Socialism and Democracy

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Capitalism, Class Conflict, and Domination

Samuel Arnold

To cite this article: Samuel Arnold (2016): Capitalism, Class Conflict, and Domination, Socialism
and Democracy, DOI: 10.1080/08854300.2016.1215810

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Socialism and Democracy, 2016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2016.1215810

Capitalism, Class Conflict, and

Domination

Samuel Arnold

1. Introduction
Capitalisms defenders have long praised it for its freedom. It is,
they say, a system of free markets, free enterprise, and free labor a
system that extends maximal freedom to choose (in Milton Fried-
mans famous phrase) to all members of society, from the towering cor-
porate raider to the humblest worker.1 Nobody, after all, forces workers
to work, or employers to hire, or consumers to buy. Rather, under
capitalism people freely choose to do these things. So whatever else
one might say about it, surely it must be admitted that capitalism
scores very well in terms of freedom: it promises to replace the coercion
and domination characteristic of alternative modes of production (e.g.,
feudalism, bureaucratic socialism) with voluntary, mutually beneficial
exchange.
Socialists typically reply that this paean to capitalist freedom
obscures more than it illuminates, especially the bit about free labor.
True, under capitalism workers are self-owners, and therefore cannot
be forced to work for any capitalist in particular (or indeed, for any capi-
talist at all). They have, that is, the formal freedom to refuse employ-
ment. But the socialist will insist workers propertylessness
renders this formal freedom empty. Lacking access to the means of pro-
duction, workers have little choice but to work for some capitalist or
other merely to survive. As Marx puts this point, workers belong not
to this or that capitalist but to the capitalist class.2 But what is it to
belong to another even if that other is a group rather than an individ-
ual if not slavery? Capitalism, socialists concede, represents an
advance on feudalism and chattel slavery by eradicating personal depen-
dence. But because it places workers at the mercy of the capitalist class,

1. Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose (New York: Harcourt, 1990).
2. Karl Marx, Wage Labor and Capital, in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. R. Tucker, 2nd
ed. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1978), 203217, at 205.

# 2016 The Research Group on Socialism and Democracy

2 Socialism and Democracy

capitalism does not overthrow the basic logic of enslavement. It simply

exchanges one form of enslavement for another: chattel slavery for
wage slavery, as socialists call it. So (socialists conclude) it is pro-
foundly misleading to describe capitalism as a paradigmatically free
society. In truth, capitalism is something close to the opposite: a realm
of deep of unfreedom in which the haves use their economic advan-
tages to systematically dominate the have-nots.
I believe that the standard socialist reply just rehearsed is funda-
mentally correct: surface appearances to the contrary, capitalists do dom-
inate workers. My aim in this article is to convey this old socialist truth in
a fresh, rigorous, and convincing way. It might be wondered why such a
revamping is needed. The answer is that the socialist argument sketched
above suffers from two important weaknesses. First, its central concept
domination is often left rather obscure and under-analyzed. What is
domination? Intuitively, it has something to do with subjection to
power, but this cant be the whole story, since there are many examples
of subjection to power and/or dependence e.g., the relationship of
student to teacher, or of citizen to a democratic state that we would
not want to classify as inherently entailing domination.
Second, even if the domination complaint (however we cash it out)
rings true with respect to the rapacious, unregulated capitalism of
Marxs day, surely (defenders of capitalism will say) it applies with
greatly reduced force to contemporary capitalism (at least as it presents
itself in the developed world), what with its safety nets, competitive
labor markets, worker-friendly regulations, and so on. In short: is it
even remotely plausible to describe a person with multiple job
options, a decent wage, and reasonable working conditions as a
wage slave?
In what follows, I repair these weaknesses, thus putting the old
socialist truth that capitalists dominate workers on a sturdier foun-
dation. I repair the first weakness by drawing on recent work in politi-
cal philosophy to clarify the concept of domination. I repair the second
weakness by explaining the sense in which capitalists dominate
workers even when workers have ample ability to exit particular
firms, and indeed even when they have ample ability thanks to
unconditional income support (such as a basic income) to exit
employment altogether.
My plan is as follows. Section 2 introduces the concept of power and
draws on recent work in political philosophy to clarify the conditions
under which power turns into domination. Power becomes dominating,
on the view I shall endorse, to the extent that the power-holder is not
forced to track the interests of those in his grasp. Sections 3 through 5
 Samuel Arnold 3

put this account of domination to work, using it to examine the capital-

ist/worker relationship. In particular, these sections establish, first, that
capitalists have power over workers, both within the site of production and
at the level of politics, and second, that this power constitutes domination,
for it is not forced to consider the interests of workers. Indeed, quite to
the contrary: drawing on the Marxist theory of class conflict, I show
that capitalists, far from having to consider workers interests, are actu-
ally forced (by the logic of capitalist competition) to use their power to
subvert workers interests. It follows that capitalists dominate workers.
Sections 6 and 7 show that this result holds across friendlier versions
of capitalism even those that include robust labor markets and uncon-
ditional income support.
What, then, is to be done? If capitalism is the problem, is socialism
the solution? I believe so, but I cannot make that case here. My present
aim is to resurrect (and improve) a traditional criticism of capitalism
rather than to explore socialist alternatives. But I hope that the critical
work done here might facilitate constructive efforts down the road,
since we must first understand capitalisms flaws before we can
build something better.

