I asked Gil what Veneziani's specific results were, but he didn't seem to
have time to respond. Luckily, I found my copy of Roberto Veneziani's
Exploitation and Time, (London School of Economics: Centre for Philosophy
of Natural and Social Science, discussion paper 47/00). [BTW, he doesn't
just cite Dymski and myself; he also cites pen-l's Justin Schwartz.] His
analysis of Roemer's theory of exploitation produces the following results.
If you want to skip the quote, the start of my summary and commentary are
marked by two asterisks.
(1) Veneziani first discusses the importance of time in terms of whether
we should look at within period exploitation [static cross-section or
synchronic] or complete lives [dynamic, over the life-cycle] exploitation.
I agree with him that the former emphasizes the importance of the structure
of economic relations in a capitalist economy which is not only more in
line with Marx's theory, but also it gives the opportunity to evaluate the
dynamics of exploitation deriving from the structure of the competitive
economy.
[The assumption of a competitive economy doesn't hurt this analysis, since
the existence of monopoly doesn't seem to contradict his results. BTW, I've
corrected some typos below and reformatted a bit (adding some punctuation)
for readability. It is not quite a literal quotation.]
(2) In particular, focusing on within period exploitation, it is possible
to analyse another problem that emerges once time is introduced, i.e., the
issue of the persistence of exploitation. If agents' lives are divided into
several productive periods, Roemer's models are not able to provide
microfoundations to [explain] exploitation as a persistent phenomenon. This
fact has two theoretical implications:
firstly, Roemer's models are not suitable to discuss Marx's concepts of
exploitation and class. According to Marx, exploitation and class are
inherent phenomena of a capitalist economy and they relate to the very
structure of capital/labor relations. Instead, the intertemporal
generalisation of Roemer's model shows that even without a capital market,
the competitive economy displays and inherent tendency toward labour value
pricing, i.e., a just structure. [Veneziani assumes that price = value
represents fairness or justice in exchange, which doesn't fit with Marx's
views.{*}]
[BTW, this fits with the standard Marxian result that if the rate of
surplus-value is zero (here the result of the end of Roemerian
exploitation), values and prices of production correspond.]
Thus, in Roemer's framework, exploitation is _a transitory accident_ [my
emphasis] related to an initial unjustified differential ownership of
property assets that has nothing to do with the functioning of a capitalist
economy [as modeled by Roemer or Veneziani]. And [Veneziani's Proposition 3]
suggests the very counterintuitive result (from a marxian perspective) that
a laissez-faire policy could be justified in a competitive economy [because
exploitation tends to evaporate and the inequality of wealth ownership to
moderate: trickle-down works in Roemer's model when Veneziani adds time to
the mix].
Secondly, Roemer's models provide microfoundations to exploitation and
class as persistent phenomena [only] thanks to a very restrictive set of
assumptions, and in particular the impossibility of accumulation. In the
one-period model, agents optimally choose their exploitation and class
status given the constraints, but they cannot change it. Accumulation is an
essential ingredient to analyse the last issue and when it is included,
Roemer's models do not provide microfoundations to [the existence of]
exploitation and classes. ...
(3) According to [Proposition 3], the tendency of exploitation to disappear
and the persistence of DOPA [the differential ownership of productive
assets] are coexisting features of the economy and this fact has two
consequences. First of all, the persistence of inequalities in the ownership
of productive assets is not a sufficient [indicator] of the fairness of the
labour/capital relations (and more generally, of the society) from a marxist
perspective. In the intertemporal context, DOPA remains probably necessary
to have exploitation, but it is by no means sufficient for it to persist. In
this sense, DOPA does not contain all the relevant moral information, as
maintained ... by Roemer -- and his game-theoretic definition of
exploitation based exclusively on DOPA cannot be considered a generalization
of Marx's theory.
Secondly, given that the analysis of DOPA may be seen as reflecting a
different moral concern from exploitation, if the results of the
intertemporal model are taken into account, Roemer's reasoning about the
relative importance of DOPA and exploitation can be reversed -- and it seems
legitimate to ask ...: should anybody be interested in DOPA? [Proposition 3]
shows that DOPA can be a persisting feature of an exploitation-free economy
and that the competitive economy tends to this
