> How can you just focus on voluntary exchange and set aside inequality?
> In fact if power relationships are too unequal the voluntary should even be
> in scare quotes.
> Consider the following:
> 1) A person "voluntarily" pays a ransom and in exchange is set free by
> kidnappers. (The person could have refused)
> 2) A poor rural Thai woman voluntarily contracts with a brothel in
> Bangkok in exchange for marginally more than the cost of her meagre room and
> board. (She could have stayed home with her family who may not be able to
> feed her)
>
> If I understand David's position in each case conventional economics would
> claim that following the "science" of conventional economics would
> efficiently satisfy each person desires. The person kidnapped desires to be
> free and paying the ransom may be the most efficient way of satisfying this
> desire. The Thai woman wants to eat, and have a roof over her head, the
> exchange provides that and is the most efficient choice given
> the plausible alternative starving at home. Is that not so?
> However, the desires involved are not the desires that the person would
> wish satisfied absent the power relationships. The person kidnapped desires
> to be free without paying the ransom but there is no practical alternative.
> The Thai woman would rather stay with her family in her community but there
> is nothing but possible starvation there.
> One of Marx's main points is that voluntary contracts between worker and
> capitalists are not voluntary but forced since the worker does not have
> access to the means of production and the capitalists appropriates the
> products and owns the means of production.
> Of course as David claims there are other ethical resources for
> criticising the types of situations he cites. But for Marx ethics is part
> of the superstructure. As long as the basic inequality of power resulting
> from the capitalist ownership of the means of production while most do not
> have access to production except through sale of their labor power voluntary
> exchanges will in fact continue to be exploitative and no amount of moral
> influence can change that substantially. Why? Because any ethical restraint
> that conflicts significantly with returns on capital will act as a barrier
> to "efficiency". Of course the typical right wing response to the second
> example represents an ethics that does not even find an ethical restraint
> justified since the Thai woman is better off contracting with the brothel
> than in her other choice.
>
> CHeers, Ken Hanly
***************
So the condemnation of exploitation is that it is inefficient? Is power an amoral
concept? If so what's the point of "condemning" exploitation?
Ian
