Shapiro - Resources, Capacities, and Ownership.pdf

Sage Publications, Inc. Resources, Capacities, and Ownership: The Workmanship Ideal and Distributive Justice Author(s): Ian Shapiro Source: Political Theory, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Feb., 1991), pp. 47-72 Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/191733 Accessed: 12-10-2015 02:28 UTC

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RESOURCES, CAPACITIES, AND OWNERSHIP The Workmanship Ideal and Distributive Justice

IANSHAPIRO YaleUniversity

Though the Earth,and all inferiorCreaturesbe common to all Men, yet every Manhas a Propertyin his own Person. This no Body hasany Rightto buthimself. The Labourof his Body, andthe Workof his hands,we maysay, areproperlyhis. Whatsoeverthen he removes out of the State thatNaturehathprovided,and left it in, he hathmixed his Labourwith, andjoyned it to somethingthatis his own, and therebymakes it his Property.It being by him removedfrom the common stateNatureplacedit in, hathby his laboursomethingannexedto it, thatexcludes the common right of other Men. For this Labour being the unquestionable Propertyof the Labourer,no Man but he can have a rght to what that is once joyned to, at least where thereis enough, and as good left in common for others. John Locke, Second Treatiseof Government,section 27

HUMAN BEINGS GENERATEmuch of what they want and need by mixing their productivecapacities with other resources,producingobjects andservices of value. This fact abouthumancreativityhas been incorporated into Westernthinkingaboutdistributivejustice via the workmanshipideal of ownership. It revolves aroundthe conviction that as long as the resources with which people mix their productivecapacities arejustly acquired,they AUTHOR'SNOTE. Earlier versions of this essay werepresented at the annual meeting of the AmericanPolitical Science Association in Atlanta, GA in September1989 and at the workshop on changing conceptionsof propertyat the ClarkLibrary,Umversityof California,LosAngeles in November1989. Helpfulcommentshave been receivedfroman anonymousreaderforPolitical Theory, Bruce Ackerman,Joyce Appleby, RichardArneson, RichardAshcraft,John Brewer, Jeffrey Isaac, Douglas Rae, Alan Ryan, Debra Satz Steven Smith,Susan Staves, TracyStrong, and Sylvia Tesh.Whileworkingon this essay I receivedfinancial supportfrom theSocal Science Faculty Fund at Yale,the GuggenheimFoundation,and the Centerfor AdvancedStudyin Palo Alto, CA. Part of my support at the Center was paid by National Science Foundation grant BNS87-00864. POLITICAL Vol.19No. 1, February 1991 47-72 THEORY, ? 1991SagePublications, Inc. 47

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may legitimatelyown the productof the conjunction.Just how to organize thingsso thatthe caveat embeddedin the workmanshipideal is not violated has been subjectto vituperativedebatefor centuries,as have the meaningof and justification for the premise that people may be said to own their productivecapacitiesin the firstplace. Ina numberof idiomsbothintellectual and political, the workmanshipideal sets the termsof debate aboutthe just distribution,ownership,and even definitionof property.1 The endunng intensityof argumentsabout this ideal signifies that it retains a powerfulhold on the Westernpolitical imagination,and it is the hold as much as the ideal that concerns me in this essay. In a deconstructionist spiritI tryto accountfor our collective inabilityto let go of the ideal, despite major conceptualdifficulties it confronts. In a constructivespirit I try to adducesupportfor the view that,partlybecause of its internaltensions, the workmanshipideal can defensibly be partof our thinkingaboutdistributive justice only in a limited and conditionalway; we must not expect too much from it and nor should we attributeto the rights it spawns a necessary trumpingpowerwith respect to competingrequirementsof social justice. In partI, I arguethatthe workmanshipideal formulatedby Lockewas part of an internallycohesive view of just ownership that derived part of its intellectualappealfrom the fact thatit situatedthe rightsof workmanshipin a complex moralscheme that left room for other demandsof social justice. I also argue,however,thatthe attractivenessand coherenceof Locke's view dependedon theologicalassumptionsthathave long since beenjettisonedm the dominantintellectualtraditionsof the West. Yet becauseof the powerful appealof the intuitionsthatdrive the workmanshipideal, manyhave tned to formulatesecularvariantsof it; they have sought historicallinkingstrategies thatcan be used to tetherlegitimatepropertyrightsto the workof productive agents. PartsII and III are devoted to analysis of the two main variantsof such strategiesthat have grown out of the Marxistand neoclassical traditions of political economy. This leads to a discussion- in partIV - of why historical linking strategies invariablyfail, runninginto insuperableproblems of overdeterminationand threateningperpetuallyto swamp the competing values with which property regimes are bound to coexist in any intellectuallycompelling account of social justice. This conclusion seems naturallyto counsel abandoninghistorical linking strategies altogether,a possibility I examine in part V via a discussion of recent attemptsby John Rawls andRonaldDworkinto displacethemwith socializedviews of human productivecapacities. But the proposal that we should abandonthe workmanshipideal turnsout to be as troublesomeas the difficulties that result fromembracingsecularvariantsof it. In partVI, I discusstwo possible ways

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out of the conundrumthusgenerated.The first involves embracinga variant of the workmanshipideal on consequentialistgroundswhile conceding that it rests partlyon causal and moral fictions. The second, which need not be inconsistentwith the first, requiresus to treatthe workmanshipideal as part of a democraticconception of distributivejustice. I suggest briefly in conclusion thatthis lattercourse is better.

I. THEOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONSOF IDEAL THECLASSICALWORKMANSHIP Locke's theoryof propertywas elegant,coherent,and- if one acceptsthe premisesto which he was committed- compelling.2He thoughthumanlabor the main source of value, but he believed that naturalresources make an independent-if comparatively minor-contribution to the value of produced goods and services.3Against Filmer (who insisted that God gave the worldto Adam andhis heirsvia an hierarchicalsystem of inheritance),Locke argued that God gave the world to mankind in common, subject to two constraints:thatit not be wasted andthatany individual'suse of the common to producehis own propertywas subjectto the restrictionthat"enough,and as good" remainavailableto others to use in common.4 Locke's treatmentof humancapacitieswas linked to his theology in a different way. It rested on his categorialdistinctionbetween naturalright and naturallaw which explained humanautonomy.Naturallaw, Locke tells us, "oughtto be distinguishedfromnaturalright:for rightis groundedin the fact thatwe have the free use of a thing,whereaslaw enjoins or forbidsthe doing of a thing." Right, then, is a differentkind of thing from law, the former indicatinga capacityfor autonomousactionandthe latterexternallyimposed obligatoryconstraints.5It is throughacts of autonomousmaking that rights over what is created come into being: Making entails ownership so that naturallaw is, atbottom,God'snaturalrightoverhis creation.6Locke'sfrequent appealsto metaphorsof workmanshipandwatchmakingin the TwoTreatises and elsewhere make it fundamentalthatmen are obliged to God because of his purposesin makingthem.Men are"theWorkmanshipof one Omnipotent, and infinitely wise Maker... They are his Property,whose Workmanship they are, made to last duringhis, not one another'spleasure."7 For Locke, humanbeings are uniqueamong God's creationsbecause he gave them the capacity to make, to create rights of their own. Naturallaw may dictatethat man is subject to divine imperativesto live in certainways, but, within the limits set by the law of nature,men can act - as Tully notes-