2. Power and domination

To introduce my arguments central normative concept domina-
tion I must first discuss several varieties of power.
Social power is the ability to get ones way in a relationship despite
resistance. Or, more precisely, lets say that A has social power over B if
A can get B to do something that B would otherwise prefer not to do.
Frequently, one person acquires social power over another in virtue of
having some form of interference power over that other. A thug can get
you to hand over your wallet (i.e., can exercise social power over you)
by threatening to hit you with a club (i.e., by making you aware of his
interference power, and of his intention to use it unless you toe the
line). Interference can be subtler than this, however, as when A threa-
tens to withhold something that B needs. Suppose that your health
depends on a certain medicine, and that theres only one supplier of
this medicine for miles and miles around. The supplier can interfere
with you, can cause you damage, by withholding the medicine. This
is a kind of omission-based (rather than act-based) interference
power. Yet just like the thugs more active approach, it can ground
social power: should the supplier command you to hand over your
wallet, you will almost certainly comply.
4 Socialism and Democracy

Social power, then, is the ability to get people to do things they

would not otherwise prefer to do, and it frequently rests on what we
might call interference power broadly, the ability to produce conse-
quences that matter to another, whether by acting (as in the case of the
thug) or by refraining from action (as in the case of the medicine
supplier).3
Now, is it wrong for one party to have power whether interfer-
ence power or social power, or both over another? Sometimes, but
not always. As recent developments in political philosophy have
taught us, what is morally problematic is not power per se, but arbitrary
power, subjection to which constitutes a serious form of unfreedom,
domination.4 And what is arbitrary power? Some philosophers say
that power is arbitrary when it does not have to concern itself with
the interests of the person subject to it.5 This is the conception of arbi-
trary power and thus of domination that I shall use here.
To illustrate this conception, consider the form of power possessed
by a master over a slave. The masters interference power being nearly
unconstrained, so too is his social power practically unlimited. Nothing
forces the master to use his power over the slave in ways that take the
slaves interests into account. He can beat him, whip him, etc., just as he
has a mind. But precisely because he can do to the slave anything he
likes, he can get the slave to do virtually anything he wants. The
slave, knowing this, cannot look the master in the eye; he must
grovel, and act servilely, and in general try to anticipate and satisfy
the masters desires, all in order to keep him sweet and thereby hope-
fully stay his hand. Indeed, notice that these ill effects obtain even if the
master never actually interferes with the slave. The masters mere capacity
to interfere suffices to render the slave unfree.
Yet power does not always domination make. My universitys
library can fine me: this is a form of interference power. So too, it can
deny me access to materials: this is another form of interference
power. And because it can interfere with me in these ways, it can get
me to do things I would not otherwise prefer to do, such as return

3. When A can produce consequences that matter to B, B is vulnerable to A. For further

analysis of vulnerability, see Robert Goodin, Protecting the Vulnerable (Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 1986).
4. Key works in this literature include Philip Pettit, Republicanism (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1997); Philip Pettit, On The Peoples Terms (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2012); Frank Lovett, A General Theory of Domination and Justice (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2010); Lovett, What Counts as Arbitrary Power? Journal of
Political Power 5, 1 (2012), 137-152.
5. See, e.g., Pettit, Republicanism, Chapter 2: Liberty as Non-Domination.
 Samuel Arnold 5

library materials on time. Yet theres nothing morally amiss with this
relationship; in having these forms of power over me, the library
does not dominate me.6 But why not? The basic answer is that the
librarys power is constrained to track my interests, and is therefore
not arbitrary. It cant fine me without reason; nor can it deny me
access to its collections on a whim. It must operate in accordance
with public rules. And indeed, not only is the librarys power con-
strained; it is constrained in ways that force it to track the interests of
its patrons. We patrons benefit from the librarys having the powers
that it does. Weaken these powers, and library materials wouldnt be
returned on time, etc., thus undermining the good that the library
can do for us. Moreover, if a patron feels that the library has used its
powers in a way inconsistent with its brief, she can protest to some
administrator or official somewhere. Anticipating this sequence of
events, library staff will tend not to abuse their power in the first
place. In all of these ways, then, the librarys power is kept in check,
is forced to consider my interests, and therefore is neither arbitrary
nor (hence) a source of domination. That my relationship with the
library is freedom-preserving is reflected in the fact that I can stand
tall when I enter its premises: I can look librarians in the eye, I
neednt flatter them, I neednt conform my actions to their arbitrary
wills, and so on.
To sum up, then: social power is the ability to get others to do things
they would otherwise prefer not to do; this form of power frequently
rests on interference power. Domination arises only when power-
holders are not forced to track the interests of the person (or group)
subject to them.

