Exploitation Analysis in Socio-Economics. A State of the Art

Simon Bittmann () and Ulysse Lojkine
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Simon Bittmann: SAGE - Sociétés, acteurs, gouvernement en Europe - ENGEES - École Nationale du Génie de l'Eau et de l'Environnement de Strasbourg - UNISTRA - Université de Strasbourg - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement
Ulysse Lojkine: SOPHIAPOL - Sociologie, philosophie et anthropologie politiques - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre, EconomiX - EconomiX - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, AxPo - AxPo Observatory of Market Society Polarization - Sciences Po - Sciences Po

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Abstract: Exploitation is a paradoxical notion: both widely used to characterize extractive relations, and little discussed within contemporary social sciences. It generally offers three attractive properties compared to more commonly used concepts - inequality, domination, and discrimination - in that it is simultaneously distributive, relational and openly counterfactual. In order to clarify debates on what makes a labor contract, market transaction or social relation exploitative, we suggest moving beyond strict Marxist and neo-classical baselines, making explicit the non-exploitative counterfactual on which claims of exploitation are predicated. To do so, exploitation analysis should answer four main questions: What is the non-exploitative counterfactual? What is appropriated? What allows the exploiter to exploit? At what scale does exploitation operate? Using those, we move away from the traditional focus either on the worker-employer dyad or rent capture, to offer a typology of four exploitative forms - within the production unit, on the market, in the domestic sphere, and by the State. Finally, we suggest the notion of chains of exploitation, since most socio-economic configurations involve layered relations, where agents can stand both as exploiters and exploited.

Keywords: Exploitation; Counterfactual; Theory; Inequality; Domination; Labor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-09-10
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