Exploitation via labour power in Marx

Author: Laycock H.¹

Source: The Journal of Ethics, Volume 3, Number 2, 1999 , pp. 121-131(11)

Publisher: Springer

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Abstract:

Marx's account of capitalist exploitation is undermined by inter-related confusions surrounding the notion of ``labour power.'' These confusions relate to [i] what labour power is, [ii] what happens to labour power in the labour market, and [iii] what the epistemic status of labour power is (the issue of ``appearance and reality''). The central theses of the paper are [a] that property ownership is the wrong model for understanding the exploitation of labour, and [b] that the concept of exploitation is linked more fruitfully to a conception of distributive injustice than to Marx's theory of surplus value.

Keywords: appearance and reality; capitalism; commodities; employers and employees; exploitation; G.A. Cohen; labour power; ownership; property rights; slavery

Language: English

Document Type: Regular paper

Affiliations: 1: Department of Philosophy Queen's University Kingston Canada K7L 3N6

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