3. Capitalists have power over workers

Do capitalists dominate workers? They do if and only if (and to the
extent that) they have arbitrary power over workers. But of course they
do have such power over workers; and indeed, they have this power in
great supply. Or so I will now argue. I first defend the claim that capi-
talists have power over workers at work. I then show that capitalists
workplace power, being largely unconstrained to track workers inter-
ests, is arbitrary, hence dominating (section 4). I then show (in section
5) that capitalists also have power over us politically, and that this
political power being no more constrained by our interests than is
capitalists workplace power is arbitrary, hence dominating. I start

6. For this example, see Lovett, A General Theory of Domination and Justice.
6 Socialism and Democracy

by clarifying terms. By capitalists, I mean those people who own suffi-

cient means of production such that they do not need to sell their labor
power to live, or to live well, and who hire others to work using these
means of production. Workers, by contrast, are those people who,
lacking sufficient ownership of the means of production in the above
sense, must sell their labor power to buyers of labor power in order
to live or to live well. More sophisticated, finer-grained frameworks
for thinking about class are, of course, available, but for our purposes
this simple, two-class model will suffice.7 Can it be doubted that capi-
talists have an awesome degree of social power over workers? Simply
consider the many things that capitalists are able to get those human
beings in their employ to do:
a) show up to their jobs;
b) toil, often long and hard, under hierarchical command;
c) follow labor processes that being designed for profit rather than
for producers interests are frequently routine, simple, and stul-
tifying, and sometimes hazardous;
d) absorb abuses and indignities (some petty, others consequential)
from customers, from managers, from co-workers;
e) pour their time and energy into creating products that usually
mean nothing to them, products that they may neither understand
nor value, products whose immediate aim is not the satisfaction of
human needs but rather the creation of profits for the capitalist;
f) alienate these products, handing them over to the capitalist,
thereby forfeiting any control over the use to which these products
(or the profits they enable) are put;
g) accept, in return for their labors, less than the value of the products
they create (otherwise capitalists would not hire them).
In all of these ways, capitalists wield social power over workers,
directing their actions, subordinating them, getting them to do things
they would otherwise prefer not to do.
And all this without the threat of force! For the capitalist is no thug;
he (typically) doesnt resort to violence to achieve his aims.8 How, then,
do capitalists get us to conform, in all the ways just canvassed, to their

7. See, e.g., Erik Olin Wright, Classes (London: Verso, 1985).

8. Which is not to say that capitalists have no club at their disposal. They do; its just
held at one or two removes, and by a different party the state. As radicals have
long noted, capitalists will not hesitate to use the coercive power of the state to
further their class interests when necessary (e.g., to facilitate primitive accumu-
lation, to put down strikes, to suppress radical movements, to protect their fortunes,
and so on).
 Samuel Arnold 7

wills? It would appear that capital acquires its social power over labor
through a straight deal, a fair exchange among equals. As David
Harvey observes:

The remarkable thing is that capitalism does not appear to rely on cheating,
theft, robbery, or dispossession. . . . This fairness rests on the conceit that
laborers have an individualized private property right over the labor power
they are capable of furnishing to capital as a commodity and that they are
free to dispose of that labor power to whomever they like.9

But if capitalists and workers are free equals if capitalists do not

have any legally enforceable right to the labor power of workers how
does it happen that workers are invariably subordinated to capitalists,
rather than the other way around? The answer, in a word, is property (or
the lack thereof). As G.A. Cohen explains, the workers subordination
ensues because, lacking means of production, he can ensure his survi-
val only by contracting with a capitalist whose bargaining position
enables him to impose terms which effect the workers subordina-
tion.10 Capitals asymmetric social power is founded, in short, on its
unequal control of the resources without which workers cannot live
or live well. Or, to put this more plainly: we do what capitalists say
because they own the things we need.

4. Class conflict and capitalist domination in the workplace

But do capitalists dominate workers? Yes, for capitalists not only
have power over workers, they have arbitrary power over workers
power that is, in many respects, not forced to track workers interests.
Indeed, if anything capitalists are forced by capitalisms laws of
motion to wield their power over workers in ways deleterious to
workers interests. Or so I will argue in this section, drawing on the
Marxist idea of class conflict.
The interests of workers and capitalists conflict in myriad ways.
Within the capitalist firm that hidden abode of production
workers and owners (and the owners surrogates, such as managers
and supervisors) are at loggerheads over various issues swirling
around three central conflicts: first, operational conflicts over how to
run the firm on a day-to-day basis; second, strategic conflicts over
what to do with the surplus created by the firms activity; and third,

