
have claimed that
and in articular resP.ect for persons is the
core. reguirement un erpinning our judgments of exploitation and exmany Qf those Juogments. Philosophers are familiar wit mmanuel Kant' s view that uiiian beings are "ends in themselves" and that respect for the moral law requires that we treat them as such. Every person
possesses "dignity," which differentiates us from those things and creatures that possess merely "price." 10 This dignity is not contingent upon
the performance of admirable or virtuous actions, but only upon the possession of a rational will. Probably the most memorable formula of the
supreme principle of morality is that we always treat such rational wills
as ends in themselves and never as a 11J!_
""ii'1Sbnly. Kant famously took
himself to be articulating our common
how it leads back to
the supreme principle of morality. Thus he argued that the categorical
imperative, and thus respect for persons, is part of the ordinary under11
standing of morality, not something that he invented. Clearly, the notion of respect for persons is at the core of contemporary theories of justice, including the quite opposite views of John Rawls and Robert
Nozick. But what does respect for persons mean? And more specifically,
what does respect for persons require of us?
First, respect involves constraining our behavior toward certain kinds
of beings for certain kinds of reasons. Stephen Darwall calls this "moral
recognition respect," which is a way of treating other persons as persons.
10. Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals , trans. with
an introduction by Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959), 47,
53 .
11. Kant, Foundations, 8-9.
'
What Is Bad about Exploitation?
63
This differs from nonmoral "appraisal respect," whereby we positively
assess some feature of a person.
To respect something is thus to regard it as requiring restrictions on the
moral acceptability of actions connected with it. And crucially, it is to
regard such a restriction as not incidental, but as arising because of the
feature or fact itself. 12
we restrict our behavior in this way, we are not doing so for
prudential reasons, but for moral ones. William Frankena agrees, although he adds that to introduce the additional notion of intrinsic value in
order to explain why respect is owed adds nothing to our understanding:
say that persons have intrinsic worth as such is just another way of
saymg they are such that there are morally right and wrong ways of treat. th em. " 13 0 n h'IS VIew,
.
mg
to say that we owe respect to a person because
she has intrinsic value does not bring us any closer to understanding what
respect entails but simply restates the fact that her existence constrains
our actions morally. Nonetheless, Frankena concurs that respect requires
morally restraining our actions in regard to others in virtue of some relevant feature they possess.
There are several immediate problems here< First, why must we rele, and in articular, why must we accord such respect to all
_ peop ? Kant gave an answer to IS question, but it is an answer that has
faced much criticism. The short version of his answer is simply that the
moral law requires that we treat all persons as ends in themselves. Treating persons as ends in themselves is treating them with respect. However, some have argued that Kantian respect for persons is nothing other
than respect for the moral law. If we must constrain our behavior toward
others because the moral law commands it, then, as Joseph Raz argues,
"the moral law, rather than people, is the object of respect." 14 Respect for
the moral law does not seem to be the same as respect for persons them-
12. Stephen Darwall, "Two Kinds of Respect," Ethics 88 (1977): 36-49, 40.
13. William Frankena, "The Ethics of Respect for Persons," Philosophical
Topics 14, no. 2 (Fall 1986): 149-67, 159. Frankena argues that we are constrained in virtue of purely "unloaded" (i.e., nonnormative or empirical) features
people happen to have, but that animals happen to have also, namely, "consctous, sentient life" (166).
14. Joseph Raz, Value, Respect, and Attachment (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2001), 134-35 . Raz offers his own Kantian argument that we
ought to respect people as ends in themselves because people are valuers. Cf.
152ff.
64
Chapter Three
selves. In addition, this interpretation raises the question of why the
moral law requires that we treat all persons with respect, rather than
those who demonstrate virtue in the exercise of their rational will . Others
have argued that not only is Kantian respect for persons reducible to respect for the moral law itself, but the Kantian account of respect for persons thereby collapses into incoherence. On this account, persons as they
actually are in the world (phenomenal persons) do not command our respect. Rather, the moral law as it exists within our nonempirical 'noumenal' selves is what possesses dignity and really commands our respect.
But then this severs the link that Kant made between the dignity of each
person (which consists in something that is completely unique, priceless,
and nonfungible) and respect, since by respecting the moral law within
each person we are respecting something perfectly general-all rational
wills being the same. 15 Nonetheless, the idea that others exert a moral
claim on us that constrains our actions is defended by Kant when he says
regarding persons that "such a being is thus an object of respect and, so
far, restricts all [arbitrary] choice. " 16
So Kant's explanation of why we should respect other persons may
be problematic. I do not attempt to solve these difficulties with Kant's
arguments here. It may be that Kant's own particular understanding of
respect for persons and the reasoning behind it cannot, in the end, be defended. Nor am I committed to particular metaphysical views about values. Values can be understood as unusual metaphysical elements that
give us reasons to act or constrain our actions. Alternatively, values can
be understood simply, as Frankena suggests, as shorthand for reasons
that constrain our actions. Any account that accepts that idea that persons
have value, as opposed to price, might be consistent with Exploitation as
Degradation. For our purposes, we need to pay attention to two things.
First, the idea that a certain kind of respect for persons is obligatory is an
jmport!_nt art of our landscape-and appears 1o motivate- tile c arge o
exploitation. Second, persons who do not recognize an obligation to res ecf others will not care about exploitation one way or the other. Since
? my task is to explore exploitation as an ethically thick notion, the fact
' that some people do not recognize such an obligation--or any othert. does not pose a challenge here.
The second problem inherent in Kant's conception of the duty of respect is the question of what precisely the duty of respect demands from
us. To say simply that respect demands that we constrain our behavior is
15. Andreas Teuber, "Kant's Respect for Persons," Political Theory 11, no.
3 (August 1983): 369-92.
16. Kant, Foundations, 46.
What Is Bad about Exploitation?
65
too vague to be of any practical or theoretical use. As Frankena argues,
to say that we ought to respect persons (whether by appealing to their
intrinsic value or by appealing to some empirical feature they happen to
possess) does not appear to provide us with a master principle from
17
which we can derive more specific requirements of respect. Despite the
efforts of Kant and Kantians after him, it is hard to see how the requirement of moral respect for persons as persons can be used casuistically.
This feature of the duty of respect goes a long way toward explaining
why the very things that Rawls has argued are required by respect (e.g., a
set of basic institutions that are organized in accordance with the Difference Principle) seems to others (such as Nozick) to involve treating others with disrespect (by treating their talents as if they were jointly owned
by all) .
1
Finally, who counts as a person deserving of respect? What may 1
seem obvious to some is a deep philosophical quandary for others. At
first blush, the question is one of who is a human being. But clearly the
real question is what sorts of beings constrain our behavior for moral
reasons similar to the reasons that constrain our actions for the typical
adult human being. Kant limited moral recognition respect, and hence the
moral community generally, to rational beings, arguing that we need to
constrain our behavior toward animals only insofar as our treatment of
them would debase our own humanity.18 Philosophers who came after
him (most famously Jeremy Bentham) argued that sentience, and not rationality, is the relevant criterion. Since then, various criteria have been
suggested that would include human fetuses, human infants, and certain.J
(or all) animal life. Related to this issue of the domain of respect is the
nature of respect itself, as applied to various sorts of beings. Are different kinds of respect owed to different members of the moral community
in virtue of some feature or other they possess? In other words, there are
questions not simply of who counts as worthy of respect, but of what
kinds of respect are appropriate to what kinds of beings.
Without answering these questions, we can formulate a general account of what res ect is
highli htin its structu_!e. Res ect is a wa of
.kQmportill.g oneselfJo.watcLothers that acknowledges the claims that othmake
it seems to involve, first an oremost, refraining
from
of behavior. However, while respect requires that we
recognize that others have a claim on us, it is by no means the most com-
-
p
17. Frankena, "The Ethics of Respect for Persons," 164.
18. Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics, trans. Louis Infield (New York:
Barper and Row, 1963), 239-40.
'
exp\<l ;-b+.-;:,'1
"'
-.JJ
66
Chapter Three
plete form of recognition and concern that persons can demonstrate toward one another. The duty to respect others is not the same as the duty
to love others. In loving others we (among other things) come to identify
their good with our own. Love also requires, in addition to loving action,
a certain kind of sentimental disposition-a disposition that is to a very
large degree beyond our control. To the degree to which it is within our
control, an obligation to love others extends at most to intimates-to
family, friends, and spouses . 19 Very few people seriously believe that we
have an obligation to love everyone in just this sense. 20 The duty of respect falls short of a requirement to love.
Raz has argued that respect is a particular way of responding to
value. If someone or something has value, either it has value in itself, or
it is good for something else that has value. (Nothing can have value if
the thing it is for has no value. Hence an object that is good for keeping a
plant healthy is of no value unless there is some value in keeping the
plant healthy.) Those things or beings that have value in themselves either can have intrinsic value (as a work of art can) or can have the kind
of value that Kant was interested in: the value of beings who are ends in
themselves. Persons and any other valuing beings are ends in themselves
in virtue of their status as valuers. Ends in themselves exert the highest
. o f respect on us. 21
c Iatms
If we start with the assumption that an entity does indeed have
value, then the question becomes one of what sorts of actions are appropriate with respect to that entity. Raz argues that there are three stages of
proper engagement with value. First, we can have the appropriate intentional states with respect to something of value. That is, we regard the
valuable thing or person as valuable insofar as we are aware of it at all.
19. Christina Hoff Sommers, for example, has defended such a duty to love.
She claims that "[p]ersons who lack feeling for their parents may be culpable for
their very lack," to the extent to which "persons are responsible for their characters." On her view, the extent is considerable. See Christina Hoff Sommers, "Filial Morality," Journal of Philosophy 83, no. 8 (1986): 439-56, 450.
