Carrol Cox
Raghu: If you deny that capitalist exploitation is morally wrong, what is
it exactly that you have against capitalism anyway?
I certainly do deny that it is "morally wrong"; I don't even know what such
a proposition means!
In the first place it is sloppy. I take it that you do not object to
"feudal" exploitation, only to _capitalist_ exploitation. That seems silly.
Ignoring that sloppiness, how can an abstraction ("exploitation") be either
right or wrong "morally"? It is either pure gibberish or what it really
means is that capitalists, as individuals (not as capitalists, an
abstraction) are bad people. You can't demonstrate that! And if you _could_
demonstrate it, you would have successfully defended capitalism, for you
would have shown that all we need to do is to substitute good people for bad
people as capitalists. If only Raghu rather than the Walmart family owned
WallMart all would be well.
^^^^^^
CB: One problem with this is that all capitalists must exploit and
oppress wage-laborers upon penalty of ruination in the capitalist
competition for failure to do so. So, raghu could not be a successful
owner of Walmart without exploiting and oppressing. It's not personal
in the sense of a personal choice of whether to be an exploiter or
not.
The proof of the immorality of exploitation and oppression is in Marx
and Engels thesis that written history is a history of class
struggles. Why do the exploited and oppressed down through the ages
_struggle_ , resist their exploiters and oppressors ? Because it is
against their instincts and self-interest. Exploiting and oppressing
ruling classes ignore and abjure "empathizing" with the interests of
those they exploit and oppress. That's how exploitation can be wrong
, immoral.
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