9. David Harvey, Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2014), 63.
10. G.A. Cohen, Karl Marxs Theory of History: A Defence, expanded edition (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 70.
8 Socialism and Democracy

interpersonal, largely non-economic conflicts over how to organize

human relations between owners and their surrogates, on the one
hand, and workers on the other.
Consider, first, operational issues. Capitalist firms aim, of course,
to make money, but to make money they must produce goods or ser-
vices that people will buy. And to do that, they must combine their
workers labor power with other means of production tools, equip-
ment, and so on. However, this general recipe add workers to
means of production, yielding commodities leaves almost every-
thing up for grabs. In particular, the firm needs to determine what
workers will produce, how they will produce it (that is: using which
labor processes, at what levels of intensity and surveillance, under
what sorts of working conditions, etc.), and in return for what sorts of
compensation, pecuniary or otherwise. I call these operational
issues because they concern the day-to-day activity of the firm.
In addition to these operational issues, firms face larger strategic
questions as well. After selling its wares and paying its costs of pro-
duction, the firm may find itself with a surplus. What should it do
with this surplus? Again, the general recipe is clear it must use
this surplus in profit-maximizing ways but the concrete implications
of this recipe are not. The firm has to decide, for instance, how much of
the surplus to consume (and by which of its members), and how much
to reinvest. And of that portion that it reinvests, it must decide the spe-
cifics of this reinvestment. For instance, should it expand existing lines
of production, or branch out into new ones? Insofar as it does expand,
where should it expand locally, or should it seek greener pastures
elsewhere? Moreover, what kinds of jobs, if any, will it create as it
expands? Will it hire skilled, well-paid workers, or cheaper workers
with lower skills? Or perhaps it will strive to dispense with workers
altogether swapping expensive humans with cheaper technology?11
And so on.
Now, there are three important things to appreciate about all of
these various operational and strategic issues.
First, capitalists decide. Generally speaking, it is capitalists who have
the legal and effective authority to resolve the operational and strategic

11. It may seem like mere science fiction, but many researchers have concluded that
robots are coming for our jobs. One particularly influential study suggests that
nearly half of US jobs could be at risk of computerization over the next two
decades. Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne, The Future of Employment:
How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation? http://www.futuretech.ox.ac.
uk/sites/futuretech.ox.ac.uk/files/The_Future_of_Employment_OMS_Working_
Paper_1.pdf
 Samuel Arnold 9

conflicts described above. This is not to say that capitalists always get
their way; workers are not wholly without influence over capitalists,
especially those workers whose skills are in high demand. The
balance of power between, say, Google and its software engineers is
much different than that between Google and its janitors. And the bar-
gaining position of all workers, even those with low skills, is improved
when unions are strong and labor markets are tight. The class struggle
can be somewhat fluid, with capitals dominance ebbing and flowing
as broader social, political, and economic conditions change. Further-
more, even when workers are at their weakest relative to capital,
bosses may still voluntarily solicit worker input, or at least make a
show of doing so.
But none of this threatens my argument. All I am claiming is that
when it comes to the what and how of production, capitalists gen-
erally decide; it is generally they (or their agents) who determine what to
produce, under what conditions, using what mix of inputs, at what
rates of pay, what to do with the surplus, etc. This claim, which
seems to me uncontroversial, is fully compatible with all of the quali-
fications just noted.
Second, capitalists and workers have conflicting interests across these
issues. The set of solutions or policies that advance the interests of
workers will generally not overlap with the set of solutions or policies
that advance the interests of capitalists. Thus, capitalists want lower
wages; workers want higher wages. Capitalists want to maximize
work intensity and effort; workers do not. Capitalists want to choose
the profit-maximizing labor process, even if (as is frequently the
case) its stultifying and alienating for the worker; workers want
labor processes that incorporate a variety of engaging and autonomous
tasks.12 Capitalists have an interest in choosing that level of monitoring
and surveillance at work and away from it that maximizes work
intensity, and thus profits; workers have an interest in being free
from surveillance (whether extreme or mild). Capitalists, but not
their workers, have an interest in spending part of the surplus on
their own luxury consumption. Capitalists, but not their workers,
have an interest in using the lowest-cost production techniques, even
if this means moving operations to India, slashing jobs, dumping
waste in workers communities, etc. So too, capitalists, but not their
workers, have an interest in producing whatever will fetch the

12. For the classic Marxist analysis of class conflict over the labor process, see Harry
Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth
Century, 25th Anniversary Edition (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998).
10 Socialism and Democracy

largest profits, even if this means ignoring urgent, unmet human

needs. These examples could be multiplied, but the basic point
should be clear: class conflict is real, it is deep, and it is broad.
Third, this conflict between workers and capitalists is structural, rooted
in the nature of capitalism itself. Capitalists do not minimize wages or
maximize work intensity, relocate to distant shores or replace
workers with robots, etc. because they are greedy or mean. They do
these things and indeed, must do these things because to fail to
do them is, in the long run, to go out of business. Capitalists who do
not resolve key operational and strategic conflicts in profit-maximizing
ways do not long remain capitalists. In an important sense, then, indi-
vidual capitalists lack real discretion over these issues: they must econ-
omize on their wage bill, increase work intensity, and so on and so
forth, on pain of being driven from the field only to be replaced by
a different capitalist more willing and able to do what the laws of
capital command.13
Consider, next, a third area of conflict within the firm: largely non-
economic hence, largely optional conflicts over interpersonal
relations. Capitalists can use their power over workers for ends unre-
lated to that powers underlying economic rationale. Thus bosses can
harass employees sexually, emotionally, physically; they can bully
workers into disclosing their political preferences, into attending politi-
cal rallies of the bosses choosing, into contributing to favored political
causes; they can force employees to dress a certain way, to speak a
certain way, to use certain modes of address but not others, to pick
up their dry-cleaning, and so on. These examples are familiar and by
no means exhaustive. What unites them is that in each case, we see
bosses interfering with and controlling workers in ways totally discon-
nected from the immediate economic functions of the firm. The capitalist
who harasses his employees, or forces them to contribute to his
favored super-PAC, etc., cannot point to the laws of capital and say:
capitalism made me do it! In this, he is quite unlike the capitalist
who, say, drives down wages or ramps up work intensity. This
opens an important possibility. If this form of abuse is not integral to

