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From exploit; the act of exploiting.

a. To make use of or productively utilize. b. To make use of in an unjust, cruel or selfish manner for one's own advantage.

It is the latter which is discussed below.

Exploitation usually does not include simple theft, since the latter is not a persistent economic or social relationship, as when a pimp "exploits" his prostitute. Rather, exploitation involves some long-lasting aspect of the socioeconomic system, an institution.

General considerations

In sociology, "exploitation" refers to the use of people as a resource, with little or no consideration of their well-being. This corresponds to one ethical conception of exploitation, that is, the treatment of human beings as mere means to an end or as mere "objects".

The word "exploitation" is often seen as describing the situation where poor and powerless people are hired by a powerful entity, such as the state or a corporation. More generally, it is common to use the word "exploitation" to characterize the work for pay (wage-labor) system, especially when it is applied with cruelty, or with compulsion, or on terms that are disagreeable to the employee.

A common example of is that of "corporate exploitation", in which companies such as Nike, and The Gap operating in poor nations use powerless female labor and child labor in sweatshops to manufacture their products in return for little pay. This pay is often seen as insufficient for the local cost of living if only normal working hours are observed, while frequently long working hours are forced under unsafe conditions.

These companies' spokespeople often argue that even such low wages are living wages for that location, or that, at the very least, the option of working for them is superior to preexisting options. The argument is that people choose to work for the company of their own accord. But critics see this as disingenuous, since the companies are applying unequal standards compared to first-world production conditions. Furthermore, many critics argue that if people choose to work for low wages and in unsafe conditions because it is their only alternative to starvation or scavenging from garbage dumps, it cannot be seen as any kind of "free choice" on their part. They concluse that if a company intends to sell its products in the first world, it should pay its workers by first world standards.

In addition, corporate wealth can be a strong incentive in governments with weak human standards and rampant corruption, to persuade such governments to give various privileges to corporations. Thus the case is often made that a corporate entity shares complicity in human rights abuses, when it enters into a working partnership with a tyrannical and abusive political government, to exploit people's labor.

On the other hand, an employer may see him- or herself as being exploited by labor. For example, labor unions are sometimes seen as using their political and economic power for self-serving reasons such as acquiring undue perks or excess pay raises. According to many observers, these kinds of abuses by labor occur rarely and only in the richer economies, after traditional imbalances in the employer's favor are countered. In the United States and some other rich countries, this conception seems increasingly out of date, as labor unions have lost most of their power and the institution of the sweatshop has become more common.

Marxian theory

In Marxian theory, the "exploitation" described above (i.e., in sweatshops) is usually described as "superexploitation," exploitation that goes beyond the normal standards of exploitation prevalent in capitalist society. While the theories discussed above emphasize the exploitation of one individual by an organization, the Marxian theory concerns the exploitation of one entire segment or class of society by another. The Marxian theory is structural and institutional, rather than emphasizing the relationship between individual organizations.

In the Marxian view, "normal" exploitation is based in three structural characteristics of that kind of society: (1) the monopoly of the ownership of the means of production by a small minority in society, the capitalists; (2) the inability of non-property-owners (the workers, proletarians) to survive without selling their labor-time to the capitalists; and (3) the state, which uses its strength to protect the unequal distribution of power and property in society. Because of these human-made institutions, workers have little or no choice but to pay the capitalists surplus-value (profits, interest, and rent) in exchange for their survival. They enter the realm of production, where they produce commodities, which allow their bosses to realize that surplus-value as profit. They are always threatened by the "reserve army of the unemployed." For more on this theory, see the discussion of Marx's labor theory of value.

Some Marxian theories of imperialism extend this kind of structural theory of exploitation further, positing exploitation of poor countries by rich capitalist ones. Some Marxist-feminists use a Marxian-style theory to understand relations of exploitation under patriarchy, while others see a kind of exploitation analogous to the Marxian sort as existing under institutional racism.

Liberal theories

There are also liberal theories of exploitation. In neoclassical economics, exploitation is a kind of market failure, a deviation from an ideal vision of capitalism. The most common neoclassical exploiter is a monopsony or a monopoly. These exploiters have bargaining power in the markets that they dominate.

Another type of exploiter is the "agent" who takes advantage of the "principal" who hires her, under conditions of asymmetric information (see the principal-agent problem). A third exploiter is the free rider who takes advantage of others who pay for the production of public goods.

For others, exploitation coexists with perfect markets: given a special position in society (controlling an important asset), an interest group can shift the distribution of income in its direction, impoverishing the rest, even though their role serves no reasonable purpose. While Henry George pointed to land-owners, John Maynard Keynes saw rentiers as fitting this picture. In some ways, these theories are similar to the Marxian one discussed above. However, they represent the power and influence of special interests in society (and within the capitalist class) rather than representing a structural difference in class position of the Marxian sort.

Finally, combining the neoclassical emphasis on market imperfections with the above school's stress on the exploiters forming a segment of society that gains income without contributing, Milton Friedman, free-market libertarians, and other laissez faire business conservatives, along with the anarchists, claim that the government or state is exploitative. They see it as a monopoly run by a special interest group, regularly interfering with markets or other processes.

See also

corporate abuse, slavery, child labor, child sexual exploitation, human exploitation, animal abuse, Class warfare, exploitation of natural resources, exploitation film