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Exploitation of labour

Exploitation is a concept defined as, in its broadest sense, one agent taking unfair advantage of another agent. When applying this to labour (or labor), it denotes an unjust social relationship based on an asymmetry of power or unequal exchange of value between workers and their employers. When speaking about exploitation, there is a direct affiliation with consumption in social theory and traditionally this would label exploitation as unfairly taking advantage of another person because of their vulnerable position, giving the exploiter the power.

Karl Marx's theory of exploitation has been described in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as the most influential theory of exploitation. Marx described exploitation as the theft of economic power in all class-based societies, including capitalism, through the working class (or the proletariat, as Marx called them) being forced to sell their labour. The two main perspectives when analysing the exploitation of labour are that of Marx and that of Adam Smith, a classical economist. Smith did not see exploitation as an inherent systematic phenomenon in certain economic systems as Marx did, but rather something that stems from a random occurrence in the chaos of the market, such as a monopoly, that will even out by the tendency of the free market towards equilibrium.

Many assume[weasel words] that liberalism intrinsically lacks any adequate theory of exploitation because its phenomenon commits itself only to the primacy of personal rights and liberties and to individual choice as the basic explanatory datum. Hillel Steiner provided an argument to refute the claim that liberalism cannot supply an adequate theory of exploitation. He discusses interpersonal transfers and how there are three types: donation, exchange and theft. Exchange is the only of the three that consists of a voluntary bilateral transfer, where the beneficiary receives something at a value greater than zero on the shared scale of value, although at times there can be ambiguity between more complex types of transfer. He describes the three dimensions of transfers as either unilateral/bilateral, voluntary/involuntary and equal/unequal. Despite these types of transfers being able to distinguish the differences in the four types of transfers,[further explanation needed] it is not enough to provide a differentiating characterization of exploitation. Unlike theft, an exploitative transfer is bilateral and the items are transferred voluntarily at both unequal and greater-than-zero value. The difference between a benefit and exploitation despite their various shared features is a difference between their counterfactual presuppositions, meaning that in an exploitation there is a voluntary bilateral transfer of unequally valued items because the possessors of both items would voluntarily make the transfer if the items to be transferred were of equal value, but in a benefit the possessor of the higher-value item would not voluntarily make the transfer if the items were at equal value. Put simply, the exploitation can be converted to an exchange: both exploiters and exploited would voluntarily become exchangers when benefactors would not.

In an exploitation both transfers are voluntary, but part of one of the two transfers is unnecessary. The circumstances that bring out exploitation are not the same as what brings about exploitative transfers. Exploitative circumstance is due to the factors other than what motivates individuals to engage in nonaltruistic bilateral transfers (exchanges and exploitations) as they are not sufficient circumstances to bring about exploitative transfers.

To further explain the occurrence of exploitative circumstances certain generalizations about social relations must be included to supply generalizations about social institutions. He says that 'if (i) certain things are true of the institutions within which interpersonal transfers occur and (ii) at least some of these transfers are nonaltruistic bilateral ones, then at least some of these transfers are exploitative. Steiner looks at the institutional conditions of exploitation and finds that in general exploitation is considered unjust and to understand why it is necessary to look at the concept of a right, an inviolable domain of practical choice and the way rights are established to form social institutions. Institutional exploitation can be illustrated by schematized forms of exploitation to reach two points:

On a liberal view, exploitation can be described as a quadrilateral relation between four relevantly distinct parties: the state, the exploited, the exploiter and those who suffer rights violations. However, it can be argued that the state's interests with the exploiters action can be viewed as unimpeachable because you cannot imply that the exploiter would ever withhold consent from exploiting due to altruistic concerns. So this trilateral conception of exploitation identifies exploited, exploiters and sufferers of rights violations.

In terms of ridding exploitation, the standard liberal view holds that a regime of laissez-faire is a necessary condition. Natural rights thinkers Henry George and Herbert Spencer reject this view and claim that property rights belong to everyone, i.e., that all land to be valid must belong to everyone. Their argument aims to show that traditional liberalism is mistaken in holding that nonintervention in commerce is the key to non-exploitation and they argue it is necessary, but not sufficient.

The classical liberal Adam Smith described the exploitation of labour by businessmen, who work together to extract as much wealth as possible out of their workers, thus:

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