help on surplus value

[ar734]

Can somebody help with surplus value? Marx said that part of a worker's workday is not paid, the capitalist keeps that portion, this his profit. I can see how that could be the case when workers were paid by the day.

But how does sv work when a worker is paid $10.00 per hour for an 8 hr workday? The worker doesn't work an extra hour for nothing. How does this work?

I know you have to look at the entire social system, economy, etc. Can anybody explain sv in as simple terms as possible?

[Broletariat]

I think the easiest example to use would be child sweat shops, they make quarters an hour to produce shoes which can sell up to 100 dollars. They get paid lets say a quarter an hour and can make lets assume half a shoe in an hour (I have no idea about shoe creation times or anything, these are all blind assumptions), we can pretty easily see where the exploitation and surplus value takes place.

[S.Artesian]

The wage-form, in which the worker receives payment by the hour is the mask for the fact that labor itself is organized as a commodity; to be exchanged, as a value, for the means of subsistence.

Consequently, whether paid by the hour, the day, the week, the month, or by the piece, the wage corresponds to the price of labor, and the price is the monetary representation of the value of the labor-power, OR the cost of the reproduction of that labor-power.

However, the reproduction of that labor-power, expressed in money [or in means of subsistence] does not take up, does not absorb, does not require the entire working day. In fact, this expression-- of the wage being equal to only a portion of the working day is nothing other than the manifestation under capitalism that human beings can produce more than simply their own subsistence in the working day-- a modern representation, for example, of the ability of even the simplest agriculture to produce more than the means for individual subsistence.

With production for exchange, the transformation of surplus product into surplus products for exchange and the expansion of this exchange into the dominant purpose of production, products become values, pack animals, mules for value.

Still, the worker reproduces a value equal to his or her requirement for sustaining that labor in less than the entire working day. The balance of the working day then is essentially free for the capitalist, for which no payment is tendered-- or less payment is tendered than the value extracted during the entire working day.

Hope that helps.

[bezdomni]

Fantastic question! Let's get to work...


Marx said that part of a worker's workday is not paid, the capitalist keeps that portion, this his profit. I can see how that could be the case when workers were paid by the day.

Surplus-value is a consequence of wage labor. So it does not matter if workers are paid by the day or by the hour, there is always unpaid labor <=> surplus value.

Let's first rephrase your question more precisely.

Engels posed the question thus:

Whence comes this surplus-value? It cannot come either from the buyer buying the commodities under their value, or from the seller selling them above their value. For in both cases the gains and the losses of each individual cancel each other, as each individual is in turn buyer and seller. Nor can it come from cheating, for though cheating can enrich one person at the expense of another, it cannot increase the total sum possessed by both, and therefore cannot augment the sum of the values in circulation. (...) This problem must be solved, and it must be solved in a purely economic way, excluding all cheating and the intervention of any force — the problem being: how is it possible constantly to sell dearer than one has bought, even on the hypothesis that equal values are always exchanged for equal values?"

Similarly, Marx wondered:

If the exchange-value of a product equals the labour-time contained in the product, then the exchange-value of a working day is equal to the product it yields, in other words, wages must be equal to the product of labour. But in fact the opposite is true. Ergo, this objection amounts to the problem, -- how does production on the basis of exchange-value solely determined by labour-time lead to the result that the exchange-value of labour is less than the exchange-value of its product? This problem is solved in our analysis of capital.

Before Marx constructs his theory of surplus value, he first observes that it is not labor being sold by the worker to the capitalist -- but the capacity to work. In Marx's terminology, this is referred to as labor-power.

Then an "efficient" (due in part to the level of technology, in part to skill) worker produces more value in a given day than they are paid for, since they are not being paid based on the quantity or value of goods produced by based on their capacity for production.

A worker being paid X dollars per hour manufactures a commodity every T minutes which is worth X' = (X + dX) dollars. Then the capitalist gets X' > X every T minutes, but pays the worker only X dollars for an entire hour hour > T minutes.

Marx gives several concrete examples of this in Capital. Here is one such example from Wikipedia,


Imagine a worker who is hired for an hour and paid $10. Once in the capitalist's employ, the capitalist can have him operate a boot-making machine using which the worker produces $10 worth of work every fifteen minutes. Every hour, the capitalist receives $40 worth of work and only pays the worker $10, capturing the remaining $30 which, after deduction of costs (the leather, depreciation of the machine, etc.) leaves a residual, i.e. surplus value or profit.


