To exploit someone is to take unfair advantage of them. It is to useanother person’s vulnerability for one’s own benefit. Ofcourse, benefitting from another’s vulnerability is not alwaysmorally wrong—we do not condemn a chess player for exploiting aweakness in his opponent’s defence, for instance. But some formsof advantage-taking do seem to be clearly wrong, and it is thisnormative sense of exploitation that is of primary interestto moral and political philosophers.

Exploitation can betransactional orstructural. Inthe former case, the unfairness is a property of a discretetransaction between two or more individuals. A sweatshop that pays lowwages, for example, or a pharmaceutical research firm that tests drugson poor subjects in the developing world, might be said to exploitothers in this sense. But exploitation can also bestructural—a property of institutions or systems inwhich the “rules of the game” unfairly benefit one groupof people to the detriment of another. As we will see below, Karl Marxbelieved that the economic and political institutions of capitalismwere exploitative in this sense. And some contemporary feminists haveargued that the institution of traditional marriage is exploitativeinsofar as it preys upon and reinforces pernicious forms of inequalitybetween men and women (Sample 2003: Ch. 4).

Exploitation can also beharmful ormutuallybeneficial. Harmful exploitation involves an interaction thatleaves the victim worse off than she was, and than she was entitled tobe. The sort of exploitation involved in coercive sex trafficking, forinstance, is harmful in this sense. But as we will see below, not allexploitation is harmful. Exploitation can also be mutually beneficial,where both parties walk away better off than they wereexante. Most philosophers think that what makes such mutuallybeneficial interactions nevertheless exploitative is that they are, insome way, unfair.

It is relatively easy to come up with intuitively compelling cases ofunfair, exploitative behavior. Providing a philosophical analysis tosupport and develop those intuitions, however, has proven moredifficult. The most obvious difficulty is specifying the conditionsunder which a transaction or institution may be said to be unfair.Does the unfairness involved in exploitation relate to thedistribution of resources? Or a violation of her moral rights? Is theunfairness involved in exploitation a matter of procedure, substance,or both? And how, if at all, are the attitudes and motives of thewould-be exploiter relevant to assessing charges of exploitation?

• 1. Historical Accounts of Exploitation
  • 1.1 Pre-Marxian Accounts of Exploitation and Unjust Trade
  • 1.2 Marx’s Theory of Exploitation
  • 1.3 Neoclassical Accounts
• 2. The Concept of Exploitation
  • 2.1 Domain Conditions
    • 2.1.1 Structural and Transactional Exploitation
    • 2.1.2 Exploitation and Benefit
    • 2.1.3 Exploitation and Harm
  • 2.2 Unfairness
    • 2.2.1 Substantive Unfairness
      • 2.2.1.1 Equality
      • 2.2.1.2 Sufficiency and Basic Needs
      • 2.2.1.3 Bargaining Solutions
    • 2.2.2 Procedural Unfairness
      • 2.2.2.1 Fair Market Value
      • 2.2.2.2 Unjust Property Relations and Historical Injustice
  • 2.3 Attitudinal Conditions
    • 2.3.1 Disrespect and Domination
    • 2.3.2 Awareness
• 3. The Moral Weight and Force of Exploitation
• 4. Applied Issues in Exploitation Theory
  • 4.1 Universal Basic Income
  • 4.2 Sweatshop Labor
  • 4.3 Commercial Surrogacy
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Historical Accounts of Exploitation

Although the term “exploitation” appears not to have beenused to describe unfair advantage-taking prior to the 19^thcentury, there are nevertheless extensive discussions of the themesand problems that characterize contemporary discussions ofexploitation in the history of philosophy. Those themes include thenotion of justice and injustice in economic exchange, the role oflabor in the creation of value, and the justification and abuse ofprivate property, especially in capital and land.

1.1 Pre-Marxian Accounts of Exploitation and Unjust Trade

Concerns about exploitation often take the form of unfair economicexchange. Attempts to specify the principles that render an exchangefair or unfair can be traced back at least as far as Aristotle, whoargued that a just exchange will embody a kind of reciprocity suchthat the values of the goods exchanged are proportional(Nicomachean Ethics, Book V, Part V). But while the notion ofproportionality is intuitively appealing, it is somewhat unclearprecisely what Aristotle had in mind by it, or what the mostdefensible explication of the idea would be. To borrowAristotle’s own example, if a shoemaker and a builder trade, howmany pairs of shoes is proportional to a single house?

In the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, we find the beginnings of amuch more sophisticated and promising approach to questions such asthis. In hisSumma Theologiae, Aquinas sought to answer thequestion of “whether a man may lawfully sell a thing for morethan it is worth?” The “worth” of a thing, forAquinas, was its just price. And the just price, according to Aquinas,appears to have been simply the prevailing market price (SummaTheologiae, part 2, second part, question 77; see also de Roover1958 and Friedman 1980). Rather than relying on some fixed notion ofproportionality, Aquinas’ just price will be responsive toconsiderations of supply and demand. But not justany pricethat two individuals mutually agree upon will be deemed just onAquinas’ standard. Thus, a seller who takes advantage of fraud,or a temporary monopoly, to charge an excessive price for an itemwould be acting unjustly, insofar as his price is in excess of theprice at which similar goods typically sell in the relevant market.But Aquinas saw nothing inherently sinful in selling a good for morethan one paid for it, or with charging enough to earn a profit, or tocompensate for risks involved in the productive process. Seekingprofit for its own sake may involve a certain sort of“debasement”, but profit can also be sought in order tofulfill necessary or even virtuous ends.

Later Scholastics would devote considerable attention to developingand refining the notion of the just price. Of special concern was theprice attached to the lending of money, or interest. Since thefounding of the Catholic church, it was widely regarded as sinful forlenders to charge interest on their loans, and so-called“usury” was prohibited by canon and often by secular law.Much of the concern regarding usury seems to have been driven by theidea that the charging of interest involves an inequitableexchange—lenders give something to borrowers, but demand backmore than they have given. But Aquinas seems to have been particularlyconcerned that borrowers would often be driven to take out loans outof necessity, and thus that their consent to the exchange is not fullyvoluntary (Summa Theologiae, part 2, second part, question78).

The much later natural law theorist John Locke also took up questionsregarding just and unjust prices, not in either of his well-knowntreatises on government but in a lesser known tract titled,Venditio. Locke, even more explicitly than Aquinas, saw thejust price as being equivalent to “the market price at the placewhere he sells” (Locke 1661: 340). The relativity of the justprice to the particular market in which the transaction takes place isimportant. For Locke argued that if two ships sailed laden with corn,one to Dunkirk where there is a near famine taking place, and theother to Ostend where normal conditions obtain, it would not be unjustfor the merchant to sell at a significantly higher price in the formerlocation than in the latter (so long as the higher price is one thatthe buyers can afford). If the merchant didnot charge ahigher price, Locke argued, then two problems would result. First, itis likely that the merchant’s goods would simply be bought byspeculators and resold on a secondary market, thereby simplyredirecting the profit into somebody else’s hands without doinganything to improve the situation of buyers. And second, if merchantscannot charge a high price in “good” markets to covertheir losses in “bad” ones, they will soon operate at anet loss and this will, Locke claims, “quickly put an end tomerchandising” (Locke 1661: 342).

Whatwould be unjust would be for the merchant to sell anitem to a particular individual for a price higher than the generalmarket rate as might happen, for instance, if that individual is inparticular distress. Thus, Locke holds, if anchors typically sell fora certain price, say 100 pounds, then it would be unjust(exploitative) to charge the captain of a distressed ship 5000 poundsfor an anchor, simply because one knows he will be compelled to payit. The just price is the going market rate, where that rate isdetermined by thegeneral features of supply and demand, andnot the particular needs or vulnerabilities of any particular buyer orseller.

Interest in exploitation as a feature of economic exchange is thusalmost as old as philosophy itself. It was not until the19^th century, however, that exploitation as a feature ofemployment relationships came to be a subject ofphilosophical and political concern. In a sense, of course, theemployment relationship is simply another instance of economicexchange, with the laborer selling his or her work in exchange formoney in the form of wages. But two ideas led many people to thinkthat there was something special about labor. The first was a beliefthat labor is the ultimate source of all economic value. The secondwas the belief that labor morally entitles the laborer to the fullvalue of that which he or she has produced.

More will be said about the first of these ideas in the discussion ofMarx’s theory of exploitation, below. The second idea, and itsconnection to the idea of labor exploitation, is perhaps bestillustrated by the theory put forth by the 19^th centuryliberal Thomas Hodgskin. For Hodgskin, as for Locke from whose ideashe drew heavily, the right of private property is a natural,pre-political right. That right consists in

the right of individuals, to have and to own, for their own separateuse and enjoyment,the produce of their own industry, withpower freely to dispose of the whole of that in the manner mostagreeable to themselves. (Hodgskin 1832: 24)

But while the natural right of property is based on labor, there isalso anartificial right of property that is based on nothingmore than legislative force. That artificial right cements in place,through the machinery of government, property claims that had theirorigins not in labor but in violence, conquest, and theft. And itthereby enables capitalists to profit without labor, simply by virtueof their (illegitimate) control of the means of production (Reeve1987b).

For Hodgskin, capitalists exploit workers in precisely the same waythat landlords exploit their tenants. In both cases, one person isentitled to a stream of revenue simply by virtue of their legal claimof ownership (Hodgskin 1832: 97). The money the landlord earns as rentcomes from the wages the tenant earns as a laborer, just as the moneythe capitalist earns as profit comes from the sale of productsproduced by his laborers. In both cases, one person is able to live asa parasite off the productive activities of others, all because thestate actively suppresses the natural right of laborers to the fullproduct of their labor, in favor of the artificial right of propertyestablished by violence. One finds echos of Hodgskin’s concernabout harmful parasitism in contemporary discussions of exploitationas well (van Donselaar 2009).

