Rate of exploitation
 | This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages)
No issues specified. Please specify issues, or remove this template. |
| Part of a series on |
| Marxism |
|---|
 |
| Outline |
The rate of exploitation is a concept in Marxian political economy.[citation needed] It refers to the ratio of the hours of necessary labour performed by workers and the hours of surplus labour worked by them. This is an economic relationship between quantities of hours worked, which is inferred from the amount of income workers actually get out of the total value of the output they produce[citation needed]. The concept of the rate of surplus value assumes a cash economy[citation needed].
Divergence of the two rates
Marx did not regard the rate of surplus value and the rate of exploitation as necessarily identical[original research?], insofar as there was a divergence between surplus value realised and surplus value produced[citation needed]. Thus, the quantity of surplus labour performed by workers in an enterprise might correspond to a value higher or lower than the surplus value actually realised as profit income upon sales of output. The implication is that if the gross profit volume was related to wage costs to establish the rate of surplus value, this might overstate or understate the real rate of labor-exploitation[citation needed].
This distinction has sometimes played an important role[original research?] in wage bargaining negotiations by trade unions[citation needed]. Workers might work extremely hard in an enterprise which nevertheless operates at a loss. Workers might also work less hard if they know that their product will sell well in a sellers market at sharply inflated prices, yielding profits disproportionate to labour input. The divergence between surplus value realised and surplus value produced becomes even more marked if surplus value is viewed in terms of the net incomes of social classes, i.e. net labor income and net property income.[citation needed]
Field of application
The rate of exploitation is a concept that could be applied to any class-based labor process in history since it expressed only the relationship between necessary labour and surplus labour[citation needed]. By contrast, the rate of surplus value was specifically the way the rate of exploitation manifested itself in the capitalist mode of production[citation needed].
Different formulae
Marx identified five different formulae for the rate of surplus value (see surplus value)[citation needed].