Marx vs. Roemer by Justin Schwartz 06 March 2002 17:47 UTC
my understanding is that Roemer would have > >accepted > >Marx's story (of capitalist exploitation as based on structural coercion) > >when he developed his own story, but saw the structural coercion as > >unnecessary to the existence of exploitation. > > > >That is exactly correct. > >jks >^^^^^ > >Charles: On this Roemer makes the understanding of capitalism less exact >than Marx's, I agree, but why do you think so? ^^^^^^ CB: He downgrades the importance of the specific form of exploitation in capitalism. ^^^^ yet he crtiques Marx under the rubric of making him more exact. Marx developed nice empirically based differentia specifica for capitalist exploitation; Roemer seeks to make the understanding more blunt, less sharp. ^^^^^^ Roemer's point is logical, that on his notion of exploitation, you can have exploitation without corcion. I discuss this at length in my paper on the subject; so dooes Jim in his and Dymski's now classic paper. jks ^^^^^^ CB: If you mean that capitalist exploitation is characterized by a less directly coercive method than feudalism or slavery, Marx already made that point. Roemer does not improve on what Marx has already taught.
