Rawls J. Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy

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some mode of production is settled by whether or not permitting slavery

and fraudulent practices speciﬁes a content for the law of contracts which is

most adequate to the existing mode of production, and is well adapted to

the operation of this mode in fulﬁlling its historical role. Recall that this

role is the rapid accumulation of (real) capital and the development of the

technology to use it in innovative ways.

Hence, the juridical form of the law of contract under capitalism is

most adequate when its content is adjusted so as to enable this mode of

production to accumulate capital in the most effective way. Slavery is in-

compatible with this, and so with the requirements of capitalism as a mode

of production. As a system of personal dependence, it is unjust under a

capitalist conception of justice. One essential feature of capitalism is a sys-

tem of free competitive markets, including a free market for the hire of free

labor-power.

In this connection, it is said to be Marx’s view that the competitive

wage relation, as an essential feature of capitalism, is not unjust, provided

that the workers are paid the full value of their labor-power, that is, the

equivalent of the socially necessary labor time that it takes to produce and

to reproduce the workers’ labor-power. In discussing the labor contract in

Capital, Marx says:

What really inﬂuenced him [the capitalist] was the speciﬁc use-value

which this commodity [labor-power] possesses of being a source not

only of value, but of more value than it has itself [Marx’s italics]. This is

the special service that the capitalist expects from labor-power, and in

this transaction he acts in accordance with the “eternal laws” of the ex-

change of commodities. The seller of labor-power, like the seller of

any other commodity, realizes its exchange value, and parts with its

use-value....Theowner of the money has paid the value of a day’s

labor-power; his, therefore, is the use of it for a day; a day’s labor be-

longs to him. The circumstance, that on the one hand the daily suste-

nance of labor-power costs only half a day’s labor, while on the other

hand the very same labor-power can work during a whole day, that

consequently the value which its use during one day creates, is double

what he pays for that use, this circumstance is, without doubt, a piece

of good luck for the buyer, but by no means an injury to the seller.

(Capital, Vol. I, Chapter 7, §2, ¶21; or see Tucker, 357–358)

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His Conception of Right and Justice

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That is, it is not an injury, or an injustice under the conception of jus-

tice adequate to capitalism. As Marx says some lines below: “Equivalent has

been exchanged for equivalent.” And so the conception of justice appropri-

ate to capitalism is satisﬁed. Paying workers less than the value of their la-

bor-power would be unjust; and this is a far more relevant example of injus-

tice than slavery. It may appear, then, that Marx thinks that capitalism with

its free competitive market is perfectly just! Or at least not unjust.

5. Of course, this idea of the capitalist conception of justice as adequate

to the capitalist mode of production does not belong to the capitalist con-

ception of justice itself. On this interpretation, it belongs to Marx’s idea of

the historical role of conceptions of justice as part of the ideological con-

sciousness of capitalist society. The capitalist conception of justice, as pre-

sented in its own terms, speaks of the freedom and equality and the equal

rights of man. It is on these principles that the regime of free contract and

the system of personal independence rests.

I shall come back later to the idea of ideological consciousness, only

commenting here that it is always a form of false consciousness, and one of

two kinds: either an illusion or a delusion. But this is getting ahead.

§3. That Marx Condemns Capitalism as Unjust

1. Contrary to the view we have just discussed, other writers (among

them Norman Geras and G. A. Cohen)

hold that Marx does think that cap-

italism is unjust, and that he says things that strictly imply that it is. There-

fore, they argue, he has and uses a conception of right and justice whether

he knows that or not.

Among some main points of this second view are these:

(a) Marx’s insistence that the wage relation is an exchange relation,

where equivalent is exchanged for equivalent, was made from a partial, pro-

visional point of view, seeing that relation as part of the system of circula-

tion in capitalist society. It was supplemented by an account of the mode

of production as a whole that showed it to be not an exchange relation at

all, but clearly exploitive: it was simply the capitalist expropriation of un-

paid labor.

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7. See Cohen’s review of Allen Wood’s Karl Marx in Mind, July 1983.

