Class, Exploitation, and Economic Rents: Reflections on Sorenson's "Sounder Basis" Erik Olin Wright
نویسندگان
چکیده
Aage Sørensen, in “Toward a Sounder Basis for Class Analysis,” argues that Marxists are correct in placing exploitation at the center of class analysis since an exploitation-centered concept of class has a much greater potential for explaining the structural foundations of social conflicts over inequality than does its principle rival, the material “life conditions” conception of class. But he also believes that existing concepts of exploitation are seriously compromised due to an absence of rigorous theoretical foundations. To solve this problem he proposes rehabilitating the concept of exploitation by closely identifying it with the economic concept of rent. This, he believes, retains the fundamental sociological meaning of exploitation while giving the concept much more theoretical precision and analytical power. I share with Sørensen the commitment to reconstructing an exploitation-centered concept of class (Wright 1979, 1985, 1989, 1997). And, like Sørensen, I believe that a rigorous concept of exploitation can be elaborated without the use of the labor theory of value. I have also argued that there is a close link between the concept of economic rent and various forms of exploitation. I disagree, however, that exploitation can be fruitfully defined simply in terms of rent-generating processes or that a class
منابع مشابه
From Stratification to Class Analysis (and back again
I will elaborate this contribution by briefly distinguishing three general perspectives on economic inequality, which I will refer to as the individual-centered, exclusionary, and exploitation approaches to inequality. Stratification research in American Sociology is most closely associated with the first of these; Weber-inspired approaches to class and inequality with the second; and Marxist c...
متن کاملThe Shadow of Exploitation in Weber's Class Analysis
the inner structure of Weber's concept of class, its similarities and differences from Marx's concept, and its relationship to the problem of exploitation; second, to use this interrogation of Weber's work to defend the importance of the concept of exploitation for sociological theory. To understand the foundations of Weber's class analysis one must look beyond his most synoptic treatments of c...
متن کاملMeandering Reflections from the pathways to a cooperative market economy workshop
The current era is characterized by two widely-held feelings among people living in the developed capitalist world: On the one hand capitalism seems exhausted, incapable of generating widespread prosperity and security; stagnation, crisis and deepening inequality are the new norms. On the other hand, in spite of this, capitalism seems triumphant, an implacable force of nature; there is no alter...
متن کاملMadison Institute for Research on Poverty
Over the past fifteen years Marxist theoreticians have devoted considerable attention to reconceptualizing the place of "class" in the overall Marxist theory of society and social change. In this paper the author situates class structure within a broader context of class analysis. He defines the concept of "the political," both as it bears on the problem of the political aspect of practices and...
متن کامل