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in a godlike fashion:"[M]anas maker... has analogousmaker'sknowledge of, and a naturalrightin his intentionalactions."Providedwe do not violate naturallaw,we standin the same relationto theobjectswe createas Godstands in to us; we own themjust as he owns us.8This is not to say that, for Locke, all ourcapacitiesareGod-givenor thattheirdevelopmentis uninfluencedby social arrangements;he thoughtthatproductivecapacitiescould be bought and sold in ways thatincreasedproductivityandthereis some evidence that he believed workers'productivityto be influencedby mercantileworkhouse discipline.9Certainlythere was potential for tension between these causal beliefs and the workmanshipideal; we will see later that argumentsthat humanactivity and organizationshape productivecapacitieswould eventually be pressed into the service of an explosive immanentcritiqueof that ideal.'?But as long as humancreative power was seen as a gift from God, this possibility could be staved off; even if productivecapacities are influenced by humanagency, this agency finds its genesis and limits in the will of a beneficentdeity. Locke conceived of the rangeof humanactivitiesfree of God's sanctions quite broadly;certainlyit includedmost of what is conventionallythought of as the realm of the production and consumption of goods." But the existence of naturallaw constraintson humanautonomy meant that there were circumstancesin which the exercise of otherwise legitimate rights of appropriationwould be curtailed. If Locke's provisos were violated, for instance, the nght to appropriatefrom naturewould be limited. Likewise, someone starvinganddisabledwould havethe rightto another'splentybased on the naturallaw requirementsof the right of preservation,and someone starvingandable-bodiedwould have the rightto the meansof preservationthe rightto materialsto work on to preserveoneself-whether by means of the workhouse system or coerced labor for a landowner.In additionthere were limits, for Locke, to the reparationsthata conquerorcould legitimately demandin wartimehaving to do with the subsistencerightsof the wives and childrenof defeatedsoldiers.12 The existence of Locke's naturallaw constraintsthus meant that not all rightswere of the same kind;propertyrightsoccupieda circumscribedspace in an hierarchicalsystem. Productive human actions issue in rights and obligationsthatarebindingon humanbeings,but these arenot the only types of moralclaims to which Locke believed us subject.Although not independentof the workmanshipmodel (naturallaw was arguedto be valid as God's workmanship),these othermoralclaimswere conceived of as priorto claims of humanworkmanship.'3To be sure, therewould be disputes aboutwhen and how the naturallaw requirementsare triggeredand aboutthe degree to

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which they limit propertyrightsin particularinstanceswhich the naturallaw theory could not by itself resolve; as Ashcraft has shown with respect to eighteenth-centuryEnglish debates about poor relief, the scope of what subsistence requirescould be expanded and pressed into the service of a radical Lockean critique of the claims of capital."1But if the theory left balancingthe claims of the competingrequirementsof naturallaw andhuman workmanshipopen to interpretationand political argumentat least at the margins,it also underminedthe presumptionthatrightsof humanappropriation supersedecompetingjust claims.

II. SECULARIZINGTHE WORKMANSHIP IDEAL:MARXISM In many respects Marx's labor theory of value was more sophisticated thanLocke's. He famously distinguishedlaborfromlabor-power,developed the concepts of abstracthumanlaborand socially necessarylabortime, and from them the theoryof exploitationof laborby capital.Yet Marxheld onto the basic logic of the workmanshipideal, even though he transformedit radicallyby seculanzing it and locating it in a dynamic theoryof historical change.'5 Since Locke's treatmentof both resourcesand capacitieshad been linked to his theology, both would now have to be treateddifferently.For Marx, resourcescease to be of independentmoralsignificance;the value of a natural resourceis determinedby the socially necessary labor time requiredfor its appropriationfrom nature.God is no longer needed as the giver of natural resourcessince they are, by definition,without value apartfrom the human capacitiesneededfor theirappropriation.Not until the marginalists'rejection of the labor theory of value in the late nineteenth century would natural resourcesreenterthe explanatoryand moralcalculus as an independentunit of value, and by then the theoryof marketswould offer differentconceptual tools for dealing with them. If resources are secularizedby being reconceptualizedas moral proxies for capacities, what of the treatmentof capacities themselves? Are we still the ultimate owners of our capacities for Marx, and if so, why? In The Critiqueof the GothaProgram,Marxoffers his most elaboratediscussionof his views aboutthe ultimatebasis of entitlementsin the courseof a discussion of fair socialist distribution.Defining the cooperative proceeds of labor as the "totalsocial product,"he arguesthataftervarious deductionshave been made by the state (for the provision of public goods, welfare for indigents, and financingnew production),the balanceof the surplusbecomes available

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for consumption.'6Because distributionin the earlystages of communismis "still stampedwith the birthmarksof the old society from whose womb it emerges," it will continue to be based on work. The individual producer receives back from society, after the deductionshave been made, "exactly what he gives to it." In these circumstances,"thesame principleprevailsas thatwhich regulatesthe exchange of commodities,"but it is nonethelessan advanceon capitalismbecause "underthe alteredcircumstancesno one can give anythingexcept his labour,"and "nothingcan pass into the ownership of individuals except individual means of consumption."Thus, although "equalright"continuesto mean"bourgeoisright"undersocialism,"principle and practiceare no longer at loggerheads."'7 Marxconcedes that this principlewill generateinequalitiesby virtue of the fact that actual work becomes the basic metric of equality.Since labor must be defined either by durationor intensityto functionas a measureat all, and since people differ from one anotherIn physical and mentalcapacities, the rightto each accordingto his work is unavoidably" an unequalright for unequallabour."He also notes thatthese inequalitieswill be exacerbated by the differingsocial circumstancesof differentworkers.Such defects are inevitablethroughthe early stages of communism,but in a "higherphase" of it "afterthe enslaving subordinationof the individualto the division of labour,and with it also the antithesisbetween mental and physical labour, has vanished" and the "springsof co-operative wealth flow more abundantly,"then the "narrowhorizonof bourgeoisright"can be "crossedin its entirety"anddistributioncan be basedon needs.The transcendenceof every regime of right is seen as necessaryfor the triumphof genuine equality;the work-basedregime of socialism is not special in this regard:It is "a rightof inequality,in its content,like every right."'8 The workmanshipideal plays a role throughoutMarx's account, but it shouldnot be confusedwith his formulationof the labortheoryof value.This latteris thecausalthesisthatonly living humanlaborpowercreatesexchange value (which determinesprices in a capitalisteconomy). Marxbelieved that it explainedthe phenomenonof exploitationundercapitalismby generating an accountof how exchange value accrues to the capitalistas a by-product of the differencebetween the value of wages paid to workersand the value of the productsthose workersproduce.In Marx'shandsthe labortheoryof value thus became a vehicle for incorporatingthe moral appeal of the workmanshipideal into argumentsaboutthe productionand distributionof wealth in a differentway than had been the case with Locke; it restedon a different variant of the labor theory of value. Yet in neither case is the workmanshipideal partof or reducibleto the labortheoryof value. The ideal

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rests on the moral thesis that the legitimate basis of entitlement lies in productiveaction, and it is only because of the intuitivemoralappealof this thesis that the labor theory of value was thoughtto be pregnantwith moral significance. It is not surprising,therefore,thatMarxistswho have abandonedthe labor theoryof value nonetheless affirmvariantsof the workmanshipideal. G. A. Cohen argues that exploitationundercapitalismderives not from the problematical thesis that the workers alone produce value but, rather,that the workers alone produce the product.19Conceding that capitalists may act productivelyby investing,he distinguishesthis fromproducinggoods which, he argues,is exclusively done by workers.WhetherCohenis rightaboutthis we need not settle now; thathe makesthe argumentat all exhibitshis reliance on the intuitivemoralpull of the workmanshipideal.20This reliancebecomes explicit in two essays on the relation between self-ownership and worldownershipwhere Cohen advances criticisms of RobertNozick that rely on affirmingthe idea that we own our productivecapacities and the goods, in certaincircumstances,thatthey are instrumentalin generating.2' Likewise, John Roemerassumes thatpeople own theirproductivecapacities and defines exploitation and unfairness(for him these two are not the same) in termsof distributionsof the alienablemeansof productionthatforce or supply incentives to workersto producegoods thatbecome the property of capitalists.22To pack any moral punch such argumentsmust rest on the claim that such class monopoly is unjustifiable,and when we ask why the answer turnsout to rest eitheron the claim thatthe monopolywas achieved via illicit appropriationof the proceedsof the work of othersor an argument that the class monopoly prevents workers' realizing at least some of the potentialfruitsof theirown labor,or both.Thus Roemerresiststhe possibility that the class monopoly might have come aboutas a resultof differencesin naturalabilities or propensitiestoward risk on historical and probabilistic grounds,and he defines unfairnessand exploitationby referenceto counterfactuals in which individuals or classes would produce more goods by as much or less work than is the case when the class monopoly obtains.23 If the workmanshipideal is implicated in Marxistcritiquesof capitalist exploitationwhetheror not these reston the labortheoryof value, what is its role in Marx's positive argument for the superiority of socialism over capitalismand of communismover socialism? His appealto the workmanship ideal might be interpretedas an ad hominem polemical charge that socialism is an advance on capitalismbecause underit, those who actually do the work are rewardedas bourgeois ideology requires.Yet to claim that what is wrong with capitalism is that it fails to live up to a standardthat

