Exploitation of labour

Exploitation refers to social relations where an "actor or character of actors uses others for their own end because of a fundamentally asymmetric power relationship between them". When speaking about exploitation there is a direct affiliation with consumption in social theory. Traditionally, this would label exploitation as unfairly taking advantage of another person because of his or her inferior position, giving the exploiter the power.

Karl Marx, who is considered the most classical and influential theorist of exploitation, did not share the same traditional account of exploitation. Marx's theory explicitly rejects the moral framing characteristic of the notion of exploitation, and restricts the concept to the field of labour relations.

In analyzing exploitation, many political economists are often stuck between the explanation of the exploitation of labour given by Marx and Adam Smith.

Marx's exploitation theory is one of the major elements analyzed in Marxian economics, and some social theorists consider it to be a cornerstone in Marxist thought. Marx credited the Scottish Enlightenment writers for originally propounding a materialist interpretation of history. In his Critique of the Gotha Program, Marx set principles that were to govern the distribution of welfare under socialism and communism; these principles saw distribution to each person according to their work and needs. Exploitation is when these two principles are not met, when the agents are not receiving according to their work or needs. This process of exploitation is a part of the redistribution of labour, occurring during the process of separate agents exchanging their current productive labour for social labour set in goods received. The labour put forth toward production is embodied in the goods and exploitation occurs when someone purchases a good, with their revenue or wages, for an amount unequal to the total labour he or she has put forth. This labour performed by a population over a certain time period is equal to the labour embodied to the goods that make up the net national product (NNP). The NNP is then parceled out to the members of the population in some way and this is what creates the two groups, or agents, involved in the exchange of goods: exploiters and exploited.

...
Wikipedia