Marx vs. Roemer

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 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.