Exploitation and Inequality

While numerous challenges have been raised to the Marxian conception of exploitation, most notably by John Roemer (1985), this chapter argues that this concept is vital for understanding why misery is ineradicable under capitalism, as well as the different qualitative forms that it can take. Beginning with the dual character of exploitation, its qualitative and quantitative dimensions, this chapter traces the connections between exploitation, class struggle, and the surplus population as articulated in Capital Vol. I. This reveals, in part, Marx’s most important insight, carefully drawn-out by Mario Tronti, that a critique of capitalism on the basis of inequality is the immediate consequence of the relations of production. The struggle that results from this challenge serves as the creative force of capitalist development. It is the historical role of the working class to utilize these moments as points of departure, rather than ends in themselves. A brief application of these insights to the historical development of capitalism in the United States through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first simultaneously exposes the continued pertinence of these insights alongside the gaps that emerge, namely, in terms of racialization and spatiality. Future work must find ways of building on the insights of the Marxian conception of exploitation, while paying close attention to the complexities of race and space.