Growth, Exploitation and Class Inequalities

Giorgos Galanis, Roberto Veneziani and Naoki Yoshihara ()

No 814, Working Papers from Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance

Abstract: This paper provides a formal dynamic analysis of exploitation, class inequalities and profits. A stylised model of a capitalist economy with two classes - workers and capitalists - is considered which extends Roemer [21, 22]. First, a dynamic generalisation of a key Marxian insight is provided by proving that the profitability of capitalist production is synonimous with the existence of exploitation. Second, it is shown that, in a competitive environment, asset inequalities are fundamental for the emergence of exploitation, but they are not sufficient for its persistence, both in equilibria with accumulation and growth, and, perhaps more surprisingly, in stationary intertemporal equilibrium paths. Finally, it is shown that labour-saving technical progress may yield persistent exploitation by ensuring the persistent abundance of labour.

Keywords: Dynamics; Accumulation; Exploitation; Classes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B24 C61 D51 D63 E11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-01-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme, nep-mac and nep-pke
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Working Paper: Growth, Exploitation and Class Inequalities (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:qmw:qmwecw:814

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