Exploitation Perspectives from Philosophy, Politics, and Economics

Exploitation: Perspectives from Philosophy, Politics, and Economics brings together recent work on the topic of exploitation from philosophy, political science, and economics in one volume, organized around three main questions: What is exploitation? Why is exploitation wrong? What should we do about it? These questions are increasingly relevant in public policy discussions. The past decade has witnessed the rise of populism and an increasing sense that politics is a game rigged to benefit certain classes of persons at the expense of others. Interestingly, this sense of unfairness has been shared across the political spectrum though, of course, the left and right differ in both their moral diagnosis and their political prescription. Current debates over minimum wage laws, immigration reform, and undue corporate influence on politics can all be understood as drawing on and developing these concerns over exploitative political treatment. At the same time, the literature on exploitation has blossomed. What was once a topic of relatively narrow interest to philosophers working in the tradition of analytical Marxism has been reinvigorated and diversified. The essays in this book both represent and extend that diversity. While the condition of labor remains an important and central topic, the current volume extends the analysis to such neglected topics as the relationship between children and parents, interactions between states, and interactions between generations.

Benjamin Ferguson is Professor of Philosophy and director of the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics program at University of Warwick. His research is in moral and political philosophy and focuses on the ethics of market-based interactions like exploitation and fraud. He is co-editor of the Routledge Companion to Libertarianism. Matt Zwolinski is Professor of Philosophy and director of the Center for Ethics, Economics, and Public Policy at University of San Diego. His research focuses on the intersection of philosophy, law, and economics, with a special interest in issues of exploitation, basic income, and libertarian political theory. He is the editor of Arguing About Political Philosophy, and co-editor of the Routledge Companion to Libertarianism. He is the co-author of The Individualists: Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of Libertarianism, and Universal Basic Income: What Everyone Needs to Know.