Session 11
Session 11. Moral Concerns about Capitalism: (1) What, If Anything, Should We Forbid the Market to Allocate? The Idea of Noxious Markets In Things Like Women’s Sexual Labor or Child Labor. (2) The Argument that Workers are Collectively Unfree Not to Sell their Labor Power: As a Collective, They are Forced to Sell It.
Read first: Debra Satz, "Introduction," "Noxious Markets," "Child Labor," Why Some Things Should Not Be For Sale, pp. 3-14, 91-113, 155-170.
Then read: G. A. Cohen, "Capitalism, Freedom, and the Proletariat," The Idea of Freedom, ed. Alan Ryan (Oxford University Press, 1979) , pp. 9-27.
So you’d like to know more…
Michael Sandel, What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012).
Diagnoses and critiques the seemingly increasing marketization of everything. Full of studies of cases (can you believe there’s a market for this, and a market for that, and one for that too…!). Presses the reader to think hard about whether and why all these new markets are acceptable.
Michael Walzer, "Money and Commodities," Spheres of Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1983), pp. 95-115.
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Draws the line between what may be bought and what may not by saying that money exchanges that don’t increase domination or political advantage should be allowed, while those that do have a presumption against them.
Elizabeth Anderson, "The Ethical Limitations of the Market," Economics and Philosophy 6 (1990): 179-205.
Argues that at least two sorts of goods ought not to be exchanged by, or divvied up by the market, or with a market mentality of seeking one’s own clear benefit: gift goods, which are those appropriately given as gifts within personal relationships, and shared goods, which are those goods which cannot be divided so that each person gets a recognizable quantity of the good. Explains why these ought not be objects of market exchange.
Steven Lukes, "Invasions of the Market," in Worlds of Capitalism: Institutions, Governance, and Economic Change in the Era of Globalization, ed. M. Miller (London: Routledge, 2005): 57-78
Identifies three of the ways in which market exchanges can do harm: by commodifying relationships and people, by
exacerbating inequalities, and by conflicting with the demands of citizenship.