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cannot,anyhow,be independentlyjustified is to say less thanMarxwanted or neededto say. One only has to thinkof othersystemsto which he objected -notably feudalism-that were not subject to the particulardefect of hypocrisy as capitalismallegedly is, to realize that Marx'scritical arguments were intended to have more far-reachingmoral impact.24Throughouthis writingshumanbeings are describedas productivecreatures,creatingtheir means of subsistence In ways that decisively shape other aspects of their lives and identities as persons.25Even a communist society, where the existence of a superabundanceof wealth frees people from necessity, is The workmandescribedby the matureMarxas a society of freeproducers.26 ship ideal thus capturedsomething in Marx's positive conception of the human condition that motivated his attack on modes of production that alienatepeople fromtheirproductivenatures.To be sure,the idealwas much changed in his hands; it took on a dynamic characterderiving from the romanticexpressivistnotion thathumanbeings producenot only the means for their subsistencebut also, and as a resultof this fact, themselves. This meantthatthe distributiveimplicationsof the idealwere morecomplex than in Locke's mechanisticview of the relationbetween the producerand his product,more complex- as will become plain in partIV - than even Marx realized. But the workmanshipideal nonethelessremainedthe basic legitimatingideal of humanownership.27 Workmanshipdiminishesin significancefor Marxwhen we turnattention to the argumentthat socialism is merely transitionalto a needs-basedcommunist regime of superabundance,althougheven here it retainsa residual influence on his view. First there is the negative pole in Marx's implicit justificatory argument:A communist utopia is conceived of as the only possible regime m which thereis no exploitationof one class by another.By thusrequiringits own negation,the theoryof exploitationleaves an indelible stamp on the depiction of communismand so, inevitably,does the workmanshipideal which gives the theoryof exploitationits criticalmoral bite. Second thereis the assumptiondrivingMarx'sdefense of collective allocation of the productivesurplus in The Critiqueof the Gotha Program and elsewhere,namelythatunderconditionsof advanceddivisionof laborprivate allocationis not defensible, and collective allocationis, on the groundsthat This assumptionhas only to be stated the surplusis collectively produced.28 for its reliance on the workmanshipideal to become plain. If makingwere not thoughtto entail ownershiptherewould be no basis for arguingthatthe relationsof mutual reliance and enhancedproductivityresulting from the division of laborboth reveal privateappropriationas illegitimateandjustify collective allocationof the collectively producedsurplus.Unless we interpret

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superabundanceto mean that a situationcould arise in which no distributive choices of any kindwould ever have to be made(becauseeveryonecould always have everythingthatthey needed or wanted), Marx would presumably continue to embrace some variant of this workmanship-based defense of collective decision making.29In this way Marx's speculations about the postcapitalist future affirm the justificatory power of the workmanshipideal, even if he often relies on a mixtureof ad hominemargument and intuitionistappeal- ratherthanpnnclpledjustification- in its defense.

III. SECULARIZINGTHEWORKMANSHIP IDEAL: NEOCLASSICAL VIEWS Like most Marxists,neoclassicalpolitical and economic theoristsexhibit an abidingcommitmentto the workmanshipideal thathas long survivedthe marginalists'abandonmentof the labor theory of value. Indeed, the labor theory was rejected partly on the groundthat since the causal story it tells was thought by the marginaliststo be false, attemptsto use it as a basic yardstick for thinking about distributive fairness violate the ideal; such attemptswere arguednot to take into account the productivecontributions of capitalists.Modernneoclassicists thus retaina commitmentto the notion thatthe act of workingcreatesentitlementsin the object or service produced by the relevant work; indeed, they typically defend acquisition of goods throughexchange by referenceto the claim thatan agentis entitledto dispose of what she has producedhowever she likes. It is no accident that Nozick's critique of redistributivetaxation reduces to the claim that it is "forced labor."30 The principal neoclassical strategy for secularizing the workmanship ideal replacesthe Lockean theology with a foundationalappealto the value of individual autonomy, whether for more or less Kantian reasons. Its proponentslink propertyrightsover the productsof one's productivecapacities to the preservationof autonomy,as in Nozick's claim thateveryone has an inviolable rightto what oneself has producedor freely been given. It is an open secret that where these rights come from is never fully accounted for in such argumentsand that the freedoms they preserve are purely formal.31Typically, as in Nozlck's case, there is some appeal to Locke, but without grapplingwith the issues inevitablyraisedonce his limited defense of private appropnationis detached from its theological moorings. Thus RichardPosner embracesa variantof the Kantianclaim when arguingthat no injustice results from the fact that in a marketsystem "people who lack

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sufficient earning power to supporteven a minimally decent standardof living areentitledto no say in the allocationof resourcesunless they arepart of the utility functionof someone who has wealth."He resists the Rawlsian critiqueof this view (takenup herein partV), insistingthattreatingthe more and less well endowed as equally entitled to valuable resources"does not take seriously the differencesbetween persons,"and indeed that any redistributivetaxationpolicy "impairsthe autonomyof those from whom redistributionis made." Posnerconcedes thatthis procedureimpliesthat"if an individualhappens to be bom feeble-mindedand his net social productis negative, he would have no rght to the means of support even though there was nothing blameworthyin his inabilityto supporthimself."Yet he insists thatalthough this conclusion might be argued to violate the autonomy of the feebleminded,thereis no escape from it "consistentwith any of the majorethical systems." This is a view that he shares with John Harsanyi,who asserts againstRawls and without argumentthatour abilities "arepartsof our own inner selves and belong to us as a matterof sheer naturalfact." That such declarationsaredeemedsufficientto bridgethe fact/valuegap andlegitimate secular variants of the workmanshipideal is testimony to its captivating power;no principledargumentis thoughtto be needed in theirdefense.32

IV DIFFICULTIESCONFRONTING SECULAR IDEAL OF THEWORKMANSHIP VARIANTS In both Marxistand neoclassical traditions,then, the workmanshipideal has exhibited a staying power that has long outlived both its theological origins and the labortheores of value to which it was initiallylinked. Yet in its secularformthe workmanshipidealconfrontstwo majortypes of conceptual difficulty. These combine to throw into sharp relief the difficulties of determiningthe natureof and limits to human-producedentitlementsonce we arewithoutLocke's naturallaw limitingconstraintssuch as the provisos, the requirementsof charity,and the legitimatedemandsof dependents. First, luck in the genetic pool and in the circumstancesinto which one happens to be born play substantial roles in what kinds of productive capacitiespeople develop and are able to develop. The resultinginequalities seem to be deeply at odds with what is attractive in the logic of the workmanshipideal, since these are only the proximateresultof the work of the relevantproducingagent.If two peopleworkequallyhardbutone is twice as productivebecause of having more effective naturalcapacities or better

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nurturedcapacities, it seems that in a deeper sense, it is not her work but her superior genetic or nutritionalluck that is the basis for such relative advantage.If differencesderiving from naturalcapacity or social condition were traceableultimatelyto the will of God, they need not seem unjustifiable nor need it be the responsibilityof humansociety to counteracttheireffects. Once these differencesarethoughtaboutby referenceto secularunderstandings of workmanship,however, they are bound to become morally controversial. Second, because humanproductivecapacities are themselves partlyproduced by humanwork, it seems arbitraryto treata given producingagent as the "final"owner of his productivecapacities to begin with. Locke saw our productivecapacitiesas God-given,so the questionof why we mightbe said to own them never arose for him; indeed, their very existence was partof what markedoff the ultimatemoral boundariesamong persons. But in the absence of a theology which dictates this assumption,defendersof secular variantsof the workmanshipideal have to confrontthe difficulty of how to specify the morally relevant boundaries among persons qua productive creatures. In recent years American courts have begun to recognize how complex this can be in divorce settlements.The domestic laborperformedin supportof a spouse attaininga professionalqualificationis treatedas partof the relevant work in creating the capacity to generate the income that the qualificationbrings.Forthis reason,the divorcingspouse who performedthe domestic laboris given a propertyinterestin the streamof futureincome that the now qualified divorcing spouse is newly capable of generating.33As a philosophical matter the intuition behind this type of example has been generalized by feminist theoriststo make the point, for instance,that it was morally arbitraryfor Marx to try to measure the rate of exploitation by exclusive reference to the relation between the surplus produced and the money wage paid to the worker.Any such calculationignores the contributions of the worker'sspouse to thatworkers'capacityto work,which is rented to the capitalistand which Marx arbitrarilytakes to be the worker's"own." From this standpointMarx's argumentcan be turnedon the worker's relationshipwith one's spouse to reveal it in certaincircumstancesto be exploitative.34It is indeed surprisingthat Marxists have attendedso little to the significance of producedproductivecapacities,both for the coherenceof the self-ownership thesis which they generally embrace and for its distributive implications.35 In short, if the use of productivecapacities generatesentitlementsand if productivecapacitiesare themselves partlyproducedby the work of others, then tracingthe moralreachof a particularproductivecapacityexercised in