Even before Marx, then, we see in the 19^th century a tightconnection between theories of exploitation and theories of class andof class conflict. Marx himself credited the “bourgeoiseconomists” of the FrenchIndustrialist school withhaving pioneered the economic analysis of class struggle (Marx &Engels 1965: 69). For members of that school, the two great classesinto which society was divided wereproductive laborers andunproductive social parasites. The class of productivelaborers was understood broadly to encompass not only those whoexerted physical labor to create tangible goods and services, butanyone who worked to make goods more useful than they would otherwisebe—so laborers, yes, but also entrepreneurs,arbitrageurs, and even capitalists in their role as managersand overseers of investments. The unproductive classes, in contrast,consisted of those who consume value but do not produce it, such asthe army, the government, and the state-supported clergy (Raico 1977:395).

According to Industrialists such as Charles Comte and Jean-BaptisteSay, the unproductive classes are able to maintain themselves by usingthe coercive power of government to forcibly extract resources fromthe productive. Taxes and tariffs were the most obvious forms such“plunder” could take, but the same goal could also beachieved by special protections for favored industries including thelimited conferral of monopoly power (Say 1964: 146–147).

For both Hodgskin and for the Industrialists, then, the state was akey agent in facilitating the exploitation of one class of individualsby another, and the most certain way to end exploitation was thereforeto sharply limit the power of the state and to strengthen the“natural” right of private property. But not all theoristsof the 19^th century saw things this way. For RicardianSocialists such as John Bray, ending exploitation would requireensuring that all persons have equal access to the means ofproduction, and thereby guaranteeing a system of equal exchange basedon the labor theory of value (Bray 1839). While Hodgskin and theIndustrialists sought to purify capitalism from statist interference,Bray and his fellow socialists sought to eliminate it altogether.

1.2 Marx’s Theory of Exploitation

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

For Marx, however, exploitation was a phenomenon that characterizedall class-based societies, not only capitalism. Indeed, it isfeudal society, not capitalism, where the exploitative nature of classrelations is clearest. Under feudalism, it is readily apparent thatserfs use some of their labor power for their own benefit, whileanother part (thecorvée) is used for the benefit ofthe feudal lord. In contrast, under slavery workersappear towork entirely for the benefit of their masters (though in reality apart of their labor goes toward providing for their own subsistence).And under capitalism workersappear to work entirely for thebenefit of themselves, selling their labor to capitalists as freeindependent contractors (Cohen 1978: 332–3).

In reality, Marx thought, workers’ labor under capitalism isneither truly voluntary nor entirely for the benefit of the workersthemselves. It is not truly voluntary because workers areforced by their lack of ownership of the means of productionto sell their labor power to capitalists or else starve. And workersare not laboring entirely for their own benefit because capitalistsuse their privileged position toexploit workers,appropriating for themselves some of the value created byworkers’ labor.

To understand Marx’s charge of exploitation, it is firstnecessary to understand Marx’s analysis of market prices, whichhe largely inherited from earlier classical economists such as AdamSmith and David Ricardo. Under capitalism, Marx argued, workers’labor power is treated as a commodity. And because Marx subscribed toa labor theory of value, this means that just like any other commoditysuch as butter or corn, the price (or wage) of labor power isdetermined by its cost of production—specifically, by thequantity of socially necessary labor required to produce it. The costof producing labor power is the value or labor-cost required for theconservation and reproduction of a worker’s labor power. Inother words, Marx thought that workers under capitalism will thereforebe paid just enough to cover the bare necessities of living. They willbe paid subsistence wages.

But while labor power is just like any other commodity in terms of howits price is determined, it is unique in one very importance respect.Labor, and labor alone, according to Marx, has the capacity toproduce value beyond that which is necessary for its ownreproduction. In other words, the value that goes into the commoditiesthat sustain a worker for a twelve-hour work day is less than thevalue of the commodities that worker canproduce during thosetwelve hours. This difference between the value a worker produces in agiven period of time and the value of the consumption goods necessaryto sustain the worker for that period is what Marx calledsurplusvalue.

According to Marx, then, it is as though the worker’s day issplit into two parts. During the first part, the laborer works forhimself, producing commodities the value of which is equal to thevalue of the wages he receives. During the second part, the laborerworks for the capitalist, producing surplus value for the capitalistfor which he receives no equivalent wages. During this second part ofthe day, the laborer’s work is, in effect, unpaid, in preciselythe same way (though not as visibly) as a feudal serf’scorvée is unpaid (Marx 1867).

Capitalist exploitation thus consists in the forced appropriation bycapitalists of the surplus value produced by workers. Workers undercapitalism are compelled by their lack of ownership of the means ofproduction to sell their labor power to capitalists for less than thefull value of the goods they produce. Capitalists, in turn, need notproduce anything themselves but are able to live instead off theproductive energies of workers. And the surplus value that capitalistsare thereby able to appropriate from workers becomes the source ofcapitalist profit, thereby “strengthening that very power whoseslave it is” (Marx 1847: 40).

In the first volume ofCapital, Marx presents a series offormulas representing a tight relationship between labor,exploitation, and capitalist profit. According to Marx, the value of acommodity is a function of three factors: constant capital (\(C\)),i.e., the labor value of nonlabor means of production such asmachines, buildings, and raw materials; variable capital (\(V\)),i.e., the labor value of the labor power of workers involved inproduction), and surplus value (\(S\)). Since surplus value comes fromthe exploitation of labor (rather than machines or land), Marx definedtherate of exploitation as the ratio of surplus value overvariable capital \((S/V)\). Of course, different industries willemploy different mixes of labor and other factors ofproduction—of variable and constant capital. Marx referred tothis mixture as theorganic composition of capital, anddefined it as \(C/V\). But since capitalist profit is generated by theexploitation of labor, it seems to follow that industries that employa greater proportion of labor (of variable over constant capital)should therefore earn a higher rate of profit. Thus, Marx defined therate of profit as \((S/(C+V))\), which is equivalent to therate of exploitation divided by the organic composition of\(\textrm{capital} + 1\). This last proposition has been referred toby Jon Elster as the “fundamental equation of Marxianeconomics” (Elster 1986a: 67).

Marx’s analysis of the rate of profit seems to entail thatlabor-intensive industries will be more profitable than industriesthat rely to a greater extent on constant capital. But this conclusionis clearly empirically false (Böhm-Bawerk 1898), and moreoverincompatible with Marx’s assumption of a competitive economy inwhich investments will adjust so as to equalize the rate of profitbetween industries (Arnold 1990: Ch. 3; Buchanan 1985: Ch. 3). Marxhimself recognized this fact, and sought to address it in the thirdvolume of Capital by dropping the assumption of volume 1 thatvalue andprice are equivalent, and showing insteadhow value can betransformed into price through some morecomplicated process. Whether Marx’s attempted solution to this“transformation problem” was successful, however, is amatter of great controversy (Arnold 1990: Ch. 3; Samuelson 1971;Kliman 2007).

Marx’s theory of exploitation appears to presuppose that laboris the source of all value. But the labor theory of value to whichMarx and early classical economists subscribed is subject to a numberof apparently insurmountable difficulties, and has largely beenabandoned by economists in the wake of the marginalist revolution ofthe 1870s. The most obvious difficulty stems from the fact that laboris heterogeneous. Some labor is skilled, some labor is unskilled, andthere does not appear to be any satisfactory way of reducing theformer to the latter and thereby establishing a single standard ofmeasure for the value of commodities. Moreover, the labor theory ofvalue appears to be unable to account for the economic value ofcommodities such as land and raw materials that are not and could notbe produced by any human labor. Finally, and perhaps most fatally,Marx’s assumption that labor has the unique power to createsurplus value is entirely ungrounded. As Robert Paul Wolff has argued,Marx’s focus on labor appears to be entirely arbitrary. Aformally identical theory of value could be constructed withany commodity taking the place of labor, and thus a“corn theory of value” would be just as legitimate, andjust as unhelpful, as Marx’s labor theory of value (Wolff 1981).Therefore, if, as some have alleged, Marx’s theory ofexploitation is dependent on the truth of the labor theory of value,then a rejection of the labor theory of value should entail arejection of Marx’s theory of exploitation as well (Nozick 1974;Arnold 1990).

Not everyone agrees, however, that Marx’s theoryisdependent on the labor theory of value in this way. G.A. Cohen, forinstance, argues that Marx’s theory of exploitation is not onlyindependent of the labor theory of value, butincompatiblewith it (Cohen 1979: 345–6). Marx’s account ofexploitation is premised on the claim that value created by workers isappropriated by capitalists. But the labor theory of value holds thatthe value of an object is a function of the labor that would becurrently required to produce it, regardless of how muchlabor actually went into producing it. Paradoxical as it may seem, thelabor theory of value is incompatible with the claim that labor alonecreates value.

The real problem with exploitation, on Cohen’s view, is not thatcapitalists appropriatevalue that is created by labor. Itis, rather, that capitalists appropriate some of the value of theproducts that are created by labor. Labor may not producevalue, but it is the only thing that produces whathas value,and this is all Marx needs to get his account of exploitation off theground (Cohen 1979: 354).

But even if Cohen’s account of exploitation avoids commitment tothe labor theory of value, it nevertheless remains committed to theMarxian idea that exploitation should be understood as the forcedappropriation of surplus value. And there are at least two respects inwhich this commitment is problematic. First, it is unclear whetherexploitation necessarily involves theforced transfer ofsurplus value. Marx’s account asserts that the laborer is forcedto work for capitalists because the only alternative is starvation.But suppose the government provides a safety net sufficient to ensurethat workers’ subsistence needs are met. If someone chooses towork in order to earn discretionary income, it still seems possiblethat they could be exploited by a capitalist who appropriates some ofthe value of the product the laborer creates (Kymlicka 2002: 179). Alaborer can be exploited, we might think, by being paid anunfair wage even if that laborer is notforced towork.

Second, it is unclear whether all cases involving the forced transferof surplus value are necessarily exploitative, at least in theordinary sense of involving a moral wrong. Suppose that governmentstax workers and use some of the proceeds to provide support forchildren or the infirm. If it is exploitative for capitalists toappropriate some of the value of the objects produced by workers, isit not also exploitative for government to do so through the mechanismof taxation? Some libertarians have argued that this is precisely howwe should understand the coercive power of government. For Cohen,however, the fact that Marx’s account of exploitation appears tobe committed to the libertarian idea of that workers own their laborand the products they produce with that labor—that is, to thelibertarian idea of self-ownership—is deeply problematic (Cohen1995: Ch. 6).

