ABSTRACT
The inevitably resultant obscuring of the analysis stems from the fact that recourse to this notion is simply a substitute for an explanation. The oscillation between these two analytical poles of exclusion is the sign of a lack of integrated theories able to comprehend the social mechanisms of exclusion and the process of individual exclusion. The topic of exploitation is greatly indebted to the Marxist analysis of industrial capitalism. It characterises at best the relations of society and poverty in the countries that experienced the industrial revolution. Poverty and nascent wage-earning were on a par in this movement, which drew large parts of the population into industrial work. The impoverishment of the workers as an ensemble that constituted the social question of the greater part of the nineteenth century was founded on the logic of the economic and political system.
