Towards a New Model of Exploitation: The Case of Racial Domination

Introduces a new approach to exploitation, and uses it to reinterpret the economic significance of racism, generally, and the underclass specifically. The extent of exploitation in labour processes is the product of two factors: whether workers have an “exit option” of ready alternative employment; and how completely labour exchanges specify the labour that will actually be done. The state of these two factors, in turn, depends on the social and historical setting of production. Uses this conception to reinterpret the effect of racism on economic outcomes – this suggests that the increasing number of permanently unemployed people in inner‐city ghettos have an important effect on the racially‐differentiated patterns of exploitation and on the overall level of exploitation in contrast with the perspective that the “underclass” is isolated from the rest of society.