Surplus value: what is it?

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

Surplus value is the amount of profit that is created by an employee by exceeding the cost of his own labor force. At the same time, the manufactured products, as well as the time spent, are appropriated by the employer free of charge. This term expresses a specific form of exploitation that fully corresponds to the basic economic law of capitalism. However, such a concept can illustrate not only the relationship between worker and employer, but also between various groups of the so-called bourgeoisie, for example, landowners and industrialists, bankers and merchants. Surplus value, as well as ways to increase it, can play a significant role in the effective development of productive forces and production relations. The prerequisites for the emergence of the above term is the transformation of labor into goods or services. After all, only at a certain stage in the formation of society could an employer find an employee who was not dependent on the means of production.

The source of surplus value may vary in its form. Allocate absolute, redundant and relative groups. The first is achieved by increasing the time of work or by achieving a higher intensity. The second is obtained by increasing the productivity of each individual relative to the average level. The third form, which can be represented by surplus value, is obtained as a result of a decrease in the share of labor costs. Such categories are historically established and fully characterize the ways to increase this parameter. However, despite a fair amount of differences, all these methods share one important common factor - the source is invariably unpaid labor.

The rate of surplus value is the ratio of the mass of all surplus value to the cost of the labor expended necessary for its production. Thus, the concept described above can be characterized as the degree of exploitation of one person by another.

The theory of surplus value is limited by both theoretical arguments and historical facts. The role of the latter was played both by the history of the formation and development of states, and by the forms of the economic structure of society, for example, marginalism and neoclassicism.

Let us also consider the process of production, as a result of which surplus value can be obtained. By acquiring labor, the employer can start organizing the production process, developing it in such a wayso that on a daily basis the employee not only creates value in the amount equivalent to his labor expended, but also the value that will subsequently become his wages. The latter is considered an unpaid component by the entrepreneur. Therefore, it is surplus value.