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(b) Although Marx did engage in polemics against what he saw as mor-

alistic and ineffective criticism, he presented exploitation in his theory of

capitalism as wrongful and unjust, often calling it “robbery” and “theft.”

These expressions imply that what was being done is wrong and unjust.

the principle of distribution according to need above the principle of distri-

bution according to work of socialism (the ﬁrst stage of communist soci-

ety), as well as above the norms of capitalism. In doing this Marx, in effect,

assumed an objective, non-historical standard of justice, according to which

modes of production and the paired societies may be judged by their ap-

proximation to it.

(d) Marx’s apparent statements of moral relativism are actually state-

ments of the fact that certain material conditions are, in fact, necessary if

certain principles of justice and fairness, and other important values, are to

be realized. Just and fair social institutions presuppose certain background

material circumstances and to ignore this fact is to show a lack of realism

and understanding.

(e) A concern with distributive questions is not in the pejorative sense

reformist, once we have a properly and broadly conceived conception of

justice which covers the distribution of basic rights of all kinds, and so in-

cludes the rights of property and other fundamental matters. This certainly

allows Marx a revolutionary doctrine and in no way inhibits it.

(f ) Also, while Marx did not think that moral criticism founded on jus-

tice and other conceptions was sufﬁcient, all the same it had a place in his

thought and went along with his analysis of the historical forces for change.

(g) Classifying conceptions of right and justice as juridical is, in general,

much too restricted. They can be conceived independently of state institu-

tions of coercion and their systems of law; and indeed, this is done when-

ever they are used in judging the basic structure of society and its funda-

mental arrangements.

(h) In fact, the principle, “From each according to their ability, and to

each according to their needs,” is of this kind. Actually, it aims at an equal

right of self-realization for all, even though Marx imagines it as occurring

with the disappearance of the state and its coercive institutions of law.

(i) Finally, the alleged distinction between kinds of values and princi-

ples—values and principles of right and justice vs. values and principles of

freedom and self-realization—is shown to be completely arbitrary by Marx’s

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His Conception of Right and Justice

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principle for a full communist society. This principle does grant a basic

equal right of self-realization, if you prefer that language. And surely we

can speak of the just distribution of basic freedoms as we can speak of the

distribution of anything else. Perhaps Marx supposes other equal basic

rights as well, as we shall see.

2. So much then for the more general points brieﬂy stated. Now as be-

fore, I give a few details. Contrary to the ﬁrst view, these writers hold that

when we examine, say, how Marx sees the exchange relation between cap-

italists and workers as it really is beneath the surface appearances of cap-

italist society, then it is clear that he thinks it is no exchange at all, but a

mere pretense—forced labor.

The exchange of equivalents, the original operation with which we

started, has now become turned round in such a way that there is only

an apparent exchange. This is owing to the fact, ﬁrst, that the capital

which is exchanged for labor-power is itself but a portion of the prod-

uct of others’ labor appropriated without an equivalent; and, secondly,

that this capital must not only be replaced by its producer [the la-

borer], but replaced together with an added surplus. The relation of

exchange subsisting between capitalist and laborer becomes a mere

semblance appertaining to the process of circulation, a mere form....

The ever repeated purchase and sale of labor-power is now the mere

form; what really takes place is this—the capitalist again and again ap-

propriates, without equivalent, a portion of the previously material-

ized labor of others, and exchanges it for a greater quantity of living

labor.

Marx goes on to say that this process continues in accordance with the

laws of property and exchange in capitalist society and is not a violation but

an application of those laws. Under these laws it turns out to be the right of

the capitalist to appropriate the unpaid labor of others or its product. He

says (p. 584, at the end of the same paragraph): “The separation of prop-

erty from labor has become the necessary consequence of a law that appar-

ently originated in their identity.” He comments in a footnote to this that

the original principle that the laborer could appropriate the product of his

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8. In Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 24: “The Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital” (New

York: International Publishers, 1967), pp. 583f.

9. Ibid., p. 583.

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own labor has undergone “dialectical reversal.” This has happened beneath

the surface appearances of capitalist institutions.

