Editing Openai/690e0c6e-a0a0-8008-a8d6-170f8b930892 (section)

==== These works accept that markets are not perfect and show how wage-productivity gaps, labour‐market power, mark-ups, declining labour shares may approximate the “extraction” insight, albeit using different language. ====
# “Exploitation of labour? Classical monopsony power and labour’s share” (Brooks, Kaboski, Li & Qian) — empirical work showing how labour‐market monopsony (employer power) can reduce the labour share of income in China & India. NBER<ref>{{cite web|title=NBER|url=https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w25660/w25660.pdf|publisher=nber.org|access-date=2025-11-12}}</ref> - Key result: “monopsony power substantially lowers labor’s share … by up to 11 percentage points in China and 13 pp in India.” NBER<ref>{{cite web|title=NBER|url=https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w25660/w25660.pdf|publisher=nber.org|access-date=2025-11-12}}</ref> - Interpretation: Even if contractually equal (worker sells labour, capitalist pays wage), the wage may end up being below marginal product because the worker lacks alternative options → resembling Marx's “extraction” though lettered differently.
# “Monopsony in the U.S. labour market – Upjohn Research” — recent work documenting employer‐market power in labour markets. research.upjohn.org<ref>{{cite web|title=research.upjohn.org|url=https://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1383&context=up_workingpapers|publisher=research.upjohn.org|access-date=2025-11-12}}</ref> - Supports the idea that formal contractual equality does not guarantee substantive equality of payment in realistic labour markets.
# “Marx, Marginalism, and the True Nature of Capitalism” (DeveconHub) — argues that Marx’s systemic concerns (average rate of surplus value, falling profit rate) differ from marginalist individual‐optimisation models, but the empirical trends (declining labour share, rising markups) can revive a Marx-like concern even within a modern framework. deveconhub.com<ref>{{cite web|title=deveconhub.com|url=https://deveconhub.com/marx-marginalism-and-the-true-nature-of-capitalism/|publisher=deveconhub.com|access-date=2025-11-12}}</ref> - Good for bridging Marx’s intuition with modern institutional issues of power, mark-ups, factor shares.

Summary takeaway for this camp: The formal equality of contract is not sufficient because real-world frictions, bargaining power, monopsony/markup dynamics lead to a gap between what workers receive and what they produce. In that sense, Marx’s core diagnosis (inequality masked by formal equality) finds empirical resonance, albeit with different mechanisms.