20. I remain agnostic about Kant's own views on this matter. In The Metaphysics of Morals, he suggests ultimately that respect and love coincide: "they
are basically always united by the law into one duty." Immanuel Kant, The
Metaphysics of Morals, ed. Mary Gregor with an introduction by Roger J. Sullivan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 198. However, in the
Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, he says that the Christian injunction
to "love thy neighbor" is a "duty of l?eneficence" ( 15-16).
21. Raz, Value, Respect, and Attachment, 143, 151-53. Raz rejects a strict
Kantian interpretation of what makes someone an end in himself, in part because
of Kant's reliance on the noumenal/phenomenal distinction.
What Is Bad about Exploitation?
-
67
Second, we can take steps to avoid destroying and even to preserve the
valuable thing. Third and finally, we can fully engage with something of
value by appreciating and responding to its value. Only in this last way is
value "realized." It is one thing to accept that Michelangelo was a great
painter and to acknowledge his talent in conversation with others. Another level of engagement involves refraining from damaging any of his
works and perhaps assisting in their preservation. But the third and highest level of engagement would require us to seek out his work, study it,
and appreciate it. 22
Respect, Raz argues, is characterized by the first two stages of engagement, and this is what a duty of respect involves. This characterization does not, of course, help us to determine in any precise way what
this duty requires. Does respect require that we give money or time to
organizations that preserve the works of Michelangelo? It certainly requires that we not destroy his work, but what respect requires in addition
to this is unclear. Nevertheless, Raz highlights an important feature of
respect: it is a requirement of respect that we comport our lves
ard
valuable
fQr
quirement t besto..
them all that we have o ive. It is not a
requirement to love them.
This understanding of respect as involving a limited but positive engagement with value illuminates a structural feature of exploitation. The
ructurall isomor hie to the du to ,
_respect ot ers in the followin wa . Just
to res ect involves/
,limited but positive en a ement with those beings of v_alu.e we encoun_ter, the uty to refrain from explpitation involves an obli ation .to . con_strain ourse ves in
with our
interact with them. Just as the duty to respect is not a duty to love, the duty
not to exploit is not a duty to love, but something more limited. Both duties seem to require that we avoid certain kinds of harm in the course of
our interaction, but they may also require certain kinds of beneficence
when we do interact. While we have an obligation to avoid worsening
the situation of others in certain ways, we also have an obligation to improve the situation of others in certain ways when we interact with them.
For ignoring the needs of others can be just as disrespectful as harming
them and can also be exploitative when we profit from the interaction. In
both cases we fail to acknowledge the value of our interactors.
On this account, the structure of respect also helps to explain why
exploitation is often regarded as worse than neglect, when exploitation
22 . Raz, Value, Respect, and Attachment, 161-64.
®
"'
'-'
68
Chapter Three
improves the overall position of the exploited. Flouting a requirement
seems worse than neglecting it. When we interact with intrinsically valuable others, we come face to face with their value. To be confronted with
something of value and to refuse to acknowledge that value seems a
more serious kind of failure on our part than simple neglect. It is easier to
lose sight of the value of other valuable beings when we do not interact
3
with them? Nonetheless, failing to interact with others at all may actually worsen their situation more than would exploiting them in certain
ways. Understanding respect as involving an incomplete engagement
with inherently valuable beings allows us to see why mutually beneficial
exploitation can actually appear worse. In such exploitation, while we
benefit our interactors, we reject their value.
Raz argues tha.!_ the duty of respect is not a duty to seek out, identify,
and
va "iJ'e.'"Ratlief;it is a dutY'to acknow e ge,
to refrain from harming, and to some degree to preserve what valuahle
thin _s we do_encounter.Jn the case of ends in themselves, this
not only not worsening their chances for a good life as human beings, but
also assisting them in their attempts to succeed. This structure of respect
as Raz describes it seems correct and seems to map onto the structure of
[ exploitation. However, as Raz himself acknowledges, this structure does
not bring us any closer to understanding what particular acts the duty of
respect requires. It is on the face of it fully consistent with, for example,
a just war in which innocent persons are killed, since one can acknowledge that persons have intrinsic value and nonetheless destroy them (or
allow them to be destroyed) for the sake of an important goal (such as the
safety of more people). Gratuitous killing is clearly prohibited, but ki lling or destroying in general does not seem to be ruled out by the structure of respect. In addition, we are no closer to understanding which beings are deserving of what kind of respect. Raz does not wish to defend a
strictly Kantian understanding of respect in which it is persons alone who
are deserving of a certain kind of engagement. He suggests that animals
also are valuable in themselves, even though they are not moral agents.
Works of art, on the other hand, have intrinsic value, although they do
not rise to the status of ends in themselves. 24
To bring the obligation to respect others (and its cousin, the obligation not to exploit others) into further relief, we may return to Kant. To
see
degradation is to see 't as
of disres ect, and
23 . I am here referring not to intentional neglect, but to a failure to make
oneself aware of who our valuable others are, as so many of us do.
24. Raz, Value, Respect, and Attachment, 152, 142. While works of art
command our respect, they do so ultimately because works of art are good for
beings who are valuable in themselves: us.
What Is Bad about Exploitation?
of
I/x
J{ant thought we had an obligation to respect persons. One way to understand this is to see it as a consequence of the formula of the moral law
mentioned above. Kant enjoins us to "act so that [we] treat humanity,
whether in [our] own person or in that of another, always as an end and
never as a means only." 25 While I in some sense use the bank teller in
order to get money out of my bank account, I do not necessarily violate
this formula of the categorical imperative. I do so only insofar as I treat
W
her as a means only. To do this is a form
disrespect.
1
f\
What would it mean to treat her as a reans only? Onora O'Neill
I
suggested that to treat a person in his
be to reaL er i!!_! ,.;1 "
way to which she could not
2oasent.:.___."P is rules out coerc1ve and deceptive interactio11; but how c_ould itt!!]e
._ & ,J.
cia! and consensual ex loitative interaction? A commonsense way to in- '
terpret this is to say tha"tt;treat a perSoil as an end in herself is to take
seriously the requirements of living a human life. We interact not simply
with rational beings, but with beings who have lives. To treat the teller
rudely, or with contempt; to tolerate wages upon which she cannot decently live; to ask her to trade aspects of her personhood that should not
be subject to trade; to ignore the requisites of a dignified life would be to
treat her with disrespect. Furthermore, if we profit from our interaction
with her in ways that do these things, we exploit her. But the fact that we
use the teller in order to get our money does not by itself imply any
wrongdoing.
As a practical matter, our duty not to exploit may mean that we must
take care that our interaction with her does not worsen her overall situation. In the movie Ruthless People, the character played by Judge Reinhold is a stereo salesman who cannot bring himself to sell the enormous
and expensive stereo system ("The Dominator") to a very young and obviously impoverished couple expecting a baby. He knows that he would
gain a big commission from the sale and could pass on the worry of extracting payment from the collection agency. But he refuses to do this,
sensing it would be financially ruinous for the already impoverished
couple. The purchase is in no way compulsory. The couple would like to
buy the expensive stereo (or at least the husband would). Yet their extreme youth suggests their unseasoned judgment-a vulnerability that the
27
character will not take advantage of for gain. A duty of nonexploitation
27. Of course, the character then resorts to kidnapping.
25 . Kant, Foundations, 47.
26. Onora O'Neill, Constructions of Reason: Explorations of Kant's Practical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 114.
'
\
70
l
_
.,
Chapter Three
-
also may require certain kinds or degrees of benefit. If we interact with
others in ways that benefit them, exploitation still seems possible. When
what brings a person to interact with us in the first place is a need to meet
his basic needs, then that person is vulnerable to us. If we can compensate our interactor in a way that would allow him to meet these basic
needs, but nonetheless compensate him only minimally, that appears to
be closer to what Kant had in mind with this formula of the moral law.
is
to
To ignore our vulnerable interactor's basic needs in this
the.n, can .be seen as a particular
of
} use him. Exploitative
disrespect toward a person m pursUit of our own advantage-the disrespect of merely using another person. "Merely using" is to be understood
as refusing to
the value ol:-:0iir: inf_elictor oyl_etusillg]Qfake
her genuine interests seriously ..
need in order to understand the
particular requirements of
Interaction is an account of the
..
-r
enuine
interestsofour valuaore imenictor .
g
Before I turn to the task of.developing such an account, however, I
want to consider a worry about seeing exploitation this way. As I have
framed it, exploitative interactions are always wrong because they violate
the requirement that we respect persons. This can be understood on the
Kantian interpretation of this requirement that a person who engages in
exploitative interactions violates the categorical imperative by using
other people in ways that go against their genuine interests, compromise
their ability to pursue ends, or otherwise disregard their value. At the
same time, I have argued that some exploitative interactions are failures
to improve the situation of our interactors sufficiently. But this latter duty
sounds like a duty of beneficence. On Kant's view, and on the view of
most people, the failure to perform a beneficent act is not always wrong.
The duty of beneficence, Kant wrote, is a duty to adopt a maxim to
vance the ends of others. It is not a duty to put others first always, and It
is not always a duty to maximally benefit persons one interacts with, but
a duty to "be kind where one can." 28 So doesn't it follow that as I
described it, the duty to avoid exploitation is only a duty always to avoid
harming others in our interactions? And if this is true, can't I sometimes
benefit others while gaining advantage myself-but only minimallyand in so doing, do no wrong?
I think that the answer is no. We can consider two possibilities. First,
is not simply a failure to
the ends
\ exploitation (unlike
• of others (i.e., a failure to adopt a maxim of beneficence toward others_).