3. This does not sound like a man describing a system of basic institu-

tions that he can approve of and accept as just. So the question arises

whether Marx says things that would normally be taken to imply that he

thinks the capitalist system unjust. Those who take the view we are now

considering maintain that he does, namely, when he speaks of the capitalist

appropriation of surplus value in terms of robbery and theft and the like.

To say this, they maintain, implies that the capitalist has no right to appro-

priate the surplus value, and his doing so is therefore wrongful or unjust.

We might say instead that it is not the capitalist who is unjust, but the sys-

tem itself.

Thus, referring in one place to the surplus product as “the tribute annu-

ally exacted from the working class by the capitalist class,” Marx goes on:

“Even if the latter uses a portion of the tribute to purchase the additional

labor-power at its full price, so that the equivalent is exchanged for equiva-

lent, the whole thing still remains the age-old activity of the conqueror,

who buys commodities from the conquered with the money he has stolen

from them.”

This not an isolated passage. There are many others, as when Marx

speaks of the annual surplus product as “embezzled from English workers

without any equivalent being given in return.” He says that “all progress

in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the

worker, but robbing the soil.” The prospective abolition of capitalist prop-

erty he describes as “the expropriation of a few usurpers.”

And so on in

numerous other passages.

Elsewhere Marx says that the worker may appear to enter the labor

contract voluntarily; the sphere of circulation appears as “a very Eden of

the innate rights of man...Therealone rule Freedom, Equality, Property

and Bentham” (Capital, Vol. I, International Publishers ed., p. 176; Tucker,

p. 343). But the reality again is different: the free worker makes a voluntary

agreement, that is, he “is compelled by social conditions, to sell the whole

of his active life, his very capacity for work” (Tucker, p. 376). Again: “capital

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His Conception of Right and Justice

10. Geras, Literature of Revolution, p. 17, quoting from Capital, Vol. I (Penguin edition),

p. 728. There are many other such passages in Capital, Vol. I. Thus: I: 638, 728, 743, 761,

874, 875, 885, 889, 895, 930. Vol. II: 31. Grundrisse, 705.

11. Geras, Literature of Revolution, p. 17.

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. . . pumps a deﬁnite quantity of surplus labor out of the direct producers,

or laborers; capital obtains this surplus labor without an equivalent, and in

essence it always remains forced labor—no matter how much it may seem

to result from free contractual agreement” (Capital, Vol. III, Tucker, p. 440).

Now on the view we are examining, since Marx did not think that

the capitalists rob the worker according to the capitalist conception of jus-

tice, he must have meant that they rob the workers in some other sense.

Moreover, since Marx condemned slavery and feudalism in much the same

terms, this other sense presumably belongs to a conception of justice that

holds generally. That is, it must be one that applies to the basic structure of

most if not all societies, and so it is in this sense non-relativist.

Thus those (e.g. G. A. Cohen) arguing that Marx did condemn cap-

italism as unjust saw that: since Marx did not think that, by the conception

of justice adequate to capitalism, capitalists steal or rob, he must have

meant that they steal or rob on some other, non-capitalist conception of

justice: for to steal or to rob is to take what rightly belongs to another; and

hence to act unjustly. Any economic system said to be based on theft must

be viewed as unjust (on Cohen’s view).

§4. Relation to Marginal Productivity Theory of Distribution

1. I think this view, that of Geras and Cohen and others, is correct. I try

suggesting a particular form of it. One way to begin doing this, and to illus-

trate the aim of Marx’s labor theory of value, is to conjecture how Marx

would have replied to the marginal productivity theory of distribution. To

be sure, although this theory was being developed at the time of his death

(1883), he wouldn’t have known of it; but what he would have thought of it

is clear from many things he says.

This theory has sometimes been used to argue that under free competi-

tive conditions, the distribution of wealth and income under capitalism is

just. Such an argument, seldom heard now,

was not uncommon in the late

19th century, soon after the marginal productivity theory was developed by

the neoclassical economists. They introduced the ideas of marginal utility

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12. [This part of the lecture was written in the early 1980s, when the assumptions be-

hind political and academic discussions regarding distributive justice were quite different

than they are today. —Ed.]

