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I recently read Nick French’s essay entitled “Labor Under Socialism” (Catalyst, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 42-73) in which he argues in favor of a hypothetical socialist society in the developed West having an ideally free labor market. In broad strokes, French supports the idea of having a labor market in which people are free to choose whatever occupation they want to pursue over, say, the state or some other institution assigning occupations to individuals in a Futurama-esque manner. Frankly, I agree with French. Considering things from a Rawlsian veil of ignorance perspective, given the choice between living in a society where I get to freely choose my occupation and one where I’m assigned an occupation by some higher authority, I’m obviously going to prefer the former, and I suspect the vast majority of other people would as well. All good so far.
French isn’t naive, though. He does carve out room for things like the state offering incentives for certain occupations. He uses the example of doctors in the US being helped with medical school debt if they serve lower-income communities for some amount of time. Similar opportunities exist for public school teachers who are willing to work in impoverished schools. Such state-sponsored programs don’t do anything to prevent people from freely pursuing their occupations of choice. If anything, they level the playing field a bit by making occupations that are otherwise difficult to pursue more accessible to more people, and I see that as a good thing.
“Productive justice” is what motivates French’s entire essay. First, everyone in a hypothetical socialist society has “the duty to work” (43). Roughly, human societies are cooperative and mutually advantageous. As such, anyone existing in said societies has a duty to participate in a meaningful way. In other words, no freeloading; everyone contributes to the pot. It’s the same idea that motivated Barack Obama’s famous 2012 campaign speech in which he argued, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.” Obama’s larger point, missed by many, being that anyone who has found material success in the United States ought to contribute more in the form of taxes to pay for the services that have benefited and enabled the material success: public schools, roads, law enforcement, emergency services, etc. Likewise, a socialist society that guarantees a dignified minimum existence for every person creates a duty for able individuals to contribute and participate. Otherwise, it is a situation where non-participatory individuals are taking advantage of those who do their part.
Second, every individual has “freedom of occupational choice” (49). French, like Rawls, believes such freedom is as basic as any other civil liberty like, say, freedom of expression or freedom of religion. French writes,
The right to freedom of choice of occupation (like other civil liberties and freedoms of the person) thus protects individuals against deformation of our autonomous agency. It is for this reason that the other basic liberties take priority over promoting overall welfare, equality of opportunity for jobs, and equality in other social and economic resources (50-51).
This is the point at which French introduces a crucial exception to the ideal labor market. Namely, some minimum threshold of material well-being in society must exist before basic civil liberties can be prioritized over overall welfare. Imagine a society in which there are no hospitals, courts, rule of law, etc.; a society in which basic and fundamental institutions are all lacking. In such a society, it doesn’t make sense to prioritize civil liberties such as freedom of expression and freedom of religion over material well-being. Likewise, it doesn’t make sense to prioritize freedom of occupational choice in such a society. It is only when a minimum threshold for material well-being has been crossed that civil liberties can become prioritized, according to French (and Rawls, with whom French agrees).
Again, I basically agree with French on all of this. Consider the current political climate in the United States. We are at this very moment having to fight to keep desirable institutions intact, institutions as fundamental as free and fair elections are at stake. And yet many on the left flank have taken to prioritizing defunding Israel over all else. See, for example, the “uncommitted movement” of 2024 where Democrats opposed to the war in Gaza refused to pull the lever for Kamala Harris. Or worse, prioritizing the rights of transgender Americans over all else. Don’t mistake this as me saying someone can’t be pro-Palestinian or pro-trans rights. There are, however, certain fundamentals that need to be mastered before we can even attempt to widen the circle, as it were.
There is, however, a point of disagreement I have with French. While he acknowledges the possible need for labor requirements that violate freedom of occupational choice, he sees such violations as regrettable necessities that ought to be done away with as soon as possible. For example, it may be the case that a society at war needs to institute a draft. After all, if the very existence of said society is at risk of being lost, surely a civil liberty such as freedom of occupational choice must take a backseat as more pressing matters come to the fore. French more or less sees such instances as both unnecessary and undesirable in the context of a socialist society in the developed West, though. In the United States and Western Europe, for example, we have the institutions and resources to meet the minimum threshold of material well-being so as to prioritize civil liberties. French mentions in his essay and then never properly addresses an argument he attributes to Jan Kandiyali: If a society has a labor levy for burdensome yet important work, then it has the potential to create “an ethos of public service or civic-mindedness” (64). We see just such a labor levy in Israel and South Korea, where just about every citizen is required to serve in the military for some amount of time. Of note is Israel’s internal political crisis stemming from exemptions to such requirements, but one can envision a better outcome by a fairer distribution of civic service. Not only does this provide a necessary labor pool (in the cases of both Israel and South Korea, they are in a constant state of potential military conflict with neighbors), but it also creates a shared sense of the aforementioned civic-mindedness. That is, every citizen has essentially invested in the well-being of their country.
Former US secretary of transportation Pete Buttigieg floated the idea of a “national service” program while he was running for the Democratic nomination for president in 2019. Love him or hate him, I think Buttigieg is right. Not only is there a dire need for federal employment programs in general, but to get young people involved in civil service, be it military, parks, infrastructure, Peace Corps, or something else, would undoubtedly go a long way toward ameliorating the, as Buttigieg puts it, “threat to social cohesion that helps characterize… this era.” Now, one can assume French’s immediate response: The civil liberty of occupational choice is more fundamental and important than improving social cohesion. Is he right, though? French already concedes that basic civil liberties are not inherently the most important things for a society to prioritize; a minimum threshold of material well-being must be established first. I would argue, however, that no socialist society that intends to be a respecter of liberal values such as freedom of association or occupational choice is going to successfully do so in the long run without social cohesion. Robust labor movements have found their place in societies with high social cohesion. See, for example, the Scandinavian countries. As social cohesion has deteriorated in our increasingly individualistic and consumer-focused society here in the US, so have the gains made by the labor movement of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Wrapping things up, I will restate my fundamental disagreement with French: Violation of occupational freedom should not be reserved only for societies that have not met a minimum threshold for material well-being. As Kandiyali observes, labor levies can contribute toward the development of social cohesion and an increased consideration for the public good among a society’s population. As a committed socialist, French ought to be interested in such opportunities. In order for a non-authoritarian socialist society to work, there needs to be a high degree of social cohesion. In our current capitalist world, the persistent rise of individualism has directly undermined organized labor and community organizations such as churches, volunteer fire companies, clubs, and other volunteer-based yet socially necessary groups. I imagine a world that aligns with a non-authoritarian socialist vision while utilizing labor levies to drive social cohesion. Not only is there precedent of such levies in otherwise liberal democracies (see Israel and South Korea), but it entirely sidesteps the problem that has been plaguing thoughtful individuals on both the right and the left concerning how to break with the entrenched individualism that has come as a result of both the rise of capitalism and the decline of organized religion.