Concept in Definition ABC

Exploitation is called the act of obtaining benefit from something or someone. Beyond the various variants of meaning that the term has, the truth is that it is generally related to the social and economic plane, insofar as it is related to the notion of value, to the way in which it is obtained or misses.

One of the most frequent uses is that relating to goods or natural resources. Thus, when we speak of "exploitation" from this point of view, it refers to the way in which benefits are extracted from nature to be used in a market economy. Some examples of this type of extraction profit is made up of fishing, mining, farming, livestock, forestry, etc. In these cases, the exploitation may be aimed at the consumption direct by human beings, or indirect, integrating them into processes of production more complex that will result in the creation of other assets. An example of this last possibility is the extraction of hydrocarbons on which almost the entire economic order of the world is based.

Another common use, this time with a pejorative aspect, is that of human exploitation, or to establish greater precision, of the unfair exploitation of human labor. From this perspective, the benefit that is extracted from the work of the man by another is always much greater than the remuneration in the form of wages. The most relevant proposals in recent times in this regard are those made by Kart Marx in his work Capital; There he exposes that the accumulation of capital to improve production processes entails a lower need for labor and a consequent drop in wages. Beyond that Marxism It is obsolete in many aspects, the truth is that some situations that he denounces continue to be valid.

Regardless of the specific notion of exploitation that is used, the truth is that the idea of ​​extracting profit is intrinsic to the logic of a economy market and with that orientation should be understood.