PLSC 118: The Moral Foundations of Politics
Lecture 11 - Marxian Exploitation and Distributive Justice. Exploitation is an important technical - not normative - concept in the theory of Karl Marx. Although we are dealing with voluntary Pareto transactions, under capitalism, exploitation occurs whether or not an individual is better off. Capitalism is destined to fail, says Marx, because of (1) the possibility for liquidity crises, (2) the nature of capitalist competition inducing declining marginal profit on the industry-wide level, (3) the fact that capitalist competition eliminates competitors and promotes monopolies, (4) weak demand, as workers could not pool their money and buy all that they produce, and (5) the fact that "workers will come to realize that they have nothing to lose but their chains." However, communism (that distribution should be "to each according to his needs") can only arise from socialism ("to each according to his work"), which in turn can only arise from superabundance created by capitalism. However, scarcity is very much a reality, which makes superabundance impossible; this, Professor Shapiro points out, is the major weakness in Marx's theory. (from oyc.yale.edu)
| Lecture 11 - Marxian Exploitation and Distributive Justice |
| Time | Lecture Chapters |
| [00:00:00] | 1. Relative and Absolute Surplus Value and Rate of Exploitation |
| [00:07:08] | 2. Five Sources of Crisis in Capitalist Systems |
| [00:23:36] | 3. Features of Socialism and Capitalism |
| References |
| Lecture 11 - Marxian Exploitation and Distributive Justice Instructor: Professor Ian Shapiro. Resources: Notes: Marx [PDF]. Transcript [html]. Audio [mp3]. Download Video [mov]. |
Go to the Course Home or watch other lectures: