Exploitation and Rule

I present a theory of exploitation from a Marxist perspective. To situate my theory within existing literature, it is useful to make a couple of contrasts. One, Marx discusses exploitation primarily as a phenomenon in the capitalist mode of production. I generalise the account so that it applies to all class societies. And I flesh out the normative and philosophical aspects of exploitation which are missing in Marx’s Capital since it is a work in political economy. Two, there is a literature in analytic political philosophy that engages with exploitation and distributive justice. This includes both liberal accounts which treat exploitation as a sort of unfairness, and the somewhat older literature from ‘Analytical Marxists’ which develops selected ideas from Marx in a framework of thought familiar to liberal thought.