1.3 Neoclassical Accounts

The idea that workers have rights to the contributions their labourmakes to the production of a social surplus is, we noted, common toboth Marxist and Libertarian theories. Yet, the widespread rejectionof the labour theory of value apparently undermines (Cohen’sarguments notwithstanding) of Marx’s classical account ofexploitation. Neoclassical economists subsequently developed anaccount of exploitation that incorporates this concern for aninput’s contribution to the productive surplus that iscompatible with the subjective theory of value that replaced labourtheories in mainstream economic thinking. This account claims “afactor of production is exploited if it is employed at a price whichis less than its marginal net productivity” (Robinson 1933:281).

The neoclassical account was first fully developed by A. C. Pigou inThe Economics of Welfare (1920) and was refined by JoanRobinson inThe Economics of Perfect Competition (1933),though Reiff (2013) identifies both Alfred Marshall and John BatesClark as influences on Pigou’s approach. Neoclassical accountsare, in many ways, precursors to contemporary market-based accounts ofexploitation. Their move away from the labour theory of value allowsthem to escape some of the technical problems that the classicalMarxist definition encounters. However, they face their own technicaland moral objections. Here we discuss three.

First, according to the neoclassical account, exploitation isimpossible under perfect competition. Whether this aspect of theneoclassical account is a bug or feature depends on whether one thinksthat competitive markets and the pressures they can place onindividuals—or the capitalist system, for Marxists—can beexploitative. A point against the neoclassical account is that itseems that conclusions about whether or not competitive markets can beexploitative should be the result of substantive moral argument andnot merely settled by stipulative definition. On the other hand, theidea that market competition precludes at least certain causes ofexploitation is compelling. Perfectly competitive markets excludeabuses of power by monopolists and monopsonists and the abuse ofinformational asymmetries (Wertheimer 1996). A competitive market is acontext in which the price that one pays for goods and services isshaped by the availability of these resources (supply) and the degreeto which others need or want them (demand).

Second, the neoclassical account does not limit exploitation tolabour. The account also allows for the exploitation of other factorsof production. Factors of production—which classically compriseland, labour and capital—are those resources used to producedoutputs. The returns to any of these factors can be less than theirmarginal product and when they are, on the neoclassical account, theyare exploited. As with views about whether markets are exploitative,whethercapital can be exploited should be the conclusion ofsubstantive moral argument and not settled by a definition. One mightargue that the neoclassical account provides a technical andnonmoralised account of exploitation and further, that only theexploitation of labour is morally important. In this case, theneoclassical account would be an incomplete account of wrongfulexploitation that requires supplemental arguments about the moralimportance of labour (like those advanced in Cohen 1979).

Finally, and arguably most problematic, associating fair pay withworkers’ marginal productivity means giving different workersdifferent pay for the same work. Decreasing marginal productivitymeans that the productivity associated with each additional laborerdecreases as more workers are added. Early hires will be associatedwith greater marginal productivity than those who join later, even ifthey all perform identical tasks. This also means that if an‘early’ employee quits, the nonexploitative wage of anemployee hired later increases (because theirmarginalcontribution has increased). Thus, the neoclassical account cannotsatisfy the intuition that fair employment requires equal remunerationfor equal work. This problem can be avoided by modifying theneoclassical account so that exploitation consists in paying labourless than itsaverage product. Yet the average productapproach still cannot accurately track the contributions to output ofindividual workers if some are more productive thanothers.

Each of the historical approaches surveyed here—Pre-Marxianaccounts, Marx’s account, and neoclassical accounts—haveinfluenced and, to some degree, been incorporated into thecontemporary accounts that we cover in the following section.

2. The Concept of Exploitation

Philosophical analyses of exploitation are broad and varied. As isoften the case with such analyses, there is no widespread agreementabout what, precisely, exploitation is. However, consensus has emergedaround some of the domain conditions for exploitation. Most—though not all—philosophers agree that exploitation involvestaking unfair advantage, though, of course, they disagree about whatexactly this involves. And most, but not all, philosophers also agreethat in order to be an exploiter, \(A\) must benefit and this benefitmust come at \(B\)’s expense. We think few philosophers woulddeny that exploitations can be all- things-considered harmful.However, much more philosophical attention has been given to mutuallybeneficial exploitations, in which the exploited benefits from theinteraction, albeit in a morally problematic way. The reason for thisfocus is that harmful exploitations are less ethically puzzling thanmutually beneficial exploitations. The wrongs of harmful exploitationare more familiar, often over determined, and usually coextensive withfraud and coercion. Harmful exploitations are also likely to benon-consensual and, of course, the harm itself may also be sufficientto explain the wrongfulness of these cases.

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

In the rest of this section, we discuss exploitation’s variousdomain conditions before surveying debates about unfairness, and otherpossible necessary conditions. Exploitation’s moral status iscovered in section three.

2.1 Domain Conditions

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

2.1.1 Structural and Transactional Exploitation

Many authors have pointed out that exploitation can be a structuralphenomenon. What it means for exploitation to be‘structural’ differs from account to account. For MattZwolinski (2012: 155) exploitation is structural when it is broughtabout by unjust “conditions that lie in the background of theexchange”. For Maeve McKeowan (2016) exploitation is structuralwhen social systems structure and limit the options of disadvantagedgroups to the advantage of more powerful groups. Gabriel Wollner(2019: 157) argues that structures exploit by making anindividual’s “position within the structure... such thatin order to optimize or maximize economic revenue she has to takeunfair advantage of others.” Finally, Marxists often point outthat although Marx’s technical definition of exploitation(outlined in section 1) can be stated in transactional terms, Marxalso conceived of exploitation “as a property of the economy asa whole, not just individuals” (Elster 1986b: 176). Indeed, inRoemer’s (1982a) unequal exchange account and later work byRoberto Veneziani (2007) and Naoki Yoshihara and Veneziani (2018)exploitation is not defined as a relational predicate at all. Instead,only the predicates ‘…is exploited’ and‘…is exploiter’ are defined. On thesenon-relational accounts, whether agents are exploited depends onwhether the total labour they perform in the economy is greater thanthe labour embodied in the total bundle of goods they consume.

Structural exploitation in Zwolinski’s, McKeowan’s, andWollner’s senses and transactional exploitation are not mutuallyexclusive. This is quite clear in Zwolinski’s definition, whichdirectly references an exchange. But both McKeowan and Wollner’saccounts are also compatible with exploitation being a relationalproperty of transactions. One distinction that is sometimes elided inthese discussions is between the sources of exploitable vulnerabilityand those who benefit from this vulnerability. That social systems,norms and institutions make certain groups vulnerable while advancingthe interests of others does not entail that these systems themselvesbenefit from the vulnerability (a feature of exploitations we discussin the next section). By structuring interactions in such a way thatgroup or individual \(A\) can take unfair advantage of \(B\), theycreate the conditions that allow \(A\) to exploit \(B\). However, tosay that the systemsthemselves gain from, and therebyexploit \(B\) involves a different (and less plausible) claim.

In contrast, non-relational forms of structural exploitation areconceptually distinct from transactional accounts. We surmise that‘exploitation’ in ordinary use hews closer to thetransactional model because accusations of exploitation often targetdiscrete interactions between groups, such as the exploitation ofsweatshop workers by multinational corporations; the exploitation ofthe elderly by con artists; or the exploitation of children byparents. However, note that the common use does not undermine thevalue of the non-relational conception as a tool for making moral andpolitical critiques of social systems. Our point is merely that twodifferent conceptions exist and should not be confused. Thetransactional model has, arguably received a greater amount ofattention in contemporary moral and political philosophy and we willfocus primarily on it in the sections that follow.

2.1.2 Exploitation and Benefit

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

Consider abuse. It has been alleged that medical students arefrequently abused by verbal insults and denigration and that thisabuse may leave long-lasting emotional scars. It is also sometimesclaimed that medical interns are exploited, that they work long hoursfor low pay. The contrast is just right. There is no reason to thinkthat anyone gains (in any normal sense) from abuse, but it is at leastplausible to think that the hospitals or patients gain from theexploitation of interns.

Let us say that \(A\) oppresses \(B\) when \(A\) deprives \(B\) offreedoms or opportunities to which \(B\) is entitled. If \(A\) gainsfrom the oppressive relationship, as when \(A\) enslaves \(B\), then\(A\) may both oppress and exploit \(B\). But if \(A\) does not gainfrom the oppression, the oppression is wrong but not exploitative. Wemight say that the unemployed are oppressed, but unless we couldspecify the ways in which some gain from their lack of employment, theunemployed are not exploited. Marxists would claim that capitalistspay exploitative wages to the employed precisely because there is a“reserve army” of the unemployed with whom the employedmust compete. But that merely confirms that they are exploited becausethe oppression generates a gain to the capitalist class, and it is theemployed who are exploited and not the unemployed that make suchexploitation possible.

Clearly, an exchange still counts as exploitative even if \(A\) doesnot benefiton net. If \(A\) derives unfair benefit from hisinteraction with \(B\), but suffers unforeseen costs such that sheends up worse-off after the interaction than she was before, then\(A\) has still exploited \(B\). Less clear is the question of whether\(A\) must derive any actual benefit at all, or whether it is enoughthat \(A\) merely intend to benefit. Suppose a sweatshop owner workshis employees ruthlessly in order to extract as much profit as he canfrom the workers’ labor, but that the product the laborersproduce turns out, due to an unforeseen turn of events, to have zeromarket value. Have the sweatshop workers nevertheless beenexploited?

Related to the question of whether \(A\)’s intent to benefit issufficient for exploitation is the question of whether \(A\)’sintent to benefitunfairly isnecessary forexploitation. Is it possible to exploit someone by mistake? Can oneforesee that one’s interaction will be exploitative withoutintending it to be so? If so, is \(A\) still culpable? (Ferguson2016b)

2.1.3 Exploitation and Harm

Exploitation thus involves \(A\) unfairly benefitting from aninteraction with B. But what exactly does it mean to benefitunfairly? One natural response to this question is toconceive of unfairness as benefitting \(A\)at \(B\)’sexpense. Perhaps exploitation advances the interests of \(A\)while harming \(B\). Exploitation, thus understood, is a kind ofparasitism. Or, as Allen Buchanan defines it, exploitation is“the harmful, merely instrumental utilization of him or hiscapacities, for one’s own advantage or for the sake ofone’s own ends” (Buchanan 1985: 87).