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the productionof a particularnonhumanobject becomes exceedingly complex, arguablyimpossibleeven in principle.For the feministpoint can itself be generalized:The productivecapacitiesthata conventionalwife "has"that she expends in her husband'sattainmentof a professionalqualificationwere no doubtthemselvespartlyproducedby the workof others:parents,perhaps children,Sunday-schoolteacherswho drummedinto hera particularmixture of the work ethic and conventionalfamily values, and so on. If one pushes the idea of productivecapacityas the moralbasis for entitlementto the limit, it seems to point in the direction of a tangled and indecipherableweb of overdeterminedentitlementsand, indeed, to reveal a deep tensionat the core of the workmanshipideal itself. The claim that we own what we make in virtue of our ownershipof our productivecapacities underminesthe claim that we own our productive capacities, once it is conceded that those capacities are themselves producedpartlyby the work of others. Yet if we want to employ a variantof the workmanshipideal withoutpushingit to the limit, and in the absence of a theological limiting device such as Locke's, then the difficulty remainsof how to do the pertinentline-drawingwithout inviting chargesof moralarbitrariness.

IDEALAND V THEWORKMANSHIP STRATEGY THESOCIALIZATION OF CAPACITIES These formidabledifficulties lend seriousness to the suggestion that we abandonthe workmanshipideal altogether.This possibility has been most fully exploredby John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin in differentways in the course of contributingto a largerdebate aboutwhetherresources,welfare, or some intermediatemetricshouldform the basic unitof accountof theories of distributivejustice. The initial impetus for their turn to resource-based theorieswas theperceiveddefects ofwelfarist views like utilitarianismwhich seem to requireeither too little or too much in the way of interpersonal judgmentsof utility to be morallysatisfying. In classical (objective)welfarism, where cardinal scales and interpersonalcomparisons of utility are permitted,welfanst theoriesarevulnerableto the chargethatthey fail to take seriously the differencesamong persons, since paternalisticjudgmentsmay be employed to increase one person's welfare at the expense of another's. Yet if the neoclassical move toward subjective welfarism is made and interpersonalcomparisonsare disallowed, welfarism either requiresinformation about mental states on which it seems impossible to rely without generatingperverseincentives for the systematicmisrepresentationof pref-

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erences or it is managed through the market-basedtheory of revealed preference.This latterstrategyrunsinto the disquietingfact thatpeople have differentresourcesto expresspreferencesin a marketsystem, neatlysummed up in Anatole France'squip thatthe poor are free to sleep underthe bridges of Paris.36These difficulties with welfarism are no less intractablethan are they often repeated,and resourclsmis thoughtto be attractivepartlybecause it appearsto open up the possibility of avoiding them. Its motivatingidea is that some set of instrumentalgoods - such as Rawls's primarygoods - can be thoughtof as valuable for all rationalindividualconceptionsof the good life, and it is those that should be justly distributedwithout referenceto the mentalstates(or welfareotherwiseconstrued)thatthey allegedly engender.37 Rawls and Dworklnboth arguethat, like other resources,humancapacities should for certainpurposesbe regardedas social goods. This socialization of capacitiesstrategymay be thoughtof as a mirrorimage of the classical Marxianone: where, for Marx,nonhumanresourcescease to be of independent moralinterest,being reducibleto the capacitiesnecessarilyexpendedin their creationor their separationfrom nature,on this view capacities cease to be of independentmoralinterest:They are treatedas social resourceslike any other.ThusRawls arguesforciblythatdifferencesboth m naturalabilities and in contingencies of upbringingare morallyarbitraryfactors that should not, in principle,determinethe rewardsthatpeople receive, usefully renderdebate beside the point for argumentsabout distribuing the nature/nurture tive justice.38Similarly,Dworklntreatshumancapacities and externalmaterialresourcesas moralequivalentsfromthe standpointof distributivejustice, arguingthatalthoughthere may be good reasonsfor resistingthe redistribution of physical and mental resources (insofar as this is technologically feasible), a case might nonetheless be made for compensating those with inferiorphysical and mental resourcesfor their relative incapacities.39 Given the precedingdiscussion of luck and producedcapacities, it might be suggestedthatthereis no way genuinely to link entitlementsto work other thanvia some variantof the socializationof capacities strategy,that it alone can consummatethe workmanshipideal. This is true,I think,but the variant of the ideal thus saved is so thin that it dispenses with a good partof what gives it its intuitive appeal. This has to do with the psychological side of workmanship,with the sense of subjective satisfaction that attaches to the idea of making something that one can subsequentlycall one's own. We all know the feeling, and it is not easily arguedthatit can apply to a generalized notion that there is a sense in which I, along with everyone else, own everythingthateveryone appearsat a given time and place to make. And for a species so critically reliantas is ours on productiveactivity for survival, it

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seems perverseto deny the legitimacy of so powerful a spurto productive activityas the psychic activitywhich producingsomethingthatone can own brings. This is why theoristslike Rawls and Dworkinbalk at the implicationsof the socializationof capacitiesstrategy.Rawlssuppliesa list of primarygoods which are held to be desirable for any rationallife plan, but he explicitly refusesto confrontthe implicationsof his accountof the moralarbitrariness of differingcapacitieswhen he holdsthattheeffectivenesswithwhich people are able to use resources- or choose to use them- is not a relevantconsideration in deciding how resources should be distributed.There are two differentissues here, both of which raise internaltensions in the Rawlsian account.One derives from AmartyaSen's point that if what we really want justly to distributeis what people of greatlydifferentcapacitiesare enabled to do, thenwe cannotuse Rawlsianprimarygoods;we needa differentmetric which takesaccountof how differentpeopleemploy capacitiesandresources as basic.4 Second, there is the point made by Cohen, Nagel, Areson, and othersthatdifferentpeople have differentpreferencesandgoals, some more expensive and more difficult to satisfy than others. Rawls's attempt to sidestepthis problemby arguingthatthese are not afflictionsbut arechosen scarcelymeetstheobjectionbecause,as Scanlonandothershave noted,often they are not.41 Dworkin also balks at the implicationsof the socializationof capacities strategy.He invites us to speculateon how resourcesmight, in principle,be equalizedby use of a hypotheticalauctionin which all partiesbegin with the same finite numberof bargainingchips.42As partof this he arguesthat human capacitiesshould be thoughtof as resources,yet thereare two ways in which he dodges the full implications of the socialization of capacities strategy.First he claims that althoughcapacities (his term is "physicaland mentalpowers")are resourcesand, as a consequence,legitimateobjects of a theoryof distributivejustice, they shouldnonethelessbe treateddifferently from "independentmaterialresources."With physical and mentalpowers, the goal shouldnot be to striveto distributethemjustly (which,for Dworkin, meansequally).Instead,the problemis construedas one of discovering"how far the ownershipof independentexternalresourcesshould be affected by differencesthatexist in physical and mentalpowers,andthe responseof our For this reason Dworkin argues theory should speak in that vocabulary."43 that people should be compensatedby referenceto a standardarrivedat by our speculationsconcerningwhetherand to what extent people would, on average,have insuredagainstthe particularhandicapor disabilityor lack of

