Abstract
Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski argue in recent work that “semiotic” or “symbolic” objections to markets are unsuccessful. I counter-argue that there are indeed some semiotic limits on markets and that anti-commodification theorists are not merely expressing disgust when they disapprove of markets in certain goods on those grounds. One central argument is that, contrary to what Brennan and Jaworski claim, semiotic arguments against markets do not depend fundamentally on meanings that prevail about markets. Rather, they depend on the meanings that attach to various goods, meanings that give us moral bases on which to make judgments about their prospective commodification.
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Notes
See Brennan and Jaworski (2015). Brennan and Jaworski (2016) offers another rendition of the argument. This work has already garnered a significant amount of critical attention. For a sampling see: Booth, 2018; Carter, 2017; Dick, 2018; Jonker, 2019; Moriarty, 2017; Sparks, 2017; Stein, 2019; Taylor, 2016, and Wells, 2017.
I am not sure how the adjectives “deep” and “metaphysical” are meant to qualify the noun “fact” here, but we can let this finicky point pass.
Joseph Heath seems to have anticipated the core of Brennan and Jaworski’s argument here. In a review of Satz, 2010 Heath writes, “serious doubts have… been raised about the extent to which the exchange of goods is really what triggers repugnance, or whether people are merely reacting to the background inequality that underlies certain exchanges.” (Heath, 2011, 100) To admit that a prohibition on some market has to do with a concern for background inequality or unfairness not a concern for the sacredness of the human body or some other such concern “is to risk undermining the idea that there should be any prohibited markets. This is because …there is a familiar line of reasoning in welfare economics which shows that, if inequality is the problem, then the best way to address it is by making adjustments on the income side, not by interfering with particular markets. Why? Because this both permits a more effective solution to the inequality problem and allows participants to realize the efficiency gains associated with market exchange” (Heath, 2011, 101).
See, among other things, Anderson, 1990a, 1990b, 1993; Radin, 1996; Sandel, 2012; Satz, 2010; Walzer, 1983. These authors do not self-identify as “anti-commodification theorists”. That phrase is introduced by Brennan and Jaworski. For simplicity’s sake, I follow them in using it here. The label “anti-commodification theorist” may be misleading: none of these authors oppose commodification as such. What they oppose are markets without limits. See also Brennan & Jaworski, 2015 (1053– 54) for a list of other, non-semiotic objections to markets.
Though, see Nobel prize-winning economist, Garry S. Becker, who claims that “an efficient marriage market usually has positive assortative mating, where high-quality men are matched with high-quality women and low-quality men with low-quality women, although negative assortative mating is sometimes important.” (Becker, 1993, 108) I trust that I am not alone in finding talk of an “efficient marriage market” extremely bizarre.
The distinction drawn by Radin (1996) between “literal” and “metaphorical” markets is germane here, and, though not identical, in the same general neighborhood as the distinction between Pervasive and Incidental markets.
See for instance their advocacy for markets in human organs. (Brennan & Jaworski, 2016, 8; 219-21)
I think Robert Nozick’s (1974) famous Wilt Chamberlain parable seizes on a similar wobble. The way that the Chamberlain transaction is depicted by Nozick makes it seem like this is merely a one-time transfer, and admittedly makes it more difficult to disapprove of. But, as G.A. Cohen has pointed out, the Chamberlain transaction only “poses a serious challenge” on the assumption that it is “an example of something which occurs regularly, or will occur regularly in the future.” Viewed as a one-time occurrence, the Chamberlain transaction, like Incidental markets more generally, looks “harmless.” (Cohen, 1995, 28n20; 25) I am not committed to a view about what it takes for Incidental markets to become Pervasive. Clearly, however, social and legal institutions need to be involved. It takes more than sheer volume of transactions to move from the one to the other. Pervasive markets are thus not merely like a garage sale writ large.
I think that Brennan and Jaworski engage the incorrect wavelength of Anderson’s argument here. They claim that the conclusion she wants is that “we ought to have a full prohibition on surrogacy arrangements” (Brennan & Jaworski, 2016, 36). I read Anderson, instead, as advancing the following conditional: “If we are to retain the capacity to value…women in ways consistent with a rich conception of human flourishing, we must resist the encroachment of the market upon the sphere of reproductive labor” (Anderson, 1990b, 92). I do not see how a conclusion about a “full prohibition” necessarily follows from this.
