Rate of exploitation
The
rate of exploitation is a concept in
Marxian political economy. It usually refers to the ratio of the total amount of unpaid labor done (
surplus-value) to the total amount of wages paid (the value of
labour power). The rate of exploitation is often also called the
rate of surplus-value.Technically speaking, in the finer points of his theory, Marx did not regard the rate of surplus value and the rate of exploitation as necessarily identical,
insofar as there was a divergence between surplus value
realised and surplus value
produced. Thus, the quantity of
surplus labour performed by workers in an enterprise might correspond to a value higher or lower than the surplus value actually
realised as profit income upon sales of output. The implication is that if the gross profit volume was related to wage costs to establish the rate of surplus value, this might overstate or understate the real rate of labor-exploitation.Although it is a subtle point, it has sometimes played an important role in wage bargaining negotiations by
trade unions. For an extreme example, workers might work extremely hard in an enterprise which nevertheless operates at a loss. For another extreme example, workers might work less hard, knowing that their product will sell like hotcakes in a sellers market at sharply inflated prices, yielding profits disproportionate to labour input. The divergence between surplus value
realised and surplus value
produced becomes even more marked if surplus value is viewed in terms of the net incomes of
social classes, i.e. net labor income and net property income.
The rate of exploitation was, in Marx view, a concept which could be applied to any class-based labor process in history, since it expressed only the relationship between
necessary labour and
surplus labour. By contrast, the rate of surplus value was specifically the way the rate of exploitation manifested itself in the
capitalist mode of production.
Marx identified five different formulae for the rate of surplus value (see
surplus value).
Several important criticisms have been made of Marx's concept from different sides:
*The ambiguity of the concept - does it have a purely objective, economic significance in terms of the yield of labour utilisation, or does it rather have a moral-political significance?
*All
factors of production can add value to products, invalidating Marx's
law of value and his claim that workers are exploited.
*None of the five measures that Marx cites express anything directly about the
intensity of labor-exploitation, which can increase or decrease without being reflected in his ratios. Exploitation in the workplace might involve much more than Marx envisaged (see also
productivity).
*Marx disregards the fact, that workers may be doubly exploited, not just at the point of production, but at the point of their consumption; when they spend their wages on goods and services, they are "taxed" again by the profit and tax component added to the value of the goods and services they
buy (this point is not theoretically developed in most Marxist literature, although it can give rise to consumer resistance and consumer boycotts). This importantly affects our understanding of the economic
value of
labour power.
*Marx theoretically largely disregards state intermediation which can strongly influence the magnitude of both wages and profits earned, in many different ways.
*Marx equates wage costs with labour costs, but labour costs may involve much more than wages (taxes, social security levies, employer contributions to schemes benefiting employees, bribes and all sorts) (see also
Compensation of employees).
*Marx disregards the unpaid labor of (mainly) women in the household, and associated voluntary labor necessary and indispensable for the reproduction of labour power. Market relations depend to a large degree on non-market relations.
*Viewing the labor process in terms of exploitation is not conducive to anything, since it disregards the constructive role of employers in developing production. If they are just viewed as exploiters, this distracts from the problem of how else you could organise production with better forms of association.
*Marx largely disregards that employers of labor might be exploited by each other, or that workers might be exploited by each other (this is obviously not completely true, but Marx's main focus was certainly on the capital-labor relationship).
The overall result of these criticisms is that many people believe Marx's whole notion of exploitation was either too narrowly defined or else too sweeping.
*
Marx's theory of alienation*
Surplus value*
Surplus labour*
Surplus product*
Wage share*
Wage labour*
Wage slavery
