One million miles to go: taking the axiomatic road to defining exploitation

Roberto Veneziani and Naoki Yoshihara ()

No SDES-2017-12, Working Papers from Kochi University of Technology, School of Economics and Management

Abstract: This paper analyses the Marxian theory of exploitation. The axiomatic approach standard in social choice theory is adopted in order to study the concept of exploitation - what it is and how it should be captured empirically. Two properties are presented that capture some fundamental Marxian insights. It is shown that, contrary to the received view, there exists a nonempty class of definitions of exploitation that preserve the relation between exploitation and profits - called Profit-Exploitation Correspondence Principle - in general economies with heterogeneous agents, complex class structures, and production technologies with heterogeneous labour inputs. However, among the main approaches, only the so-called ‘New Interpretation’ satisfies the Profit-Exploitation Correspondence Principle in general.

Keywords: Exploitation; Profits; Axiomatic analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2017-08, Revised 2017-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Published in SDE Series, August 2017, pages 1-30

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http://www.souken.kochi-tech.ac.jp/seido/wp/SDES-2017-12.pdf First version, 2017 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: One million miles to go: taking the axiomatic road to defining exploitation (2015)
Working Paper: One Million Miles to Go: Taking the Axiomatic Road to Defining Exploitation (2014)
Working Paper: One million miles to go: taking the axiomatic road to defining exploitation (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kch:wpaper:sdes-2017-12

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