By kilin Tang

In “Coercive Wage Offers,” David Zimmerman argues that wage offers are inherently coercive in a capitalist society. In doing so, he rejects the view of coercion as a moral concept assessed in terms of a “baseline set by a morally required course of events.”[1] He argues that any definition of coercion must explain why coercion results in unfreedom and is thus prima facie wrong. However, for the moral definition of coercion, attempts to justify coercion as wrong via utilitarianism or Kantianism ultimately rely on the non-moral to explain why coercion is prima facie wrong.[2] To address this concern, Zimmerman constructs a non-moral definition of coercion. His non-moral definition is different in that, when certain circumstances are met, offers, in addition to threats, are considered coercive. Zimmerman then utilizes this new definition of coercion to argue that wage offers in a capitalist society satisfy said conditions and are thus coercive.

This paper seeks to evaluate the strength of both Zimmerman’s non-moral definition of coercion in and of itself as well as his ultimate argument that wage offers are coercive. I argue that Zimmerman’s definition of coercion dilutes the significance of the term, is too ambiguous to be practical, and overly depends upon the preferences of the victim. I then contend that under Zimmerman’s own definition, wage offers are not definitively coercive. I argue that capitalists as individuals do not necessarily actively prevent workers from receiving higher wages, and I point out that Zimmerman’s argument relies upon the unsubstantiated premise that workers strongly prefer a socialist alternative to the current capitalist state.

Zimmerman proposes a framework to understand coercion. Consider an example of 2 people, A and Q, where A is the aggressor and Q is the victim.[3] When A has given an offer to Q, the situations that Q finds himself in can be broken down into three different types: the “pre-proposal situation,” the “proposal situation,” and the “alternative pre-proposal situation.”[4] The pre-proposal situation describes Q’s situation before a proposal by A has been offered to Q, the proposal situation describes Q’s situation at the time A has offered a proposal to Q, and the alternative pre-proposal situation describes any situation before a proposal by A has been offered to Q that is different from the pre-proposal situation. Importantly, Zimmerman limits all alternative pre-proposal situations to those that are historically, technologically, and economically feasible.[5]

Using this framework, Zimmerman defines coercion as follows: offers from A to Q are coercive when A “actively prevents Q from being in the alternative pre-proposal situation Q strongly prefers.”[6] Zimmerman proposes that for A to “actively prevent” Q from being in the pre-proposal situation, A must satisfy the “prevention condition.”[7] The prevention condition is satisfied when “Q would have enjoyed his highly preferred pre-proposal situation but for the obstacles [A] erects.”[8] In other words, to be considered coercive, it is required for A to erect obstacles that are necessary to prevent Q from enjoying his highly preferred pre-proposal situation.

Zimmerman offers an example to elucidate this definition. Consider two separate cases. In the first case, A kidnaps Q and places him on an island where A’s factory is located. The next day, A offers Q a genuine proposal to work at A’s factory for an extremely low wage or otherwise starve. In the second case, Q washes ashore on an island on which B owns a factory. B sees Q on the island and offers Q the same genuine proposal—to work at B’s factory for an extremely low wage or otherwise starve. According to Zimmerman, both offers are exploitative, but only the offer in the first case is coercive. Similarly to A, B has offered Q an extremely low wage. However, B has not satisfied the prevention condition: B has not erected any obstacles that would prevent Q from being in the pre-proposal situation Q strongly prefers, which is to not be on the island in the first place. It is only A who kidnaps Q and puts him on a remote island. In doing so, A erected an obstacle that prevented Q from being in his strongly preferred situation of not being on the island. With the prevention condition satisfied, A’s subsequent offer to work for an extremely low wage is defined as coercive.[9]

Utilizing his non-moral definition of coercion, Zimmerman argues that wage offers in a capitalist society are coercive. He writes that “capitalists prevent workers from having the pre-proposal situation(s) they strongly prefer.”[10] Zimmerman contends that workers (Q) strongly prefer either of two pre-proposal situations: higher wage levels and a genuine alternative to current capitalist structures. First, Zimmerman argues that capitalists (A) attempt to actively prevent wage level increases by erecting numerous obstacles: union-busting, advocating for “right-to-work” legislation, and threatening to move overseas. Capitalists also resist attempts to move to alternative capitalist structures by refusing to invest in any opportunities that could create capitalist alternatives.[11] Second, Zimmerman contends that workers generally prefer various types of cooperative and communal enterprises over capitalist structures. As an example, Zimmerman points to a conglomerate that refuses to sell ownership of a steel plant to a group of workers and instead lets the plant sit unused.[12] He reckons that ownership of a steel plant by a group of workers could result in a socialist alternative in which there is “meaningful workers’ control of the workplace and the firm”: a balance of social planning and investment, a sensible mix of human planning and market, and an “emphasis on the fulfillment of human need rather than private enrichment.”[13] For the purposes of his argument, Zimmerman assumes that such a socialist state is feasible, and presents it as a genuine alternative to capitalism.[14] Importantly, Zimmerman notes that whether simply not providing the necessary resources to facilitate the emergence of a non-capitalist alternative economy counts as an “active prevention” of workers receiving higher wages is a question up for debate. He thus rests his claim upon a conditional statement: “if this kind of discretionary control of capital resources counts as preventing the emergence of an alternative non-capitalist pre-proposal situation, then one condition for the coerciveness of capitalist wage proposals is satisfied.”[15] Thus, when capitalists actively prevent both wage level increases and socialist structures from emerging, both actions independently prevent workers from achieving their pre-proposal situations and therefore are considered coercive.

