Abstract
This paper considers how Roemer’s General Theory of Exploitation and Class and related work has engaged and reframed the historical materialist critique of capitalism initiated by Marx’s Capital project, and in turn how aspects of Marx’s account of capitalist profit and exploitation not addressed in the General Theory might be analyzed within Roemer’s framework of rationally optimizing agents and equilibrating markets. In particular, the paper discusses how imperfect contracting conditions and capital accumulation might figure in a coherent materialist theory of profit and exploitation.
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Notes
By which I mean his four “drafts” of Capital starting with the Grundrisse notebooks of 1857–1858 (Marx 1973, hereafter cited as GR); the economic manuscript of 1861–1863 (Marx and Engels Collected Works 1988, 1989, 1991, 1994, hereafter cited as MECW plus the volume number); the economic manuscripts of 1863–1865, in which Marx first separated the material for Capital into three volumes; and Marx’s final pre-publication draft of the first volume in 1866–1867. The three published volumes of Capital (Marx 1976 [1867], 1978 [1885], 1981 [1894]) are hereafter respectively cited as K.I, K.II, and K.III. Finally, the chapter titled “Results of the Immediate Process of Production,” originally intended for Volume I of Capital but omitted by Marx from the published version, is included in the appendix of K.I, and will thus be cited separately in the text as K.IA.
Marx used the term surplus value to refer to the pecuniary reward received by capital owners for financing new production activity, embracing profit and interest as special cases. Since no significant distinction is made between these cases in the contexts discussed here, the terms profit, interest, and surplus value are used interchangeably.
In Value, Exploitation and Class (1986), Roemer also considers a generalization of these two cases in which agents seek to maximize utility defined as a function of income and leisure.
Contemporaneously with principal-agent analysis there arose a Marxian literature on the problem of labor discipline that addressed many of the same issues, albeit with different theoretical language and normative concerns (e.g., Braverman 1974; Marglin 1974; Gintis 1976; Edwards 1979; Reich and Devine 1981). Since contributions to this literature typically assumed the presence of SLC and CLP, however, they are less suited to address the questions I pursue in this section. A similar comment applies to formal analyses of contingent renewal that grew out of this earlier literature (e.g., Bowles 1985; Gintis and Ishikawa 1987; Bowles and Gintis 1990). This approach takes the form of compensation as given and does not attempt to explain why capital suppliers choose to hire labor power rather than lending capital to workers at interest. Consequently, the framework provides no basis for identifying conditions under which CLP and SLC are necessary for the existence of capitalist exploitation and profit, and is more suited to exploring the economic logic of formal SLC. For example, Yoshihara (1998) studies conditions under which Roemer’s class-exploitation correspondence is preserved when efficiency wages are paid.
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With the standard caveat, I thank the two anonymous referees, Marc Fleurbaey, Juan Moreno-Ternero, and Roberto Veneziani for extremely helpful comments on earlier drafts.
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Skillman, G.L. Marx’s Capital through the lens of Roemer’s General Theory (and vice-versa). Soc Choice Welf 49, 423–443 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-017-1072-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-017-1072-6