Defining the duty to contribute: Against the market solution
| Author | Markus Furendal |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885117693401 |
| Published date | 01 October 2019 |
| Date | 01 October 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of Political Theory
2019, Vol. 18(4) 469–488
!The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885117693401
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Article
Defining the duty to
contribute: Against the
market solution
Markus Furendal
Stockholm University, Sweden
Abstract
If there is a duty of justice to contribute to society, which asks individuals to produce a
specific amount of goods and services that can be redistributed, we need a decision-
procedure to know when we have done our part. This paper analyses and critically
assesses the commonly suggested decision-procedure of relying on market prices to
measure the value of one’s contribution. It is usually assumed that a high salary indicates
that one’s talents are put to good use, but this presupposes both that market prices of
labour are correct reflections of supply and demand, and that market prices are correct
reflections of social value. I criticise both assumptions and argue that the social value of
a contribution cannot simply be a function of its market value, but is also influenced by
the principles of justice that support the duty to contribute. Further, the market solu-
tion is incapable of valuing contributions that lack market prices, like non-marketised
care labour. The market solution thus fails as a decision-procedure under other than
special circumstances. This does not mean, however, that we need to give up the idea of
a duty to contribute.
Keywords
Duty to contribute, markets, market mechanisms, Joseph H Carens, distributive justice,
productive justice, market socialism
While much of the debate on distributive justice in the last decades has focused on
how people’s responsibility for their choices determines what a just distribution is,
the question of people’s responsibility to contribute to the production of that which
is to be distributed justly has received less consideration. Yet since what is distrib-
uted must first be produced, the latter question clearly deserves more attention.
One way of contributing is to accept that one’s income is taxed and redistributed
according to some principle of justice. A second way not only requires that we
Corresponding author:
Markus Furendal, Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, Stockholm SE-10691, Sweden.
Email: markus.furendal@statsvet.su.se
tolerate taxation of what we have produced, but that we actually produce goods
and resources to be redistributed. If we are expected to contribute in the former,
less demanding way, we still freely decide how to divide our time between work and
leisure. On the second, more demanding formulation, however, we would be
expected to work until we have produced a specified minimum amount of goods
and services.
A theory that supports the idea that there is a duty to contribute in the second
sense should answer why,where and when it applies. For example, one common
answer (Becker, 1980; White, 2003) to these three questions (to which we may
remain uncommitted for the purposes of this article) is based on the idea of reci-
procity, and says that those who take part of the goods of a society also have an
obligation to contribute to their production. This view may be said to inform the
increasingly common practice in many welfare states of making welfare provisions
conditional on work effort (White, 2004). It can, but need not, be complemented by
the Aristotelian or Marxian view that humans are social creatures for which it is
natural and good to produce (Gomberg, 2016). Additionally, it is a fact that in the
real world jobs that are important to justice are often not performed, and a duty of
productive justice could also be justified because it would help reduce injustice in
non-ideal circumstances (Stanczyk, 2012). In addition to these issues, there is also a
motivational question of how to make sure that people are willing to contribute,
and whether it could be done in a way that is consistent with a plausible view of
individual freedom (see, for instance, Casal, 2013; Cohen, 2008; Lang, 2016;
Murphy, 1999; Pogge, 2000; Wiens, 2016). Since much has been written about
these problems I will not address them in the present context.
1
Instead, my focus
is on another problem in need of a solution if we are to assess the idea of a duty to
contribute: Even if citizens were motivated to do their bit, it would not do much
good unless they knew what their bits were. Independently of our answer to
whether there is a duty to contribute, and whether it is feasible that people will
honour it, we need an answer to the question that is the focus of this article: what
should count as making a socially valuable contribution?
In approaching this question, it is useful to view the duty to contribute as an
account of right-making characteristics in need of a decision-making procedure (or
decision-procedure for short). Just like some consequentialists (e.g. Bales, 1971)
hold that an individual performs the right action if and only if there is no other
available action that would have better consequences, we could correspondingly
say that an individual fulfils a duty to contribute when he or she has produced
something of sufficient value – regardless of whether we know what particular
action fulfils this right-making criterion. For such an account to guide action,
however, we also need a decision-procedure to help us pick out the particular
action that has the best possible consequences or the particular contributions
that are sufficiently valuable. How could an individual, for instance, decide whether
a career in architecture or cartoon drawing would be a better way to fulfil a duty to
contribute? In discussions concerning a duty to contribute, the most commonly
suggested decision-procedure is the ‘market solution’, which holds that market
prices of labour indicate the social value of a contribution. This view, ascribed
470 European Journal of Political Theory 18(4)
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