Rather it is a failure to recognize and treat another person as an end tn
am conside-ring interaction with a person that wou
...
28. Kant, Foundations, 14.
What Is Bad about Exploitation?
J;
.
71
0..
f'..-
benefit her to some degree but nonetheless would ignore her basic needs,
-\- ...,.
then I must ask whether the maxim of my action would pass the test of (.f\.
the categorical imperative. If my action cannot pass this test, then it is I'C ... J -4prohibited. I am suggesting that all genuinely exploitative interactions f.
fail the test, both those interactions that are harmful and those that are C.: "'
mutually beneficial. When our interactors are not vulnerable to us in virtue of their need, only then would the question be simply one of beneficence. In such a case, it may indeed be up to us to decide whether in that
case, we wish to advance the ends of our interactor further than we are .
inclined to, or to perform another beneficent act at some other time.
A second way to answer this question is the following. Briefly, it is
possible that some particular acts of beneficence are obligatory, although
it is not obligatory that we act so as to benefit others at each possible
moment. Mutually beneficial interaction may be exploitative insofar as it
is a failure of a duty of beneficence. The usual understanding of this duty
is that it is an imperfect duty, or a duty that is not exceptionless. Imperfect duties are "duties of virtue" that require us to adopt a certain maxim
in our general action; yet they allow us some latitude in the way we fulfill them. However, it is possible that refusing a certain level of benefit to
our transactors always, as a practical matter, violates our imperfect duty.
How is this so? While imperfect duties allow us some discretion in determining whether to act beneficently in a given case, those situ·ations in
which we are confronted by vulnerable others in transactions for advantage could not be, by any reasonable person, optional opportunities for
beneficent action. As O'Neill has suggested, "[t]here are contexts and
relationships to others in which to do nothing or to do the wrong thing
would be sufficient evidence that the underlying maxim or principle is
unjust or lacking in respect or rejects beneficence."2_:J!
uesti
"If you have genuinely adopted a maxim of beneficence,how could you
possibly not alter the terms of your transaction so that your vulnerable
interactor can meet her asic needs?" This may apply either to our intimates-friends, relatives, spouses, lovers--or to strangers. In the former
case, we must be careful to avoid manipulation and paternalism while
adopting and furthering some of the ends of our intimate others. In the
latter case, we must be careful to consider what is necessary in order for
our interactors to pursue their ends themselves. Furthermore, we may
have good reasons to prioritize and place the ends of strangers over the
of intimates when we cannot advance both. As O'Neill puts it,
[b]eneficence directed at putting people in a position to pursue whatever
29. O'Neill, Constructions ofReason, 116-17.
D..
(
72
Chapter Three
ends they may have has, for Kant, a stronger claim on
than
cence directed at sharing ends with those who are already m a pos1t10n to
pursue varieties of ends."30 No one could plausibly claim to have adopted
the maxim of beneficence if he interacted with vulnerable others on the
terms just described. Such interaction would call into question one's
commitment to the principle of respect for persons more than.
simple noninteraction. So if we understand the duty not t? explo1t as (m
some cases where the exploitation is mutually beneficial) part of the
duty of
and this duty in turn is part of
it means to. respect other persons, then nonexploitative interaction IS, as a practical
31 .
matter, always required ofus.
. .
. .
,---- This may seem counterintuitive, because It m1ght seem to JUStify
avoiding interaction with another on the grounds that the terms ?n wh1ch
I would like to interact are exploitative. In other words, my mteractor
might actually be worse off because of my attem.pts to avoid
in the form of exploitation. Yet if I am not required to
m
that benefit particular persons, I certainly cannot be reqmred to
m
mutually beneficial exploitation. Again, a person who systematically
avoids an interaction because it would not be profitable enough, or. even
because it might be costly, may not have actually adopted .a max1m of
beneficence. It will not always be clear when one has. Even '.f we see the
obligation to refrain from exploitation
a perfect,
duty
(rather than as a duty of beneficence), th1s leaves the questiOn of our duties of beneficence untouched. A person who systematically
such
interactions-who is determined to get the best deal or not mteract at
all-can hardly be said to take such a duty seriousl.y.
.
.._
I have tried to show that respect for persons IS a w1dely shared feature of our moral landscape and bears a structural similarity to nonexploitative interaction. Our exploitation claims often seem to be based on
.rea judgment that a party to a transaction has not been
spected. I do not pretend to have solved all of the
m spelling
out what respect for persons would involve. We may disagree as to what
30. Onora O'Neill, "Kantian Approaches to Some Famine
in
Matters of Life and Death, ed. Tom Regan, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980),
285-94, 293.
.
.
f K t
31. Barbara Herman endorses this conclusion as an
o an
when she writes, "The needs for which a person may make a cla1m.
duty of mutual aid are those that cannot be left .unmet if he to
m
activity as a rational agent. Thus we may refram from helpmg only 1f such ac
tion would place our own rational activity in jeopardy."
The
Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Umvers1ty Press,
1993), 167.
What Is Bad about Exploitation?
73
kinds of things and creatures, aside from humans, warrant respect, and
we may disagree as to what that respect entails more specifically. Yet we
have a general idea of what respect demands of us. When we look upon
other persons (and perhaps other sentient beings) as exerting a claim of
respect on us, we affirm a commitment to their dignity. As Thomas Hill
puts it,
commitment to dignity reflects an attitude that places the highest priority on maintaining mutual respect, affirming practices that give each
person a fair and equal chance for a life appropriate to a rational agent,
and endorsing principles only when anyone's acting under them could
reasonably be defended to anyone else who was willing to look at the
matter from a moral point ofview.32
The lack of such a commitment is at the heart of the three forms of interaction outlined earlier that may justify a judgment of exploitation: interactions that fail to improve the situation of others, interactions that take
advantage of injustice, and interactions that inappropriately commodify.
The core objection behind each judgment of exploitation is not an objection that appeals to consequences or to standard market prices, but one
that appeals to the dignity of the beings who are exploited. In the following sections, I elaborate on what respecting persons in this way would
require.
Vulnerability, Human Needs, and Flourishing
So far I have argued that the duty to respect the inherent worth of others
underpins our judgments of wrongful exploitation. Although I reject the
conventionalist approaches of both Wertheimer and Goodin, Goodin's
emphasis on vulnerability is more nearly correct. I want to argue that
vulnerability is connected to exploitation in an important way. Of course,
an important kind of vulnerability involves what we might call diminished capacity. Persons whose judgment is clouded, or who suffer from
mental illness, or who are not fully rational or competent in some other
sense, can of course be exploited. However, because we can understand
the exploitation in such cases as coercive, they present less of a challenge
in terms of defining what is and isn't exploitation. I am more concerned
to understand cases of exploitation in which there is no question about
32 . Thomas Hill Jr., Respect, Pluralism, and Justice (Oxford: Oxford UniVersity Press, 2000), 26.
/
74
Chapter Three
the exploited person's competence and in which the exploited person
benefits. In such cases, the exploited person judges that the transaction is
her best alternative relative to her current situation, and furthermore the
exploiter is not obligated to interact with the exploited person at all.
The rinci a! form of vulnera_!illi.cy in such
is_J1Q.ed. Goodin
correctly argues that the vulnerability (at least in this latter sense) in exploitative interaction should be understood as an extreme dependency
with respect to something that one needs-not merely something that one
wants, or something that it would be good to have. Goodin claims that
exploitation involves playing for unusual advantage in transactions with
vulnerable others. While I reject that understanding of exploitation,
Goodin is right to emphasize that exploitation involves making use of
another's vulnerability, and we are vulnerable (in part) because of our
need. Needs include not only those objects necessary for
survival, but also conditions of purposeful employment, the prerequisites of
psychological w_ell-being, and constraints on interaction that are neces_s_acy__fo
Vulnerability is thus dependent upon an account of
what humans require for a good life.
What claim does the vulnerability of others make on us? To take unfair advantage of such vulnerability is to interact with another so as to
disregard what is necessary for human well-being. People who accept a
moral point of view agree that it is wrong to disregard those needs when
we interact with others for the sake of advantage. Even when the interaction is not obligatory it is nonetheless regulated by the demands of the
value of our interactors. Voluntary interaction with another cannot be
conducted under whatever terms we choose. This is consistent with the
widely held view that we are not in general obligated to provide others
with what they need in order to flourish or even survive, but that we have
'-' a duty to do more than simply avoid inflicting overt harm on them.
But others are vulnerable to us not simply in terms of nonmoral
goods that make up a flourishing life. Others may treat us in ways that
fail to respect us insofar as they disregard the requirements of justice.Jf
we ain advantage from an interaction with another, and that advanta e
is due in part to an injustice he has suffered, we have failed to give him
When the bargaining position of our interactor has
been weakened by injustice, he will be vulnerable to us in a different
way. His basic needs may be satisfied. However, his bargaining position
has been to some degree weakened by injustice. Those who make use of
I such weaker bargaining positions for the sake of advantage are failing to
1 demonstrate the appropriate respect that is due to the victims of injustice.
If we use the need of others for nonmoral goods in order to induce
the exchange of certain goods or services that ought not to be subject to a
What Is Bad about Exploitation?
