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"Exploitation and inequality is innate to the industrial-capitalist system; a fact well-known at least since the time of Marx." Citation needed?
by elipsey 9y ago
"Exploitation and inequality is innate to the industrial-capitalist system; a fact well-known at least since the time of Marx."
Citation needed?
- roenxi 9y agoIf 'exploitation' is in the ethically neutral sense of taking something with latent potential and bringing it to bear then this isn't particularly controversial. Capitalism has a happy partnership with inequality. People who exploit resource effectively get given more resources; that is the heart of the system. Works really well. Builds societies that are the envy of the world. Even people who squander resources can expect to come out ahead (they get a small share of a bigger pie).
- int_19h 9y agoI mean, Marx would be the citation, but it's important to remember that exploitation in this context is a neutral term, not a judgment. It just means that people who own means of production (i.e. capitalists) can extract economic rent from people who don't (i.e. workers, who need access to those means of production to generate wealth). That shouldn't be controversial - the problem with Marx wasn't that he pointed this out, but rather his statement that it is a fundamental problem, and remedies offered for it.