B. The Exploitation Objection
A different though related reason the ghetto poor might have for refusing to work is that, under current circumstances, work requirements, or the specific terms of work, are exploitative. (Piven and Cloward go even further, arguing that not only is the work regime exploitative, but it has the often intended effect of imposing discipline on and instilling fear in the rest of the workforce, making them more docile and easily exploitable. In response to the dehumanizing effects of the work regime, workers will often accept lower compensation, fewer benefits, and less job security to avoid sharing the degraded status of the ghetto poor.) One way of developing this objection relies on the injustice objection as a premise. Though one may rightly be regarded as an exploiter (or parasite) if one does not work when background conditions are just, one may be among the exploited if one is forced to work under unjust conditions. To garner benefits by extracting labor from persons who are powerless to resist because unjust circumstances have been imposed on them is a paradigm case of economic exploitation. The systems of slavery, serfdom, colonial subjugation, and apartheid are examples of such an arrangement. Insofar as the ghetto poor are forced to work because of correctable, unjust background conditions, they too are rightly regarded as among the economically exploited. The legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, along with continuing employment discrimination and unequal educational opportunity, have created (or helped to create) a large class of blacks who are poor and unskilled. The result is that the black urban poor have been fashioned into a source of cheap, expendable, and exploitable labor, from which the affluent benefit.
But the exploitation objection would still have force even if the basic structure of U.S. society had not exceeded the threshold for tolerable injustice. Many Americans maintain that the ghetto poor remain poor because of bad option luck for which they are responsible. Had they worked harder, avoided risky behavior, delayed childbearing until marriage, developed useful skills, and so on, they would not be in such a dire situation. Because of this irresponsible conduct, it is argued, their vulnerable economic position is deserved--or at least they should bear the economic costs of their unwise behavior--and it is therefore not exploitative for their fellow citizens to require them to work as a condition of material support. However, even if we allow that such charges are rightly applied to adults whose bad choices have left them confined to the ghetto, what of those persons who grow up under ghetto conditions? After all, a shockingly high percentage of the black poor were born into ghetto conditions. Their disadvantage is the result of bad brute luck, not bad option luck. In view of their undeserved economic disadvantage and insecurity, even if economic reciprocity is, in general, a requirement of justice and the basic structure of U.S. society is reasonably just, forcing the indigenous black urban poor to work is exploitative. It is a case of profiting from the labor of people who are compelled to work because of weaknesses and vulnerabilities that are not of their making.
In fact, the situation is worse than this. Under the new work regime, the indigenous ghetto poor are in a self-reproducing exploitative relationship with affluent citizens. The structure of a self-reproducing exploitative relationship is as follows:
X and Y are in a self-reproducing exploitative social relationship if: (i) Y is regularly forced to make sacrifices that result in benefits for X; (ii) X obtains these benefits by means of a power advantage that X has over Y; and (iii) as a result of conditions (i) and (ii) X's power advantage over Y is maintained (or is increased) and Y remains in the condition of being forced to make sacrifices for X's benefit.
Thus, in a self-reproducing exploitative social relationship, a social relation that has the basic structure outlined in conditions (i) and (ii) has as one of its causal consequences that the conditions for the continuation of a relationship that preserves that structure are thereby reproduced. What this account does, then, is help us to see why some exploitative relationships tend to persist: the very structure of these relationships tends to secure their continuance.
Because of the new work regime, this self-reproducing exploitative relationship exists between the indigenous ghetto poor and their more affluent fellow citizens. The basic problem is this: many of the ghetto poor who have submitted to the requirements of the new work regime nevertheless remain poor. They simply become part of the working poor, often serving the private needs of the well off--e.g., performing the roles of maids, nannies, dishwashers, maintenance workers, and so on. Others fall back into poverty because of recessions, periods of economic restructuring, or mass layoffs. The schools available to the ghetto poor are often so substandard that they do not enable upward mobility. Thus, when work requirements do not allow for skills enhancement or promotion to better-paid positions, these requirements are reasonably interpreted as attempts to profit by extracting burdensome and unrewarding labor from the weak and vulnerable. Work enforcement, under these circumstances, is disempowering--it ensures that the ghetto poor are a permanently exploitable class.