Certain paradigmatic cases of exploitation clearly fit this analysis.Slavery is an exploitative relationship, and one that clearly harmsslaves for the benefit of their masters. But as Alan Wertheimer hasnoted, some exploitation appears to be mutually advantageous ratherthan harmful (Wertheimer 1996: 14). Someone who charges a hiker lostin the desert $1,000 for a bottle of water takes unfair advantage ofher. Nevertheless, the transaction is one from which both partiesemerge better off relative to how they would have been, had thetransaction not taken place. The seller has traded away something shevalues less (the bottle of water) for something she values more($1,000). But so has the buyer. If the water is necessary to save herlife, and if she values her life more than the $1,000 she gives up tosave it, then she too is better off with the transaction than withoutit.

There is, however, one important sense in which even an exploitercould be said to harm her victim. Even if relative to a baseline of notransaction at all, exploitation often makes its victim better off,relative to a baseline of afair transaction, exploitationleaves its victim worse off. In this sense, an exploiter’s gaindoes, contra Joel Feinberg, come at the victim’s expense(Feinberg 1988: 178). For even when both parties gain from thetransaction, the victim of exploitation gains less than she shouldbecause some of the “cooperative surplus” (to which she isby fairness entitled) has been captured by the exploiter.

Exploitation therefore does not necessarily harm its victim in thesense of making her worse off than she would have been, had theexploiter never interacted with her at all. Rather, it makes itsvictim worse off than she should have been, had she been treatedfairly. As with similar cases involving coercion, the precise detailsof our analysis thus depend on the relevant baseline against which wechoose to compare \(B\)’s situation after the interaction. Butthese details probably do not matter much as far as ourall-things-considered moral evaluation is concerned. Whether we chooseto say that exploitation involves \(A\) making \(B\) better off, butnot as much better off as \(A\)should have made \(B\); orwhether we say that it involves making \(B\) worse off than \(B\)should have been, the final verdict is the same (Wertheimer 1996:22–23).

2.2 Unfairness

In the sense in which most philosophers use the term, exploitationnecessarily (conceptually) involves unfairness. This sense ofexploitation is thus amoralized term. To judge that someoneis engaged in exploitation is already to pass a moral judgment onthem—to say that they are acting wrongly (at least in aprotanto sense). Not all uses of “exploitation” aremoralized in this way. As we noted at the beginning of this entry,some ordinary language use of the term implies no moral judgmentwhatsoever. And it is possible to develop a philosophicallysophisticated account of exploitation that isrelevant tomoral judgment, without being moralized (Goodin 1987), and indeedwithout referencing fairness (Vrousalis 2013).

Still, even if exploitation is not conceptually unfair, it ischaracteristically so. In some cases, this unfairness is the result ofsome procedural defect in the transaction—call thisprocedural unfairness. In other cases, the unfairness is afeature ofwhat is agreed to, rather than how the agreementis reached—call thissubstantive unfairness.

2.2.1 Substantive Unfairness

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

2.2.1.1 Equality

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

Although Marx took pains to deny he was giving an account of justice(let alone fairness), much of the intuitive force of his account oflabor exploitation seems to rely on the idea that a fair exchange willembodyequal transfers of socially necessary labor. It isbecause the objects produced by the worker embody more sociallynecessary labor than the wages he receives in exchange for producingthose objects that the laborer is exploited. And otherlate-19^th century theorists such as Josiah Warren andStephen Pearl Andrews made this moral claim explicit. “It isclear”, wrote Andrews,

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

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

If labor is problematic as a distribuendum, perhapseconomicvalue would work better. A fair trade, on this view, involves theexchange of equally valuable goods or services. And an unfair tradeinvolves the exchange of goods or services of unequal value. To returnto an earlier example, someone who sells a bottle of water to a hikerstranded in the desert for $1,000 takes unfair advantage of her. Andpart of what makes the exchange unfair is that the bottle of watersimply isn’t worth nearly $1,000. \(B\) is giving up far morethan she gains in exchange.

Or is she? Once we give up on the 19^th century notion thateconomic value is an objective property of commodities, and embraceinstead that value is a function of the subjective preferences ofeconomic agents, the problem with this analysis becomes readilyapparent. Economic exchange is only possible precisely becausedifferent agents assign different values to the same object. I sellyou my old television for $75 because I’ve bought a new set, andto me, the old television is worth less than the $75. You pay the $75because you just moved into a new place and, to you, the $75 is worthless than the television. Neither of our valuations is the“right” one. Our preferences simply differ, and so it ispossible for us to both walk away from the dealbelieving—correctly!—that we have gotten more than we havegiven up.

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

This suggests one final possible distribuendum that could be pairedwith an egalitarian distributive criterion. Perhaps what makes anexchange is fair is not that the objects traded have equal economicvalue, but rather an exchange is fair when the social surplus createdby the exchange is equally distributed. Exploitative exchanges, incontrast, are those in which one party commands a disproportionatelylarge share of the social surplus, leaving the other party with anunfairly small share. For example, suppose that an employer gains $10per hour worth of value from an employee’s labor. An employerlike that could afford to pay its workers $9 per hour and still make aprofit. But if potential employees have nowhere else to go, why shouldthe employer pay that much? Why not pay employees as little as she canget away with—maybe $3 an hour, just barely over the subsistencelevel of $2? In this case the employment relationship would generate asocial surplus of $8. But $7 of that surplus would go into the pocketof the employer, while only $1 goes to the laborer. Might not thatlopsided division of the social surplus be precisely what’sunfair, and thus exploitative, about this kind of labor?

Perhaps. But the unequal division of the social surplus cannot explainall cases of exploitation—including some of the mostparadigmatic. To see this, let us return once more to the case of thelost desert hiker. \(A\) offers to sell \(B\) a bottle of water for$1,000. This would appear to be a clear instance of an exploitativeproposal. But it is not, as suggested above, because the water bottleis worthless than $1,000 to \(B\). Indeed, it is probablyworth far more! Most people put a fairly high value on their continuedexistence. So, suppose \(B\) values not dying at $1 million. In thatcase, \(B\) gives up something he values at $1,000 in exchange forsomething he values at $1 million. \(A\), in turn, gives up somethinghe values at close to $0 in exchange for something he values at$1,000. The exchange creates a social surplus of $1 million, but fully99.9% of that surplus goes to \(B\), leaving \(A\) with amere .1%. If exploitation consists of grabbing the lion’s shareof the social surplus of an exchange, then we are forced to concludethat thirsty \(B\) is actually exploiting water-selling \(A\)—anunlikely result!

2.2.1.2 Sufficiency and Basic Needs

It is thus difficult to specify an egalitarian criterion of fairnessthat explains the wrongfulness of exploitation across a range ofcases. For this reason, few current theories of exploitation use anegalitarian distributive criterion. One alternative is asufficiency-based criterion, according to which exchanges are fairwhen the parties gain sufficiently from them. The crucial questionhere is what qualifies as gaining ‘enough’?

The most common response, endorsed by both Ruth Sample (2003) andJeremy Snyder (2008), is that parties gain enough when what they gainis sufficient to ensure theirbasic needs are met. Morespecifically, both authors argue that exploitation involves a failureto respect the value of those with who we transact. When we encounterothers whose basic needs are unmet, we should help them because of theinherent value they possess as a human being. In contrast, exploiterssee in the unmet basic needs of others not a cry for help but as anopportunity for profit. When they enrich themselves without ensuringthese basic needs are met, they transact unfairly with them.

Although appeals to basic needs make sense intuitively, it is notclear that meeting basic needs is necessary or sufficient for anexchange to be fair. Two very poor persons who engage in an exchangeare not necessarily exploiting each other even if they are incapableof meeting the other’s basic needs. Transactions can be fairdespite basic needs being unmet. Conversely, two rich persons canstill engage in a transaction in which the social surplus is unfairlydistributed between them. \(A\) could buy \(B\)’s yacht for anunfairly low price. Such cases are certainly of less moral concernthan unfair and exploitative exchanges between, say, a rich and a poorperson, but this does not entail that the terms of the exchange arefair. Transactions can be unfair despite basic needs being met.

The basic needs account is relatively straightforward to interpret inthe context of salary negotiations: it suggests that whatever the wageemployers offer their employees, it should at least be sufficient toensure the needs of these workers are met. But suppose \(A\) buys anapple from \(B\)’s stand: what, in this case, does the basicneeds account identify as a fair price? Must \(A\) pay a price thatmeets \(B\)’s basic needs for a year? Surely not. A day?Perhaps, but what if \(B\) sells many apples? Does this mean \(A\)should pay less? The degree to which \(B\) is able to meet her needsvia her apple stand depends on the market she finds herselfin—the supply and demand for apples—as well as featuresabout herself, such as how long or hard she works. One consequence ofthis observation is that the basic needs approach may be impossible toinstrumentalize in discrete cases. A second consequence is that, since\(A\)’s meeting \(B\)’s basic needs depends, in part, on\(B\)’s own choices, a moral hazard problem arises (Ferguson2016b). Indeed, this problem confronts all accounts of exploitationthat are not responsibility sensitive.

Suppose that \(A\) knows that, should he become vulnerable forwhatever reason, \(B\) will be obligated to constrain \(B\)’sadvantage over \(A\)—perhaps by selling \(B\) goods for lessthan the normal market price. Given this knowledge, \(A\) might betempted to take a risky gamble, knowing that if it doesn’t turnout well, \(B\) will be obligated to partly subsidize \(A\)’sloss. In effect, \(B\)’s obligation toward \(A\) puts \(B\) in aposition of vulnerability, a vulnerability that \(A\) has thepotential to unfairly take advantage of. In other words, \(A\)’sobligation not to exploit \(B\) renders \(A\) vulnerable toexploitationby B! To avoid this difficulty, it seemsnecessary to limit the kinds of vulnerabilities that trigger theobligation to constrain one’s advantage, perhaps by ruling outvulnerabilities for which agents are themselves morallyresponsible.

