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FERENC ÍRK and long-term common values. Was it maybe because of this realization that the member states of the European Union have failed to approve of the Agreement? Failing to come to the necessary agreement has serious conseguences as Ágnes Heller pointed out in an interview shortly before her death?. According to Szilárd Teczárs interpretation Heller, a philosopher emphasized that as there is no European Constitution those who act against the common European interests cannot be called to account because it cannot be said that they act against the Constitution but only that “they don’t comply with the European values, which is a rather vague concept”. The validity of the above statements will be tested in the following against the way the exploitation of the workforce is dealt with in the European Union. THE CONCEPT OF EXPLOITATION AND THE WAY IT OPERATES The concept of exploitation can be identified with a certain kind of purposeful action, which means taking advantage of someone or something unjustly or cruelly. There are various ways of exploitation just as the number and the composition of the groups of people involved are varied. The concept involves forced (or slave) labour, and the groups of perpetrators and victims characterized by their age group, gender and occupation. When analysing this gross form of the misuse of power (advantage) experts most often focus on the issues of economic exploitation. This concept means that a person generates profit with his or her work for another person without being offered or given fair remuneration. There are two known forms of it: organizational or “micro-level” and structural or “macro-level” exploitation. The former means the commercial power of economic enterprises in the area of commercial activities. The latter — especially in connection to free trade — focuses exploitation on wide layers of society. This approach means a close connection to the Marxist theory, according to which the capitalist class is an exploiting entity and capitalism itself is based on exploitation.* Forced and slave labour can be regarded as an especially serious kind of exploitation of labour. The relevant sources of literature also confuse these two concepts several times and they often mention forced labour and slave labour together. Therefore, both will be defined in the following. 3 Teczar, Szilárd, Agnes Heller: , Orbánnak ilyen a természete, ösztönösen erre törekszik". Interview, Magyar Narancs (9 May 2019), https://magyarnarancs.hu/belpol/ez-valamiuj-119535. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploitation. There are also so-called neoclassical and neoliberal theories of exploitation but I am not going to expound them here. + 286 +
