The facets of exploitation
| Date | 01 October 2014 |
| Author | Marc Fleurbaey |
| Published date | 01 October 2014 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0951629813511552 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
The facets of exploitation
Journal of Theoretical Politics
2014, Vol. 26(4) 653–676
©The Author(s) 2013
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DOI:10.1177/0951629813511552
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Marc Fleurbaey
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA
Abstract
This paper proposes four concepts of exploitation that encapsulate common uses of the word in
social interactions: unfair advantage, unequal exchange, using persons as means, and free-riding.
It briefly discusses how these concepts appear in the literature (the first two are prominent in
Roemer’s classical work), and then examines how these forms of exploitation are related and
how they can occur.
Keywords
Exploitation; Roemer; social justice
1. Introduction
In his landmark book A General Theory of Exploitation and Class, John Roemer thor-
oughly examined how to model the Marxian theory of labor exploitation. This theory
relies on the idea that workers give more labor to their employers than they receive
through the goods their wages can afford. One difficulty in this theory is to identify
the quantity of labor that the workers receive in payment. In Marx’s approach, the labor
theory of value was supposed to make this computation easy because market prices and
wages would reflect the labor cost of producing the goods (and of producing the labor
power,in the case of wages). But the labor theory of value is hard to reconcile with mod-
ern general equilibrium theory and appears discredited. Moreover, Roemer showed that,
formally, there is little reason to focus on labor, as any other commodity (e.g. coal) could
serve as the basis of value or as the currency for the computation of the unequal exchange
workers are involved in.
The general conclusion of Roemer’s book was that Marx’s approach, with its focus on
labor, should be abandoned and replaced by an approach that highlights the inequalities
in endowments that give an advantage to the wealthy in the distribution of commodities
and leisure. He proposed an alternative abstract definition of exploitation which involves
Corresponding author:
Marc Fleurbaey, Princeton Wallace Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
Email: mfleurba@princeton.edu
654 Journal of Theoretical Politics 26(4)
the cooperative-game notion of a value function, i.e. a function v(S) defining the total
payoff that coalition S(a subgroup of the population N={1,... ,n}) would obtain if it
had to live with a fair share of the total endowment available in society. The coalition S
is then said to exploit its complement N\Sin the allocation (x1,... ,xn)if it is better off
than under a fair distribution, while its complement is worse off:
(a) i∈Sxi>v(S);
(b) i/∈Sxi<v(N\S).
In addition, Roemer stipulated that exploitation really occurs when there is a relation
between the two groups and S‘dominates’ N\Sin this interaction (e.g. members of S
hire and direct the work of members of N\S).
Elsewhere (Fleurbaey, 1996) I have argued that the Marxian focus on labor is use-
ful when it highlights the fact that unequal societies, since the origins of history, have
witnessed an unequal division of advantages characterized by the coexistence of an elite
living well and enjoying pleasant activities while the unpleasant, dangerous, degrading
jobs are the lot of the poor. In this perspective, as shown by Roemer, the accounting of
quantities of labor incorporated in commodities can be performed independently of the
labor theory of value, taking the market prices as given. The labor theory of exploitation
can then be consistent and morally relevant even if the labor theory of value is flawed.1
Roemer, however, rightly questioned whether the labor theory of exploitation can
serve as the basis for a comprehensive theory of distributive justice. When individual
preferences over leisure and consumption differ in the population, some well-endowed
individuals may be exploited in labor terms because they don’t mind working a lot.
Avoiding exploitation would impose proportionality between consumption and labor.The
principle that consumption should be proportional to labor has indeed been studied in the
theory of fair allocation (Moulin, 1990; Roemer and Silvestre, 1993), but this theory has
made it clear that there are many other ways of conceiving equality or fairness in the
distribution of consumption and leisure.
So, the broader conclusion that Roemer (1982, 1985) put forth, and that is reflected
in his own seminal work on equality of opportunity over the decades following the 1982
book, is that studying theories of social justice is more relevant than focusing on a very
specific notion of exploitation. This broad move to a more general question, however,
leaves it possible for the notion of exploitation to play a role in the definition of justice
or, perhaps more directly, in the definition of injustice. This is the alley that this paper
explores.
The purpose of this paper is to examine various ways in which the notion of exploita-
tion can be understood and given a precise formulation. It appears that four different
sorts of exploitation, at least, can be distinguished. First, exploitation can be understood
as ‘unfair advantage’ due to inequalities in endowments, and Roemer’s proposal of an
alternative definition pertains to this approach. Second, exploitation can be spotted when
there is an ‘unequal exchange’, and the Marxian approach seems to be inspired by this
idea. Third, exploitation can also refer to a situation in which some individuals are used
as means or resources by others, and stand to benefit from their own capacities less than
their exploiters. Finally, exploitation is also often mentioned when the deviant behavior
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