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

The basic needs approach is one of manypossible accountsthat appeal to sufficientarian distributive criteria. For the basicneeds approach, the distribuendum is welfare and the distributivecriterion requires that welfare is sufficient to meet basic needs. Onecould argue for an alternative version of a sufficiency-baseddistributive criterion, for example, by claiming that fairnessrequires greater levels of welfare than that which is sufficient tomeet basic needs. Alternatively, one could argue for a differentdistribuendum, for example, by claiming that the social surplus, orembodied labour, or some other good must pass a certain threshold inorder for the transaction to be fair. However, while thesealternatives are conceptually possible, the basic needs approachremains the only widely defended sufficiency based account.

2.2.1.3 Bargaining Solutions

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

Bargaining problems are a form of two person cooperative game,characterised by (i) the status quo point, that is, what bargainerswould receive in the absence of an agreement; (ii) the feasible set ofPareto improving points, which is shaped by the transactors utilityfunctions, and (iii) a solution concept, which selects a (usuallyunique and Pareto optimal) point in this set as the rationaldistribution. Nash’s solution is the unique point in thefeasible set that maximises the product of the agents utility gaincompared to the status quo point for a particular distribution. Forexample, suppose \(A\) wants to buy \(B\)’s phone and the twoare bargaining over the price. \(B\)’s reservation price mightbe $100—she won’t sell her phone for less. \(A\)’sreservation price might be $200—he won’t pay any more thanthis for the phone. In this case, \(A\) and \(B\) are bargaining overa $100 surplus. For simplicity, let’s also make the (usuallyunrealistic) assumption that the transactors utility gains are linearwith respect to money. In this case, \(A\) gains 100 utils if he getsthe phone for $100 dollars and \(B\) gets 100 utils if she sells thephone for $200. The Nash solution is the price at which the value ofmultiplying \(A\)’s utils by \(B\)’s utils is maximised.As we can see in the following simplified table, in this case the Nashsolution happens to also involve an equal split of the utility: whenboth gain 50 utils (which by our simplifying assumption is also $50)the product of the agents utilities is maximised.

Note that the Nash solution does not always select an equaldistribution. If \(A\)’s utility increased linearly with hismonetary gain, while \(B\) placed greater weight on the first $10 thanshe did on the next $10, a different distribution would result.

Nash argued that his solution was therational solution tobargaining problems because it is the only solution that satisfiesfour axioms that, he argued, any agents not involved in a bargainwould select as desiderata for a bargaining problem: Paretooptimality, utility invariance, symmetry, and independence. Analternative justification is provided by Brian Barry who argued thatif the bargaininers were to hire an independent arbitrator todetermine how gains should be distributed, “each side willrefuse to accept any arbitrator whose decision it expects to be lessfavourable than the outcome of direct bargaining ...[A]n arbitratorwho is acceptable to both sides must be one whose decisionsapproximate the Nash solution” (Barry 1991: 26—27).

Bargaining solutions, such as Nash’s, might identify outcomesthat agents would be rational to agree upon, but are thesedistributions alsofair? One concern is that they take thepre-bargaining status quo as given. Yet, the context that leads up toa transaction might play some role in what kinds of outcomes are fair.For example, suppose in our phone sale case that \(B\) is selling herphone because her hotel room was burgled while on holiday. \(B\) needsmoneynow and the only item of value remaining in herpossession is her phone. So, while \(B\) might, if given more time, beable to sell her phone for much as much as $1000, \(A\) is the onlybuyer she can find on short notice. \(B\)’s desperation lowersher reservation price and, consequently, alters the Nash solution aswell. It isn’t necessarily the case that the outcomes ofbargains resulting from circumstantial pressures are unfair, but whenthese pressures result from identifiable injustices, as in\(B\)’s case, the bargaining outcome appears unfair. Thiscontextual insensitivity to the sources of bargaining power underminesthe sufficiency of bargaining solutions as criteria for fairtransaction.

There are also reasons to think that bargaining solutions areunnecessary as criteria for fair transaction. Suppose that thetransactors’ status quo pointsare morally acceptable(so that there is nothing morally suspect about the Nash solutionitself), but the transactors (irrationally) agree to an outcome thatis not Paretooptimal. For example, it might be that 100utils are up for grabs and the Nash solution dictates both receive 50%of the gains but both transactors irrationally ‘burn’ thesame portion of their gains, each taking only 40 utils. This behaviourwould be odd and, by definition, against each agent’s interests,but it does not seem that the distribution would be unfair. The pointis thatrationality may require optimisation, but fairnessdoes not. Non-optimal distributions that preserve the proportionalityof the Nash solution remain fair. If this is the case, arriving at theNash solution is not strictly necessary for a fair transaction.

2.2.2 Procedural Unfairness

Problems with substantive accounts of fairness in transactions haveled many philosophers to adopt procedural accounts, which, recall,identify unfairness with some procedural flaw in the transactionrather than with a particular transactional outcome. Here we surveythree: Wertheimer’s (1996) fair market value account,Roemer’s (1982a,b) property relations account andSteiner’s (1984, 1987) historical rights-based account.

2.2.2.1 Fair Market Value

There are good reasons to think that markets can tell us somethingabout fair prices. A fair price, it seems should reflect how raresomething is and how much others would like to have it. There are somegoods, such as air or water, that are—at least in high-incomecountries—in abundant supply. Even though our demand for thesegoods is high, the supply of these goods is also considerable, meaningthat they command relatively low prices on the market. In contrast,goods like a particular child’s primary school artwork may havelow supply (perhaps only a few of little Jane’s or Tom’sTurkey-hand-collages exist in the world), but since demand for thesegoods is limited to the child’s parents, the price these goodswould fetch on the market is low. Those goods that are both rare (lowin supply) and popular (high in demand), like prime real estate, areexpensive. Acquiring them requires giving up a greater amount of thoseresources we already have. And since there are many others who wouldlike to have these rare goods, it is, intuitively, fair that oneshould have to give up more to obtain them.

However, fair prices cannot be associated withactual marketprices because we often want to claim that actual market prices areunfair. Thus, while markets’ ability to make prices reflectgoods’ scarcity and others demand for them may take us some waytowards a procedure for generating a fair price, it seems that theconditions in which markets operate must also be fair themselves. AlanWertheimer (1996) has argued that the fair price is the price thatgoods would fetch in a hypothetical competitive market that excludesasymmetries of information and undue pressure. Wertheimer argues that“fair market value” prices are prices at which neitherparty takesspecial unfair advantage of the otherparty’s decision-making capacity or special vulnerabilities inthe other party’s situation (232). Such a price, he notes,“may or may not be a ‘just price’, all thingsconsidered, but it may well be a non-exploitative price” (232).Although the fair market value approach enjoys some intuitive appeal,it is unclear that Wertheimer’s conditions of pressure and fullinformation are required for fair prices.

Consider full information. Information is a good that can be traded onthe market itself. Obtaining information can be costly and timeconsuming. Indeed, information is the main commodity that universitiestrade in: students pay tuition in order to obtain information abouttheir topics of study. The fair price for a university education mayindeed differ from that which we find in current markets, but thisdoes not mean that professors’ cannot profit from their owninformational endowments. Of course, some informational asymmetriesare indeed unfair. Asymmetries introduced by deception, for example,are characteristic of fraudulent transactions. There may also be morallimits on the returns one can enjoy from informational asymmetries.But the point is that mere asymmetries of information are not alwaysunfair.

Now consider pressure. Suppose \(B\) forgot her lunch at home. Herwillingness to buy a sandwich from \(A\) is now greater than it wouldhave been had she not forgotten her lunch; she’ll pay more for asandwich given than she’s forgotten her lunch than she would hadshe remembered it. In this case, \(B\)’s hunger exerts apressure on her that causes her to pay \(A\) a higher price for asandwich. But there’s nothingunfair about having topay for (or pay more for) lunch because you forgot your lunch.Pressure does not necessarily make a transaction unfair. Yet, likeasymmetries of information, pressurecan lead to transactionsthat are, intuitively, unfair. If \(B\) is drowning and \(A\) offersto save her only if she pays him $100,000, many would say\(A\)’s offer takes unfair advantage of the undue pressure thatthe threat of drowning places on \(B\).

In situations involving informational asymmetries and pressure boththedegree andsource of these factors influencesour willingness to say that effects they have on the terms of atransaction are unfair. We are less willing to say that \(B\) paying\(A\) more for a sandwich is unfair if the source of the pressure issuch that it arises from \(B\)’s own choices. It is moreplausible to say that \(B\)’s paying \(A\) more is unfair if thereason she is hungry is that \(C\) has stolen her sandwich. Similarly,thedegree of pressure or asymmetric information alsoinfluences whether we are willing to say these factors give rise tounfair terms. The higher price \(B\) might pay given that she forgother lunch might be fair while the price she might be willing to pay ifshe were starving might not be fair.

One way to capture these rough intuitions about the degree and sourceof factors that influence prices is to appeal to antecedent notions ofjustice. In other words, whether influence of pressure, informationand other factors on price is fair depends on whether thedistributions of information and pressure among the parties are just.In this case, the fair price would not be that which excludes allinfluence from pressure or informational asymmetries, but instead theprice that we would find in ajust market. Of course, thereare many competing conceptions of justice. However, the nextprocedural account offers structural conditions that are, inprinciple, compatible with a wide range of approaches to justice.

2.2.2.2 Unjust Property Relations and Historical Injustice

Many have found plausible Marx’s claim that employmentrelationships under capitalism are exploitative. But perhaps Marx waswrong to locate that exploitation in the particular details of thecapitalist-employee relationship. After all, what makes exploitationpossible at all on Marx’s view is a feature of the macro leveldistribution of property in society—specificallycapitalists’ monopoly over the means of production. Marx’sformal theory of exploitation, however, makes no explicit mention ofthis property relation, focusing instead entirely on the interactionbetween capitalists and laborers at the point of production. Theresult, according to John Roemer, is a theory that is focused too muchon the micro level of particular employment relationships and notenough on the macro level background of inegalitarian propertydistribution against which those relationships take place (Roemer1982a,b).