Can anybody explain sv in as simple terms as possible?

Marx and Engels (along with many others) devoted a lot of their time to doing exactly this. It is best to do your homework and learn what you can from books, and ask more specific questions.

Here is a (slightly redundant) reading list where this question is addressed explicitly:

Wikipedia: Surplus Value (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_value)

Capital (Vol. 1): Ch.8 - Constant Capital and Variable Capital (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch08.htm)

Historical Notes on the Analysis of Commodities (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ch01a.htms)

Anti-Dühring (Part II): Ch. 7 - Capital and Surplus Value (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch19.htm)

Capital (Vol. 3, Part 2): Ch. 10 - Equalisation of the General Rate of Profit Through Competition; Market-Prices and Market-Values; Surplus-Profit (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch10.htm)

Theories of Surplus Value (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/)

Value, Price and Profit: Ch.2 - Production, Wages and Profits (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/ch02)

Start with the Wikipedia article, read a bit about what Marx and Engels wrote on the subject, come back here and ask more questions. ;)

[ar734]

Still, the worker reproduces a value equal to his or her requirement for sustaining that labor in less than the entire working day

So, in my example, the worker produces a value equal to sustaining his or her labor in, say 4 hrs. But even if the employer requires the worker to remain for the full 8 hrs, doesn't the employer still pay $10 for each additional hr?


The balance of the working day then is essentially free for the capitalist, for which no payment is tendered-- or less payment is tendered than the value extracted during the entire working day.

Hope that helps.

This part is easier to understand. A worker is paid $10 per hour but actually produces, say, $15 hourly value (taking into account material, depreciation, etc.) This explanation seems, however, different from not paying a worker for a part of the working day, i.e. paying for 4 hrs and requiring work for 8 hrs.

[ar734]

Fantastic question! Let's get to work...

A worker being paid X dollars per hour manufactures a commodity every T minutes which is worth X' = (X + dX) dollars. Then the capitalist gets X' > X every T minutes, but pays the worker only X dollars for an entire hour hour > T minutes.

So, a worker makes $10 per hour and makes 1 commodity per hour.
This commodity is worth (on an hourly basis) $10 plus $5 (dX), or $15. Is there any statistical data, real life evidence that this change actually occurs?

I can understand that profit (or surplus value) cannot be explained by the process of exchange or supply/demand, etc. It can only come from the production process. That much is clear as noon-day, as Marx might say.

But why can't modern economic evidence prove this? The neoliberals, neoclassicists, Austrians, etc. etc. all claim that profit comes from some ethical quality of capitalism or from the magic of the marketplace. Why can't this profit question be solved for good?

I saw the same wiki article. I was looking for some recent work (like the last 10 yrs.) on surplus value.

[Revolutionair]

So, in my example ... paying for 4 hrs and requiring work for 8 hrs.

If you receive 10 per hour, but you create 20 per hour. You work 8 hours per day. You produce what is needed for your wage in 4 hours (you receive 80 in total, you create 80 in 4 hours.) so you work 4 hours for your wage, and the remaining 4 hours per day, you work for the boss.

I'm sorry if this is not clear enough. Please tell me if you don't understand and I try to elaborate.

[Revolutionair]

This is a good video, at the start he shows what surplus value is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e8rt8RGjCM

[S.Artesian]

So, in my example, the worker produces a value equal to sustaining his or her labor in, say 4 hrs. But even if the employer requires the worker to remain for the full 8 hrs, doesn't the employer still pay $10 for each additional hr?

The worker reproduces the value equivalent to his/her full daily wage in 3-4 hours. This is called the necessary labor-time. The rest of the working day is surplus labor time, in which the worker produces surplus value, the social embodiment of this surplus labor time.

[ar734]

If you receive 10 per hour, but you create 20 per hour. You work 8 hours per day. You produce what is needed for your wage in 4 hours (you receive 80 in total, you create 80 in 4 hours.) so you work 4 hours for your wage, and the remaining 4 hours per day, you work for the boss.

I'm sorry if this is not clear enough. Please tell me if you don't understand and I try to elaborate.


Yes, that is clear. But what actual evidence is there that you created an additional 10 per hour? I know the average person would say that he/she was paid, say, 10 per hour and worked 8 hrs; although most people would also agree that they produced or were worth a lot more than 10 per hour. They are right, but how do you prove it?

[Paul Cockshott]

an hours labour creates a lot more than ten dollars added value, forty dollars would be a better guess, the boss keeps thirty.