13. We must take care, however, not to exaggerate this point. Although capitalists must
maximize profits, sometimes there are multiple plausible paths to this goal, in which
case capitalists do enjoy real discretion. For instance, economic considerations might
dictate layoffs, but leave open which particular workers get the sack. Or again,
perhaps costs must be cut, but there are many ways to do this: salaries could be
reduced, waste eliminated, executive perks rolled back, etc. Insofar as economic
rationality does not fully determine this choice, the capitalist has real discretion.
 Samuel Arnold 11

capitalisms workings, perhaps capitalism can be cleansed of it. We

shall return to this possibility below, in section 7.

5. Class conflict and capitalist domination in politics

Thus far I have identified three conflicts operational, strategic,
and non-economic that mark intra-firm relations between specific
capitalists and their workers. There is another site of worker/capitalist
conflict, however, that we must register: this is the political conflict
between the two classes. This conflict is global rather than local, and
large scale rather than small scale; it does not pit this particular capital-
ist against this particular group of workers, but rather capitalists as a
class versus workers as a class.
The central issue at stake in this political conflict concerns the
countrys laws, policies, and regulations: and in particular, to what
extent will these rules of the game favor one class over the other?
For example, will there be regulations concerning wages, working con-
ditions, working hours, etc., and if so, how worker-friendly will
these be? Will workers have the right to form unions, or to strike?
Will capitalists and their businesses (and bequests, and mansions,
and yachts, etc.) face heavy rates of taxation? Will there be any controls
on capital flows across borders, or will capitalists be able to move their
money wherever they want, whenever they want? What sorts of
environmental policies and regulations will constrain economic
activity? What degree of economic security, if any, should workers
be granted? Will there be a safety net, and if so, will access to it be con-
ditional on working or trying to find work or will there be some form
of unconditional income support? Across these and many other politi-
cal issues fateful for the fortunes of capitalists and workers alike, the
two warring classes face off, revealing the depth and breadth of the
antagonism between them.
Regarding workplace conflicts between capitalists and workers
conflicts that arise within the site of production itself I stressed
three points. First, capitalists usually have sufficient social power
(rooted ultimately in their considerable omission-power, or power
not to act) to get their way. Second, this is bad for workers, since the
interests of capitalists and workers are at odds. Third, the laws of
capital themselves are largely (although not completely) responsible
for producing the antagonism between capitalists and their workers:
capitalists do not fire workers, drive down wages, etc., out of spite,
but rather because these things are required by the logic of capitalist
12 Socialism and Democracy

competition. To what extent do these same three points apply to the

political conflicts just canvassed?
Clearly, the second point remains applicable. The set of policies
favorable to capitalists will be largely antagonistic to the set of policies
favorable to workers: capitalists, but not their workers, will want lower
taxes on the rich, fewer regulations, no controls on the movement of
capital, weaker unions, and so on. The third point also remains valid.
Capitalists press for, say, laxer workplace regulations, more porous
safety nets, lower taxes, etc., not (solely) from personal motives, but
out of considerations of global competitiveness; when it comes to pol-
itical preferences, their hands are to some extent anyway tied by
the objective requirements of profitability. But does the first point
apply? Do capitalists have the power to get their way, not just in the
realm of production, but in the realm of politics as well?
At first glance, you might not think so. Capitalists are few, workers
are many. Surely it follows that workers are in the drivers seat, politi-
cally speaking: they have the numbers, hence, the votes, hence, the
influence to secure policies favorable to their interests.
Were this logic sound, democracies the world over would be
awash in social-democratic or perhaps even socialist policies and insti-
tutions. The reality, of course, is much different. Despite enjoying
numerical superiority, workers cannot match the political sway held
by their less-numerous capitalist antagonists. This is largely because
capitalists control something more important than votes: namely, the
bulk of societys wealth. This matters for a variety of familiar
reasons. When campaigns are privately funded, as they are in the
United States, wealth equals influence, and the Sheldon Adelsons of
the world get to decide which candidates are viable contenders. This
makes it very difficult for radical parties to gain power via electoral
means. And of course wealth also buys influence in other ways
through lobbying, through control of the consciousness industry
(education, mass media, think tanks, etc.), and so on. But suppose
that somehow these familiar obstacles were surmounted, and socialists
or social democrats riding a swell of popular support, a torrent of $50
donations grasped the reins of government. Would they be able to
implement their progressive agenda?
Formally, yes, but in reality, their ability to pursue leftist ends
within a capitalist framework would be sharply curtailed by the
threat of capital flight. Precisely because capitalists control the bulk of
the social surplus precisely because finance and investment are
largely privatized under capitalism capital can say to government:
Sure, you can pass your radical agenda. But if you do, well take
 Samuel Arnold 13

