Class and exploitation in general convex cone economies

In this paper, we examine what appropriate formulations for labor exploitation are, in order to explain the emergence of class and exploitation status in capitalist economies. Given the well-known controversy pertaining to plausible formulations for labor exploitation in joint production economies, we propose an axiom, Axiom for Labor Exploitation (LE), which every ‘appropriate’ formulation of labor exploitation should satisfy. Using this axiom, the necessary and sufficient condition for plausible formulations of labor exploitation is characterized to verify Class-Exploitation Correspondence Principle (CECP) (Roemer, 1982). According to this, CECP no longer holds in general convex cone economies if the well-known formulations of labor exploitation such as Morishima (1974) and Roemer (1982; Chapter 5) are applied. Therefore, we propose two new definitions of labor exploitation, each of which verifies CECP.