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Marxian economics
Concepts Capital (accumulation) Capitalist mode of production Class process Commodity Concrete and abstract labor Constant capital Critique of political economy Exchange value Exploitation Labour power Labour theory of value Law of accumulation Law of value Means of production Mode of production Monopoly capitalism Organic composition of capital Productive forces Profit Prices of production Primitive accumulation Rate of exploitation Rate of profit Real prices and ideal prices Relations of production Reproduction Reserve army of labour Socially necessary labour time Socialist mode of production Socialization Simple commodity production Surplus value Surplus labour Surplus product Use value Wage labour Wage slavery Value-form Value product Variable capital
Topics Capital controversy Crisis theory Economic determinism Immiseration thesis Imperialism Historical materialism Okishio's theorem Overaccumulation Overdetermination Overproduction Kondratiev wave Technological determinism Technological unemployment Temporal single-system interpretation Falling profit-rate tendency Transformation problem Underconsumption Value
Variants Analytical Marxism Classical Marxism Orthodox Marxism Neo-Marxian economics
Works A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy Das Kapital Grundrisse Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 The Accumulation of Capital Monopoly Capital The Theory of Capitalist Development Finance Capital
People Karl Marx Friedrich Engels Vladimir Lenin Rosa Luxemburg Rudolf Hilferding Leon Trotsky Karl Kautsky Ernest Mandel Antonie Pannekoek János Kornai Andrew Kliman Richard D. Wolff Nikolai Kondratiev Paul Sweezy Nobuo Okishio Ian Steedman John Roemer David Laibman Paul A. Baran Stephen Resnick Michał Kalecki
Journals Cambridge Journal of Economics International Journal of Political Economy Monthly Review New School Economic Review Real-World Economics Review Rethinking Marxism Science and Society
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In Marxian economics, the rate of exploitation is the ratio of the total amount of unpaid labor done (surplus-value) to the total amount of wages paid (the value of labour power). The rate of exploitation is often also called the rate of surplus-value.^[1]

Divergence of the two rates

Marx did not regard the rate of surplus value and the rate of exploitation as necessarily identical, insofar as there was a divergence between surplus value realised and surplus value produced. Thus, the quantity of surplus labour performed by workers in an enterprise might correspond to a value higher or lower than the surplus value actually realised as profit income upon sales of output. The implication is that if the gross profit volume was related to wage costs to establish the rate of surplus value, this might overstate or understate the real rate of labor-exploitation. Although this is a subtle point, it has sometimes played an important role in wage bargaining negotiations by trade unions. For an extreme example, workers might work extremely hard in an enterprise which nevertheless operates at a loss. For another extreme example, workers might work less hard, knowing that their product will sell like hotcakes in a seller's market at sharply inflated prices, yielding profits disproportionate to labour input. The divergence between surplus value realised and surplus value produced becomes even more marked if surplus value is viewed in terms of the net incomes of social classes, i.e. net labor income and net property income.^[2] Marx identified five different formulae for the rate of surplus value (see surplus value).^[3]