Marx on exploitation: an ABC for an unequal world

Submitted to tutorial tutor/marker Dr. Cristian Constantinescu.

The aim of this essay is to defend two minority positions respecting the proper interpretation of Marx’s critical theory of capitalism, and in such a way, hopefully, as to make Marx’s theory more interesting to non-Marxists. The first position defended is that Marx is better read as an heir to the pre-modern tradition of objective natural right than as a proponent of the radical Enlightenment claims on behalf of the rights of man, as an Aristotelian rather than as a Jacobin. The second position defended is that, despite its Aristotelian heritage, Marx’s critical theory does not rest upon a metaphysically suspicious account of the telos of human being. Threading this needle – Marx’s position is Aristotelian, but does not rely upon claimed insight into the purpose of human existence – will also give rise to some novel side-claims: that capitalist exploitation is a violation of the nature of the labour process; that Marx criticizes only capitalist exploitation, not exploitation in general; and that Marx is so idiosyncratic a socialist as to make his assimilation to that party more misleading than enlightening. The hope is that this combination of minority and novelty will be intriguing enough to sustain the reader through a return to the crags, thickets, and arid stretches of Marx’s Capital. The upshot is a renovated Marx, neither an economist whose insights were constrained by the industrial capitalism of his day, nor a prophet who saw into the future, but a moral and political theorist who attempted to get to the bottom of what is wrong with capital.

2014

This paper argues that Marx’s critique of capitalism is not, as commonly believed, a critique of the “free market.” I argue that the “market” under capitalism should be understood as a three-fold market—for goods and services, for labor and for capital. I argue that Marx’s critique is essentially a critique of the latter two markets, and not the first. Hence theoretical space opens up for “market socialism.” I proceed to elaborate briefly what specific institutions might comprise an economically viable socialism that would not be vulnerable to Marx’s critique

In this article excerpted from the International relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity, edited by Tim Dunne, Milja Kurki, and Steve Smith. It examines Marx’s arguments against capitalism. For a summary of ideology opposed to capitalism. Criticism of Capitalism ranges from expressing disagreement with the principles of capitalism in its entirety, to expressing disagreement with particular outcome of capitalism. In discussions of world politics, it is not uncommon for Marxism to be dismissed out of hand as being preoccupied with economics rather than politics, and concerning itself with domestic rather than international social relations. In this article I will suggest to the contrary that Marxist theory aims at a critical understanding of capitalism as an historically particular way of organizing social life, and that this form of social organization entails political, cultural, and economic aspects which need to be understood as a dynamic ensemble of social relations not necessarily contained within the territorial boundaries of nation states. Viewed in this way, Marxism can yield insights into the complex social relationships—on scales from the workplace and the household to the global—through which human beings produce and reproduce their social relations, the natural world, and themselves. Marx was one of the most incisive critics of a peculiarly modern form of social life capitalism. For Marx, capitalism was not to be confused with markets or exchange, which long predated capitalism. Rather, capitalism represented a form of social life in which commodification had proceeded to such a degree that human labour itself was bought and sold on the market. One of Marx’s central insights was that this situation presupposed the development of historically specific class-based relations and powers: the concomitant development of capital—socially necessary means of production reconstituted as the exclusive private property of a few—and wage labour as the compulsory activity of the many. Under the class relations of capitalism, direct producers are not personally tied to their exploiter, as were slaves in bondage to their master or feudal serfs bound to the lord’s estate.

Rethinking the Normative Content of Critical Theory, 2001

Marx, Morality and Exploitation The tension between Marx's historical critique of political economy and his transhistorical critique of capitalism reaches its apotheosis in his theory of exploitation. This manifests itself in the contradiction between an exchange-based and a production-based version of property rights. Looked at from the (historical) standpoint of exchange, workers receive a value equal to the value of the commodity they sell to capital. Looked at from the (transhistorical) standpoint of production, workers are paid less than the value they produce for capital. Consequently, while capitalism appears just from the standpoint of exchange, it appears unjust from the standpoint of production. At the heart of Marx's theory of exploitation lies his labour theory of value. As we have seen, Marx is concerned both to retain Ricardo's theory of value and reformulate it in accordance with production for exchange. This requires him to steer a perilous path between a transhistorical account of labour that is vulnerable to his critique of political economy and an historical one that threatens to dissolve labour into capital. In order to square that particular circle Marx offers a variety of overlapping formulations concerning the relationship between labour and value. These range from the transhistorical materialism of Ricardo to the historical hegemony of exchange-value found in Say. Natural versus social property rights Marx's decision to base his critique of capitalism on a labour theory of value was undoubtedly influenced by the work of Ricardian 67

Marx, Justice and History, 1980

When we read Karl Marx's descriptions of the capitalist mode of production in Capital and other writings, all our instincts tell us that these are descriptions of an unjust social system. Marx describes a society in which one small class of persons lives in comfort and idleness while another class, in ever-increasing numbers, lives in want and wretchedness, laboring to produce the wealth enjoyed by the first. Marx speaks constantly of capitalist "exploitation" of the worker, and refers to the creation of surplus value as the appropriation of his "unpaid labor" by capital. Not only does capitalist society, as Marx describes it, strike us as unjust, but his own descriptions of it themselves seem to connote injustice. When we look in the writings of Marx and Engels for a detailed account of the injustices of capitalism, however, we discover at once that not only is there no attempt at all in their writings to provide an argument that capitalism is unjust, but there is not even the explicit claim that capitalism is unjust or inequitable, or that it violates anyone's rights. We find, in fact, explicit denunciations and sustained criticisms of social thinkers (such as Pierre Proudhon and Ferdinand Lassalle) who did condemn capitalism for its injustices or advocated some form of socialism as a means of securing justice, equality, or the rights of man. We even find, perhaps to our surprise, some fairly explicit statements to the effect that capitalism, with all its manifold defects, cannot be faulted as far as justice is concerned. Whatever else capitalism may be for Marx, it does not seem that it is unjust.

"Marx’s account of capitalist exploitation is undermined by inter-related confusions surrounding the notion of “labour power.” These confusions relate to [i] what labour power is, [ii] what happens to labour power in the labour market, and [iii] what the epistemic status of labour power is (the issue of “appearance and reality”). The central theses of the paper are [a] that property ownership is the wrong model for understanding the exploitation of labour, and [b] that the concept of exploitation is linked more fruitfully to a conception of distributive injustice than to Marx’s theory of surplus value."

The Handbook of Economics and Ethics, 2009