our investment funds elsewhere. In which case the economy will

crash, people will sour on leftist policies, and the leftist government
will find itself booted from power at the next opportunity only to
be replaced by politicians eager to restore conditions more favorable
to the interests of business. Anticipating this chain of events, leftist gov-
ernments will tack to the center from the start. As David Schweickart
concludes, Clearly, as long as investment decisions remain in
private hands, governments that want to survive which is to say,
all governments have little choice but to cater to the sensibilities of
the capitalist class.14 Not for nothing did Charles Lindblom describe
the market system as a kind of prison, an anti-democratic institution
that confines political possibilities to a narrow range of options agree-
able to capitalists.15

6. Taking stock
To sum up our results thus far: Workers rely on capitalists for the
wages they need to live, or to live well, while the political community
as a whole relies on capitalists for the finance and investment it needs
to prosper. But as we saw in sections 2 and 3, dependence breeds sub-
ordination: just as you must bend to the will of the pharmacist who has
unilateral control over the medicine you need to survive, so too must
workersand indeed, even governmentscater to the whims of the
class that has unilateral control over the means of production
without which life, let alone prosperity, is impossible. Across a wide
range of issues, then, within both the realm of production and the
realm of politics, capitalists have the power to get their way. As dis-
cussed in detail in the previous two sections, it is (generally) they
who decide how to run the firm and what to do with the social
surplus; it is even (generally) they who control the broad parameters
of political possibility, despite their numerical inferiority vis-a-vis
workers.
So capitalists have power, but do they dominate? That depends: is
their power forced to track the interests of those over whom it ranges?
Hardly. As argued in sections 4 and 5, capitalists must bow to market
demands, which align imperfectly with the interests of workers and
citizens. Capital, in short, is forced to serve profit, not people. It

14. David Schweickart, After Capitalism, 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield,
2011), 157.
15. Charles Lindblom, The Market as Prison, The Journal of Politics, 44, 2 (May, 1982),
324 336.
14 Socialism and Democracy

follows that capitalists dominate in two senses and in two sites. First,
within the firm, individual capitalists dominate workers in their
employ; second, at the level of society as a whole, capitalists as a class
dominate workers as a class, insofar as they are able to use their econ-
omic power (especially their control over finance, investment, and
the consciousness industry) to secure political results favorable to
their interests (hence, opposed to those of workers).

7. Competition?
Might labor market competition come to capitalisms ideological
rescue here? Philip Pettit suggests that in a well functioning labor
market, no one would depend on any particular master, and so no
one would be at the mercy of a master. . . . [Any given worker] could
move on to employment elsewhere in the event of suffering arbitrary
interference.16 Walmart, the thought goes, wont abuse its workers if
it knows that the Target down the street is hiring. Or, to put the point
in more general terms, when workers have viable exit options they
are less dependent on their current employer, greatly reducingand
perhaps even eliminatingthat employers power over them.
There is some truth to this line of argument; competition, I readily
grant, does indeed constrain the power of capitalists to some degree.
But we should not exaggerate this constraining effectas Robert
Taylor does, I think, when he writes that under perfect competition,
economic power is not so much dispersed as extinguished.17 Labor
market competition, whether perfect or imperfect, does not extinguish
the power of capitalists over workers; rather, it defines the limits within
which that power operates, as I will now explain.
Consider W, a worker with only one employment option A.
Because W has no alternative to dealing with A, As power over W is
considerable. Now suppose that B, a rival employer, arrives on the
scene offering W comparable terms. Since W now has two viable
options, she depends on neither A nor B individually. Yet if she
depends on neither employer, what happens to their power over
her? Does it vanish?
Crucially, no, it does not. Employers retain power despite the pres-
ence of competition. To illustrate, suppose W asks A for his terms. In

16. Philip Pettit, Freedom in the Market, Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (June,
2006) 131149, at 142.
17. Robert Taylor, Market Freedom as Antipower, American Political Science Review
(August, 2013), 594 602, at 598.
 Samuel Arnold 15

