 On Roemer’s analysis, capitalist exploitation is essentially a form of social parasitism. One group (the capitalists) are made better off by the existence of a second group (workers), but that second group is made worse off by the existence of the first. More formally, according to Roemer’s account (1982b, 194—95), we may say that a group \(S\) in a larger society \(N\) is exploited by its complement group \(S'\) (relative to \(N\)) if and only   if:[1]