Abstract

The definition of capitalist exploitation that I put forth was as follows. Let a society be divided into a coalition S and its complement S’. S is exploited and S’ is exploiting if: S would be better off if it withdrew with its per capita share of productive, alienable assets; S’ would be worse off if it withdrew with its per capita share of productive, alienable assets; and S’ would be worse off if S withdrew from society with its own assets. Call this the property relations definition of exploitation. I favored the PR definition over the traditional approach, which focuses upon the relationship between capitalist and worker mediated by a labor market and consummated at the point of production, because the classical approach fails to locate the source of exploitation in the unequal and unfair distribution of the productive assets.