[lbo-talk] Definition of nation (was as if on cue)

Dissenting Wren dissentingwren at yahoo.com
Mon Feb 14 16:47:48 PST 2011


For Marx, those who produce surplus value are exploited. This, of course, opens up the whole tortured question of value theory.

If you want to dispense with value theory and approach capitalist exploitation in marginalist terms, the conventional definition, I believe, is John Roemer's.

You are capitalistically exploited if you would be better off if you were able to withdraw your per capita share of the means of production and live off of the returns to your labor employing that quantity of the means of production.

Roemer, in the same work (General Theory of Exploitation and Class), demonstrates that in a capitalist economy where everyone optimizes their income, those who do not own the means of production will be exploited and those who own sufficient means of production to employ labor are exploiters. GTEC is extremely technical; less forbidding versions of Roemer's work can be found in an essay in his edited volume, Analytical Marxism, and in his more general introductory work, Free to Lose.

In a separate essay in Analytical Marxism, Roemer also makes the argument that exploitation is not wrong in and of itself, but in virtue of an unjust initial distribution of assets.

There are arguments contra Roemer, but at the very least least his treatment is well-defined and not merely emotive.

As an aside on the corporate exec question - things are not as obvious as Wojtek suggests. The corporate exec's compensation has effects that are not limited to his/her "contribution to the production process". A CFO, for example, can produce a great deal of value for a company while remaining largely divorced from the production process. And high salaries at the top contribute to a structure of corporate incentives that have effects at multiple levels of production. So, it would be very hard to demonstrate that a corporate exec receives compensation that grossly exceeds the value of her/his contribution, if that value is measured by the counterfactual of total output in that exec's absence. Perhaps some other counterfactual would be more appropriate, but it's not obvious what that would be.

----- Original Message ---- From: Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Mon, February 14, 2011 6:21:39 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Definition of nation (was as if on cue)

brad :We are exploited because we are alienated from the products of our labor. "

[WS:] Could you explain what it means in empirical terms? That is, what empirically observable qualities decide whether a person is exploited or not?

I can understand its meaning for Marx - it was a metaphor for the lack ownership of the means of production, which for him was the explanation of poor living conditions of the working class. But it was not a good explanation after all - as it turned out that people who do not own means of production (corporate exec in capitalism and socialism alike) nonetheless receive compensation that grossly exceeds the value of their contribution to the production process. So if neither living conditions nor ownership matter - the concept of exploitation loses any empirical meaning, no? It retains it emotive/expressive appeal - but that puts it among religious concept that also have emotive and expressive qualities but lack empirical meaning.

Wojtek

On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 4:12 PM, brad <babscritique at gmail.com> wrote:


> Over 80% of the population, including people who earn rather huge
> salaries, are exploited. Joanna, for example, is probably much more
> exploited than are Walmart clerks. To focus on Exploitation as "what
> is wrong" is to splinter the working class, and it leads to bad
> politics.
>
> Carrol
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> Exploitation has nothing to do with how much you make. It also has
> nothing to do with particular working conditions. We are exploited
> because we are alienated from the products of our labor. That doesn't
> splinter the working class, it constitutes it. If you are throwing
> exploitation out the window then what is left of your left politics,
> Carrol?
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list