How many workers nowadays would agree that they are not always, but only "sometimes" exploited, as the author claims?

There's 2 things at play:

1) Our planet's natural resources. And

2) The means of production - tools & machinery that turn those resources into useful items.

Difference comes from who owns those.

For 1), imho best is if that's a common resource, and taking from it regarded as damage that warrants compensation. You want to dig something out of the earth, occupy some land, or cut some trees? Fine, but compensate society for the loss of those resources (as in: taxes). You want to pollute some waters, even if society is compensated generously? Don't complain if society says "No!" & ties your hands.

Resources ideally common across the globe. Split up between nations? Not ideal, but so be it.

Any other method is worse. In this context, benevolent dictators don't exist.

Note that resources could be managed by assigning 'owners' to them. Like Native Americans owning the natural areas they live/depend on. Which seems to work well from what I've read. Ownership in this context read as stewardship / manager.

About 2), there's 3 models:

a) Mostly owned by big, faceless corporations, backed by wealthy investors that comprise a small % of the population. This model has benefits, but also many downsides.

b) Owned by the state. When / wherever tried, it appears to go hand in hand with autocratic regimes / dictators, bureaucracy, curtailing free press, inefficiency, and generally bad outcomes. Maybe "state owned" and "autocratic regime" gravitate towards or enforce each other? Maybe historical examples were just bad luck, poorly executed, or tried @ the wrong time? Who knows.

c) Owned by citizens, or SMALL groups of those. Like small family business, or company with a few dozen workers each owning equal share in the company.

Imho this model hasn't been tried enough. More experiments welcome.

And d) no private ownership, period. This seems to work only in small / simple societies. Not globalized complex ones like ours.

Of course the above is just irrelevant blurb given historic causes & the status quo we're dealing with irl...

Well, yes as we are sliding back ever since the progress at gunpoint ended with Reagan? The neo-feudalists work hard to keep it alive..

Some of these are very odd for someone in a position that almost certainly implies they've studied the source material and the nations that followed it.

The line about the Crusades particularly stands out, since it doesn't seem to match Marx nor match the takes of Communist bloc historians, who were somewhat compelled to tinge their works with Marxist orthodoxy.