Distributive lessons from division of labour

Journal of Moral Philosophy

Volumn 5, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 96-117

  Dietsch, Peter ^a  

^a UNIVERSITÉ DE MONTRÉAL   (Canada)

Author keywords

Co operative surplus; Distributive justice; Division of labour; Equality; Left libertarianism; Libertarianism; Self ownership

Indexed keywords

EID: 62449111974     PISSN: 17404681     EISSN: 17455243     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/174552408X306744     Document Type: Article

References (23)

1. I borrow this term from Stephen Perry, 'Libertarianism, Entitlement, and Responsibility', Philosophy and Public Affairs 26.4 (1997), pp. 351-96
2. The transmissibility argument is equivalent to the position that Amartya Sen, 'The Moral Standing of the Market', Social Philosophy and Policy 2.2 (1985), pp. 1-19, discusses and rejects under the name 'personal production view'
3. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974). The final element of Nozick's entitlement theory, namely a set of principles to rectify previous injustices, will not concern us here
4. For a critical discussion, cf. Gerald A. Cohen's multi-faceted analysis of the notion of self-ownership, in which he describes it as 'the organising centre of libertarianism' (Self-ownership, Freedom, and Equality [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995], p. 12)
5. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd edn, 1999)
6. Ronald Dworkin, 'What is Equality? Part 2: Equality of Resources', Philosophy and Public Affairs 10 (1981), pp. 283-345
7. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (New York: Random House, 1937 [1776]), book I, chapter I
8. John Rawls (in J. Rawls and Erin Kelly [eds.], Justice as Fairness: A Restatement [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001], p. 76), for instance, considers the division of labour in an orchestra, whose members rely on their complementary specializations to achieve a joint performance
9. Some of the pitfalls of effort-based distribution principles are discussed by Julian Lamont, 'Problems for Effort-Based Distribution Principles', Journal of Applied Philosophy 12.3 (1995), pp. 215-29
10. Xiaokai Yang, Economics: New Classical versus Neoclassical Frameworks (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), p. 44
11. Cf. The distinction in section 2 between intertemporal and Smithian division of labour
12. I believe the Ricardian mechanism of exogenous comparative advantage, though admittedly always active to some degree, only dominates in contexts where it is important not only to be good, but to be the best. In recent economic literature, such contexts have been characterized as winner-take-all markets (cf. Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook, The Winner-Take-All Society: Why the Few at the Top Get So Much More Than the Rest of Us [New York: Free Press, 1995])
13. For a comprehensive historical and systematic overview of left-libertarianism, cf. The two volumes edited by Peter Vallentyne and Hillel Steiner, The Origins of Left Libertarianism: An Anthology of Historical Writings (New York: Palgrave, 2000)
14. and Left Libertarianism and its Critics: The Contemporary Debate (New York: Palgrave, 2000)
15. Peter Vallentyne, 'Left-Libertarianism - A Primer', in Vallentyne and Steiner (eds.), Left-Libertarianism and its Critics, p. 1
16. Hillel Steiner, An Essay on Rights (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), p. 271
17. Peter Vallentyne, 'Libertarianism' (2002), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (fall 2004 edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford. edu/archives/fall2004/entries/libertarianism/
18. Hillel Steiner, 'The Natural Right to the Mean of Production', The Philosophical Quarterly 27.106 (1977), pp. 41-49, at p. 49
19. For a suggestion to amend this classification, see Peter Dietsch, 'L'interprétation du principe de la propriété de soi au sein du libertarisme de gauche', Dialogue, forthcoming
20. Vallentyne, 'Left-Libertarianism - A Primer', p. 9
21. Nozick, Anarachy, State, and Utopia, p. 156
22. For an elaboration of this point, see Dietsch, 'L'interprétation du principe de la propriété de soi'
23. As you will note, this still represents a patterned rather than an entitlement principle of justice. Philippe van Parijs and Robert van der Veen ('Entitlement Theories of Justice: From Nozick to Roemer and Beyond', Economics and Philosophy 1.1 [1985], pp. 69-81) have convincingly shown that the classification of principles of justice into these categories is relative to the distribuendum in question. Nozick's own form of libertarianism is indeed unpatterned with respect to income or utility, yet it is patterned with respect to self-ownership