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talent ex ante, assuming that insurancerateswould be set in a competitive market.44 Notice that Dworkln supplies no principledargumentfor why physical andmentalpowers shouldbe treateddifferentlythanmaterialresourcesfrom the standpointof distributivejustice. The assertion that they "cannot be manipulatedor transferred,even so far as technology permits"is not further explained or justified, but since Dworkin has chosen to treat powers as resources, an explanation is surely In order.45This is so not least because compensation in any amount will sometimes be inadequateto equalize a power-or capacity-deficiency(as in the case of blindness),as Dworkinelsewhere notes, yet equality of resources is his basic criterionof distributive justice. In such circumstances,compensationbased on a standardset by a hypotheticalinsuranceauction cannot be said to equalize the resourcesof two persons, one blind and one sighted.46Yet it is not always true, pace Dworkin,thattheirpowers of sight could not be equalized.47The statemight forcibly transplantone eye from a sighted personto the blind one in orderto equalize their resources,or, for that matter,simply blind the sighted person. Less callous and more interesting, it might invest billions of dollars on research on and development of artificial eyes, financed by a tax on the sighted. If Dworkin is to avoid such unpalatableresults, he must supply an argumentfor why we may be said to be entitledto our powers andcapacities (and in some sense responsiblefor having or lacking them) in different(and trumping)ways thanwe can be said to be entitledto materialresources,given his equationof the two. In the absence of such an argument,it is difficult to see how Dworkin can adopt the socialization of capacities strategy in principle, yet simply assert that people are entitled to, and responsiblefor, theircapacities and incapacitiesin fact. The second way in which Dworkin refuses to live with the socialization of capacities strategythathe otherwise embracesconcerns his discussion of how ourconception of a personshould be distinguishedfrom ourconception of that person's circumstances. Dworkin argues that we need a view of distributivejustice thatis "ambitionsensitive."It requiresa view of equality by referenceto which people "decidewhat sorts of lives to pursueagainsta backgroundof informationabout the actual costs that their choices impose on other people and hence on the total stock of resourcesthat may fairly be used by them."This he tries to achieve by assigning "tastesand ambitions" to the person, and "physical and mental powers" to his "circumstances," arguing that the former are not relevant considerations in deciding how resourcesshould be distributed.48 In this way he hopes to rescue an islandof

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creative autonomy for the individualagent. Dworkin wants to rescue the kernelof what is intuitivelyattractivein the workmanshipideal:the idea that when people conceive of andput into practiceproductiveplans, the benefits from the resultingactionsshould flow back to them. Yet he wants to do this without being swamped by the difficulties of overdeterminationthat flow from the Rawlsianclaim thatthe distributionof physical andmentalpowers is morallyarbitrary.49 Dworkin's strategy fails. The volitions that we are able to form, the ambitionsthatit occurs to us to develop, aregreatlyinfluenced,perhapseven determined,by our powers and capacities.To "thinkbig," to "resolveto go for broke,"to steel oneself throughself-controlto performdemandingacts, do these reflect ambitionor capacity?When we describesomeone as ambitious, are we not describingsomething more basic to her psychology and constitutionthan her tastes?There are certainlycircumstancesin which we would say that lack of confidence is an incapacitythat preventsthe formation (not just the attainment)of particularambitions.Differentpeople have differentcapacities to form differentambitions,and those differentcapacities must be as morallytaintedfrom Dworkin'spoint of view as any other capacities. Donald Trumpis able to develop more far-reachingambitions than, say, Archie Bunkerdue at least partlyto luck in the genetic pool and the circumstancesof his upbringing.50 Similar argumentscan be made about the differentabilities to form (or refrainfrom forming)differentkinds of tastes, whetherexpensive, compulsive, or both, as Dworkinis aware.The case thatDworkinconsidersis where a person might have an incapacitatingobsession that he wishes he did not have, and Dworkin deals with this by arguing that such cravings may be thought of as handicaps and thus handled via his hypotheticalinsurance scheme.51But this is to sidestepthe point being madehere, which is thatthe obsession may itself incapacitatea personfromformingthe relevantsecondorderdesire to make Dworkin'shypotheticalinsurancesolution work. Are we to say of an alcoholic, whose affliction is so severe thathe cannoteven formthe desire not to be an alcoholic, thatthe preferencefor alcohol results from his taste ratherthanhis incapacity9I thinknot.52 Withall acquiredtastes (notjust the expensive), experiencingthe taste is by definition conditionalon the exercise of pertinentcapacities.A taste for good beer or even just for beer,a tastefor a particularkindof music, perhaps even for any music-these can be developed only throughthe exercise of relevantcapacities. We would not say that a deaf personcould have a taste for music of a particularsort or even a taste for music of any sort (although of course we could intelligibly say that such a person might perhapswish

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thatshe was able to have such a taste).Likewise with beer and someone who had no functioningtastebudsor sense of smell. The idea that we form our tastes and ambitionsin some way that is independentof our resourcesand capacities is too whiggish, as would be revealed to anyone who tried to performa thought experimentin which she was requiredto decide on her future tastes and ambitions while kept in ignoranceof her powers and capacities. Surelywe have learnedthis muchfromtwo decadesof debateabout the veil of ignorance.Whatdrives Dworkin'sintuitionhere is the notion that people should be held responsibleonly for the choices they make in life, not for things over which they have no control.A variantof this thesis might be defensible, but Dworkin's treatmentof it is unpersuasive.His replacement of the resourcesversus capacities distinctionwith the ambitionsand tastes versus physical and mental powers distinction fails to rescue the Lockean notion of an autonomous agent, of whom rights and responsibilitiesmay legitimatelybe predicated. To sum up: Like Rawls, Dworkin is unableto live with the deterministic implicationsof the socializationof capacitiesstrategy.This, I havesuggested, is partlybecause when taken to its logical conclusion this strategy undermines what is attractivein the workmanshipideal. Yetreluctantas Rawls and Dworkinbothareto abandontheirintuitivecommitmentsto the idea of moral agency that informs the ideal, neither has supplied an account of how this can be renderedconsistentwith the socializationof capacitiesstrategywhich both feel compelled to endorse.This reflectsdeep tensionswithin the secular variant of the workmanship ideal itself: It presses relentlessly toward a determinismwhich its very termssuggest we ought to be able to deny.

VI.PRODUCTIVEFICTIONS?CONSEQUENTIALIST AND DEMOCRATICCONSIDERATIONS Historicallinking strategiesfail to tie regimesof entitlementsto the work of productive agents in morally satisfying ways, yet theorists who have explored the full implications of junking them find the consequences too threateningto the Idea of personalresponsibility,even of personalidentity, to stomach. This is partly because once the labor theory of value has been rejected, there is no evident method to assess which work performedby whom ought to be compensated in what amount when a given object or service is produced.Liberaltheoristshave often arguedor assumedthatthe marketgeneratesthe appropriatesystem of rewards,but we saw in part III that this is not so; neoclassical variantsof the workmanshipideal take for

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granted prevailing distributionsof resources and capacities as mattersof "sheernaturalfact"withoutjustificatoryargument.However,the failure of the traditionalcontendingtheoriesto generatea metricby referenceto which we might plausiblyassess productivecontributionsdoes not underminethe intuitionthat there are productivecontributionsand that these should play some role injust distribution;this fact at leastpartlyaccountsfor the inability of people like Rawls and Dworkin to stick consistentlyto the socialization of capacitiesstrategy. The difficultyrunsdeeperthana problemof measurement,however.The tensions internalto the workmanshipideal are partly reminiscentof this paradoxof free will: A person may find it both rationallyundeniableand psychologically impossible to accept that all of his actions are determined. In a similarspiritit mightbe arguedthatforbothindividualandspecies, some fictionsaboutworkmanshipmaybe requiredfor reproductionandwell-being even if we know them to be fictions. The belief thatautonomousproductive action is possible may be indispensableto the basic integrityof the human psyche and necessaryfor generatingand sustainingthe incentiveto work on which humanbeings are, after all, critically reliant. As a result, although facts aboutmoralluck and producedproductivecapacitiesconspire- when confronted- to enfeeble the workmanshipideal, people may nonethelessbe powerlessto abandonit. These considerationsmight reasonablybe thoughtto counsel embracing a variantof the workmanshipideal on consequentialistgroundswhile conceding thatit incorporatescausal andmoralfictions.Thereis muchto be said in supportof such a view, but ratherthanexploreit at length here, I will take brief note of three difficulties that it is bound to confront.These should be evident from my repeateduse of "may"and its cognates in the preceding paragraph.First,althougha wide consensusmightbe possible on the principle of a consequentialistdefense, it seems inevitablethatthere would be an equallywide dissensusover what it entails in practice.It is not only the labor theory of value and neoclassical price theory that fail to reward work impartially;no neutral system of rewardshas ever been developed. As a consequence,whateverfiction is employedwill workto the disproportionate benefit of some and be subject to endemic political controversy-as Marx noted so perspicaciouslyin his discussion of rightsundersocialism.53 Second, distributive questions aside, the consequentialist benefits of workmanshipare not beyond legitimatecontroversy.If it gets out of control, the work ethic can be subversive of psychological well-being and promote morallyunattractivekinds of acquisitiveness,and the realizationthat invisible hands can as often be malevolent as benign suggests that the con-