On Roemer’s analysis, capitalist exploitation is essentially aform of social parasitism. One group (the capitalists) are made betteroff by the existence of a second group (workers), but that secondgroup is madeworse off by the existence of the first. Moreformally, according to Roemer’s account (1982b, 194—95),we may say that a group \(S\) in a larger society \(N\) is exploitedby its complement group \(S'\) (relative to \(N\)) if and only if:^[1]

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

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

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

Roemer’s account clearly separates the structure of exploitationfrom the particular content that gives rise to exploitation claims.Different specifications of the withdrawal conditions in (1) yielddifferent accounts of exploitation. For example, a relation thatRoemer terms ‘feudal exploitation’ occurs when \(S\) wouldbe better off withdrawing with their own endowments. Historically,feudal serfs were required to perform corvée labour onlords’ lands and/or required to pay rents in exchange for‘protection’. Under the assumption that such‘protection’ was not of real value, this arrangement wasexploitative. Serfs would be better off withdrawing with their ownlabour and land and not paying the lords. Having lost the value ofthis labour or rent, lords would be worse off. Roemer identifiescapitalist exploitation as a situation in which \(S\) is allowed towithdraw with their per capita alienable assets and socialistexploitation as a situation in which they withdraw with their percapita alienable and inalienable assets (such as skills and talents).Many other forms of exploitation are possible under the Roemerianstructure. For example, \(S\) might be ‘Rawls Exploited’if they would be better off withdrawing with the basic liberties andprimary goods required by Rawls’s two principles of justice.

The separation of the structure of exploitation from its ethicalcontent helps to clarify disagreement about whether a particularsituation is exploitative. Two parties might disagree about whethercapitalism is exploitative, for example, because they disagree aboutwhether productive assets ought to be distributed in an egalitarianmanner, while agreeing that exploitation does require something likethe conditions Roemer outlines. On the other hand, parties mightagree about the theory just distributions that informsRoemer’s forms of exploitation while disagreeing about whetherRoemer’s conditions are necessary and sufficient forexploitation.

Note that Roemer’s definition is a partition of \(N\) into twomutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive subset groups. As such, itprecludes the possibility of a third group with neutral exploitationstatus. This feature might not be particularly odd if we think thatsociety divides rather crudely into two groups: exploiting capitalistsand exploited workers. However, Roemer himself allows for andtheorises the existence of more than two classes. One explanation forthis feature of the definition is that it simply arises fromRoemer’s coalitional approach.

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

Many theorists agree that an antecedent injustice is necessary forexploitation. For example, Hillel Steiner’s account ofexploitation holds that exploitation occurs when \(A\) gains more froman interaction, and \(B\) gains less, than they would have were it notfor the existence of a prior injustice (Steiner 1984). So, forexample, if \(A\) hires \(B\) as a laborer and is able to pay \(B\) alow wage of $2 per hour only because \(A\) (or someone else) haspreviously unjustly deprived \(B\) of alternative sources of labor,then \(A\) has exploited \(B\). If, on the other hand, the explanationfor \(B\)’s earning only $2 does not involve injustice—if\(B\) simply does not have very valuable skills, or if there is alarge supply of (not unjustly) unemployed laborers, then a $2 wage, nomatter how insufficient it might be to meet \(B\)’s needs, andno matter how much more \(A\) could afford to pay, is notexploitative. Like Roemer’s account, Steiner’s has theadvantage of being a structural account. Indeed, the two bear much incommon. Roemer’s account is focused on “macro”issues pertaining to the distribution of property in society, whileSteiner’s focuses on “micro” issues regarding howindividuals treat each other within the framework created by thatdistribution (Ferguson and Steiner 2016: 545–546).

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

On the other hand, some theorists have argued that the source ofvulnerability is irrelevant to the exploitative nature of atransaction. Robert Goodin, for instance, argues that exploitationconsists in “playing for advantage in situations where it isinappropriate to do so”, and involves a violation of the moralnorm of “protecting the vulnerable”. Importantly, Goodinholds that this norm applies “regardless of the particularsource of their vulnerability” (Goodin 1987: 187). Thus, whethera worker is economically vulnerable because of a past injustice orwhether her vulnerability derives from a normal fluctuation of thebusiness cycle is irrelevant. To use that vulnerability to pressone’s own advantage is exploitative. Wertheimer claims that“even in a reasonably just society, people will find themselvesin situations in which they can strike an agreement that will producemutual gain, and some of these cases will give rise to allegations ofexploitation” (Wertheimer 1996, 9). Similarly, NicholasVrousalisrejects the claim that “\(A\) exploits \(B\)if and only if the exchange in which they are engaged occurs againstthe background of an unjust distribution”, and he concludes that“asset injustice furnishes no necessary condition forexploitation” (Vrousalis 2013: 148—149). Matt Zwolinskiechoes these concerns, arguing that the kinds of background injusticeto which Roemer’s conditions appeal is not necessary. Zwolinskiclaims that, “Offering to rescue an individual who becamestranded in the desert because of her own poor planning in exchangefor her entire net worth is wrongfully exploitative because of theunfairness of the terms of the transaction, not because of the historyor institutional background to that transaction” (Zwolinski2012, 171) (Vrousalis uses as similar case to motivate his objection).Zwolinski also argues that historical injustice is also not asufficient condition, for we can imagine cases where parties gain frompast injustice without thereby engaging in exploitation. If\(B\)’s home is unjustly burned to the ground by an arsonist,and a contractor \(A\) charges \(B\) a normal market price to rebuildit, then \(A\) has not exploited \(B\), despite the fact that \(A\)has profited from the injustice suffered by \(B\) (Zwolinski 2012:172).

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

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

The extension of duties of justice to duress or vulnerability causedby natural misfortune handles some cases that motive a rejection ofthe claim that antecedent injustice is not necessary for exploitation,but this move is less appealing for cases in which a person’sdisadvantage isself-caused. Suppose that rather than \(A\)pushing her or the sea rocking her overboard, \(B\) jumped into theocean on purpose. Suppose that she immediately regrets her decisionand asks \(A\) for rescue. While we might accept that \(A\) may bepermitted to charge her more for rescue in this case than insituations involving natural disadvantage, many still believe fairnessplaces some limit on the gains \(A\) can extract. Consequently, asWertheimer, Vrousalis, and Zwolinski have argued, it appears that\(A\) can still take unfair advantage of \(B\) despite the absence ofany antecedent injustice. One might continue to resist by arguing that\(A\)’s self-harm constitutes an injustice to herself, yet sucha position is difficult to maintain and would certainly stretch theordinary understanding of the scope of justice.

At this point, defenders of historical accounts might opt for analternative defence, arguing that if the disadvantage that B uses toexploit \(A\) is indeed one that she is responsible for bringingabout, then \(B\) doesnot exploit her when he benefits fromthis disadvantage. Support for this position is provided by the moralhazard objection, mentioned above: if \(A\) knows the consequences ofher actions will be subsidised by \(B\) (by placing a constraint onthe advantage \(B\) can reap from his future interactions with \(A\)),then \(A\) has an incentive to take risks, the consequences of whichare at least partly borne by \(A\) (Ferguson 2016b). There is also anintermediate position available here. We might acknowledge that if\(B\) is responsible for her plight, then \(A\) is permitted to gainfrom \(B\)’s disadvantage, while also placing limits on theamount of gain that \(A\) can extract in such circumstances. As SerenaOlsaretti has argued, the grounds of responsibility, which concern“the features of people that we can … hold themresponsible for” differ from the fairness of the‘stakes’ of their choices, the costs “attach[ed] towhatever features constitute the justifiable grounds ofresponsibility” (Olsaretti 2009: 170). An account of just stakesmay therefore be used to make space for this intermediate position,where \(A\) can gain from \(B\)’s self-caused vulnerability, butonly within certain limits.

Whether historical injustice is necessary for exploitation remains anopen debate amongst exploitation theorists, with the main points ofcontention centred around scope of justice and the plausibility of anyproffered bullet biting response (possibly tempered by theintermediate position).

The second objection to Roemer’s account is that his dominationcondition isad hoc and unsatisfactory. As Kymlicka pointsout, the condition isad hoc since it is “disconnectedfrom the ‘ethical imperative’ [the distribution ofproductive assets] that [Roemer] identifies as the basis ofexploitation theory” (Kymlicka 2002: 204 n. 13). And Roemerhimself admits that lack of clarity regarding the concept of dominanceprevents his account from being a “satisfactory analyticalaccount of exploitation” (Roemer 1982b: 304 n. 12).

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

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

As Elster points out, \(S\) would be better off if they withdrew withtheir per capita assets, and R would be worse off. Thus, group \(R\)exploits \(S\). Yet, this appears to be the wrong result. Theintuitive result to such cases is that the interaction between thegroups isn’t of the right sort for it to count as a case ofexploitation. It appears that we need something like a dominationcondition to qualify the kinds of behaviour that are appropriatelydescribed as exploitation. If one assumes that exploitation is apurely distributive phenomenon, then Roemer’s account, sansdomination fails. Indeed, it is unclear how cases like Elster’scould be handled by tweaking the distributive conditions alone.

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

Indeed, as Benjamin Ferguson has argued, the most prominent accountsof fair transaction make unfair transactions pervasive. Ifexploitation is tantamount to unfair transaction, then exploitationsare pervasive too. Yet, as he argues, if nearly all transactions areexploitative, “then what is the point of singling out particularpractices, such as commercial surrogacy, sweatshops, and price gougingas wrongfully exploitative?” (Ferguson 2020: 536). Furthermore,the problem isn’t merely that exploitation might bewidespread—after all, he notes, many other wrongs might also bewidespread. Rather, the pervasiveness of unfair transaction is suchthat we can have good evidence to believe that a transaction is unfair(and thus, for purely distributive accounts exploitative) withoutknowing which party benefits unfairly. In such cases it would beinappropriate to blame either of the transactors, which, he argues,“conflicts with the ordinary intuition that exploiters aremorally responsible and blameworthy for exploiting” (Ferguson2020: 537). Ferguson argues that these problems can be overcome byappending a second condition that refers to exploiters’attitudes to the standard requirement that exploitations are unfair.In the next section we consider three ‘attitudinalconditions’ that might be appended to the unfairnessrequirement.