75
market, those others have also been treated as having less value than they
actually have. Of course, people may reasonably disagree as to whether
another has been the victim of irUustice, or as to whether something
(such as sex) should be subject to market exchange. Nonetheless, if a
person uses vulnerabili of either kind mentioned above in order toTeverage t e exchange of a nonc_ommodifial;>le good, that
interaction. This is not to defend any particular conception of which features o persons are beyond exchange. Rather, it is to acknowledge that at
least some of our judgments regarding exploitation involve this kind of
resistance to the commodification of persons-in light of the fact that
those persons are worthy of respect.
beThus Exploitation as
_Eause
Ii.ity is l)picall Jif not always at the roo.t.of ex
When we exploit others, we make use of their genuine need for the sake
of advantage in ways that fail to respect them. When we understand respect as involving a limited but positive engagement, a more balanced
account of the requirements of nonexploitative interaction emerges. First,
seeing exploitation as a failure to respect others allows us to steer a
course between the extreme level of obligation entailed by the views of
Peter Singer and Robert Goodin, on the one hand, and the extremely deflationary account of obligation delivered by voluntarism (as discussed in-·
chapter 2), and other views that emphasize negative rights, on the other.
The needs of others do not automatically obligate us to provide them
with what they need. However, the needs of others do constrain how we
may interact with them. Each of us has good reasons to refuse to sacrifice
whatever is necessary to satisfy the needs of those who (for whatever
reason) are in need. However, there is no good moral reason for ignoring
the .value of our
If we can interact with persons so that their
basic needs are taken mto account through the transaction, we ought to.
f th
I
uall beneficial interaction possible is one in which those /I
needs
be sati fied, then such i-;rteraction
ex loitative.
This also strikes a balance between complete su
and complete universalism. What one needs will surely vary depending upon the
era .in which one lives and the circumstances of the entire community.
in climate, geography, demographics, and culture will deterwhat kind of heating or cooling is required for one's dwelling, what
kmd of transportation one needs, and what kind of clothing a person
rnust have. The nature of employment will determine in part one's necessary diet. At the same time, thinking that one needs something is not the
as actually needing it. By appealing to what flourishing for a person In a particular community looks like, we can determine whether our
)
76
Chapter Three
interactions for the sake of advantage adequately contribute to her ability
to flourish.
Just as importantly, this understanding of exploitation allows us to
see why some interactions seem exploitative even when normal or standard procedures are being followed. It also allows us to say that an entire
social system can be exploitative. A social system is exploitative when it
positively sanctions institutionally recognized transactions that allow
persons to exploit. At various points throughout history, some institutions and practices become accepted even though they allow transactions
that fail to respect at least one of the parties to the transaction. The fact
that the practice is accepted often prevents us from seeing that someone
is being degraded. In the case of slavery and marital coverture, many
persons regarded these practices as morally acceptable and nonexploitative precisely because they were so widely accepted. Not only is it possible to have institutions that allow this; we have actually witnessed it in
labor markets, charitable institutions, and families.
If vulnerability is a function of human needs, what is a human need?
Since Rawls, social theorists are familiar with the idea of "pnma
goods," which Rawls defined as "things that every rational man is presumed to want." These include "social" primary goods such as "rights
and liberties, powers and opportunities, income and wealth" but also
"self-respect," which Rawls claims is most important. They also include
"natural" primary goods such as "health and vigor, intelligence and
imagination." Only social primary goods are said to be under the direct
control of the basic structure of society and hence are regulated by
Rawls's two principles of justice. 33 Rawls famously argued that
rational deliberators would agree that rights and liberties such as those m
the U.S. Bill of Rights should be distributed equally among all citizenswe should all have the same very broad civil liberties- the remaining
social primary goods would be distributed according to the
Principle. 34 This has come to be called a "resourcist" approach because tt
emphasizes the maldistribution of social primary goods or resources as
the locus of injustice.
In more recent years, Martha Nussbaum has expanded and developed
35
Amartya Sen's "capabilities approach." Capabilities, according to
33. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 62.
d
34. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 302.
35. Sen and Nussbaum have developed their views in dozens of articles an
books. Here I will focus on several of the more recent formulations . See Arnar;
tya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Anchor Books, 2000); Marthh
Nussbaum, Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approacd
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), and "Human Functioning an
What Is Bad about Exploitation?
77
Nussbaum, are "basic powers of choice that make a moral claim for opportunities to be realized and to flourish." 36 The capabilities approach
rneasures the justice of an economic and political system not by the average or aggregate income or welfare of its citizens, or by gross domestic
product (GDP). Sen and Nussbaum point out that the same resources will
allow two different people to realize their capabilities to different degrees, and they see this fact as a major shortcoming in the resourcist approach. When social primary goods are distributed according to the Difference Principle, a handicapped person may receive an amount that
barely allows her to survive (if that), because she requires a greater
amount of resources to achieve a very basic level of functioning. A per- .
son with greater natural endowments may receive the same amount (or
even less!) but will be able to do much more. Focusing on goods prevents us from assessing how persons are able to use those goods in order
to live and will view such distributions of goods as just?7 Hence both
Sen and Nussbaum emphasize the ability of citizens to turn resources
into capabilities. Moreover, they emphasize more explicitly than does
Rawls the ability of social institutions, along with material resources, to
underwrite capability.
Instead of focusing narrowly on income and wealth, Sen emphasizes
the importance of underwriting freedom, which is both instrumental to
and constitutive of a good human life. Various freedoms are essential to
flourishing for all people. These include, according to Sen, "(I) political
freedoms, (2) economic facilities, (3) social opportunities [including
education and health care], (4) transparency guarantees ['the freedom to
deal with one another under guarantees of disclosure and lucidity'], and
(5) protective security." Sen claims that "freedom is not only the primary
object of development but also its principal means." Justice would then
consist of promoting, in all cultures, the freedoms Sen has identified. 38
. Nussbaum's approach differs from that of Sen in several respects.
Ftrst,_ she explicitly appeals to Aristotle and Karl Marx in her account of
ife (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press and Oxford University Press,
Justice: In Defense of Aristotelian Essentialism," Political Theory 20
L\992): 202-46; and Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, eds., The Quality of
l 993).
37·
36. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development, 298.
I<.
The best overview of this issue that I have found is presented in Will
£ Ytnhcka's Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (OxOrd: Oxford University Press, 2002), 70-75.
Th 38. Sen, Development as Freedom, 10, 38-39. See also Nussbaum and Sen,
e Quality of Life.
78
Chapter Three
m
'
human flourishing . Second
of ca abilities as the basis of a constitutional rinc· le. In other
'She defends a minimum leveTof capability as a requirement of j
1.. \ whereas Sen does not explicitly advocate this . Third, while Sen
· with Rawls in his lexical ordering of goods, and in particular in the
t
ity of liberty among those goods, Nussbaum does not lexically order
pabilities. While she ackno ledge the imP-Qrtance of liberty,_
that
equally
Finally, Nussbaum
a defense of particular capabilities that all just societies ought to
Nussbaum defends a list of ten central human capabilities. Capabi
ties are genuine abilities to succeed in those functionings that constitute
fully human life. These capabilities are universal requirements of ·
societies . They include not only life (" being able to live to the end of
human life of normal length") and bodily health, but also bodily rei!-•
rity, senses, imagination, and thought (" being able to use the senses
imagine, think, and reason, among other things"), emotional capabil
(" being able to have attachments to things and people outside
selves"), practical reason, affiliation with others, affiliation with
species and nature, play, and control over one ' s political and
40
environment. Nussbaum calls this a "thick vague theory of the
and argues that a just society will ensure at the very least a "th
41
level of realizing these capabilities. This involves distributing
for the sake not of increasing the amount of resources or primary oov•""'ll•
goods for the worst-off members of society, but of ensuring a
baseline of capability for the worst-off members of society. In add
members of society must have meaningful opportunities to exercise
capabilities.
· Nussbaum is careful to say that a just society need not ensure
each person achieve these functionings . First, this may be an impossib
goal, given the natural limitations that individual persons face . Not
eryone may be able actively or effectively to engage in practical r<>"''""1"
ing, given the existence of mental illness and differing levels of ability.
39. Nussbaum, Wom en and Human Deyelopment, 11-15. Nussbaum
says that she and Sen also disagree in their basic understanding of rights,
though this disagreement is not directly material to the capabilities approach.
Nussbaum sees rights as, in Nozickian parlance, "side-constraints," whereas
Sen 's nonutilitarian consequentialism criticizes that view.
40 . Nussbaum, Wom en and Human Development, 78-80. Nussbaum's ap·
proach differs from that developed by Sen in several ways, but principal
them is her explicit appeal to Aristotelian conceptions of flourishing and
explicit list of universal human 9apabilities.
41. Nussbaum, "Human Functioning and Social Justice," 214.
What Is Bad about Exploitation?
79
l·
'f
furthermore, not everyone may be interested in actively pursuing an "af42
filiation" with nature and animals. Even though Nussbaum defends her
of ten capabilities, she shies away from insisting that everyone actu43
\ty live them out in their daily lives.
a Nussbaum does not offer a theory of exploitation . However, Nusse the -eneral ide<l:
as to
"a
--er5oi1 as a mere object for the use of
Furt ermore, she IS concerned with how the capabilities approach might provide the basis for
critiquing it. Indeed, her development of the capabilities approach offers
':J>' ,.
a way to see how Exploitation as Degradation might be assessed
translated into practical principles.
9
First, Nussbaum' s approach may be more in line with ordinary intui.
tions about what we owe each other. The distributive principle embodied .,..\
in the threshold approach is, by itself, less demanding than Rawls's Difference Principle, which requires that inequalities in social primary
goods be distributed to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged. 45
When combined with the requirement that each person be guaranteed a
threshold of capability, however, her approach quickly threatens to become very demanding, depending upon how one interprets the moral
minimum. Providing a severely handicapped person with enough resources to have the capability to function in a fully human way might
demand enormous sacrifices from those who will be taxed to support that
capability. Providing such a person with both the capability and the opportunity to exercise that capability is still more demanding. Nonetheless, the idea of threshold as the basis for moral obligation has some intuitive weight. In this sense it can serve as a preliminary basis for
(f)
expressing our ordinary ethically thick notion of exploitation.