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and marginal productivity into the theory of price. Very roughly, the idea is

that each factor of production—labor, land, and capital—contributes its

share in producing society’s total output. In accordance with the precept, to

each person according to that person’s contribution, it is just that those

who contribute their land and capital should share in the output along with

labor. Adam Smith said: “...rentmaybeconsidered as the produce of

those powers of nature, the use of which the landlord lends to the farmer.

...It[rent] is the work of nature which remains, after deducting or com-

pensating everything which can be regarded as the work of man.”

which Marx in effect replies: since Mother Nature is not around to collect

her share, the landlord comes to claim it in her stead.

2. Marx says the following (Capital, Vol. III, International Publishers,

p. 824): “These means of production are in themselves capital by nature;

capital is merely an ‘economic appellation’ for these means of production;

and so, in itself land is by nature the earth monopolized by a certain num-

ber of landowners. Just as products confront the producer as an indepen-

dent force in capital and capitalists—who actually are but the personiﬁcat-

ion of capital,—so land becomes personiﬁed in the landlord and likewise

gets on its hind legs to demand, as an independent force, its share of the

product created with its help. Thus, not the land receives its due portion

of the product for the restoration and improvement of its productivity,

but instead the landlord takes a share of this product to chaffer away or

squander.”

Of course, the last words here, “to chaffer away or squander,” are a dis-

traction and they obscure, as Marx’s expressions of contempt often do, his

main point. This point is not that the landlord may be a spendthrift and lead

a life of idleness and luxury; for many landlords are conscientious and take

care of their estates. (Recall Levin in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.) Rather, the

point is that the landlord receives a return solely as an owner; that is, the

landlord receives a rent from the land that measures the marginal contribu-

tion of the land: a unit of land receives a price according to what it is worth

to a producer of grain, say. Marx is not talking about what a landlord re-

ceives in return for the management of the estate: what capitalists and land-

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His Conception of Right and Justice

13. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (New York: Random House, 1937), Bk. II, Ch. V,

pp. 344f.

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lords receive as the wages of management is not counted as the extraction

of surplus value.

What counts as extracted surplus value is what the capitalist or landlord

receives above any wages of management—that is, what they receive sim-

ply as owners of scarce factors of production which are in demand on the

market. In Marx’s view, it is the social system of capitalism that grants to

certain classes the strategic position of ownership of the means of produc-

tion, which allows them to demand returns in the form of proﬁt, interest,

and rent.

Note that when Marx talks about the land becoming “personiﬁed in

the landlord,” this somewhat mystifying mode of speech refers to the

fact that it is the landlord, as an economic agent who owns the land,

who steps forward on the market to receive payment for the use of the

land. The system of markets with its various categories of agents existing

over time makes the various kinds of payments—proﬁt, interest, and rent

along with wages—seem perfectly natural and to have existed “from time

immemorial.”

3. Let’s look at the long paragraph (third from the end) of Chapter 48

(The Trinity Formula) in Capital, Vol. III, International Publishers, p. 830:

In capital-proﬁt, or still better capital-interest, land-rent, labor-wages, in

this economic trinity represented as the component parts of value and

wealth in general and its sources, we have the complete mystiﬁcation

of the capitalist mode of production, the conversion of social relations

into things, the direct coalescence of material productive relations with

their historical and social determination. It is an enchanted, perverted

and topsy-turvy world...[yet]itis...natural for the actual agents of

production to feel completely at home in these estranged and irratio-

nal forms of . . . illusion in which they move about and ﬁnd their daily

occupation ...Thisformula[the trinity formula]...corresponds to

the interests of the ruling classes by proclaiming the physical necessity

and eternal justiﬁcation of their sources of revenue and elevating them

to a dogma.

Earlier Marx has referred to the trinity formula as presenting “a uni-

form and symmetrical incongruity” (Vol. III, International Publishers, p. 824).