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sequentialisteffects of embracingthe workmanshipideal will not always be beneficial. A legitimatingethic thatencouragesproductiveaction can easily thus become too much of a good thing, and it can have externaleffects (on the environment,for instance) thatare bound to be controversialpolitically. Third,if a variantof the workmanshipideal is embracedon consequentialist grounds,questionsmust arise concerningits appropriaterange,given the inevitabilityof its conflict with otherjustice values. Once it is conceded that the rightsof humanworkmanshiphave no naturalstatusor special trumping moralpower, then there is boundto be controversyaboutwhere they fit into a governing distributivescheme that must cope with multiple demands on scarce resources-from redressingthe effects of histoncal disadvantage,to caring for the sick and elderly, to supportingjust causes in other countries. In short,it seems unlikely thata consequentialistscheme could be developed that would or should be beyond the boundsof political controversy. These are not Intuitionsaboutmere implementation.Once it is conceded, in a world of endemic scarcity,thatthere is neithera theological model nor a calculus of contributionfrom which correctdistributiveinjunctionscan be "readoff," we have to come to gripswith theprimacyof politics to arguments aboutdistributivejustice. It is remarkable,in this light, thatso little attention has been paidby justice theoriststo how andby whom theirprinciplesshould be implemented-particularly given the dismal historcal records of both laissez-faireand statistdistributiveregimes.54The idea thatwhat isjust in the distributionof social goods can be reasonedaboutindependentlyof how such justice mightpracticallybe achievedrestson inappropriateexpectationsfrom philosophy, thrown into sharp relief by the undergraduatewho insisted on knowing why, now thatRawls's differenceprinciple"hasbeen established," the Constitutionhas not yet been changed to incorporateit. Although few academic theoristswill permitthemselves such revealing directness,much of the debatediscussed hereproceedson the assumptionthatthereis a correct answer,that Rawls, Dworkin,Nozick, Cohen, or someone else will eventually get it right.But if the reasoningbeing pressedhere is accepted,whether and to what degree the workmanshipideal should be institutionalizedis a political not a philosophicalquestion,and as a consequence rightsof workmanshipcannot fairly be thoughtof as anteriorto the political process. The researchagenda opened up by this conclusion is to explore ways of developing and grappling with the implications of democraticdistributive principles.To attemptsuch explorationnow would take us too far from the scope of the presentessay. However, let me note in conclusion that Cohen and otherjustice theorists may be right that in democraticsystems there is the permanentpossibility for tyrannyof the majority,but the risks of this

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should be evaluated not against some unspecified ideal of a just social order (which Cohen, among others, has done much to undermine)but against the alternativefeasible systems of orderingsocial relations." In this light I would venturethat the question should not be whetheror not democracy carrieswith it the threatof majoritytyrannybut whetheror not this threatis betterto live with than systems that carrywith them the threatof minority tyranny.I have suggested elsewhere that it is, a suggestion I hope in future to elaborateinto a full defense of a democraticconceptionof social justice, conceived of as a thirdway between statistand market-basedaccounts.56

NOTES 1. I takethe term"workmanshipideal"fromJamesTully,ADiscourse ConcerningProperty (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1980). 2. The following discussion of Locke incorporatesand buildson aspects of my accountin The Evolution of Rights in Liberal Theory(Cambrdge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1986), 86-118. 3. Locke minimizes the independentcontributionof resourcesby arguingthat the world which has been given us in common is God's "waste"and insisting that"labourmakesthe far greaterpart,"althoughhe is famouslyvague aboutthe preciserelativecontributionsof laborand nature.See Locke, Two Treatisesof Government(Cambridge:Cambrdge University Press, 1970), 330, 331,337, 338, 341. 4. Ibid., 329. To this moral theory Locke added two dubious empirical claims which combinedto get him from the theoryof use rightsto the commonto somethinglike the view of propertythat twentieth-centurylibertariansoften wrongly designate as Lockean.Firstwas the claim thatwith the introductionof money the injunctionagainstwaste, althoughnot in principle transcended,for practicalpurposesbecame obsolete. Locke believed that as well as itself not being subject to physical decay, money made possible the comparativelymore productiveuse of naturalresourcesthrough trade and productivework. See RichardAshcraft, Locke's Two Treatisesof Government(New York:Allen & Unwln, 1987), 123-50;RevolutionaryPolitics and Locke'sTwoTreatisesof Government(Princeton,NJ:PrincetonUniversityPress, 1986), 270-85. For the view (which Ashcraftcriticizes) that Locke thoughtthe proviso transcendedwith the introductionof money, see C. B. Macpherson,ThePolitical TheoryofPossessive Individualism (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1962), 203-21. Second was the claim that the productivity effects of enclosing common land would be so great that the "enough, and as good" proviso could, in practice,also be dispensedwith (therebylegitimatingprivateownership).It is possible to rejecteitheror both of the empiricalclaims withoutrejectingLocke's basic moralargument, althoughany such move would jeopardize his defenses of unlimitedaccumulationand prvate property. 5. By following Hobbes and Pufendorfin this formulationof the distinction,Locke was embracingan importantdeparturefrom the Thomisttradition,rootedin Grotius'revival of the Romanlaw conceptionof a nght as one's suum,a lknd of moralpower orfacultas which every manhas, andwhich has its conceptualroots,as QuentinSkinnerhas established,in the writings

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of Suarezand ultimatelyGerson and the concilianst tradition.See The Foundationsof Modern Political Thought(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1978), vol 2, 117, 176-78. See also RichardTuck,NaturalRights Theories(Cambridge:CambridgeUmversityPress, 1979); John Finnis,NaturalLaw and Natural Right (Oxford;Clarendon,1980), 207-8. 6. John Locke,Essays on the Law of Nature,edited by W.Von Leiden(Oxford:Clarendon, 1958), 111, 187. 7. Locke, TwoTreaties,311, 347. For furtherdiscussion, see Tully,Discourse, 35-8; John Dunn, ThePolitical ThoughtofJohn Locke (CambridgeUniversityPress, 1969), 95. 8. Tully,Discourse, 109-10, 121. 9. Evidencethatcapacitiesmay be boughtand sold can be found in Locke's insistencethat "the turfs my servanthas cut become my property,"and his accountof wage labor which states that"a free man makes himself a servantto another,by selling him for a certaintime, the service he undertakesto do, in exchange for wages he is to receive."That Locke thoughtwage laborenhancedproductivityis evident from his defense of enclosurepartlyon the groundsthat this would replace less efficient forms of subsistence production.See Second Treatise,90-97, 290, 292-93, 330, 365-66. On Locke on discipline and productivity,see Tully,"GoverningConduct," in Conscienceand Causistryin Early ModernEurope,edited by E. Leites (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversityPress, 1988), 12-71. 10. On the implicit tensions between the causal argumentand the workmanshipideal in Locke's formulation,see David Ellerman,"On the LaborTheory of Property,"Philosophical Forum 16 (Summer1985): 318-22. 11. Forfurtherdiscussion,see PatrickRiley, Willand Political Legitimacy(Cambridge,MA: HarvardUniversityPress, 1982), 64ff., Shapiro,Evolution, 105-7. 12. On the role of the provisos in the theory of individualappropriation,see Locke, Two Treaties,327-44; on charity,ibid., 206; and on the naturallaw limits to conqueror'srightstojust reparations,ibid., 438. 13. On the hierarchicalpriorityof Locke's naturallaw requirements,see Ashcraft,Locke's Two Treatises,123-50. 14. See Ashcraft, "Locke and Eighteenth-CenturyConcepts of Property:The Politics of ClarkLecturedeliveredat the UCLA Centerfor 17thand 18th CenturyStudies, Interpretation," November 1989. 15. 1skirtthe question,not relevanthere,of the degree to which Marx'slabortheoryof value was influencedby Smith's and Ricardo's. 16. KarlMarx,Critiqueof the GothaProgram,in KarlMarxand FrederickEngels, Selected Works,vol. 3 (Los Angeles, CA: ProgressPublishers,1970), 15-17. 17. Ibid., 17,18. 18. Ibid., 18,19. 19. G. A. Cohen,"TheLaborTheoryof Valueand the Conceptof Exploitation,"Philosophy and PublicAffairs, 8, no. 4 (1979): 354. 20. Ibid. 355-56. Cohen does concede thatin some circumstancescapitalistsmay also work productivelybut not in theirprototypicalroles as capitalists.I do not meanto suggest thatCohen believes that the workmanship ideal is the only or most importantbasis for distributive entitlements. Indeed, his recent advocacy of equality of "access to advantage"suggests a different basis for distributivejustice, that people should not be held responsiblefor unchosen disadvantages.It is not yet possible to assess how the imperativesgeneratedby this injunction should affect otherrights,includingrightsof workmanship,in Cohen'sview because he defends equalityof access to advantageonly as what he dubsa weak formof egalitananism;he explicitly refrains from saying to what extent we should equalize in his sense, or even how conflicts