Second,_
abilities approach
fact that what we (
5
realLy care abo.ut.,_frQID moral om of view, is how peop
resources_theyjlave. As Nussbaum puts it,- "wealth ano
not good in their own right; they are good only insofar as they promote
42. Nussbaum acknowledges that this is one of the most controversial
capabilities on her list, as some Southeast Asians objected to her that this was
not very important and "actively disliked animals." On the other hand, others
:v-1
have objected that the entire list is anthropocentric and hence
,.,.; ..1; ,.-.;
Nussbaum, Women and Human Development, 157.
'
",}
43. This, of course, raises the issue of why those capabilities are on a uniV'.
Versa\ list, if they are not universally valued by all cultures.
··
<;.... ,.
-r· '
44. Nussbaum, Wom en and Human Development, 73 .
c
45. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 302.
<.:.v'
80
46
Chapter Three
human functioning." The Rawlsian approach can be misleading in this
respect. The same amount of money in the hands of a severely disabled
person, or a person who is very poorly educated, cannot really contribute
to the well-being of that person in the same way as it could in the hands
of a person who needs less in order to function and who can carefully
manage it. Sen and Nussbaum make a compelling case that the resource
approach focuses on the wrong metric.
Third, although Nussbaum's approach is explicitly universalist (she
dedicates the better part of the first chapter of Women and Human Development to arguments against relativism), it also explicitly addresses
the problem of cultural differences. How capability is ensured may vary
from culture to culture. (This is part of the reason why Nussbaum's theory is deliberately vague.) What counts as a decent education, what
counts as adequate housing, what counts as control over one's environment-all of these will determine how well a given society ensures
capabilities of its people, and all of these will surely vary from culture
culture. And yet a threshold of capability remains constant as a requirement of justice. We need not even agree with Nussbaum's list of ten capabilities in order to see that human need is relevant to assessing exploitation. It may be true that some of the capabilities on Nussbaum's list are
not equally valued in every culture, or that some are not valued at all in
some cultures. More relevant for our purposes is that Nussbaum has provided a list of capabilities that, at the very least, matter to members of
those cultures in which the charge of exploitation carries moral weight.
We may also part company with Nussbaum, without affecting the conclusions drawn here, on the claim that each of the capabilities she identifies is equally important. The basic idea remains: human
·
have
are_deterll!ined by t e n!quirements of flour is hing, _a"'n,__-=-fl.£urishing has value that has the potential to make a claim on other huThere is nothing in Nussbaum's approach to social justice that sees
justice itself as constitutive of flourishing, and there is nothing that rejects the commodification of any given aspect of a person. Thus Nussbaum's account of justice is here limited to the distribution of those
goods that enhance capabilities. It says nothing about whether certain
exchanges ought to be completely prohibited (such as the sale of sexual
services or the sale of organs for transplant). As a result it does not offer
a complete account of the ways in which persons are disvalued in exploitative interaction. Nonetheless, we can see how the capabilities approach provides a way of interpreting exploitation as degradation . Genu46. Nussbaum, "Human Functioning and Social Justice," 233.
What Is Bad about Exploitation?
-..,
81
jnely ex loitative interactions are those in which the ca
interactors are ignored in the ursuit of our own adv ntage. Nonexploitainteraction requires that we in some way acknowledge that our interactors have needs and that the social surplus of our interaction is relevant
to those needs. This does not necessarily entail an obligation to provide
our interactors with whatever they need in order to flourish. Clearly this
will not even be possible for most of the interactions we might engage in.
In addition, as Sen and Nussbaum point out, even a person who is capable of functioning in a particular respect may choose not to do so. But
even if it is possible to do so, nonexploitation does not require that we
ensure the capabilities of our interactors in individual transactions.
Rather, it requires that we in some way take their needs into account.
In an individual interaction, moral agents must take into account how
this interaction affects the capabilities of the interactors. Clearly the
problem with harmful exploitation is that it diminishes a person's capabilities in some respect or other. But in cases of mutually beneficial exploitation, the exploited person either does not benefit sufficiently from
the transaction that results in her exploitation or is in some other way
treated as having less value than she actually possesses. Either the
sources obtained from the interaction fail to_con rib
to that person'
in.-the eJe
t way, or else the
it--self-as o osed- o_the...r.e.s rces-·-or social sur Ius oft tca,nsactio degrades her.
The case is somewhat different with repeated transactions or relationships. Relationships of employment, family, and friendship are protracted interactions. In addition, employment and family are allconsuming and tend to preclude other relationships from occupying the
same role. Thus an employer is aware that the full-time employee will
necessarily be relying solely on the wages obtained from that employer
for subsistence and that accepting such employment precludes her from
obtaining subsistence in other ways. If an employer fails to compensate
an employee in a way that provides her with adequate income when such
compensation is possible, then the relationship is exploitative. The employer is, at the very least, taking advantage of the surplus of labor in
order to neglect the objective needs of the employee. This neglect can be
tneasured in terms of the employee's inability to function. The employer's greater involvement seems to entail a greater commitment to the
Well-being of his interactor.
Families may be similarly exploitative, and in chapter 4 I explore the
specific case of exploitation in marriage. However, here it is worth noting that biological and adoptive families bear a significance for most
I,
i
.,
82
2
Chapter Three
people that is singular
We might understand the need
for family connection along the lines of Nussbaum's capability of emotion, or of affiliation. To leverage the uniqueness of this relationship for
one's own personal gain is exploitative. It fails to respect the value of the
commitment to family that many people have by using it as a mere tool
for personal benefit. Hence it degrades the interactor as well as the relationship. It treats the exploited person as if her commitment were a
choice or preference like any other.
This is not to argue that individual acts of exploitation are less pernicious than are relationships of exploitation. The man who hires a drugaddicted prostitute for just one sexual interaction is taking advantage of
her vulnerability for the sake of advantage without regard for her flourishing. He knows that the prostitute will use her income to continue her
addiction, exposing herself to life-threatening diseases and violence, and
yet he interacts for his own perceived benefit anyway. This exploitation
may have far more severe consequences than other forms of even longterm exploitation.
I have noted several ways in which we can fail to recognize the value
in another person. But one important form of exploitation involves taking
advantage of injustice. In one respect, Nussbaum's list of capabilities
gets at the heart of what it would be to take seriously the good of another
human being. Honoring those capabilities is said to constitute distributive
justice. However, we can exploit persons by taking advantage of injustice, even when their threshold capabilities are met. If a person is il!..!weaker bar aining osition because of Rast injustice, WfP stand to ain
orti.Qn..'!,te!y in virtue o:ft hat injwrtice.-The vulnerability, in this
case, is not an unfulfilled basic need, but the person ' s bargaining position
is lower than it would have been without the injustice. Thus historically
whites have been ·able to pay blacks less money and men have been able
to pay women less money for the same work because of a history of racial and sexual discrimination, respectively. Moreover, white workers
and male workers have been able to take advantage of discrimination
against blacks and women in the labor market. In some cases the beneficiaries of these transactions do not distinctly harm other persons, but they
do take advantage of distortions in the market that are the result of injustice; and these distortions do harm others, in the same way that buying
stolen property harms those who have been robbed. Taking advantage
injustice fails to respect the value of other beings who deserve to be
treated justly and hence fits the model of Exploitation as Degradation.
· As I mentioned above, inappropriate commodification is at the heart
of many claims of exploitation. Some transactions seem to fail to
the value inherent in a person because they ask that person to trade
What Is Bad about Exploitation?
83
I
thing that, it seems, he ought not to trade. Just what sorts of things ought
not to be subject to market exchange is of course a controversy. Hence
the exploitation claims made by appealing to such an anticommodification argument are also controversial. But what is not controversial is that
it is part of our core notion of exploitation that using a vulnerability in
order to force certain things into a market is exploitative and wrong.
While I remain agnostic on the issue of whether certain aspects of our
personhood are noncommodifiable, I reject the idea that a person could
be exploited if no vulnerability is made use of. A person whose basic
needs are met, and who nonetheless chooses to transact in a way that
would violate a putative restriction on exchange, is not
person whose bar ain'JJ,g_positiQn
seriously_c.Pmpro.mised-as.-.a._ms.ult
of injustice is similarly not exploited. Such a person may, however, be
degraded if the appropriate case against commodification can be made.
Thus the making use of a person's vulnerability or need for the sake
of advantage is our basic way of understanding exploitation. We can in
turn understand this vulnerability in terms of a set of human capabilities
and their concomitant functionings . Exploitation occurs when the value
of persons is not appropriately respected. This can happen when their
human capabilities are ignored in the course of an interaction or relationship of mutual benefit; or when we take advantage of injustice to profit
from that interaction or relationship; or when we inappropriately commodify something. Exploitation can occur either at the level of individual
transaction, or at the level of a protracted relationship. When exploitative
interactions fail to properly value our interactors, degradation has occurred.
