In recent literature on the philosophical foundations of socialism a growing number of theorists have endorsed the claim that freedom as non-domination is a fundamental normative commitment undergirding socialist politics. On this sort of view, a broad range of traditional socialist claims can be explained and justified by reference to freedom as non-domination. In this paper, I argue that even if these theorists are right that opposition to domination is a core socialist normative commitment, it is not clear that that (...) opposition is best understood in terms of a commitment to a particular conception of freedom. Instead, socialist opposition to domination can be more fruitfully understood as flowing from a commitment to a relational conception of equality, according to which relationships with a substantially egalitarian character have a special value. I argue, first, that a relational egalitarian construal of socialist opposition to domination can retain all of the benefits of the freedom as non-domination construal, and, secondly, that a relational egalitarian account will have benefits that a freedom as non-domination approach will lack. I conclude that there are still significant benefits to retaining a place for equality in our considered account of the normative foundations of socialism. (shrink)

According to the nonworseness claim, it cannot be morallyworseto exploit someone than not to interact with them at all when the interaction 1) is mutually beneficial, 2) is voluntary, and 3) has no negative effects on third parties. My aim in this article is to defend the moral significance of exploitation from this challenge. To that end, I develop a novel account of why sweatshop owners have a moral obligation to pay sweatshop workers a nonexploitative wage despite the fact that (...) their relationship is entirely optional. More precisely, I defend two main claims. First, I show that sweatshop owners are morally obligated to pay sweatshop workers a nonexploitative wage even though they have a right not to hire them and even though that will require them to pay sweatshop workers a wage that is higher than the one they voluntarily accepted. Second, I explain why this obligation on the part of sweatshop owners is not defeated by the fact that other individuals not party to the transaction would benefit even more than sweatshop workers from receiving this additional level of pay. (shrink)

Standard accounts of what makes exploitation wrong ground its wrong in distributive unfairness: when A exploits B he wrongs her by taking a greater share of the benefits from their interaction than he ought. I argue that this standard account does not succeed; distributive unfairness is neither the sole, nor the primary wrong of exploitation. I assume that distributive unfairness is pro tanto wrong. However, I argue that in situations where transactors’ consent to a transaction is morally valid, it is (...) also morally transformative and overrides distributive unfairness’s pro tanto wrong. Thus, wrongful exploitation requires morally invalid consent. (shrink)

Informing others about the world is often a helpful act. In this paper, I study agents who conduct experiments to gather information about the world, committing in advance to fully disclose the nature of the experiment together with all experimental findings. While this appears to be a benign activity, I characterize a type of exploitative informing that is possible even within this restricted setup. I show how exploitative informants use public experiments to predictably manipulate interlocutors’ beliefs and actions to their (...) own advantage. I discuss epistemic and practical grounds on which it may be permissible for agents to resist acts of exploitative informing, then conclude by discussing implications for epistemic injustice and duties to gather evidence. (shrink)