Unfair advantage and exploitation: comments on Folbre.

One of Erik Olin Wright's important contributions was to characterize exploitation in a particular way, as consisting of three interlocking features: STRUCTURAL: a situation where the positive welfare of some is dependent on the deprivation of others EXCLUSION: some are excluded from control over productive resources MECHANISM: the way in which 1 and 2 work is the appropriation of the labor of the exploited (Wright, [6]). In her paper (Folbre, [4]), Nancy Folbre rejects an account of exploitation that is restricted to class relationships and centered on the extraction of surplus labor in competitive markets. While Folbre is right to emphasize the role of social norms in distribution, it is quite unclear to me how egalitarian she thinks those norms need to be if exploitation is to be avoided. I began my comments by noting that Folbre's account of exploitation is far broader than Wright's, extending the concept beyond the confines of class. [Extracted from the article]