[ar734]

The worker reproduces the value equivalent to his/her full daily wage in 3-4 hours. This is called the necessary labor-time. The rest of the working day is surplus labor time, in which the worker produces surplus value, the social embodiment of this surplus labor time.

So, the worker works 4 hours and produces $80 of value (8hrs at 10 per hr.) The worker is only paid 40 for this 4 hrs, but is required to work for an entire "day."


2 questions: How do we know the worker's necessary labor time (the value equivalent to reproduce himself for a day) is 3-4 hours?

Assuming the cost of living for an average worker is 80 per day, if he/she is paid 80 per day then doesn't this 8 hr day replace the worker's own labor value? I know the surplus value is there, I just can't see it.

On the other hand, if the average cost of living is 100 per day and the average wage is 80 per day, then the worker is being paid less than the full value of his/her own labor. But this would mean the labor commodity of the worker is not being exchanged at its true value.

Thanks for your patience. I really want to get to the bottom of this.

I will look at some of the web pages recommended.

[ar734]

an hours labour creates a lot more than ten dollars added value, forty dollars would be a better guess, the boss keeps thirty.

I can see that. I think Marx said that if you can't explain profit by surplus value then you can't explain profit.

But my problem, among many others, is how to prove with real economic evidence that the added value (value added?) is created in the hour's labor?

It would be a stupendous irony if the capitalist concept of value added would actually be Marxist surplus value.

[ar734]

This is a good video, at the start he shows what surplus value is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e8rt8RGjCM

I watched the video. I have been reading Marx for a few years and I have to say that even though the professor is very good, he loses me after about 10 minutes. I think it would be easier if it were put in terms like profit, costs and price rather than surplus value, constant capital and variable capital. Thus,

Profit=Price - non labor costs - labor costs.
Or Price=Profit + labor and non labor costs.

[Paul Cockshott]

If you do an industry by industry comparison and look at the of profit, you can see that the level of profit correlates closely with the number of workers employed. If capital as well as labour was productive of value, you would find that industries that had a high capital labour ratio would have the same rate of profit as those with a low capital labour ratiio. This is not what happens, the industries with a high labour to capital ratio have the higher profit rates. This is only explicable by the theory of surplus value.

[Blake's Baby]

One way you can look at the problem is by finding out what a company makes in profit. All that profit has been made by the workers, hasn't it? The shareholders don't make it, the bosses don't make it, the buildings and the electricity bills and the raw materials purchased and the machines themselves even don't make it. So all the profit (indeed all the money the company has coming in) has been made by the workers (whether they're physically producing or moving stuff around to sell it).

The workers have obviously been paid much less than the amount the company takes, or else they wouldn't be able to pay the shareholder bonuses, the electricity bills and whatnot. And yet, the workers have done all the work. So the workers' unpaid work has created the difference. Were the workers rewarded for all of their work, they would receive all of the value that their work produced, in other words, all the money that the company made.

Total income of a company - wages = surplus value. The costs of raw materials don't figure. Just because I use a raw material that has been dug out of the ground and flown halfway round the world doesn't alter my labour power. It's not my problem. My problem is that I turn that raw material into $250 worth of stuff but only get paid $50. In other words, one day a week I work for my wages, 4 days a week I work for my boss's perks (and to pay the firm's electricity bill, and to fly the mined stuff around the world). The amount of labour expended doesn't depend on the raw material.

[bezdomni]

But my problem, among many others, is how to prove with real economic evidence that the added value (value added?) is created in the hour's labor?


Anwar Shaikh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_Shaikh_%28economist%29), among others, has done some considerable work on empirically verifying the Labor Theory of Value.

This is also one of the questions addressed in Robert Vienneau's Labor Theory of Value FAQ (http://pandora.simons-rock.edu/~eatonak/LTV-FAQ.html), in particular:

What empirical evidence supports the Labor Theory of Value? (http://pandora.simons-rock.edu/~eatonak/LTV-FAQ.html#Transformation7)


...the LTV may be a good approximate theory of prices if the price of capital per worker for vertically integrated industries is closer to the average price of capital per worker than for non-vertically integrated industries. Anwar Shaikh has checked this condition with the 1947 input-output table collected by Wassily Leontief for the United States. This input-output table divides the U.S. economy into 190 sectors. Anwar Shaikh found that the ratio of the standard deviation of the capital-labor ratios to the mean capital-labor ratio (the coefficient of variation) is 1.14. The coefficient of variation for capital-labor ratios of vertically integrated sectors is 0.60. So the desired condition is confirmed. Furthermore, 96% of sectoral variations in the logarithm of relative prices are explained by variations in the logarithm of relative labor values. (Anwar Shaikh provided a theoretical argument for using natural logarithms.)

