Abstract
Recently, political philosophy has seen a resurgence of debates regarding the wrongs of capitalism and the purpose of socialism. Some argue that capitalism is unjustly exploitative, but only contingently so, depending on unjust distributions. The purpose of socialism is thus to achieve distributive justice. Others have objected that capitalism is intrinsically unjust because it is domineering, regardless of the presence of distributive injustice. The purpose of socialism is to overcome the injustice of domination through workers’ collective control of the labor process. I argue that both views offer an insufficient critique of capitalism, with regard to their site of analysis, as well as their account of the distinctive problem with capitalism, the purpose of socialism, and its institutional demands. I propose a normative critique of capitalism that (i) focuses on capitalism’s mode of investment and valuation, beyond the labor process, as its core site of analysis, (ii) reconceptualizes capitalism’s distinctive ill as one of social alienation, rather than exploitation or domination, and its wrong as a matter of legitimacy rather than justice, (iii) understands the point of socialism, beyond redistribution and nondomination, as one of reconciliation, and (iv) argues for a broader account of economic democracy, which includes the democratic planning of investment.
Chiara Cordelli
Chiara Cordelli is Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and an affiliated faculty member in the Department of Philosophy. She is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for History and Economics at Sciences Po. In addition to her published articles, she is the author of The Privatized State (Princeton University Press, 2020), which was awarded the 2021 ECPR Political Theory Prize for best first book in political theory, and of Privatocrazia (Mondadori 2022), as well as the editor of NOMOS and the co-editor of Philanthropy in Democratic Societies (University of Chicago Press, 2016). Cordelli has held visiting positions at Stanford, Princeton, Harvard, and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Her current book project, Ruled by None: A Political Theory of Capitalism (under contract with PUP), develops an alienation-centered critique of capitalism and a normative case for financial democracy.