I return now to Goodin ' s plausible suggestion that there is a relationship between asymmetrical relations of power and exploitation. In chapter 2, I suggested that this appealing idea is nonetheless not quite on the
mark. There are many transactions in which one party is less interested
than the other in the benefit of the transaction and is thus less willing
than the other to pay a high price for it. These are situations of unequal
bargaining power. They are not, solely for that reason, regarded as exploitative. But if an asymmetry in power is not sufficient for exploitation,
is it necessary? If asymmetry in power is simply an unequal interest in
seeing the transaction occur, then the answer must be no. Two persons
could be equally interested in seeing that an exploitative transaction goes
through. The reason why the asymmetrical personal relationship described by Goodin is exploitative is not the unequal bargaining power
involved; it is that the person who has the greater power in the relationship uses it to gain advantage in a way that fails to respect the other per-
84
Chapter Three
son in the relationship. An important instance in which this occurs
when one party preys upon an important need of another. If, for
I used my spouse's need for my affection and approval to convince
to quit smoking or to give up scuba diving, it would not be ""'IJIUilli:1u
He might be quite dependent upon my opinion of him and attitude
ward him, and this emotional relationship is deserving of respect.
ever, the charge of exploitation is legitimate only if the putative
is being asked to give up or compromise something that is a ....c ...a,, .. ;_,,
of or constitutive of human flourishing. If scuba diving, for
..
were plausibly subsumed under one of the capabilities (and maybe it
be subsumed under the capacity for play-I remain neutral on this ·
then a case could be made that I have a reason not to disregard it in
interactions with him. If it cannot be (as in the case of smoking), and if
is in fact harmful to him (no matter how pleasant), then the charge
exploitation cannot be easily justified.
Degradation and Harm
I have argued that morally bad exploitation is interaction for the sake
advantage in a way that fails to respect the value of our interactor-that
' is, in a way that degrades her. The degradation of persons may consist in
any number of features of the interaction. It may consist in the way in
which the interaction responds to a need for a resource, or to a need for a
certain kind of relationship; it may consist in the way in which the interaction undermines the self-respect of the agent or fails to advance it;
may consist in the exchange of a noncommodifiable feature of that person; or it may consist in the way in which it fails to respect the demands
of justice due to each person. An important objection must be considered
here: Isn't degradation a kind of harm? For it might be thought that even
if I improve the access of a person to a particular resource (e.g., by providing her with it), if I do so by taking advantage of injustice, or in some
other way fail to respect her intrinsic value (putatively, e.g., prostitution),
am I not thereby harming her? And if this is the case, isn't exploitation
always harmful? If so, it would seem to follow that all of the cases of
interaction for mutual advantage presented in chapter 1 are illusory.
Those cases
only one kind of advantage and leave out the cost of
degradation, which is ultimately harmful to the exploited person. If this
is correct, exploitation is a subset of harmful interaction with others, contrary to my claim that exploitation can be mutually beneficial: all exploitation is harmful exploitation.
What Is Bad about Exploitation?
85
1 think this challenge can be met. First, if we accept that degradation
. kind of harm, we would be committed only to the consequence that
15
h
a
e
is
a harmful element to the exploitative action, not that it is on the
t er
h
h
.
whole
harmful to the exploited person. It may be t e case t at an
d rades and thus is morally bad, but that the other benefits of the action
the degradation, making the action nonharmful overall. The
might nonetheless be exploitative. The case of prostitution is
the most compelling example of this. Even those who regard
prostitution as inherently degrading can acknowledge that for some
some forms of prostitution are their best option, and that it is
rational for those women to engage in it.
Second, degradation may not be harmful in the relevant sense. Joel
Feinberg notes that I have not harmed another in any interesting sense if
1 have not worsened his situation in a way in which I had no right to
worsen it. He says that if
A received B's voluntary consent to the conduct that proved "harmful" to B-then the subsequent setback is not unfair to B. It is not an
injustice; it does him no wrong. Yet it may demean or degrade him; it
may present him to the world in an unfavorable (though not inaccurate) light. It may cost him dearly. The exploiter may not be answerable to him in that case, but, as Kleinig reminds us, he may nevertheless be answerable to third parties or to his own conscience, or subject
47
to adverse criticism generally.
Surely Feinberg is right that not all forms of harmful interaction are
immoral. Suppose for example that an especially fast runner decides to
enter a footrace . Assuming that winning is a good thing in this case (we
may suppose there is a cash prize in addition to the thrill of victory), the
other participants are in some sense worse off. However, it is clearly not
wrong (at least on the face of it) for the fast runner to enter the footrace.
So it is possible that exploitation, when understood as a failure to respect
other persons, works like this : it in some way worsens the situation of the
exploited, but not in a morally relevant way.
However, Feinberg implies that a person could degrade or
another and in so doing do him no injustice, without being "unfair." Thts
cannot be entirely correct. Demeaning or degrading other people seems
to be wrong always, regardless of whether we consider it a violation
their rights. If the person who engages in this sort of harmful conduct ts
47 . Joel Feinberg, Harmless Wrongdoing (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1990), 194.
86
Chapter Three
vALJlUILa
"subject to adverse criticism" or must answer to "his own conscience,"
surely it is in virtue of his immoral conduct. Perhaps Feinberg, appealing
to an idea found in both Kant and John Stuart Mill, is suggesting that we
have no enforceable obligation to refrain from harming others in certain
ways, and that the demands of justice or fairness are always enforceable.
Indeed, this seems to be an important part of the confusion about ex.
ploitation. Much exploitation seems to be activity with which we should
not interfere. There are two reasons for this. First, the consequences
the exploited person are often worse if he is not exploited. This is
paradox of mutually beneficial exploitation discussed above. It is
from clear that we should interfere with exploitation, even if it is
when it has overall better consequences than noninteraction. Second,
duty to respect others (in part, by not exploiting them) seems to be
example of what Kant called "ethical duties ." Juridical duties, as
to ethical duties, entail a corresponding right of enforcement. Ethical
ties, in contrast, should not be enforced, as they are duties of
constraint. A person cannot fulfill an ethical duty unless she
48
herself since ethical duties are concerned with "inner" freedom.
' not arguing that exploitation is "relevant harm" in Feinberg'
I am
sense. Persons may have a right to act in ways that exploit others, even
they have a duty not to. Furthermore, even if it should turn out that
ploitation is prohibited by a juridical duty not to exploit, we may
want to exercise our right of enforcement. Here Wertheimer's d"
between moral weight and moral force is relevant. The former
the seriousness of the evil that exploitation involves, along with the
responding evil of allowing oneself to be exploited. The latter
49
how we ought to respond to exploitation. The moral force of
tion may be that we should not, in at least some cases, interfere with it.
To do so might undermine the freedom of the exploited. Competent
viduals must be free to choose among their options when they can do
without coercion or duress. This is in part because, as Mill so
48. Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 146, 166. For a discussion ofhow
juridical/ethical distinction is connected to the distinction between perfect
imperfect duty, see Marcia Baron, Kantian Ethics Almost without
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995), 30-31. Mill put the point
or .
ently, arguing that "the acts of an individual may be hurtful to
in due consideration for their welfare, without going the length of v1olatmg
of their constituted rights. The offender may then be justly punished by
though not by law." John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, ed. Elizabeth Raport
napolis: Hackett, 1978), 73.
49. Wertheimer, Exploitation, 279 .
What Is Bad about Exploitation?
87
sively argued, individuals are in general the best judges of their own interests :
In the conduct of human beings towards one another, it is necessary
that general rules should for the most part be observed, in order that
people may know what they have to expect; but in each person's own
concerns, his individual spontaneity is entitled to free exercise. Considerations to aid his judgment, exhortations to strengthen his will, may be
offered to him, even obtruded on him, by others; but he, himself, is the
final judge. All errors which he is likely to commit against advice and
warning, are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain
him to what they deem his good.5°
Thus when the exploited person chooses an advantageous transaction
(and perhaps even a disadvantageous one) in spite of the degradation involved-perhaps she herself does not regard it as a degrading transaction-her choice should generally be respected. This is not to accept a
subjectivist account of which acts fail to respect persons. That is, I am
not arguing that thinking one is not degraded or disrespected is the same
as not being degraded or disrespected, but rather that overall, individuals
tend to be the best judges of their own situations. In any case when
someone correctly regards herself as degraded, but nonetheless finds the
degrading action her best option, we are not necessarily justified in preventing the transaction. There is no contradiction in an action's being
one's best alternative, all in all, and yet being an action that treats one as
having less value than one actually has. Persons who opt for such actions
are in many cases right to do so--both from the standpoint of pure instrumental rationality, and from the standpoint of morality.
Conclusion: A Reconsideration of the Examples
The moral badness of exploitation, then, is not a straightforward function
of distributions of the social surplus, as Wertheimer would have it, and
exploitation is not legitimately charged whenever there is an asymmetry
of power. It is not the violation of standards of interaction, although
one's cultural norms might make certain interactions exploitative when
they would not be in another context. Exploitation is not determined by
Whether a transaction occurs at the market price, above it, or below it.
Nor does it matter whether the practice in question is a long-standing
50. Mill, On Liberty, 74- 75.
88
--
Chapter Three
-
tradition or violates accepted standards of fair play. However, the distribution of the social surplus can be relevant to the charge of exploitation
if it is material to the degradation of the exploited party. The badness of
i! result
the degradation of-a failure to appropriately
respect-at least one of the parties to an interaction. When a erson in. .
-teracts with another for the sa e o further advantage in a way that degrades the other person in virtue of her vulnerability, exploitation has
occurred.
So which of our putative cases of exploitation discussed in chapter 1
actually authorize a legitimate charge of exploitation? Case ! Wertheimer's example-seems not to be exploitation at all. Even if we
concede that the greedy rescuer is taking advantage of the motorist, it is
not clear that charging him $210 for a tow is exploitation in a morally
objectionable sense. What if the rescuer demanded $1 ,000? $1 ,000,000?
If we imagine that there is no snowstorm (i.e., if we remove the vulnerability) and instead imagine that the motorist simply has a flat tire on a
sunny day but faces no serious or imminent danger, then it seems less
plausible to call this exploitation, no matter what the price. If this is exploitative, it must be because of the grave danger that faces the stranded
motorist, and we are obligated to prevent others from incurring grave
, danger when it poses no great risk to us-not to present the choice be'1 tween injury ·and surrendering one's fortune. Consider alternative versions of the scenario. What if the tow truck driver informs the motorist
1 that another truck will pass by in a couple of hours? Imagine the motorist
i were an ·airline passenger who wanted to get home immediately, but a
j ticket purchased now would cost him $400-whereas a twenty-four-hour
wait would lower the price to $200. Would the airline passenger be ex/ ploited? Like the airline, the tow truck driver (in the reconfigured exam/\ pie) is taking advantage of the specificity of the traveler's preferences,
but neither is acting exploitatively in my sense.