Anwar Shaikh also tested the ability of the LTV to explain temporal variations in prices. He used Italian input-output tables developed by Graziella Marzi and Paolo Varri for 1959 and 1969. These tables contain 25 sectors. Anwar Shaikh found that 92% of the temporal variation of the logarithm of prices of production is explained by variations in the logarithm of relative labor values.

Paul Cockshott, Allin Cottrel, Ed Ochoa, and Pavle Petrovic are some other economists whose recent empirical results support the LTV. Edward Wolff found empirical evidence against Marx's law of the tendency of the rate of profits to fall. He argues, though, that Marx's theory provides an adequate framework for empirical exploration of such issues. Anwar Shaikh and E. Ahmet Tonak found empirical evidence in favour of Marx's law. In other empirical work, William Nordhaus used a Smithian labor-commanded standard to measure technological change. Ian Steedman and Judith Tomkins found empirical evidence against the LTV in their sophisticated formulation of the question.


Also, Marx didn't just pull the LTV out of thin air -- he looked at a lot of empirical data when he was doing research for Capital.

"Exploitation is possible under capitalism because the capitalists purchase variable capital with part of their capital. When workers labor under the capitalists' direction, the capitalists do their best to ensure the use value of labor power is a greater amount of time than the labor value of labor power."

[S.Artesian]

Anwar Shaikh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_Shaikh_%28economist%29), among others, has done some considerable work on empirically verifying the Labor Theory of Value.

This is also one of the questions addressed in Robert Vienneau's Labor Theory of Value FAQ (http://pandora.simons-rock.edu/%7Eeatonak/LTV-FAQ.html), in particular:

What empirical evidence supports the Labor Theory of Value? (http://pandora.simons-rock.edu/%7Eeatonak/LTV-FAQ.html#Transformation7)



Also, Marx didn't just pull the LTV out of thin air -- he looked at a lot of empirical data when he was doing research for Capital.



No, he didn't pull it out of the air, but he really didn't pull it out of empirical data. He pulled it out of Ricardo, mostly, and then critique Ricardo's, and other, formulations.

[ZeroNowhere]

Also, Marx didn't just pull the LTV out of thin air -- he looked at a lot of empirical data when he was doing research for Capital.Other than the fact that he adopted the theory of value far before Capital, he didn't justify the theory of value in terms of empirical data and statistics in Capital either, any more than he tried to prove statistically that the state represented the illusory general interest or God the alienated human essence. Necessity cannot be deduced from induction; "the empiricism of observation alone can never adequately prove necessity."

[ar734]

I found some statistics from the UN International Labor Office (I think ILO) that showed that in the U.S. productivity for 2006 per worker on average was about 62,000 USD but that the average wages and benefits were about 50,000 USD.

If these numbers are valid for say, 50 years, then there is a big disparity between what a worker produces and what he/she is paid. Even apologists for
capitalism, like Greg Mankiw at Harvard says that a worker is supposed to be paid the equivalent of what he/she produces. (from a 2006 entry on his blog site.)

It's well known that over the last couple of years that productivity is up while wages are flat or down. In other words workers are producing more while working more hours. Workers are being exploited more "intensively."

This production over wages must be surplus value. Any thoughts?

[Paul Cockshott]

these figures understate exploitation, since salaries of CEOs etc are included in the wage figures, go for the median wage not the average.

[Armchair War Criminal]

International exploitation (through core capitalist employment of peripheral workers, spreads in capital intensities between imports and exports*, &c) is worth considering as well.


these figures understate exploitation, since salaries of CEOs etc are included in the wage figures, go for the median wage not the average.How is managerial labor not labor? (I can certainly see good arguments that high CEO pay reflects a market failure stemming from institutional dynamics, or that managerial labor is mostly guard labor, and obviously that high-salary workers have material interests aligned with capitalism even without stock options, but these seem like separate issues.)

*Yes, yes, the Leontief Paradox. That was a statistical fluke.

[Luís Henrique]

Can somebody help with surplus value? Marx said that part of a worker's workday is not paid, the capitalist keeps that portion, this his profit.

