Socialist Principles of Appropriative Justice

During the last quarter of the twentieth century, many analytical Marxists contributed to the revival of the debate concerning the relationship between Marxism and morality. One such attempt made by Ziyad Husami (1978) was to derive a ‘socialist principle of justice’ from Marx’s “Critique of the Gotha Programme”. For Husami this ‘socialist principle of justice’ takes the form of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution”. From this principle Husami derives the conclusion that capitalist exploitation is unjust because the workers do not appropriate the surplus value they create during the production process. In this paper I will argue that what really makes capitalist exploitation unjust is not that workers do not appropriate the surplus product but rather that they do not appropriate the total product of their labor. Following Ellerman and Burczak, I develop this insight further to conclude that socializing the means of production and abolishing private property are not necessary eliminate capitalist exploitation. Furthermore, I want to argue that this notion of appropriative justice can be grounded in a Kantian framework but ultimately that a Hegelian framework should be preferred as it is more faithful to Marx’s philosophical worldview.