Striking and the means principle

James Christensen

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, 2026, vol. 25, issue 1, 84-108

Abstract: Some strikes seem insufficiently discriminating. Rather than being aimed exclusively at potentially ‘legitimate’ targets (e.g., employers who, by refusing to pay a fair wage or provide acceptable working conditions, might have made themselves liable to bear certain costs), these strikes are (also) aimed at individuals who do not seem to be liable. Most problematically, such strikes invite the charge that they harm the innocent opportunistically or exploitatively . (Call this the third-party (exploitation) objection .) In other words, those who strike face the charge that they are harmfully using the innocent as a means to further their own ends, thereby violating a central and enduring principle of deontological ethics, namely, the means principle . This paper aims to set out the best case that can be made for the third-party (exploitation) objection.

Keywords: striking; means principle; opportunistic harm; threshold deontology; doing / allowing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1470594X251317189 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:pophec:v:25:y:2026:i:1:p:84-108

DOI: 10.1177/1470594X251317189

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Politics, Philosophy & Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().