exchange for wages, I expect you to work for 8 hours a day, obey my
instructions while at the worksite, and hand over the fruits of your
toil, he says. Not wanting to perform any of these actions, the
worker checks with Band finds identical demands. Well, I
suppose it cant be helped, she sighs with resignation as she reports
for work. Despite the fact that she depends on neither capitalist indivi-
dually, there she is, toiling for 8 hours, obeying orders, alienating the
product of her laborin short, bending to a capitalists will. Exit has,
in this case, utterly failed to inoculate the worker against the power
of capital.
Which is not to say that exit is always so impotent. Suppose that W
works for A, and A attempts to abuse W in some way that B would not.
W could avoid the abusecould escape As powerby leaving A for B.
Two lessons emerge. First, labor market competition does indeed
constrain capitalists, forcing them to offer terms that are no worse
than those offered by any of their competitors. Individual capitalists
cannot impose demands outside the group norm. And so we should
expect to see certain egregious and/or idiosyncratic abusesespecially
those unconnected with the economic purpose of the firm, such as
sexual harassment or unnecessarily oppressive working conditions
dissipate in the face of robust labor market competition. This is no
small thing, and it underscores the (limited) moral importance of com-
petition for labor. But, secondly and crucially, while individual capital-
ists cannot impose demands outside the group norm, they can impose
demands inside that norm. When capitalists speak in one voice,
workers must obey.
But do capitalists speak in one voice? Across a wide range of issues,
yes, of course they do. For they are, recall, themselves beholden to the
laws of capitalforced, by the logic of capitalist competition, to maxi-
mize profits. In pursuit of this goal, certain demands are simply una-
voidable. Let labor market conditions be as competitive as you
please, capitalists will still require workers to show up for work.
They will still require workers to toil at a profit-maximizing pace,
under profit-maximizing conditions, for a profit-maximizing wage.
They will still force workers to lay down their tools at the end of the
day and hand over the surplus created by their labors. And they will
still reserve for themselves the right to decide what to do with this
surplus. These demands are non-negotiable; they are the sine qua non
of capitalism. Capitalists cannot relinquish them without ceasing to
be capitalists.
In sum, earlier sections showed that capitalists have considerable
power over workers, and that this power, being arbitrary, amounts
16 Socialism and Democracy

to domination. In reply, a defender of capitalism might draw on

remarks by Pettit, Taylor, and others, which purport to show that
employment relationships do not foster domination provided that
workers are able to exit these relationships. In a slogan, where exit is
possible, domination is notor so this reply would suggest. But as we
can now appreciate, exits domination-fighting properties have been
overblown. Just as a wave can wash away trash on the beach, and
perhaps even some sand, but not the bedrock on which the trash and
sand rest, so too can labor market competition cleanse capitalism of
some of its more inessential abusesbut not those forms of worker-
subordination, of capitalist power-over, that constitute its basic
bedrock. Competition, in short, can mitigate capitalist domination,
but cannot eliminate it.

8. Basic income?
So long as people need to sell their labor power to live or live well,
they are at the mercy of capitalists, even if there are many capitalists to
choose from. Perhaps, then, the thing to do is eliminate the need to sell
ones labor power. This is the basic rationale behind an unconditional
basic income (UBI), a proposal that has become quite popular amongst
philosophers concerned with domination.18 Like traditional welfare
programs, a UBI partly decouples income from market earnings, but
unlike traditional welfare, it does this in a no-strings-attached
fashion: everyone in the target population gets it, regardless of
income level or employment status. Depending on the level at which
it is set, a UBIs likely effects on the economy; on individual indepen-
dence; on social relations, etc. vary dramatically. For our purposes,
suppose that we set the UBI at the highest sustainable level (as philo-
sophers like Philip Van Parijs propose),19 and that this level is sufficient
to enable each person to achieve a culturally defined respectable stan-
dard of living, say 125 percent of the poverty line20 which in the US
would amount to around $15,000 per year per person. With such a UBI
in place, would capitalists still dominate workers?
Yes, they would. True, no longer would workers be forced to sell
their labor power in order to live, or even to live decently. But to live
decently is not necessarily to live well. To do the latter, workers will

18. See, e.g., Philip Pettit, A Republican Right to Basic Income? Basic Income Studies 2,
2 (December 2007) 17; Lovett, A General Theory of Domination & Justice, 196 203.
19. Philip Van Parijs, Real Freedom For All (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
20. Erik Olin Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias (London: Verso, 2010), 217.
 Samuel Arnold 17

still generally need to sell their labor power and so people will still
generally be dependent on the capitalist class, and thus dominated
by their particular employers (as per our earlier argument).
But why will people need wage labor in order to live well, despite
receiving a UBI? There are three main reasons. First, most people are at
least partly consumerist in orientation hardly a surprise, given the
enormous sums spent by capitalists and governments to encourage
materialism and consumerist values.21 For people in the grip of such
values which is to say, for nearly all of us living well requires a
level of consumption totally unattainable on any feasible UBI. (As a
quick test, ask yourself if you could live well, as you define that
target, on $15,000 per year.) The problem is exacerbated by the posi-
tionality of most peoples consumption desires: many of us want
not merely to have lots of stuff, but to have more stuff than others in
our consumption reference group, as sociologists call it. This is
obviously impossible on a UBI, which provides equal purchasing
power to all.
Second, most people wish not merely to consume, but also to con-
tribute in a socially-recognized way. No one wants to be regarded as a
free-rider or a parasite. To be sure, there are many ways to contribute
besides having a job: one neednt produce exchange value for a capi-
talist in order to produce use value for other human beings. Yet in
our culture, shaped as it is by capitalist norms, the dominant
socially-recognized form that contribution takes is paid employment.
What do you do? is a standard opening move in conversation, and
as norms are at present I live on the UBI and pick up trash in
the local park is unlikely to be met with much respect. Insofar as
people wish to be, and to be seen as, social contributors in good stand-
ing, then, they will face tremendous pressure to get a job. A UBI does
nothing to alleviate this pressure.

