The Value of Workers’ Contributions Is Inherently Collective
The Left argues that workers deserve the fruits of their own labor, while the Right says that some workers contribute much more than others and so deserve higher pay. But that claim overlooks the dependence of individual contributions on collective labor.
Defenders of the capitalist status quo often justify severe income inequality on the grounds that highly paid workers contribute much more to society than others. This argument rests on a confusion about what determines the value of a worker’s labor. (Karl Gehring / The Denver Post via Getty Images)
Most on the Left believe that the people who are paid the least in capitalist economies, like the contemporary United States, ought to be paid more, even if that would mean that the market’s current winners get paid much less.
What is the basic argument for this claim? I have been preoccupied with this question for a long time. During the COVID-19 pandemic, one of my family members was working at an Amazon warehouse. Thinking about pandemic-era Amazon warehouse workers, at least, the question seemed to answer itself. These workers were called “essential”: their labor was very valuable.
The power of this answer is a testament to the enduring appeal of an old idea — the idea that workers have a claim to the “fruits of their labor,” that it is unjust when they are paid less than the value of their productive contribution. The idea doesn’t have a single name. We can call it “the contribution principle.”
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