I
If we compare this with case 4, the case of the expensive air conditioners, it becomes even clearer. There seems to be no exploitation here,
just ordinary response to supply and demand, and in particular to the
specificity of the preference of the consumer for cool air now rather than
later. The government might regulate prices for reasons of public interest, but that does not mean that the greedy rescuer, or the air conditioner
retailer, is committing an immoral act. 51 This is a case in which the
charge of exploitation has
overextended.
51 . Of course, the prices might be immoral if they violate a regulation, but
the immorality or badness is not a result of exploitation. In such a case the im·
morality would be a function of an obligation to obey regulations.
What Is Bad about Exploitation?
89
Consider again case 3 in chapter I, involving factory workers in a
developing country. If the workers are lifted out of poverty, even if only
slightly, while the factory owner makes very little profit, we might not
regard his treatment of them as exploitative. If the only way to complete
a transaction for mutual advantage involves a gross inequality in the distribution of the social surplus-and this condition seems unlikely-then
we cannot fault the factory owner. He is not degrading the workers but
simply doing the best that he can. He is not guilty of exploitation. Ho; ;
ever, if he profits substantially and yet compensates them in an inadequate way, his indifference to their lack of adequate food, housing, education, and medical care may constitute degradation. Interacting with
others for profit and allowing them a meager existence while personally
prospering displays a lack of respect for their humanity and dignity.
Case 2 differs from the case of the factory workers in that the employers are intimately aware of their maid's situation and can afford to
compensate her at a higher rate, yet they refuse to do so. This seems
more clearly exploitative than case 3.
In the case of the missionary (case 5) we do not have enough information to determine whether exploitation has taken place. We need to
know more about the motivation of the missionary and need to resolve
questions about the nature of religious faith . First, is she acting for her
own benefit, or as the agent of someone else (the church?) who stands to
benefit? Second, is one's religion something that must never be traded in
this way? If she is acting for the benefit of the sick man (as she surely
must believe herself to be acting), then her actions are better described as
disrespectful and paternalistic. (She may be uninintentionally disrespectful, but she is disrespectful nonetheless.)
What about the plight of the American baseball players (case 6)?
While they earned a more than decent living-generally eight times the
average American working man's salary-the conditions under which
they labored were severely restricted. They could be traded at will, but
they had no say in where they went or when . In fact, the reserve system
Was often referred to as a "plantation system," and Curt Flood, the black
center fielder who famously challenged the reserve system in the U.S.
Supreme Court, said that it seemed to him like slavery or indentured servitude.52 However, after Flood lost his suit, Andy Messersmith and Dave
McNally filed grievances with the baseball commissioner objecting to
the reserve clause, and Messersmith (earning $115,000 in 1975) said,
52. Curt Flood with Richard Carter, The Way It Is (New York: Trident,
1971).
90
l
Chapter Three
"I don't want everyone to think, 'Well here is a guy in involuntary
tude at $115,000 a year. ' That's a lot of bull and I know it." Even Flood
said that his failed suit was not about the money.53 If baseball players
were exploited under the reserve system, it is the severely restrictive
ture of their employment that made them vulnerable to hardball
tions, not the lower compensation, that is relevant. Insofar as their
tiations were stymied by unjust threats of being fired and blacklisted
from American baseball, they were coerced. They were being threatened
with harm (in Feinberg's "relevant" sense) in order to get them to acquiesce to the reserve system. 54 The exploitation involved in the reserve sys.
tern is not a function of the players' compensation, but a function of the
terms on which .those salaries were negotiated . Flood was earning
$90,000 per year in 1970, when his suit reached the U.S. Supreme Court,
and he turned down an offer of$100,000 per year to settle his suit.
Finally, what about the last set of cases-the putative examples
interpersonal exploitation? Here the advantage of understanding
exploitation as degradation is the strongest. The parents A and B in case 7
are taking advantage of the family ties of the grandparents C and D,
whose love of their grandchild
that they will make tremendous
sacrifices to see that the child is educated. Their morally praiseworthy
sentimental attachment is a vulnerability that is being used to the advantage of the parents, to the detriment of the grandparents' financial wellbeing. It is degrading to have one's generosity not only go unreciprocated, but be preyed upon. It cheapens the value of intimacy to use it in
this way. Friend A in case 8 seems like a good candidate for the charge of
exploitation. While occasionally backing out of appointments (apologetically and with the appropriate demonstration of regret) shows no lack of
respect for a person, habitually doing so whenever something more interesting comes along is degrading. It is bad to treat a person this way, even
if not interacting with that person would make him terribly lonely. A
could interact with B on better terms, and she should. If she feels that the
relationship would not be worth it if it were characterized by reciprocity,
then there must be a very strong countervailing reason for maintaining
the friendship. To the extent to which B knows that A is simply acting for
the sake of her own convenience, and continues the relationship, B may
be complicit in his own degradation. It may be that loneliness makes the
53 . John Helyar, Lords of the Realm: The Real History of Baseball (NeW
York: Villard, 1994), 120.
·
54. The fact that the Supreme Court ruled that the coercion was legal does
not mean that the coercion was morally justifiable. The justification for this sys·
tern was a completely untenable conservatism at odds with the rest of our views
about hiring and employment practices.
What Is Bad about Exploitation?
91
friendship seem better than no friendship at all, but that does not make it
anY less degrading. Similarly, in case 9, the husband is degrading his
wife by refusing to take seriously her aspirations while advancing his
own purposes with their relationship. He takes advantage of her investment in their marriage, and her dependency on him, in a way that degrades her, and thus he exploits her. Case 10, the "traditional marriage,"
is a more difficult case. Here we see degradation of a subtler form , if it is
present at all. While the husband may wish that his wife did not have to
shoulder so much responsibility, he is willing to let her do so even
though she will be burdened and frustrated in the process, for the sake of
saving time and energy for his own ends . If he benefits from the family
and uses her commitment to her family to further his own ends, while at
the same time ignoring her basic requirements for a dignified existence,
then his indifference may constitute degradation. Such a marriage may
be exploitative. Of course, we can imagine versions of case 10 that are
undeniably degrading. Certainly there are relationships in which the husband not only is aware that the wife is frustrated with her lack of options,
but takes pleasure in her dependency on him while profiting from it.
When considering specific putative cases of exploitation, it is important to reiterate that feeling degraded is not the same as actually being
degraded in the course of an interaction. A person might feel that, as the
.l
saying goes, "the world owes her a living," but we all recognize the
l
1
weightlessness of such complaints. A person who accustoms herself to a :.. )
very high standard of luxury might feel degraded at having to shop at I ,
5
discount stores or buy off-the-rack clothing. She might be degraded in\lrJV"" '
the sense that her position in a particular social hierarchy has declined, --r:..v
but this is not the same as an affront to her basic dignity. The failure of I ,. .,._
one party to completely capitulate to the needs or demands of another is '
not thereby exploitation. At the same time, one might not feel degraded
and might nonetheless be degraded. If a person has come to expect degrading treatment in order to earn a living, for example, she may deny
that she has any feelings of degradation under conditions of sexism, and
she may genuinely feel no degradation. But she can nonetheless be degraded insofar as she is being accorded insufficient respect as a human
being. Exploitation requires both interaction for the sake of advantage
and genuine degradation.
Is degradation the right concept here? After all, don't we sometimes
regard the situation of a person as itself degrading? For example, a life of
extreme poverty, homelessness, and drug abuse is often thought of as
degrading. Similarly, don ' t we sometimes say . that a person degrades
herself or fails to respect herself with abusive drinking or sexual prac-
92
Chapter Three
tices? These locutions always presuppose that, in the background, someone is capable of helping but will not. A life of extreme poverty, which
was typical of life throughout the world until recently, was not degrading
insofar as it was unavoidable until the onset of modern technology. But
now it is clearly avoidable by many, and if we ignore such poverty and
confer moral blame on those who cannot overcome it, we degrade the
poor. In the case of self-degradation, persons who engage in it are regarded as having a "higher self' that could, if they so wished, end the
conditions of degradation. If that higher self has been extinguished somehow, the person is no longer guilty of failing to help his lower self and is
instead in need of charity. He is no longer capable of self-degradation
because he has lost his autonomy.
At the same time, exploitation can occur even with adequate compensation. If, for example, a black waiter at a white country club is decently compensated--even well paid-but as a condition of employment
must acquiesce in being called "boy" or other insults, his need for gainful
employment is being. exploited. His need for a job is being used to the
advantage of the ·country club owners, who tolerate the degrading re55
marks to placate racist club members. Here it is unclear that higher
wages could alleviate the degradation. Indeed, if the waiter has other,
less lucrative opportunities that afford him a decent living, and yet he
chooses to work at the club anyway, he is complicit in his own degradation. Is the club thus exploiting him? They are taking advantage of (in
this case) not his need to earn a living, but perhaps his greed. If greed is a
56
vulnerability, then he is being exploited. However, greed does not appear to be a vulnerability in the sense defined above, although it is perhaps a weakness.
Wrongdoing, 182-183.
55. We can imagine variations of this situation in which a woman is required to behave in a sexually available and submissive fashion
for
employment, or in which a white man is forced to endure demeanmg.
in order to earn a living. Because of the privileges that flow from bemg a white
man in our culture, it is less common-but not uncommon-to find such exploitative situations involving white men.