Here, I provide three critiques of Zimmerman’s non-moral definition of coercion in and of itself. First, it is unclear how to determine when the prevention condition is satisfied. What is an obstacle? Can we reasonably know if the obstacles erected by A are what prevented Q from enjoying Q’s highly preferred pre-proposal situation in most situations?

Second, Zimmerman’s definition of coercion dilutes the significance of the term by defining unimportant situations as coercive. Suppose Q strongly prefers to receive a fist bump from C. However, let us presume C does whatever A tells him to do. Before Q asks for a fist bump from C, A tells C to never offer a fist bump to Q. This is exactly what happens: When Q asks for a fist bump from C, C denies Q’s request because A told him not to. A, who is present for this interaction, offers to fist bump Q instead. Q, who would prefer receiving a fist-bump from A than no fist-bump at all, ends up deciding to fist bump A.

In this example, Q has been coerced by A, per Zimmerman’s definition of coercion. Q has moved from the pre-proposal situation (getting no fist bump) to a proposal situation (fist bumping A). However, A has actively prevented Q from being in the alternative pre-proposal situation Q strongly prefers (fist bumping C). Despite Q strongly preferring a fist bump from C, it seems disingenuous to argue that Q has been coerced by A, given how unimportant Q receiving a fist bump is relative to other far more serious examples of coercion. Let us use Zimmerman’s own example as a reference: A kidnaps Q and puts him on an island before offering him an extremely low wage or letting him starve. To admit that Q being unable to fist bump one person or another and Q having to work for an extremely low wage or starve are both examples of coercion dilutes the significance of the term. This is because the inclusion of everyday interactions to be classified as coercive increases the frequency with which one encounters coercion in various aspects of their lives, resulting in an overuse of the term. This may desensitize people to the concept of coercion, leading society to potentially underestimate the seriousness of significant coercive acts and fail to recognize more significant coercive situations, such as ones involving the threat or use of force. In other words, labeling less significant, or even insignificant, situations as coercion may lead people to view genuinely serious situations—such as Q having to choose between two choices that are life-or-death—less seriously. Thus, even if Zimmerman is correct that wage offers should be classified as coercive, the decreased signification and dilution of the term—given that coercion is now everywhere around us—can lead to a state of complacency, preventing genuine efforts to transition society from a capitalist to a non-capitalist state.

Third, Zimmerman’s definition of coercion is too heavily dependent on the account of what Q strongly prefers. Zimmerman holds that it is “the victim's preference which determines which pre-proposal situation determines the status of the proposal itself, and it is the frustration of this preference which makes acquiescence to the proposal a case of unfreedom.”[16] This is what underlies any account of coercion and is what constitutes the foundation for Zimmerman’s own definition of coercion: Q must strongly prefer not to be in either the proposal or pre-proposal situation, but rather the alternative pre-proposal situation. Importantly, this means that whether something is defined as coercion relies heavily upon the preferences of the Q, the victim. Yet this gives rise to questions regarding the reliability of victim preferences, and on a fundamental level, a clear understanding of what our preferences are as human beings. Take the following example: When someone asks what you want for dinner, do you know for certain what you want? What if you wanted McDonalds for dinner at the time of ordering, but when the food arrives an hour later, you now strongly desire Burger King? As humans, do we truly know what our preferences are? If not, how does that impact our ability to understand coercion? Zimmerman’s reliance on human preferences as a means for evaluating coercive acts thus gives rise to complicated debates about human preference within moral philosophy and philosophy of action that I will not delve into further here.

On a practical note, Zimmerman’s definition can lead to counterintuitive results that I believe Zimmerman would not deem coercive. Consider a case where A and Q voluntarily live on an island and are foraging for food. Without food, both A and Q will starve. A and Q stumble upon two types of berries on the island: white berries and black berries. Let us presume that consumption of the white berries is fatal, while consumption of the black berries is safe and nutritious. Q, fascinated by the color of the white berries, strongly desires to eat the white berries. A, however, is knowledgeable about berries and warns Q that eating the white berries would be fatal. A suggests instead to Q to eat the black berries, telling Q that the black ones are safe and nutritious. Yet Q does not believe A and still strongly desires to eat the white berries. However, since the sun is setting, A and Q mutually agree to go back to their living quarters and pick the berries tomorrow. A, who is very fond of Q, does not want Q to die from eating the white berries. Therefore, in the morning, before Q is awake, A decides to pick all the white berries and throw them into the ocean. When A and Q go berry picking in the afternoon, Q is extremely upset, given that there are no more white berries on the island. In an effort to console Q, A offers to pick the black berries for Q to eat. Q realizes that eating the black berries is better than starving, and begrudgingly decides to take A’s offer.

By Zimmerman’s account, Q is being coerced by A. Q has moved from the pre-proposal situation (starving) to the proposal situation (eating black berries), but would much rather be in the alternative pre-proposal situation (eating white berries). If not for A’s actions of throwing the white berries into the ocean, Q would likely have picked and eaten the white berries: A has erected an obstacle that has actively prevented Q from being in the alternative pre-proposal condition of eating white berries that Q strongly desires. Yet from a practical standpoint, A has effectively saved Q from death. More generally, one can think of many situations in which Q’s strongly held preferences would be actively harmful to Q: not wearing a seatbelt while driving or drinking alcohol as a minor are a few examples. Therefore, Zimmerman’s overreliance on the victim’s preferences in establishing a non-moral definition of coercion fails to be completely realistic, practical, and applicable to the real world.

Utilizing his definition of coercion, Zimmerman’s argument that wage offers are coercive falls short in three ways.

First, Zimmerman’s argument relies on the assumption that all businesspeople who are offering wages to workers have engaged in some kind of union-busting, advocating for “right-to-work” legislation, and the like. This is certainly not always the case—there are plenty of small business owners and local mom-and-pop shops who have never engaged in such activities. These business owners, while still operating within a capitalist structure, often do attempt to pay fair wages, provide good benefits, and protect their workers. The critique Zimmerman presents seems to fundamentally critique the system of capitalism itself rather than the individuals who, voluntarily or involuntarily, participate in the system. In other words, it may be wrong to accuse individuals of coercion given the larger structure of capitalism at work, which motivates and encourages businesspeople to engage in what Zimmerman deems as coercive acts. Regardless, under Zimmerman’s own terms, wage offers within our capitalist society cannot be considered coercive if the select businesspeople offering those wages have not erected any sort of obstacle to their workers’ acquisition of higher wages.

Second, I argue that wage offers do not fulfill the prevention condition. This is because Zimmerman has taken a drastic step in expanding A from being one person to a collective group of people without properly examining its implications. Here, I denote A’ to mean when A, the aggressor, is composed of a collective group of people. Zimmerman asserts that for the prevention condition to be satisfied, actions and policies taken by A’ must involve “collective activity, coordinated in one degree or another.”[17] However, Zimmerman also concedes that he does not know how much coordination of collective activity is required for the prevention condition to be satisfied.[18] Without a clear framework to determine what satisfies the prevention condition, it is difficult to assess whether wage offers are coercive.

With that in mind, we can take Zimmerman’s analysis a step further. It is not readily apparent whether all individual members of A’ (the capitalists) have each “actively prevented” Q from his pre-proposal situation. Suppose A’ is composed of 2 individual people X and Y, who each own businesses, respectively. Both collectively agree that to decrease wage offers, they will both lobby for “right-to-work” legislation in their state. X donates $1 million dollars for the cause, while Y only donates $100. The “right-to-work” legislation gets passed, thereby undermining unionized attempts to negotiate higher wages.

Was it necessary for all $1,000,100 to have been donated to cause the legislation to be passed? It is difficult to know—there are many factors that affect the passage of legislation. Let us suppose that only $500,000 was necessary for the legislation to pass. The practical effect of Y donating to the cause is null—whether or not Y chooses to donate would not have altered whether the right-to-work legislation would pass or not. Is Y still engaging in coercion when he offers wages to his workers? To argue that Y is engaging in coercion is dubious given that Y’s donation was not necessary per se for the “right-to-work” legislation to pass. I find it hard to believe that Y actively erected an obstacle (the passage of such legislation) that prevents higher wages when Y’s actions practically had zero effect on the presence of that obstacle. If so, one would have to bite the bullet and argue that Y has engaged in coercion in the event that Y donated one dollar or even one cent to right-to-work lobbying. If not, then the prevention condition is not satisfied. But to argue that Y is not engaging in coercion for that reason makes it difficult to ascertain when any capitalist can be implicated in coercion. Suppose that A’ is composed of ten business owners, all of whom collectively coordinate to each donate $100,010 to pass right-to-work legislation. No individual donation was necessary to pass the right-to-work legislation. Yet a collective effort was still required. Therefore, it is unclear whether, after successfully lobbying for right-to-work legislation, each of the ten business owners individually engage in coercion when offering wages to their workers.