Sparks focusses on this feature of markets in his recent engagement with Brennan and Jaworski’s work. “When you buy some good, you express your preference for that good. That our transaction communicates a preference is not a contingent social fact, but a necessary part of the meaning of a market transaction” (Sparks, 2017, 342).
Michael Walzer’s work is an important precursor for these kinds of arguments. Walzer (1983) argued that distributive justice was “spherical” and that various goods have their own distributive logic in virtue of the social meanings of those goods. The result is that votes, for instance, are to be distributed in accordance with a principle of equal citizenship, health care in accordance with medical need, love and companionship in accordance with free choice, and commodities in accordance with ability to pay. Trying to buy votes, health care, or love, constitutes an illegitimate boundary-crossing —what Walzer calls a “blocked exchange”. Money and markets have their proper place, to be sure. But money can too easily become what Walzer calls a “dominant good”—a good whose possession enables the individuals who have it to command a wide range of other goods. A person who has money can buy Persian carpets, Italian suits, Swiss watches and German automobiles, but she can also secure a better education for her children, influence the outcome of an election, change the editorial tone of a newspaper, and endow a university chair. (Waldron, 1995, 146) Jon Elster agrees with Walzer about many of the things that ought not be bought and sold, but thinks we can “do better” at explaining this than by invoking the social meanings of the goods in question. As he writes, “In some cases, the prohibition against the sale can be justified on purely conceptual grounds. A proposal to buy love, prizes, honors, or divine grace is not so much objectionable as conceptually incoherent. In other cases, the prohibitions are justified on grounds of paternalism, to exclude ‘exchanges born of desperation’ such as selling oneself into slavery. Arguments for overruling private preferences can also be grounded in lack of information, weakness of the will, the social shaping of individual wants, and similar phenomena. In still other cases the prohibition is needed to prevent free riding and overcome a collective action problem…The reason why people cannot buy a medical degree is, as Walzer says, that we need to be sure that our doctors are qualified to treat us: a straightforwardly utilitarian argument. Thus, whenever Walzer’s claims are plausible, they can be backed by arguments that are more powerful and specific than the blanket appeal to ‘shared understandings’. And whenever they find no such backing, they are not very plausible” (Elster, 1992, 13).
See also Anderson (1993, 143) and (1990a, 180 n.1). On the subject of taking social meanings seriously, readers may recall that Robert Nozick once poked fun at Bernard Williams’s assertion that “the proper ground of distribution of medical care is ill health” (Williams, 2005, 106). While Williams regarded that assertion as something like a “necessary truth,” Nozick famously rejoined: “Presumably, then, the only proper criterion for the distribution of barbering services is barbering need” (Nozick, 1974, 234). Nozick’s rejoinder shows, in addition to his brilliant flare for philosophical analogy, a stubborn reluctance to take social meanings seriously. Equating genuine medical need with barbering need demonstrates an unwillingness to consider how receiving needed medical care differs— for us, given the broad constellation of values about human flourishing that form the background of our ability to decipher and weigh goods— from getting a haircut.
For instance: they clearly think that letting people die for lack of kidneys is objectively bad, and that child pornography is objectively an evil (quite apart from anyone’s desire for it). More, the consequentialism they recommend would be incoherent if they did not also believe that some consequences were objectively better from a moral point of view than others.
To be fair, liberal egalitarians might endorse the thesis too, albeit on slightly different grounds. Because of their commitment to remaining neutral amongst competing conceptions of the good, they might maintain that questions of value should have no bearing on how states regulate markets. So, arguably, subjectivist accounts of value might have other, non-libertarian devotees.
To be clear, the claim is not that Nobel Prize winners should not be permitted to sell their trophies or medals (there is a difference, after all, between the awards themselves and the trophies or medals that symbolize them).
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Acknowledgements
Previous versions of this paper have been presented at an annual meeting of the Canadian Philosophical Association in Montreal, and to a ‘Works in Progress’ seminar in the department of philosophy at the University of Nevada, Reno. I’m grateful to audience members and to my beloved colleagues in the philosophy department at UNR for helpful feedback. Special thanks are due to Ben Bryan, who provided many insightful criticisms on an earlier draft of the paper, and made numerous, extremely helpful, suggestions for improvement.
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Rondel, D. Semiotic Limits to Markets Defended. Philosophia 50, 217–232 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00374-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00374-y