2.3 Attitudinal Conditions

Accounts of exploitation that depart from the traditional analysisthat relies only on unfairness generally append one of threeattitudinal conditions. They claim that in addition to, or in place ofunfairness, exploitation involves either domination, disrespect, or anawareness of one’s unfair advantage. In this section we surveyeach of these approaches.

2.3.1 Disrespect and Domination

Although many accounts of exploitation reference disrespect,relatively few characterise disrespect as an independent condition forexploitation. For example, Ruth Sample has argued that there are threeways we might fail to respect the value another person: “byneglecting what is necessary for their wellbeing…by takingadvantage of an injustice…and by commodifying, or treating as afungible object of market exchange, an aspect of that person’sbeing that ought not to be commodified” (2003:57). Later Sampleacknowledges that, on its own, improper commodification does not leadto exploitation. Rather, improper commodification is onecharacteristic consequence of a prior vulnerability. Thus, her formsof disrespect reduce to taking advantage of past injustice and failingto meet basic needs.

While these two behaviours are no doubt disrespectful, they are alsoforms of transactional unfairness (discussed in section 2.2). In thiscase, an appeal to disrespect offers a deeper analysis by explainingwhat is wrong with the unfairness involved in exploitation, but itdoes not act as an additional necessary or sufficient condition forexploitation.

Similarly, Jonathan Wolff has argued that “to exploit someone isto make use of their circumstances in a way which fails properly toacknowledge their standing as an end in themself” (1999: 113).He then points out that the different traditions in moralphilosophy—Kantian, Aristotelian, and Utilitarian—offerdifferent accounts of what it means to treat others as ends inthemselves. Yet, on Wolff’s analysis, each of these accountsends up returning to fairness. For example, Wolff argues that “AKantian interpretation of the baseline forexploitation—motivated by taking a Kantian interpretation ofwhat it is to be an end in itself—leads us to a‘fairness’ norm. Kantian exploitation … is to useanother person’s vulnerable circumstances to obtain their actualcompliance with a situation that violates norms of fairness”(1999: 114). Both Wolff’s and Sample’s analyses of therelationship between exploitation, unfairness, and disrespect areplausible, but neither characterizes disrespect as anadditional condition that limits the scope of exploitation.If we want to avoid the problems for purely distributive accounts thatElster and Ferguson raise, we require conditions that do more thancharacterise exploitation as a distributively unfair transactionaloutcome.

An account that clearly distinguishes disrespect and unfairness isNicholas Vrousalis’s domination-based account of exploitation.For Vrousalis, disrespect involves acting towards another in a waythat is not “dialogically endorsable” that is, acting in away that gives one “reason to feel shame or guilt for putting orallowing a particular form of justification for some putative act onthe table of discourse” (2013: 140). Domination is a subset ofdisrespect that involves “\(A\) getting \(B\) to take[\(A\)’s] power over \(B\) as a reason for \(B\) to perform thepower-directed act” (2021: 110). And exploitation is a subset ofdominating acts that “obtains when the power-directed act,performed for the power-given reason, is geared towards \(A\)’senrichment” (2021: 110). Thus, exploitations involve dominationand domination disrespect. But crucially, for Vrousalis, unfairness isnot a necessary condition for exploitation because fairness “isresponsibility constrained equality”, but “exploitationcan arise fromany material inequality” (2013: 149,emphasis added). For Vrousalis, exploitation is a dividend ofdomination induced servitude, though not necessarily unfair.

Unlike Sample’s and Wolff’s appeals to disrespect,Vrousalis’s domination condition is distinct from the unfairnesscondition. However, it is unclear that Vrousalis’s account cando a better job of capturing intuitions about the scope ofexploitation because, as Richard Arneson (2016) points out, it isdifficult to see how the use of others’ vulnerabilities forself-enrichment is wrong if such use is not also unfair. He argues“One can readily identify examples in which people exploit theweaknesses of others—use these vulner- abilities to secureadvantages for themselves—but in which there is no unfairdivision of advantages from the interaction and so nothing thatqualifies as morally objectionable exploitation” (2016: 10). Forexample, suppose \(A\) is selling sandwiches and \(B\) is hungry. Insuch a case, \(B\) is vulnerable to \(A\): \(A\) controls a good that\(B\) desires and which contributes to her wellbeing. \(A\) can takeadvantage of this vulnerability to make a profit by selling \(B\) asandwich. If \(B\) had her own sandwich with her she would not bewilling to pay \(A\) for one of his, thus \(A\) can make use of\(B\)’s hunger to get her to pay him for the food. But unlessthe price \(A\) charges is also unfair—perhaps because \(A\) isthe only seller, perhaps because \(B\) lacks a sandwich due toinjustice, and so on—it is hard to see how \(A\)’ssandwich sale is wrong. Contrary to Vrousalis’s claims, it seemsthat unfairness is a necessary condition for exploitation.

2.3.2 Awareness

Although exploitation requires unfairness, it also seems to involvemore than unfairness. As Wolff puts it, “somehow, there justseems to be more to exploitation than unequal exchange” (1999:107). Benjamin Ferguson has argued that exploitation is bestcharacterised by a two factor account, such that \(A\) exploits \(B\)in a transaction iff \(A\) gains unfairly from \(B\) in thetransactionand \(A\) believes, or ought to have believed,that the gains he receives wrong \(B\) (2020: 535). Ferguson arguesthat this two-factor account solves two problems for existing accountsof exploitation. The first, which we have already seen, is the scopeproblem: if exploitation is merely tantamount to unfair transaction,then it seems that the scope of exploitation is too broad. The secondproblem is the blame problem. Ferguson argues that the best accountsof transactional fairness entail thatunfair transactions arepervasive: the next transaction that you or I engage in is likelyunfair. However, in most transactions we don’t know which partyis gaining too much and which party is gaining too little. Thisepistemic consequence of pervasive unfairness means that we have noreason toblame either party of the transaction. Yet, blametypically accompanies charges of exploitation. To say that \(A\)exploits \(B\) is to say that \(A\) has done something for which hecan be blamed.

Ferguson points out that in the subset of unfair transactions where\(A\) gains unfairly from \(B\) and \(A\)knows he gainsunfairly from \(B\), we can blame \(A\) because \(A\) satisfiesepistemic conditions for moral responsibility. And, of course, thescope of exploitation is constrained by the addition of this knowledgerequirement. However, knowledge may betoo restrictive fortwo reasons.

First, if knowledge requires something like justified true belief,\(A\) can believe he gains unfairly from \(B\) and his belief can betrue,without \(A\) knowing he gains unfairly if\(A\)’s belief isn’t properly formed, that is, if hisbelief is unjustified. Suppose \(A\) thinks his transaction with \(B\)is unfair because he mistakenly accepts a false account oftransactional fairness. Further, suppose that the true account oftransactional fairness—whatever it may be—and the falseaccount both entail that \(A\)’s transaction with \(B\) isunfair. If \(A\) believes the transaction is unfair on the basis ofthe false account, he lacks justification for this belief and so doesnotknow that the transaction is unfair. If exploitationrequires \(A\) to know the transaction is unfair, but \(A\) does nothave this knowledge he does not exploit. Yet, intuitively, such casesstill seem exploitative—indeed, it still seems appropriate toblame \(A\) for engaging in a transaction he believed was unfair (andthat was unfair, albeit for different reasons than those \(A\) thoughtmade it unfair).

Second, in some cases \(A\) may fail to form the belief that atransaction is unfair due to bias in his selection of evidence or howhe weighs evidence. For example, consider slavery. If any kind ofrelation is exploitative, surely slavery is. Some slave holders surelyknew slavery was unfair and yet continued to engage in the practice.But suppose some held false beliefs about a ‘natural’hierarchy of races. In such a case they might fail to believe theirinteractions were unfair. Yet, their holding these false beliefsamounts to negligence: they were surely presented with evidence thatcontradicted them.

Changing the condition from knowledge to belief and making room fornegligence addresses these problems, but even this relatively weakcondition encounters problems, as Ferguson shows in the followingcase:

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

It is hard to deny that \(A\) exploits \(B\) in such a scenario, yethe does not believe the transaction is unfair, and so does not satisfythe belief-or-negligence condition. This counterexample can beaddressed by modifying the proposition that \(A\) is required tobelieve. We needn’t require \(A\) to believe (or be negligent infailing to believe) ‘that the transaction is unfair’ butonly the more general proposition ‘that the gains he receiveswrong \(B\)’. Thus, Ferguson argues we can appropriatelyrestrict the scope of purely distributive accounts and ascribe blameto exploiters if we understand exploitation as: \(A\) exploits \(B\)iff (1) \(A\) transacts unfairly with \(B\) and (2) \(A\) believes thegains he receives in the transaction wrong \(B\).

3. The Moral Weight and Force of Exploitation

The primary task of a theory of exploitation is to set forward thetruth conditions for the claim, “\(A\) exploits \(B\)”.Beyond this purely conceptual project, however, there remain two morestraightforwardly normative tasks. Adopting terminology from AlanWertheimer, we can describe the first of these tasks as providing anaccount of themoral weight of exploitation, where moralweight refers to the intensity of exploitation’s wrongness. Thesecond task is to provide an account of themoral force ofexploitation, where moral force is understood to refer to “thevarious moral upshots of reasons for action that exploitation might ormight not involve for parties to the transaction or for society”(Wertheimer 1996: 28).

When exploitation is harmful and nonconsensual, issues of both moralweight and force are relatively unproblematic. Whatever the addedmoral importance of the gain to \(A\) from the harm to \(B\), it iscertainly at leastprima facie wrong for \(A\) to harm \(B\)and it seems that the state is at leastprima facie justifiedin prohibiting or refusing to enforce such transactions. Butexploitation that takes place in the context of mutually advantageousand consensual transactions presents a more difficult set of problems.First, regarding the issue of moral weight, it might be thought thateven if a transaction between \(A\) and \(B\) is unfair, there can benothingseriously wrong about an agreement from which bothparties benefit, particularly if \(A\) has no obligation to enter intoany transaction with \(B\). At the very least, it seems difficult toshow how a mutually advantageous (but unfair) interaction can bemorallyworse than no-interaction at all since,exhypothesi, there is no party to the transaction for whom it isworse. In the recent literature on exploitation, this thought has beenformulated more precisely as the “non-worsenessclaim”:

NWC: Interaction between \(A\) and \(B\) cannot be worse thannon-interaction when \(A\) has a right not to interact with \(B\) atall, and when the interaction is mutually advantageous, consensual,and free from negative externalities (Wertheimer 1996, 2011; Zwolinski2009; Powell and Zwolinski 2012).

