Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Exploitation occurs when someone or something (e.g., a material resource, an opportunity) is used or taken advantage of. Social scientists are chiefly concerned with the exploitation of people and classes, who are generally considered exploited if they are required, by force or by circumstances, to contribute more to some process than they receive in return. Crucially important to Marxian thought, the concept of exploitation is also employed in neoclassical economics and related sociological work. Yet the concept is controversial among sociologists; many eschew it entirely. Karl Marx held that working people are exploited if some of the labor they perform is surplus labor, labor for which they receive no equivalent. The extraction of surplus labor is most transparent in the corvée system, in which serfs worked part of the time for themselves on one plot of land, and for the lord, on another plot of land, during their remaining working time. This division of working time is not so transparent in other cases, but Marx regarded it as a feature of all class-divided societies. Workers in all such societies, he argued, are compelled to perform surplus labor because they lack access to land and other means of production. To survive, the workers must work for other people or companies. The latter can require the performance of surplus labor because they have exclusive ownership or control ... log in or subscribe to read full text