Exploitation is an economic relationship in which one actor, an exploiter that has more power and resources, benefits far more than the other, exploited actor. Karl Marx was one of the first to develop a complex theory of exploitation. Marx's theory of exploitation is directly connected to his theory of the value of goods. Marx’s theory of value views the market value of each commodity as the exclusive product of the socially necessary working time for a commodity to be produced and transported. Marx concluded from this that the difference between the wage that a worker receives for work and the price at which goods are sold, obtained by that work, represents the surplus value that the owner of the means of labor appropriates for himself, and to the detriment of the worker. This appropriation of surplus value is the essence of the economic exploitation that is done by the class that possesses the means of labor; while, by the same process, the class that performs the work is being exploited. In capitalism, capitalists are the owners of the means of labor, and the surplus appropriated is their profit, while the workers, who possess only control over their own labor, are exploited. This is the essence of the contradiction in the productive forces under capitalism.

In Accumulation on a World Scale: A Critique of the Theory of Underdevelopment (1970), Samir Amin argues that the underdevelopment of poor countries is a direct consequence of the way that the capitalist economy works. The exploitation of poor countries by rich countries enables the former to give higher wages to their workers, while at the same time reducing the prices of goods for consumers, thus eliminating the problem of insufficient demand. Immanuel Wallerstein The states and colonies located on the periphery are exploited, through trade relations, by the countries of the center, and this exchange produces the subordination of the states of the periphery. Both development and underdevelopment are interdependent processes because the development of the countries of the center necessarily depends on the underdevelopment of the countries on the periphery.

American economist and sociologist John Roemer is one of the most important representatives of analytical Marxism. At the beginning of his career, he developed the theory of exploitation in the book General Theory of Exploitation and Class (1982). Roemer conceives the general theory of economic exploitation, which has its special forms, so there is feudal, socialist, status, neoclassical, and Marxist exploitation, which are special cases of the general theory of exploitation. According to Remer, for economic inequality to be a consequence of exploitation, there must be a special causal link between the incomes of different actors, that is, for the rich to exploit the poor, their wealth must be directly caused by the deprivation of the poor. Roemer thus comes to his definition of exploitation: "A group can be considered exploited if there are some hypothetically feasible alternatives in which its members would be better off than in its present situation" (Roemer: 1982). Roemer's theory of exploitation is broader than Marxist and can be applied to many situations, other than capitalism.

Roemer sees the distribution of the means of production as the basis of exploitation because ownership of these means is sufficient to explain the transfer of surplus labor, while different types of assets determine different systems of exploitation. Classes represent positions within social relations of production that are based on property relations that determine patterns of exploitation. In Remer, relations within the production process or within the work process do not enter into the definition of class relations. 

Erik Olin Wright adopted Roemer’s theory of exploitation but he added the distinction between economic exploitation and economic oppression. In the case of exploitation, the wealth of the exploiting class directly depends on the work of the exploited class, while in the case of economic oppression, certain groups of people are excluded from the production relationship, and hence they are not directly exploited.

In the book Women’s Oppression Today (1980b), Michèle Barrett states that it is not only capitalists but also men from working-class families that benefit from the economic exploitation of women. She believes that the root of the oppression of women lies in the alliance of men and capitalists in the nineteenth century, which resulted in women being excluded from the sphere of work and pushed into the domestic sphere. The key element in the process of oppression of women is the "family-household system". In this system, all household income is earned by men, and all household members depend on that money. On the other hand, all work within the household is done by women.

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