Lecture 11 - Marxian Exploitation and Distributive Justice

author: Ian Shapiro, Yale University
recorded by: Yale University
published: Aug. 19, 2014,   recorded: February 2010,   views: 1368
released under terms of: Creative Commons Attribution No Derivatives (CC-BY-ND)
Categories

See Also:

Download Video - generic video source Download yaleplsc118s2010_shapiro_lec11_01.mp4 (Video - generic video source 542.0 MB)

Download Video Download yaleplsc118s2010_shapiro_lec11_01_640x360_h264.mp4 (Video 142.0 MB)

Download subtitles Download subtitles: TT/XML, RT, SRT


Help icon Streaming Video Help

Related content

Report a problem or upload files

If you have found a problem with this lecture or would like to send us extra material, articles, exercises, etc., please use our ticket system to describe your request and upload the data.
Enter your e-mail into the 'Cc' field, and we will keep you updated with your request's status.
Lecture popularity: You need to login to cast your vote.
  Delicious Bibliography

Description

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.

Link this page

Would you like to put a link to this lecture on your homepage?
Go ahead! Copy the HTML snippet !

Write your own review or comment:

make sure you have javascript enabled or clear this field: