Nicholas Vrousalis

This project develops a theory of structural injustice, according to which the fundamentally unjust feature of age, class, racial, gender injustice is the labour relation. Structural injustice implies the failure of certain groups of humans to fulfill their political obligations to others. If the ground of all political obligation is the obligation to provide effortful contribution to the common good—to labour in proportion to one’s ability—then it follows that all structural oppression is a violation of a labour obligation. An implication of the theory is that social struggles for the emancipation of women, of racialized humans, and of the working class, are all part of the same cause. Indeed, modernity’s project of universal free and equal citizenship will remain incomplete as long as it neglects the unifying feature at the heart of all struggles against structural injustice: the emancipation of labour.