Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site ubvax.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!umcp-cs!gymble!lll-crg!dual!amdcad!cae780!ubvax!tonyw
From: tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: What is socialism?
Message-ID: <119@ubvax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 31-Dec-69 18:59:59 EST
Article-I.D.: ubvax.119
Posted: Wed Dec 31 18:59:59 1969
Date-Received: Sat, 9-Mar-85 19:26:02 EST
References: <325@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP> <711@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA> <190@ubvax.UUCP>, <736@ucbtopaz.CC.BerkRe: What is socialism? <5132@utzoo.UUCP>
Organization: Ungermann-Bass, Inc., Santa Clara, CA
Lines: 142

> 	A person is exploited if her unequal relationship to someone
> 	else forces her to make decisions which leave her worse off
> 	than if she and that someone else were on an equal footing.
			(tony wuersch - me)
> 
> Okay. We have several problems right off the bat. First of all,
> how do I tell when a person is ``forced to make a decision''?
> . . . Also, what is ``equal footing''? . . .
> The final problem is ``who decides when se is worse off''?  I still
> don't know how to tell whether she has made her decision because she
> was exploited or because our tastes differ.
> 
	(laura creighton)

I'm afraid that my initial definition (given at the beginning of that
article) was a colloquial form (i.e. the way I usually remember
it) of what I alluded to near the end of that article:

> 	In the context of socialism, people are exploited by capital if
> 	they would be better off (would choose to live a different and
> 	more satisfied life) in a situation where capital differentials
> 	were (more or less) eliminated, i.e. in socialism.

What I'm alluding to here is a general definition of exploitation that
depends on comparing life in one system with life in another.  Tastes
are assumed to be the same in both systems.  The first system is a system
where people substantially differ in their holdings (a better word than
endowments) of some important resource.  The second system is a system
where each person has the average per capita amount of that important
resource in the first system.  The total amount of the resource is the
same between the two systems, but its distribution is unequal in the
first and equal in the second.

Exploitation (for that resource) is happening in the first system if those
who live in the first system and have less of the resource would be happier
(and better off, I would say, by external standards too -- I don't think
that tastes are everything [adults can get just as sick on candy as
children] -- however, I don't expect Laura to agree with me on this) if
they withdrew from the first system with their per capita average of that
resource and started their own second system.  Those people who would
be happier and better off by withdrawing are exploited people.

This definition should motivate the first colloquial definition I gave,
if one has a strong imagination about what the second system would look
like.  If I'd be happier in the second system, then I'd likely be making
decisions I'd be constrained from making while I'm stuck in the first
system.  I'd be forced in the first system to make decisions I'd not
have to make in the second one.  Perhaps I'd be worse off because I'd
have to make less ambitious decisions.

One misunderstanding might be resolved by my pointing out that there is
no such thing as exploitation in general.  There is only exploitation
as regards a set of one or more resources.

Having said this, Laura has, I think, three questions remaining:

  1. Property.  Why do socialists care more about property than many people
do?  Why do they think that having property is more despicable than having
any other thing one's tastes incline one to acquire?

  2. Tastes.  How can one say that anyone is exploited if people's tastes
vary so much?

  3. Better off.  How can one say that people in one system are better
off than people in another?

Question 1 is not related to questions about exploitation, so I'll put
it off till last.

The taste question is easy to answer.  First, if one needs to take account
of tastes, one should ask people what their tastes are.  Second, although
it is true that for some categories of goods, tastes vary widely, for other
categories, tastes don't vary so much.  The resources for which
exploitation can be determined have to be resources where it's reasonable
to speak of more or less, and where it's reasonable to say that people's
satisfaction with said resources roughly correspond to how much (or how little)
of that resource they have.

There's a tremendous amount of collected data and analysis of two resources
which fit the above criteria:  occupational prestige and income.  The data
and research come under the rubric of stratification studies.  At least in
the U.S. (I doubt Canada is so different) and most of Western Europe, the
results indicate a wide agreement on what are good jobs and what are bad
jobs, and a high correlation (with some exceptions, such as university
professors) between the status associated with a job and its income.  Most
people have no problem saying that job a is better than job b, or that
income a is better than income b if income a is greater than income b.
And they agree on what is better and what is worse, to a high degree.
I assume that the results on property would be similar to those on income.

There may be wide disagreement as to whether people want to see the
Grateful Dead or not, but the disagreement as to whether people want more
or less property is nowhere near as wide.

As to the second question, how we know that people are better off in the
second system than in the first, we need to carry out a thought experiment,
grounded by what we already know about the first system and similar second
systems.  Just as planning improves with experience, so do thought
experiments improve with discussion and care.  Again, it isn't a problem
of tastes in the second system, since they should be similar to tastes
in the first system, and we can find out those tastes by asking and
surveying.

In the thought experiment, we imagine ourselves as people in the first system,
based on the data we have, and ask our imagined selves if we'd feel better
in the second system.  If so, than a subjective assessment says they would
be better off.  If we need more support, than we can ask these people to
make the same assessment we made on their behalf, and find out if our
assessment disagrees with theirs.

It needs to be emphasized that as a second system comes nearer in real
life, it's more likely that those others whom we include in thought experiments
will make decisions for themselves about whether they'd be better off.

Objective assessments (physical health, for instance) don't need thought
experiments to confirm their plausibility, but they are also part of a
judgment of whether person x would be better off in system 1 or 2.

Laura's first question, put off until now, is why socialists should care
so much about property while libertarians like herself don't necessarily
care much about property at all (I hope I'm not mischaracterizing it
by putting it this way).  The answer is that property is not properly
conceived of as a satisfier of a taste for property.  It should be
conceived of as a satisfier of a taste for property or anything else
for which property might be exchanged.  Since property can be exchanged
for almost any thing (material, sensual, educational, spiritual [time
in a retreat, for instance]), and since capitalism as a system strives
to bring more and more desired things under the law of exchangeability
for property, property is a satisfier for almost any taste.  If Laura
had more property, she wouldn't have to worry about disk packs if she
didn't want to (I venture the thought experiment that Laura doesn't
enjoy working with disk packs).

So the distribution of property in a society has an important relation
to the question of whether some people are happier and better off than
others.  And discussing societies where people might be better off and
happier than in this one is what socialists and libertarians both do.
It's also supposed to be the purpose of political philosophy (to discuss
. . .), and is likely the motivation of net.politics.theory.

Tony Wuersch
{amd,amdcad}!cad780!ubvax!tonyw