I believe that what he means by this is that the trinity formula presents cap-

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ital, land, and labor as three co-equal partners in the process of production;

and as co-equal partners each deserves to receive its share of the output ac-

cording to its contribution. The formula presents the three factors of pro-

duction as on a par—it presents them uniformly and symmetrically. The

formula is an incongruity because, as we have said, on Marx’s labor theory

of value, labor is viewed as a special factor of production. From a social

point of view, the total output of the production process is to be ascribed to

past and present labor. The surface appearances of capitalist institutions

conceal the extraction of surplus value and its conversion into proﬁt, inter-

est, and rent.

It is important to keep in mind that Marx is not saying that, in the high

period of capitalism when it is serving its historical role, the general belief

in the justice of proﬁt, interest, and rent is the result of deception, that is, a

belief which arises as a result of clever manipulation of public beliefs by

certain persons backstage who stand to gain from the misconceptions of

others. Rather, Marx’s view is that the widespread belief in the justice of

proﬁt, interest, and rent is perfectly natural—an illusion (as opposed to a

delusion)—given the situation of economic agents in the system of cap-

italist institutions as a system of personal independence. This belief is part

of a capitalist conception of justice adapted to the requirements of the cap-

italist mode of production. It characterizes the ideological (false) conscious-

ness of capitalist society and is shared by workers and capitalists alike. It is

an illusion which Marx’s Capital hopes to dispel, now that capitalism has

served its historical role.

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His Conception of Right and Justice

14. Marx says in Capital, Vol. III, Ch. 48, part III, p. 825 (New York: International Pub-

lishers, 1967), also in Selected Writings, ed. David McLellan (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1977): “. . . the respective part played by the earth as the original ﬁeld of activity of

labor . . . and the other respective part played by the produced means of production (in-

struments, raw materials, etc.) in the general process of production, must seem to be ex-

pressed in the respective shares claimed by them as capital and landed property, that is,

which fall to the share of their social representatives in the form of proﬁt (interest) and

rent, like to [just as in the case of] the laborer—the part his labor plays in the process of

production is expressed in wages. Rent, proﬁt, and wages thus seem to grow out of the

role played by the land, produced means of production, and labor in the simple labor-pro-

cess, even when we consider this labor-process as one carried on merely between man and

nature, leaving aside any historical determination” (McLellan, Selected Writings, p. 501).

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§5. The Allocative and Distributive Role of Prices

1. In order to clarify Marx’s view further and to bring out what his im-

plicit conception of justice may be, let’s distinguish between the allocative

and the distributive role of prices.

The allocative role is connected with

the use of prices to achieve economic efﬁciency, that is, to direct the use of

scarce resources and factors of production to those employments in which

they yield the greatest social beneﬁt. The distributive role of prices is their

determining the income to be received by individuals in return for what

they contribute to production.

Now, it is perfectly consistent for a socialist regime to establish an inter-

est rate, say by setting up a money-market on which worker-managed ﬁrms

can borrow funds for capital expansion. This interest rate will allocate reve-

nues among investment projects and will provide a basis for computing

rental charges for the use of capital and scarce natural resources such as

land and minerals. Indeed, this must be done if these means of production

are to be employed in the best way from a social point of view. For even if

these resources fall from the sky without human effort, they are neverthe-

less productive, as Marx recognizes and takes care to assert. When com-

bined with other factors of production a greater output results.

It does not follow, however, that there must be private persons who as

owners of these resources receive as their personal income the monetary

equivalents of these evaluations. Rather, accounting prices in a socialist re-

gime are economic indicators to be used in drawing up an efﬁcient sched-

ule of economic activities. Except in the case of work of all kinds—mental

and physical—prices under socialism do not correspond to income paid to

private persons. Instead, the prices imputed to natural resources and collec-

tive assets have no distributive role. In capitalism these prices do have a dis-

tributive role, and it is this role that characterizes what I have called pure

ownership. This distinction between the two roles shows the importance of

distinguishing between the use of the market to organize economic activi-

ties efﬁciently and a system of private property in which the worth of re-

sources becomes the personal income of the owners. This latter use illus-

trates private property as a basis of exploitation.

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15. See Rawls, A Theory of Justice, §42.

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