A CRITIQUE OF ANALYTICAL MARXISM’S APPROACH TO EXPLOITATION

Analytical Marxism is an Anglo-Saxon Marxist school which eliminates metaphysical components of Marxism and grounds it by analytical arguments. Important representatives of this school, Cohen, Elster and Roemer discuss Marx’s concept of exploitation and oppose the definition that exploitation is simply appropriation of surplus value. Accordingly, value of a product is not determined by labor time spent on it but its equivalent in market. In this study, it is claimed that the concept of exploitation of surplus-value, core of Marx’s critique against capitalism, cannot be separated from Marxism. Labor creates an amount of value but the worker cannot take his/her labors’ equivalent although he/she volunteered for this appropriation by giving consent. Capitalist accumulation profits through appropriation of the surplus value. Within a capitalist system, workers have no chance other than compliance to labor contracts which presuppose seizure their surplus value. Thus, the presence of a volunteered agreement does not indicate that there is no exploitation. Exploitation of surplus value is immanent in the capitalist mode of production. Dreaming a version of capitalism exploits no one is only a repetition of the ideals of egalitarian liberalism but it is certainly against to the core of Marxism