Exploitative Power and Deliberative Democratic Recourse in the New Economy

• In Event: Democracy and Unequal Power: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that deliberative democratic systems offer a solution for mitigating exploitative labor mitigation, particularly when no wider organizing or collective action institutional mechanisms prove available. Originally articulated by Marx as a technical explanation for where profit comes from, today exploitation has taken on a pernicious, moralizing accusation used to describe a kind of manifestation of unequal power. Indeed, arguments about exploitation tend to be wide ranging, referencing anything from an understanding of commodification as inherently problematic due to the unjust manipulation of conditions and information, resulting in states of unfree decision-making, coercion, manipulation, and harm. More often than not, a vast array of literatures and fields use the word for a variety of meanings and contexts.
Isolating a more precise understanding of exploitation helps to reveal the ways in which unequal bargaining power results in degraded human flourishing and experiences of loss of worth, even when the exploited benefits from the contract or transaction of services. Similarly, not unlike other kinds of injustices, harms, and illicit uses of power, exploitation can exist in degrees, requires several conditions, and has various options available to it as recourse, solutions, and correction mechanisms, such as through collective action, universal basic income, and democratic institutions more generally as locations of redistributing power. And just as has been done for domination, oppression, and marginalization, a substantial exploration of the ontology and normativity of exploitation can help us to properly conceptualize the role of democratic institutions as sites of redistributed power, in order to better protect rights, freedoms of associations, and human flourishing.
Exploitation can be framed as a problem of power because it features unequal bargaining power, and by detailing the practice of surrogate motherhood, the gig economy, the coercive labor practices at places in Silicon Valley and on the other side of the world, I contextualize and theorize that there are degrees of unfree or imbalanced bargaining power and inability to pursue alternative opportunities. This is necessarily situated in conjunction with the lived experience of degradation. Collective action then allows those vulnerable to exploitative power to testify to their experiences, and this is best accomplished either within or acting on particular kinds of democratic institutions as well.

Author

• Naomi Scheinerman, University of Pennsylvania