21. NYU professor Bertell Ollman reports that American businesses spend approxi-
mately one trillion dollars a year on advertising and public relations, and that the
advertising and public relations industry produces or influences 40 percent of
what we see, hear, and read (How 2 Take an Exam . . . And Change the World [Montreal:
Black Rose Books, 2001], 63). Nor are children exempt from this onslaught. Corpor-
ations are increasingly infiltrating schools through, e.g., biased classroom kits
(climate change education by Chevron), advertisements for junk food in school cafe-
terias, ad-drenched BusRadio on school buses even report cards emblazoned
with Ronald McDonalds smiling visage. Exposure to pro-consumerist messaging
on this scale cannot help but profoundly shape our conceptions of the good. See
Commercial Free Childhoods fact sheet Marketing in Schools, http://www.
commercialfreechildhood.org/sites/default/files/schools.pdf .
18 Socialism and Democracy

Finally, many people want to develop and deploy their productive

capacities, whether for the sake of contributing to the good of others or
simply for personal satisfaction. Yet in many cases, production of the
desired kind requires access to resources monopolized by capitalists.
Say you have some carpentry skill, and you wish to build things.
Does your UBI enable you to satisfy your productive aspirations
without entanglement in capitalist employment? Unlikely. Youll
need tools, materials, a worksite, a community of skilled workers, a
large-scale project: all things that given the present distribution of
property you can access only within the framework of wage labor.
As one nineteenth-century critic of wage slavery puts it:

The land, the tools and materials of labor are still the exclusive property of the
privileged few, and the worker cannot produce without giving himself a boss
or master. It must not be supposed that the proclamation of emancipation lib-
erated mankind from slavery. The most odious, because the most subtle form
of slavery wages slavery remains to be abolished.22

And my present point is that wage slavery would still remain to be

abolished even with a UBI, for even with such a policy in place, many
people will find themselves utterly dependent on capitalists for the
income, opportunities for social contribution, and opportunities for
productive activity that they need to flourish.
The emancipatory potential of a UBI, it would seem, has been
widely exaggerated. A UBI loosens capitals grip on workers but it
does not eliminate that grip. UBI or no, capital retains its monopoly
on societal wealth, and thus remains in control. Indeed, not just at
the worksite, as I have been discussing thus far in this section, but
also in the halls of government: a UBI does nothing whatsoever to
free citizens from the dominating political power of capitalists, for
their political domination rests (as discussed in section 5) on their
vast reserves of wealth and their stranglehold on the means of pro-
ductions conditions untouched by a UBI.

9. Conclusion
In closing, allow me to summarize my core argument from a
slightly different angle. Edward Bellamy, an influential nineteenth-
century American socialist and novelist, says something true and

22. Cited in Alex Gourevitch, From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth: Labor and
Republican Liberty in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2014), 108.
 Samuel Arnold 19

important when he writes that if you own the things men must have,
you own the men who must have them. But capitalists, of course, own
the things workers must have. Therefore, capitalists own workers. Not,
admittedly, in any legal sense; capitalism is not chattel slavery, and
workers are legally entitled to withhold their labor power. But there
are other senses of ownership besides the legal one, and other forms
of slavery besides chattel slavery. If I can consistently control your
actions, getting you to serve my interests in ways that undermine
your interests, do I not have a kind of ownership over you? Do I not
dominate you in a morally objectionable way (section 2)? Yet as I
have argued here a clear-eyed assessment of capitalism suggests
that capitalists enjoy precisely these forms of objectionable power
over workers. Because capitalists have what workers need, they
control workers actions, getting workers to serve their interests
(section 3). But because the interests of workers and capitalists are
opposed, capitalists are not merely using their economic advantages
to get workers to do their bidding; more than this, they are getting
workers to undermine their own interests in the process of serving the inter-
ests of capital (sections 4 and 5). It follows that capitalists have a morally
problematic kind of ownership over workers (section 6). Despite
surface appearances to the contrary, capitalism produces and main-
tains a kind of slavery and is therefore a system of profound unfree-
dom. Capitalists, in short, dominate workers.
Indeed, this domination persists even across the friendliest
forms of capitalism (sections 7 and 8). Let demand for workers be
high, and exit costs for workers low; let a basic income free workers
from the need to sell their labor power to live; even so, workers will
remain subject to a hostile class of owners whose basic economic and
political interests clash with their own. They will continue to
depend, both as individuals and as citizens, on these owners for the
wages, investment funds, avenues for social contribution, and pro-
ductive facilities without which they cannot prosper, flourish, or
fully exercise their human powers.
What, then, is to be done? Is another world possible? Can we envi-
sion a viable alternative to reformist capitalism one that would truly
eliminate economic domination rather than merely nibble at its edges?
If the analysis of this article is correct, any such alternative would
have to break capitals monopoly over the means of production, and
so would have to be broadly socialist in orientation but what,
today, does that label even mean? These are issues well worth exploring.