56. Feinberg argues that we can see a character flaw as personal weakness
and that it is not necessarily wrong to take advantage of it-that it is the least
blameworthy kind of exploitation, if it is blameworthy at all. As he puts it, "Exploitation of another party's defect of character is likely to seem the least blam·
able form ofnoncoercive, nonfraudulent exploitation." I am not convinced. If, as
I argue, exploitation involves interacting with another for advantage in a
that degrades her, it is not clear why taking advantage of her bad character IS
less degrading than taking advantage of a basic need. Cf. Feinberg, Harmless
. What Is Bad .about
93
A related case IS one descnbed by H1ll: the case of "the Deferential
Wife." 57 The Deferential Wife is happy to serve her husband, as the
black waiter is happy to work at the country club. However, the Deferential Wife does not labor for the sake of compensation; she enjoys sacrificing for her husband and regards her self-abnegation as a completely
voluntary performance of her duty. She is not degrading herself for the
sake of some other goal such as personal advantage, and she is not pretending to be compliant so as to avoid punishment by her spouse or
community. Hill says that she fails to respect her own rights. However, if
rights are understood as claims that one can waive (except for special
inalienable rights), then it is unclear that her behavior is a moral failing,
since she can recognize and respect her own rights and yet waive them.
To renounce something such as a right is not necessarily to fail to respect
it, even if one does so habitually or even as a matter of principle. Only if
she fails to recognize that she is a person with rights, and that those
rights are worthy of respect when not waived or renounced, could the
Deferential Wife be accused of complicity in her own exploitation. Indeed, as Nussbaum has persuasively argued, many women have failed to
perceive their own maltreatment as unjust as a result of their forming
"adaptive preferences." Life is often easier for women who are not offended by demeaning treatment. 58 If this is true of the Deferential Wife,
we would then be in a position to ask the question of whether she is responsible for her complicity.
Hill argues that if the Deferential Wife acts out of a sense of duty
toward her husband, then her actions are inconsistent with a recognition
that she has a right to respect as a person, and hence the Deferential Wife
is confused and unable to act consensually in this context. 59 I disagree.
The Deferential Wife may believe that she is obligated to waive her
rights, even though she believes that she fully possesses those rights.
Perhaps the obligation to waive her rights is of a different kind than the
moral rights that she waives. For example, I might think that I have an
imperfect duty of charity, in Kant's sense, but nonetheless retain the right
to use what resources I possess in order to pursue my own projects. In
such a case, I ought to renounce or transfer some of the rights to my re-
57 . Thomas Hill Jr., "Servility and Self-Respect," reprinted in Autonomy
and Self-Respect (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991 ), 4-18. Hill
uses other examples, such as that of"the Uncle Tom" and "the Self-Deprecator,"
but the Deferential Wife is benefiting her husband. Thus this case is more
clearly a candidate for the charge of exploitation.
58. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development, 112-13.
59. Hill, "Servility and Self-Respect," 10.
94
Chapter Three
sources in order to fulfill that obligation, although when and how is up to
me. It does not follow that I do not really have a right to those resources,
or a right to pursue my own projects with those resources.
There is an important parallel with servility here. Hill defines servility as a kind of behavior displaying the "absence of a certain
of selfrespect." Hill says that behavior isn't servile if it is engaged m for some
higher goal (such as providing for one's children), or if there is no "humiliation or maltreatment" in the services being performed. "To be servile is to have a certain attitude about one's rightful place in a moral
community." 60 Similarly, complicity in one's own degradation is a legitimate charge only if one fails to appreciate one's own
by voluntarily submitting to humiliation or other maltreatment without the presence of a vulnerability-not if o·ne voluntarily submits to treatment for
the sake of the satisfaction of an important need. Only when the subject
of putatively exploitative behavior treats herself as having less value
she actually has can she be said to be complicit. Swallowing one's
for the sake of the survival of oneself or important others and endurmg
such maltreatment would not qualify. Just as with servility, complicity in
one's own exploitation occurs, according to Hill, when one cooperates
with degradation for the sake of advantage out of "laziness, timidity, or a
. c
.
desire
10r some mmor
a dvan t age. ,61
Another important parallel with servility is the nature of our
tion to avoid complicity in our own exploitation-as well as to avoid
exploitative interactions with others. Hill
while we have a
duty to avoid servility, that duty is a perfect nonJundical duty to
in the Kantian sense: first, it is "never overridden by other considerations," and second, "a person cannot be legitimately coerced to comply"
with it. 62 All other things being equal, interacting with another for the
sake of advantage in a way that degrades is something that it is
wrong to do, but not by itself an enforceable obligation. If the
of
the exploitative behavior is not owed the object
then
the transaction is discretionary in this sense. Servility and exploitatwnalong with complicity in one's own exploitation-have this in com63
moo.
60. Hill, "Servility and Self-Respect," 6.
61. Hill, "Servility and Self-Respect," 11.
62. Hill "Servility and Self-Respect," 12.
.
63.
that involves harm may be a juridical duty, dependmg ?11
the harm caused. However since I claim that exploitation does not necessartlY
involve harm, exploitation
se does not have this feature. In addition, it
reasonable to regard our obligation to avoid complicity in our own explOitation
as a duty to oneself, just as with the duty to avoid servility on Hill's account.
What Is Bad about Exploitation?
95
I
Hill makes a further distinction between the failure to respect one's
moral rights and the failure simply to respect oneself: the "lack of a minimum non-moral standard" (italics added). Servility is a case of the
former and
But lack of self-regard-which surely
plays a role m servility, m many cases-is a case of the latter and is different. It is unclear that we are obligated to honor ourselves, rather than
acknowledge our moral status as a person.64 We are not, after all, obligated to respect other people in the sense of having a high regard for
their character, talents, or accomplishments-Darwall's "achievement
respect." There seems to be no inconsistency "in a person's wanting to
respect herself but simply discovering that such respect is not warranted.
Hill suggests that uncoerced prostitution might involve this kind of nonmoral lack of self-respect, insofar as the prostitute acts contrary and deliberately to values that she (or he) regards as good. Since Hill backs
a":ay from the .claim that this lack of self-respect is a moral failing, it
raises the questiOn of whether complicity in one's own degradation is a
moral failing, as uncoerced prostitution is often regarded as a case of being complicit in one's own exploitation. While I cannot fully address this
specific issue here, the resolution of this question depends upon whether
prostitution is a case of servility, of lack of self-respect, or of selfexploitation. It seems to me that it is possible that the answer depends
upon the particular case. In some situations, such as when prostitution is
cond.ucted under conditions of dire necessity, it might be none of these,
provided that sex is a legitimately commodifiable activity.
examples does,
\
While t?e above discussion of
.shed some ht on how to a ly a res ect-based account of ex Joitatio
s wott
thai o not offer a me nc of ex Ioit · . Nor do
offer a complete account of which types o acts are degrading in a way
that
is because I .have really only outlined such an account.
More.
this cannot be achieved without addressing some important
that I have only touched upon here. In particular, exploitation
claims tpat appeal to anticommodification arguments depend upon the
soundnes\s of those arguments. I have not addressed those arguments
here.
I have argued that most important accounts of exploitation are inadequate for several reasons. Wertheimer's account is unable to provide an
of what impersonal exploitation and personal exploitation have
64. Thomas Hill Jr. , "Self-Respect Reconsidered," in Autonomy and Selfespect (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 19-24, 21, 24.
tn common and makes exploitation a function of an arbitrary standard
1?.
I
96
Chapter Three
market price. Goodin rightly emphasizes vulnerability as relevant to the
badness of exploitation, but like Wertheimer, he views exploitation as an
unusual event, a deviation from prevailing standards. Neither theory explains what is bad about exploitation, because neither explains what is
wrong with failing to comply with norms of interaction. Nor do the two
theories explain why it is exculpatory to comply with social norms. By
seeing exploitation as a failure to adhere to normal standards of behavior,
both accounts make it impossible to criticize those standards themselves
as exploitative. But we do ' criticize behavior that satisfies.
norms and we often criticize the norms themselves as explOitative. Not
only dan individuals exploit, but social institutions can be exploitative
insofar as they support and regulate exploitative transactions. An adequate account of exploitation must allow us to make such criticisT?.
ploitation as Degradation underwrites the criticism of both exploitative
institutions and transactions.
/
Chapter Four
Exploitation and the Family
Accounting for Exploitation among Intimates
Exploitation has so far been analyzed as a feature of transactions or relationships.l
argued that when a transaction or relationship is under_taken for the sake of advantage in a way that fails to respect the value Q_f
one of the parties, exploitation has occurre,9.:_H_9wever, not on!)' do we
judge transactions and relationships as exploitative, we also t:S)gard !llle
instituti.Q!}S and practices as exploitative. That is to say, whole categories
of human arrangements are deemed morally bad without specific reference to particular relationships between people. This is particularly applicable to "phvate" arrangements involving men and women. Since at
least the nineteenth century, when John Stuart Mill wrote On the Subjection of Women, philosophers have argued that the traditional institutions
of marriage and the family are unjust.
In this chapter I aim to explain how my account of exploitation can
explicate the notion of institutional exploitation. What does it mean to
say that a traditional marriage (i .e., a marriage formed out of the Western
European tradition) is exploitative? Exploitation as Degradation can account for such a characterization of traditional marriage because it can
explain injustice in interactions that are freely chosen and mutually
beneficial. Persons choose to marry others whom they have no obligation to wed, and often they do so willingly and in full knowledge of what
they will gain from the relationship. Yet those marriages may be unjust.
The important feature of exploitation highlighted by this account is that
exploitation is not simply a feature of a particular transaction but
97