Zimmerman’s unclear understanding of what the prevention condition entails is further complicated by what I deem to be an important distinction between prevention and non-participation. Zimmerman himself points out that not investing resources into alternative structures of capitalism may not necessarily be the same as actively preventing the alternative structure from emerging.[19] It would be odd to argue that just because a person decides not to donate food to a hungry person that it is tantamount to coercion because they have actively erected an obstacle that prevents a hungry person from acquiring a meal.[20] Rather, the person is neither making it easier nor more difficult for the hungry person to acquire a meal. Under this lens, the act of non-participation should rather be seen as neutral in nature rather than as an active act, and therefore cannot satisfy the prevention condition with respect to not investing in alternatives to capitalist structures.

Both examples presented give rise to a fundamental question: what is the relationship between the concept of coercion, individual behavior, and group behavior? Aside from being uncertain about the requirement for coordination in satisfying the prevention condition, Zimmerman provides no insight in regard to this question.

Second, Zimmerman’s argument that wage offers are coercive relies on the critical assumption that workers prefer a socialist alternative to capitalism. He writes that whether capitalist wage offers are coercive “depends on whether an alternative pre-proposal situation is feasible which is sufficiently better than the terms of the actual wage offer and which capitalists prevent workers from having.”[21] Yet whether a socialist alternative is sufficiently better than the current capitalist framework is not technically relevant to whether wage offers are coercive. Recall that Zimmerman defines offers from A to Q to be coercive when A “actively prevents Q from being in the alternative pre-proposal situation Q strongly prefers.”[22] Thus, what is relevant in Zimmerman’s understanding of coercion is whether workers strongly prefer a socialist alternative to capitalism. Prima facie evidence seems to indicate the opposite: a 2022 Pew Research Center poll found that 57% of American workers view capitalism favorably, while only 36% of American workers view socialism favorably.[23] That being said, Zimmerman’s version of a “genuine state of socialism” is likely different from what Americans perceive of socialism in a Pew poll. How can we know for certain whether workers prefer a socialist over a capitalist state if they have only experienced the latter and not the former? What happens if some workers prefer a socialist state one day but a capitalist state the next? All that said, a notable caveat to Zimmerman’s argument is that it is conditional upon the fact that American workers strongly prefer a socialist state over the current capitalist state.

Overall, Zimmerman fails to justify wage offers as coercive under his own non-moral definition of coercion. His definition is too ambiguous to be practical, significantly dilutes the meaning of coercion, and overly relies upon the victim’s preferences. Zimmerman must also clarify how the prevention condition can be satisfied when A consists of more than one person. Most notably, Zimmerman’s claim that wage offers are only coercive is conditional upon the premise that workers strongly prefer a capitalist alternative. It is unclear if workers do, considering a longstanding history of socialism being cast as evil for restricting people’s freedoms. This makes it difficult for a genuine socialist state to ever be adequately considered and achieved.

Works Cited

"Modest Declines in Positive Views of 'Socialism' and 'Capitalism' in U.S." Pew Research Center. Last modified September 19, 2022. Accessed May 5, 2023. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/09/19/modest-declines-in-positive-views-of-socialism-and-capitalism-in-u-s/.

Zimmerman, David. "Coercive Wage Offers." Philosophy & Public Affairs 10, no. 22 (1981): 121-45. Accessed May 5, 2023. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2264975.

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[1] Zimmerman, “Coercive Wage Offers,” 126.

[2] Zimmerman, 130.

[3] For consistency’s sake, I will use A and Q throughout the paper. Note that Zimmerman uses the letters P and Q in this example.

[4] Ibid, 132.

[5] Ibid, 132.

[6] Ibid, 133.

[7] Ibid, 136.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid, 135.

[10] Ibid, 143.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid, 143-144.

[13] Ibid, 142.

[14] Ibid, 142. Note that Zimmerman presents three versions of socialist states as genuine alternatives to capitalism.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid, 129. Emphasis added.

[17] Ibid, 143.

[18] Ibid, 146.

[19] Ibid 144.

[20] Whether or not that person should donate food to the hungry person all things considered is an entirely separate question.

[21] Ibid, 140.

[22] Ibid, 133. Italics added.

[23] Pew Research Center, “Modest Declines in Positive Views of ‘Socialism’ and ‘Capitalism’ in U.S.”