Most exploitation theorists are skeptical that the NWC is correct(Wertheimer 1996; Bailey 2010; Arneson 2013; Barnes 2013; Malmqvist2016). For if it were, then it would seem to be a mistake to blameindividuals who engage in certain forms of mutually beneficialexploitation—for example, those who engage in “pricegouging” by selling electrical generators to victims of naturaldisasters at inflated prices. (Zwolinski 2008). After all, we usuallywould not blame those individuals if they stayed home and did nothing.But, so long as people are willing to pay the high prices (and nocoercion or fraud is involved), both parties are better off with thetransaction than without it. So how could it be morally worse toprovide those customers withsome benefit than it is toprovide them withno benefit at all?

Of course, the NWC need not lead to a deflationary account of thewrongness of exploitation. It could, instead, lead to aninflationary account of the wrongness of non-interaction. Inother words, we can account for the NWC’s claim that mutuallybeneficial exploitation is not worse than non-interactioneither by saying that mutually beneficial exploitation isless wrong than we thought it was,or by saying thatnon-interaction is worse than we thought it was: by saying that pricegougers are less blameworthy than we thought, or by saying that thosewho stay home and do nothing to help victims of disaster aremore blameworthy than we thought.

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

Moreover, there is a real danger that preventing mutually beneficialbut exploitative transactions will wind up “consigning thevulnerable person to an even worse fate than being exploited”(Wood 1995: 156). After all, persons who are exploited are takenadvantage of because of some antecedent vulnerability—a lack ofaccess to clean drinking water, in the example above. Preventingexploitative transactionsby itself does nothing to alleviatethis vulnerability. Indeed, by depriving vulnerable parties of onepossibility forimproving their situation by engaging in amutually beneficial transaction, such interference might actuallyexacerbate it.

Perhaps this view is correct. Bracketing arguments based onexternalities, it seems perfectly plausible to maintain that the stateis justified in interfering with transactions only if one party isviolating the other’s rights. That said, those who invoke theconcept of exploitation frequently maintain that such exploitationprovides a reason for state intervention. For example, when it isclaimed that commercial surrogacy exploits the birth mothers, thecritics typically argue that surrogacy contracts should beunenforceable or entirely prohibited. Similar things are said aboutthe sale of bodily organs. Those who make such arguments do frequentlyclaim that the transactions are nonconsensual or harmful, but theyseem prepared to make such arguments even if the transactions areconsensual and mutually advantageous.

On what grounds might we justify interfering with consensual andmutually advantageous exploitative transactions? It might be thoughtthat we could interfere on paternalistic grounds. A paternalisticargument could not justify interfering with exploitative transactionsif the exploitative transaction is advantageous to \(B\) and ifinterference is not likely to result in a transaction that is morebeneficial to \(B\). For paternalism justifies interfering forsomeone’s good, and this interference would not be to thetarget’s benefit. But there might be situations in which \(B\)knows enough to agree only to those exploitative transactions that arebeneficial (as compared with no transaction), but does not know thatless exploitative transactions are available. And so there may be a“soft paternalist” justification for interference withsome mutually advantageous exploitative transactions.

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

It is worth noting, however, that prohibiting exploitativetransactions is not the only way in which the state or other moralagents might attempt to respond to its wrongful nature. Prohibition isan example of what Allen Wood describes as “interference”.But in addition to interference, Wood suggests that we can think ofredistribution as a way in which third parties such as thestate might attempt to prevent exploitation (Wood 1995: 154). Afterall, exploitation is only possible because \(B\) is in a position ofvulnerability relative to \(A\) . One way to prevent exploitation,then, is to address this vulnerability directly—to channelresources to \(B\) so as to remove the hardship that makes himvulnerable to exploitation in the first place. If workers in thedeveloping world had an adequate social safety net to fall back on,for instance, they would be less inclined to accept a job with theharsh conditions of a sweatshop, and therefore less vulnerable toexploitation by their employers.

4. Applied Issues in Exploitation Theory

Questions about exploitation arise in a wide variety of differentcontexts, not just in the domain of political philosophy but invarious areas of applied ethics as well such as business ethics,biomedical ethics, and environmental ethics. In addition to the topicsdiscussed briefly below, the concept of exploitation has played acentral role in debates over payday lending (Mayer 2003), clinicalresearch in the developing world (Hawkins and Emanuel 2008), marketsfor human organs (Hughes 1998; Taylor 2005), guest worker programs(Mayer 2005), and price gouging (Zwolinski 2008).

4.1 Universal Basic Income

Some theorists, such as Philippe van Pairjs, have argued that justicerequires that the state institute a universal basic income (UBI). AUBI is a cash transfer, funded by taxes, that would be paid to allcitizens regardless of need, and regardless of whether they areworking, or even willing to work (van Parijs 1995). Against this, somecritics have charged that a basic income would facilitate a form ofexploitation. As Stuart White argues,

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

As is so often the case in dealing with exploitation claims, assessingthis objection requires us to grapple with a complicated mix ofempirical and normative claims. On the empirical side, for instance,we might ask whether a basic income reallywould lead to anet increase in reciprocity-violating transfers. Some theorists haveargued that a basic income would actually increase incentives to workrelative to currently existing welfare programs, by lowering theeffective marginal tax rate faced by low-wage workers (Tobin 1966).Others have emphasized the role of unpaid labor in the economy, suchas domestic labor, and argued that a basic income would lead to afairer application of the reciprocity principle than welfare systemsthat condition benefits on doing paid work (Pateman 2004).Normatively, the objection challenges us to think about both what theideal of reciprocity requires and how it fits within a system ofbroader distributive justice. Some advocates of basic income haveargued that a liberal-egalitarian theory of justice is correct andrequires an equal distribution of scarce resources such as land rentand the rent component of wages (van Parijs 1997: 329). Reciprocitymay be an important political value, such theorists argue, but it isone that is to be applied onlyafter people have been givenwhat they are due at the basic level of justice.

4.2 Sweatshop Labor

The term “sweatshop” is usually used to refer places ofemployment that utilize low-skill workers, often in the developingworld, and that are characterized by low wages, long hours, and unsafeworking conditions. In many cases, sweatshops produce goods oncontract for large, multinational enterprises, who then sell thosegoods to customers in wealthier societies.

Many critics see sweatshop labor as highly exploitative. A large partof the debate over this claim has focused on the issue of wages.Critics claim that sweatshops have a moral obligation to pay a livingwage to their workers. This duty is grounded in the extreme need ofsweatshop workers, the fact that sweatshops and the multinationalenterprises with which they contract rely on them to produce the goodsthat they sell, and the fact that the multinational enterprises areprofitable enough that they can afford to increase workers’wages without jeopardizing the health of their business (Meyers 2004;Snyder 2008). Some critics, however, see sweatshops’ low wagesas merely one symptom of a broader failure to respect workers aspersons who are ends in themselves. That failure of respect manifestsitself in sweatshops violation of legal labor standards, theirexposure of workers to physically dangerous conditions, and theirabuse and coercion of workers on the job (Arnold and Bowie 2003:227–233).

Once again, a number of difficult empirical and normative issues comeout in this debate. The empirical issues include not only questionsabout what conditions in sweatshops are actually like—how lowwages actually are relative to other firms in the developing economy,for instance—but what effects various attempts to remedysweatshop conditions would actually have. Would a higher legal minimumwage improve workers’ overall well-being, or would it insteadlead to layoffs and plant relocations (Powell and Zwolinski 2012)? Onthe normative side, the Non-Worseness Condition seems to pose anespecially significant challenge to critics of sweatshop labor. Ifsweatshops, by providing jobs and capital infusion in the developingworld, providesome benefit to workers there, how can they beacting in a morally worse way than wealthy firms that do not outsourcetheir production at all, and thus provideno benefit to needyworkers abroad (Zwolinski 2007; Preiss 2014)? Another question: evenif we grant that sweatshops exploit their workers, and thatexploitation is a significant moral wrong, might it be a wrong that isall-things-considered justifiable if sweatshop labor neverthelessconfers considerable benefits on current workers, and plays animportant role in economic growth? In other words, how much weightshould a valid claim of exploitation have in our overall judgment ofthe justice of a practice or of a set of institutions that permit thatpractice?

4.3 Commercial Surrogacy

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

Both types of surrogacy arrangement have been subjected to criticismon a number of distinct grounds. Some have argued that surrogacyinvolves an objectionable form of “commodification”, whileothers have argued that the practice is harmful to children, or towomen as a class. But many have also argued that the practice exploitsthe women who serve as surrogates. In the case of internationalsurrogacy, this charge is usually based on the bad circumstances andlow pay of the women who serve as surrogates. The lack of alternativesources of employment has been said to undermine women’sconsent, and the compensation they receive is often extremely lowcompared to the pay received by American surrogates for the sameservice—sometimes as low as 10%.

In the case of domestic surrogacy, critics charge that surrogatemothers are young and do not fully understand the physical andpsychological risks that attend the services they are agreeing toprovide. As a result, the arrangement might be harmful on net to themdespite the fact that they consent to it. Or, even if it is notharmful on net, the payment they receive might be inadequatecompensation for the costs they incur, thus rendering surrogacy a caseof mutually beneficial but unfair and exploitative exchange (Tong1990).

Questions of fair compensation for surrogates raise many of the sameissues, and give rise to many of the same debates, as are found in theliterature on sweatshop labor (Wilkinson 2003). But unlike the sort oflabor that takes place in sweatshops, some critics believe thatcommercial surrogacy arrangements areintrinsically wrong. Ifwomen’s reproductive labor is not the sort of service thatshould be sold atany price, then commercial surrogacy mayinvolve a kind of exploitation insofar as it entices women to engagein an activity that is harmful to their moral character (Anderson1990; Wertheimer 1996: Ch. 4).

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