Economix / Sophiapol 2014 seminar

After igniting intellectual contests and fueling political struggles for much of the twentieth century, the notion of capitalist exploitation was largely abandoned. On the side of economics, the major political economy debates have lost their vigor and questions have become both technical and sectoralized. On the side of philosophy, Marxist problems have ebbed, and when they have persisted, it is more around the notions of alienation and domination than around that of exploitation. The slightest interest in the concept is however justified neither theoretically (it is based on changes in sensitivity and paradigms more than on reasoned analyzes) nor empirically (who could say that we are living in a phase of “capitalism without exploitation”? ). As for the meeting of these two disciplines around this theme, it is based on the interweaving of the economic and philosophical stakes of the history of the concept, as well as on the intersection of the problems of “theories of justice” and of justice. “Economic philosophy”.
The objective of the seminar is to examine the history and topicality of conceptions of exploitation, while revisiting a set of classic questions: exploitation and domination; exploitation and injustice; economic and non-economic forms of exploitation; diversity of economic exploitations and specificity of capitalist exploitation in general, of exploitation at the time of financialized capitalism in particular; comparison of the theories of value approach, the approach in monetary terms and socio-economic perspectives; analysis of the various theoretical currents approaching exploitation.
The first part of the seminar will take place in the first half of 2014. It will continue during the 2014/2015 academic year.