Class, exploitation, and economic rents: Reflections on Sorensen's "sounder basis"

Aage Sorensen, in "Toward a Sounder Basis for Class Analysis," argues that Marxists are correct in placing exploitation at the center of class analysi s since an exploitation-centered concept of class has a much greater potent ial for explaining the structural foundations of social conflicts over ineq uality than does its principle rival, the material "life conditions" concep tion of class.' But he also believes that existing concepts of exploitation are seriously compromised due to an absence of rigorous theoretical founda tions. To solve this problem he proposes rehabilitating the concept of expl oitation by closely identifying it with the economic concept of rent. This, he believes, retains the fundamental sociological meaning of exploitation while giving the concept much more theoretical precision and analytical pow er. I share with Sorensen the commitment to reconstructing an exploitation-cent ered concept of class (Wright 1979, 1985, 1989, 1997). And, like Sorensen, I believe that a rigorous concept of exploitation can be elaborated without the use of the labor theory of value. I have also argued that there is a c lose link between the concept of economic rent and various forms of exploit ation. I disagree, however, that exploitation can be fruitfully defined sim ply in terms of rent-generating processes or that a class analysis built on such foundations will be satisfactory. The objective of this article is to explain why I feel rent alone does not provide a "sounder basis" for class analysis. In the next section I will briefly summarize the central ideas of Sorensen' s proposal. This will be followed by an explication of an alternative conce ptualization of exploitation which sees exploitation as not simply rent-gen erated advantages, but advantages that involve the appropriation of labor e ffort of the exploited by exploiters. The article will conclude with a disc ussion of the complex relationship between rent and exploitation.