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between his land of equalizationand otherkinds thategalitariansmightprizeshould be settled. See Cohen, "On the Currencyof EgalitarianJustice."Ethics 99 (July 1989): 906-44; also "Equalityof What?On Welfare,Goods and Capabilities,"forthcomingin a volume of papers presentedat the WIDERSymposiumon the Qualityof Life and referredto here in manuscript form. Some of these issues are takenup briefly in my Political Criticism(Berkeley:University of CaliforniaPress, 1990), 217-19. 21. G. A. Cohen,"Self-Ownership,WorldOwnershipandEqualityI,"inJusticeandEquality Here and Now, edited by FrankLucash(Ithaca,NY: Cornell UmversityPress, 1986), 108-35; "Self-onwership,WorldOwnershipand EqualityII,"Social Philosophyand Policy, 3 (Spring 1986): 77-96. In "Self-ownershipI,"Cohenappealsto the idea that"valueaddersmeritreward" to attackNozlck's defense of privateownershipof externalresourcesby demonstrating(ingeniously) that differentforms of ownershipof externalresourcesmay, m some circumstances, rewardvalue addersmore often or more accuratelythana privatepropertyregime of the sort Nozick advocates(see esp. 128-30). In fairnessto Cohen it shouldbe noted thatin these essays he professes some discomfortwith the self-ownershipthesis (derivingfrom the inequalitiesit must inevitably generate given that some people are more productivethan others), and he promisesat a futuretime to show how andwhy the self-ownershipthesisshouldbe undermined. To say thatone owns oneself is to say somethingbroaderthanthatone owns one's productive capacities, and it may be that both Cohen and I would eventuallywant to say that productive capacitiesshouldbe distinguishedfrom otherdimensionsof personalidentityandgiven less, or at any ratedifferentkindsof, protection. 22. John Roemer, "PropertyRelations versus Surplus Value in MarxianExploitation," Philosophyand PublicAffairs, 11, no. 4 (Fall 1982): 281-313. Moregenerally,see his "Should MarxistsBe Interestedin Exploitation?"Philosophyand PublicAffairs,14, no. 1 (Winter1985): 30-65, andA General Theoryof Class and Exploitation(Cambridge,MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 1982). 23. Roemer, "PropertyRelations,"284-92, 305-10. Roemer also insists that even when differentialownershipis necessaryforreasonsof productivity,if it is the differentialdistribution of assets as such,"ratherthantheskills of capitalists,whichbringsaboutincentives,competition, innovation,and increasedlaborproductivitywhich benefiteven the workers,thenthe capitalists do not deserve their returns."By its terms, this reasoning concedes the moral force of the workmanshipideal: By contraryhypothesis, were it the differences in skills ratherthan the distributionof assets as such thataccountedfor greaterproductivityand so on, presumablythe capitalistwould deserve his differentialbenefit. Roemerdoes not face this possibilitybecause he assumesequalityof skill and propensitytowardrisk. 24. See JurgenHabermas,"Technologyas Science andIdeology,"Towarda RationalSociety (Boston: Beacon, 1970), 62-80. 25. Marxand Engels, Selected Works,vol. 1, 20; see also 26-30, 38-50, 62-73. 26. KarlMarx,Capital, vol. 1 (London:Lawrence& Wishart,1974), 82-83. 27. The difficulties inherentin tryingto pin down just what work has been done by which worker in a given cycle of productionhave been well exploredby G. A. Cohen, "The Labor Theoryof Value";Roemer,"PropertyRelationsversus SurplusValue"and"ShouldMarxistsBe Interestedin Exploitation?" 28. Marx,Selected Works,vol. 3, 17-19; Capital, vol. 1, 83. 29. For reasonselaboratedelsewhere, I do not regardMarx'snotion of a superabundance that transcendsscarcity as coherentor even consistent with his own accountof humanneeds, nordo I regardas plausiblethe attemptsby Cohenandothersto reasonaboutdistributionwithout takingaccountof endemicscarcityby referringto the idea of "relativeabundance."If I am right,

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those who continueto insist thatthe moralforce of Marx'scritiqueof capitalismdependson the possibilityof a communisteconomy of superabundancearecommittedto the view thatit has no force at all. See Political Criticism,217-19. 30. Robert,Nozick, Anarchy,State, and Utopia (New York:Basic Books, 1974), 169-72, 265-68. 31. Cohen usefully points out thatdespite the much trumpetedcommitmentto freedombehind libertarianthinking,in philosophieslike Nozlck's freedomis derivativeof self-ownership. See "Self-ownershipII,"77. 32. RichardPosner,TheEconomics of Justice (Cambridge,MA: HarvardUniversityPress, 1981), 76-87; JohnHarsanyl,"Democracy,Equality,andPopularConsent,"in Power,Inequality, andDemocraticPolitics, editedby IanShapiroandGrantReeher(Boulder,CO:WestviewPress, 1988), 279. In the face of argumentsabout the pnma facie moralarbitrarynessof theirsecular variantsof the workmanshipideal, neoclassical theoristsoften shift to consequentialistjustificatory grounds,arguingthat treatingproductivecapacitiesand what they generateas privately owned and alienablevia the marketmaximizes productiveefficiency. See Posner,Economicsof Justice, 81; also Nozlck, Anarchy,State, and Utopia, 149-82, 232-76. For criticism of such consequentialistclaims, see my "RichardPosner'sPraxis,"Ohio State Law Journal, 48 (1987): 999-1047. 33. See O'Brien v. O'BrLen66 NY2d., 576 (1985), in which the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in the Second Judicial Departmentof New York upheld a decision that a husband'slicense to practice medicine was maritalpropertyon the groundsthat"[t]he contributions of one spouse to the other's profession or career representinvestments in the economic partnershipof the marriageandthe productof the parties'jointefforts."Thus,although New Yorkis not a communitypropertystate, the divorcingwife was awarded40 percentof the estimated value of the license to be paid over eleven years, and the divorcing husbandwas orderedto maintaina life insurancepolicy for the unpaidbalanceof the award,with thedivorcing wife as the beneficiary. 34. See Nancy Folbre, "ExploitationComes Home: A Critiqueof the MarxianTheory of Family Labor,"CambridgeJournal of Economics 6 (1982): 317-29. 35. As Cohen notes in "Self-ownershipI," in this respectliberalslike Rawls and Dworkin, who rejectself-ownership,must be accountedto the left of Marxists,who generally embraceit (pp. 113-15). 36. This difficulty inevitably rears its head when a theory designed for the purpose of predictingprices becomes the normativebasis of argumentsabout distribution.I discuss this reduction at length in "Three Fallacies Concerning Majorities, Minorities, and Democratic Politics," in NOMOS XXXII:Majorities and Minorities, edited by John Chapmanand Alan Wertheimer(New York:New YorkUniversity Press, 1990), 81-94. 37. For useful accounts of what is at issue between resourcistand welfare egalitanans, see AmartyaSen, "Equalityof What?"in The TannerLectureson HumanValues,editedby Sterling M. McMurrin(Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1980), 197-220; Ronald Dworkmin, "WhatIs Equality9Part I: Equality of Welfare,"Philosophy and Public Affairs, 10 (Summer 1981): 185-246, and "WhatIs Equality?PartII: Equalityof Resources,"Philosophyand Public Affairs, 10 (Fall 1981): 283-345. Fordefense of "middleground"metrics,intermediatebetween resourcismand welfansm, see Sen, "Well-being,Agency and Freedom,"theJournal of Philosophy, 82, No. 4 (April 1985): 169-221; RichardAmeson, "Equalityand Equal Opportunityfor Welfare," Philosophical Studies 56 (1989): 77-93; and Cohen, "Currencyand Egalitarian Jutsice"and "Equalityof What?"

