It still seems like a very non-materialist distinction.
If you're working legal hours for legal wages
Why do you need to make this caveat? If people are being put in a position where they have to accept extralegal conditions of employment in order to survive, they're being exploited. Hand waving that away because it's not "legal" seems naive at best and intentionally misleading at worst.
I think the point is that if you're working legal hours for legal wages in the empire, you're being paid more than the value of your labor because of superexploitation of the global south. The Marxist definition of exploitation is not keeping the whole value of your labor; given this framing, an imperial subject working legal hours for legal wages is keeping more than the value of their labor, and so cannot be exploited in the Marxist sense.
It still seems like a very non-materialist distinction.
Why do you need to make this caveat? If people are being put in a position where they have to accept extralegal conditions of employment in order to survive, they're being exploited. Hand waving that away because it's not "legal" seems naive at best and intentionally misleading at worst.
I think the point is that if you're working legal hours for legal wages in the empire, you're being paid more than the value of your labor because of superexploitation of the global south. The Marxist definition of exploitation is not keeping the whole value of your labor; given this framing, an imperial subject working legal hours for legal wages is keeping more than the value of their labor, and so cannot be exploited in the Marxist sense.
Yes, you worded this much better than me.
Read the Zak Cope book he lays it out well. Westerns are being overcompensated for their labor.
that's pretty fucking relative