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38. See JohnRawls,A Theoryof Justice (Cambridge,MA: HarvardUniversityPress, 1971), 12, 15, 72-73, 101-103, 507-11. 39. Ibid., 12, 18f., 137f., 172, 200; Dworkin,"WhatIs EqualityI", 300-1. 40. See Sen, "Equalityof What?"212-20; "Well-being,Agency and Freedom,"185-221. 41. Rawls's most explicit statementof the view thatpeople mustbe regardedas responsible for theirpreferencescan be found in "Social Unity and PrimaryGoods,"in Utilitarianismand Beyond,editedby AmartyaSen andBernardWilliams(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1982), 168-69. For discussion of the tensions between this claim and the argument that differences in capacity are arbitrary,which Rawls defends most fully in A Theoryof Justice, 101-104, see Thomas Scanlon, "Equalityof Resources and Equality of Welfare:A Forced Marriage?"Ethics 97 (1986): 116-17; "The Significance of Choice,"The TannerLectureson HumanValues,8 (Salt LakeCity: Universityof UtahPress, 1988), 192-201; RichardAreson, "Equalityand Equal Opportunityfor Welfare,""PrimaryGoods Reconsidered,"Nous, forthcoming; Cohen,"Equalityof What?"7-10. 42. Ronald Dworkin, "What Is Equality9"partsI and II. Lack of space does not allow expoundingat length on my reasons,but I thinkDworkin'shypotheticalauction, describedin "Whatis Equality?II," 283-90, fails in its own terms as a device for deciding on what could count as an equal initial allocationof resources.An example of one of the difficulties, which will be intelligibleonly to initiatesof these debates,is thatin the hypotheticalauctionDworlin describes,it would be quitepossible for some playeror playersto bid up the prce of some good which he or she or they did not want, but which he or she or they knew someone else had to have at all costs, such as the available stock of insulin on the island in Dworkin's example, assumingtherewas one diabetic.In this way the diabeticcould be forced eitherto spend all (or at least a disproportionatequantity)of his initial resourceson insulin, thereby making other bundlesof goods relativelycheaperfor the otherinhabitants,or the diabetic mightbe forced to buy it at an artificiallyhigh price from whoever had boughtit in the initial auction.The more general point is that Dworkin's hypotheticalstory assumes that people do not have different strategicresourcesand powers to bargainand that they will not have reasons to misrepresent theirpreferencesduringthe initial auction.But thereis no good reasonto supposethateitherof these assumptionsis true,andas a result,thereis no reasonto believe thata hypotheticalauction of the kindhe describescan be a device which equalizes resourcesin the way thathe claims. 43. Ibid., 300-1. 44. As a result, insuringagainstthe possibility of not having an extremelyrareskill would be farmoreexpensivethaninsunngagainstthe possibilityof nothavinga widely sharedcapacity such as sight. In this way Dworkinhopes to come up with a theoryof equalityof resourcesthat does not itself make implicitjudgments aboutwelfare and avoids the "slaveryof the talented" problemwhich any theory that permits compensationfor differencesin capacities must confront. See Dworkin, ibid., 292-304. Again for initiatesonly: notice that for the hypothetical insurancemarketargumentto work it has to be assumednotonly thateachof the ex antechoosers has equal initial resources(see note 42) but thatnone of them has any incapacityor absence of talent (since otherwise the question of whetheror not to insureagainst the possibility of not having it could not arise). This latterI take to be an unthinkablyincoherentspeculation,given that talents and incapacities are treatedas analytical equivalentsfrom the standpointof the hypotheticalinsurancemarket. 45. Ibid.,301. 46. Ibid.,300, where he notes in oppositionto the idea thattherecan be a view of "normal" human powers that no amount of initial compensationcould make someone born blind or mentallyincompetentequal in physicalor mentalresourceswith someonetakento be "normal" in these ways.

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Shapiro/ RESOURCES,CAPACITIES,AND OWNERSHIP 71 47. Ibid., 302: "Someonewho is born with a senous handicapfaces his life with what we concede to be fewer resources,just on thataccount,thanothersdo. This justifies compensation, undera scheme devoted to equalityof resources,and thoughthe hypotheticalinsurancemarket does not rght the balance-nothing can-it seeks to remedy one aspect of the resulting unfairness"(italics added). 48. Ibid., 288, 302, 311. 49. Ibid., 311ff. 50. I should not be understoodhere as saying that people always have the capacities to achieve their ambitionsor even that we cannot develop ambitionswhich we know we cannot achieve, although I suspect that sustained analysis would reveal that part of the difference between an ambitionanda fantasyresides in the fact thatthe formeris generallya spurto action in a way thatthe latterneed not be. Here,I want only to establishthatit is not credibleto believe that our ambitionsare developed independentlyof our capacities, which Dworkln'scategoral distinctionrequires. 51. Dworkin,"WhatIs Equality' II,"302-3ff. 52. Cohen has tred to mimmize the extent of such difficultiesby suggestingthatwe should not confuse the trueclaim thatour capacities for effort are "influenced"by factorsbeyond our control with the false claim that people like Nozick mistakenly attributeto egalitarianslike Rawls, that those capacities are "determined"by factors beyond our control. Preservingthis distinctionenables Cohen to say that althoughnot all effort deserves reward,it is not the case that no effort deserves reward, that effort "is partly praiseworthy,partly not," although he concedes thatin practice"we cannotseparatethe parts."See Cohen,"Equalityof What?"8-10. Yet once it is concededthatthe very decision to choose to expendeffort is influencedby factors thatareconcededto be morallyarbitrary,one suspectsthatthe difficultybecomesone of principle ratherthan practicality;certainly Cohen offers no account of how that component of effort meritingrewardmight, in principle,be singled out. 53. Marxand Engels, Selected Works,vol. 3, 15-18. 54. For instance, in his only discussion of democratic decision-making in the "Selfownership"articles (to which he devotes a single paragraph),Cohen remarksthat traditional socialist hostility to bills of rights has to be disavowed. The socialist reply to the liberal constitutionalistthat "socialism is complete democracy, that it bnngs within the ambit of democraticdecision issues aboutproductionand consumptionwhich capitalismexcludes from the publicagenda"is now believedby Cohento be inadequate.A defensiblesocialist constitution, he argues,"mustcontaina bill of individualrights,which specifies thingswhich the community cannot do to, or demandof, any individual."The proferredreason derives from the fact that socialist democraticdecisions requireeither a unammousor a majorityvote. If they require unanimity,then they have the potential to destroy individualfreedom of action and trivialize self-ownership (since any action might requireunanimousconsent before legitimately being undertaken),and majorityrule without a bill of rights "also legitimates unacceptabletyranny over the individual." See "Self-ownership II," 87. Yet Cohen does not address the much argued-overissues of whatthe contentof thisbill shouldbe andhow the difficultiesof unanimity and majorityrule should be managedin the business of constitutionmaking.For discussion of some of these issues, see my "ThreeFallacies,"81-113. In fairnessto Cohenit mustbe said that he claims not to have done full justice to these issues, which he promisesto take up more fully in the future(although,to my knowledge, he has not done so). 55. Cohen may be wise to insist that a socialist constitution should protect individual freedoms via a bill of rights (see note 54), but as the Lochner era in the United States demonstratedall too clearly,bills of rightscan be used to facilitatewhat Cohenwould regardas exploitationas well as to preventit-whatever the intentionsof those who create them. This is

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not to say that bills of rights are undesirable,only that their benefits from the standpointof achieving and maintainingsocial justice are not self-evident. Whethersuch bills are desirable, what theirscope and contentshould be, and who should be empoweredto alterand implement them are controversialquestionsthat cannot be declaredbeyond politics (and, I would argue, beyond democraticpolitics). For an empiricallybased argumentthatdemocraticsystems have best protectedindividualrightshistorically,see RobertDahl, Democracyand Its Critics (New Haven, CT:Yale UniversityPress, 1989), 135-92. 56. For the suggestion, see my Political Criticism, chap. 9. The first installmentof the positiveargumentis my "ThreeWaysto Be a Democrat,"a paperpresentedat theannualmeeting of the AmericanPolitical Science Association in San Francisco,August 1990.

lan Shapirois Associate Professorof Political Science at YaleUniversityand authorof The Evolutionof Rightsin LiberalTheory (1986) and Political Criticism(1990). He is currentlyworkingon a book titled DemocraticJustice.

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