No; this is surplus value. Profit only comes after other things are deduced (rents, taxes, interests, etc.).


I can see how that could be the case when workers were paid by the day.

But how does sv work when a worker is paid $10.00 per hour for an 8 hr workday? The worker doesn't work an extra hour for nothing. How does this work?

I know you have to look at the entire social system, economy, etc. Can anybody explain sv in as simple terms as possible?

Regardless on whether you are paid by piece of by hour, you are paid not for what you produce, but for your subsistence. Simple model: a baker needs three loaves per day in order to subsist (if you wish, you can multiply this for his family, and then he needs 12 loaves, three for each person in family). And so he is paid money enough to buy 12 loaves a day. But he bakes 100 loaves of bread a day. So when the owner of the bakery pays his bakers the money equivalent of 12 loaves a day, he pockets the money equivalent of 88 loaves a day per baker. That is surplus value.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Wikipedia: Surplus Value (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_value)

Just corrected the ridiculous confusion between profit and surplus value!

Luís Henrique

[ar734]

No; this is surplus value. Profit only comes after other things are deduced (rents, taxes, interests, etc.).



Regardless on whether you are paid by piece of by hour, you are paid not for what you produce, but for your subsistence. Simple model: a baker needs three loaves per day in order to subsist (if you wish, you can multiply this for his family, and then he needs 12 loaves, three for each person in family). And so he is paid money enough to buy 12 loaves a day. But he bakes 100 loaves of bread a day. So when the owner of the bakery pays his bakers the money equivalent of 12 loaves a day, he pockets the money equivalent of 88 loaves a day per baker. That is surplus value.

Luís Henrique

Now, that I can understand.The owner pays the baker 12% of what he/she produces. This is, I think, the same as a peasant turning over 1/2 of the produce of his farming to the landlord. The peasant and the bakery worker see exactly what part of their work is being taken by the landlord and owner and they see exactly how much of their time is worked for free. And also for the slave who gets maybe .01% of his/her work as food, although the slave believes he is getting paid nothing.

However, the capitalist system is based on wages-labor. The worker in a bakery is paid (by agreement) $12 per hour. If that is his cost of living per hour (and it would have to be,) then that would mean when he worked 1/2 an hour he would have earned the $12. I just don't think it would ever be possible to prove that part of the working day is performed for free. Maybe 200 years from now when the wages system is history.

However, I think it can be shown that the median value produced by a worker is more than the median value of his/her wage. The only possible explanation for this is that workers are not paid the full value of their work. Not even a capitalist would try to argue that workers should not be paid the true value of what they produced.

Workers in a capitalist economy produce more than they are paid (as do slaves and serfs.) As Marx said, human labor is the only kind of labor that can create value.

[Kadir Ateş]

But why can't modern economic evidence prove this? The neoliberals, neoclassicists, Austrians, etc. etc. all claim that profit comes from some ethical quality of capitalism or from the magic of the marketplace. Why can't this profit question be solved for good?

Precisely because they seek to harmonize the antagonism which not only Marx, but also Malthus and to a lesser extent, Smith and Ricardo, pointed to decades before M&E. The very categories of bourgeois political economy--we can even just call it "political economy" as there is no such thing as Marxian political economy--seek to mystify what goes at the level of production.

I agree with S. Artesian, that any attempt to perform an empirical analysis for this kind of thing is tantamount to trying to grasp the materiality of value, no matter how much you "twist and turn it".

[06hurdwp]

Can somebody help with surplus value? Marx said that part of a worker's workday is not paid, the capitalist keeps that portion, this his profit. I can see how that could be the case when workers were paid by the day.

But how does sv work when a worker is paid $10.00 per hour for an 8 hr workday? The worker doesn't work an extra hour for nothing. How does this work?

I know you have to look at the entire social system, economy, etc. Can anybody explain sv in as simple terms as possible?

Because the value of the goods they produce within that hour will be alot higher than the amount they are paid.

[ar734]

Precisely because they seek to harmonize the antagonism which not only Marx, but also Malthus and to a lesser extent, Smith and Ricardo, pointed to decades before M&E. The very categories of bourgeois political economy--we can even just call it "political economy" as there is no such thing as Marxian political economy--seek to mystify what goes at the level of production.

I agree with S. Artesian, that any attempt to perform an empirical analysis for this kind of thing is tantamount to trying to grasp the materiality of value, no matter how much you "twist and turn it".

I tend to agree with you and Artesian. But if the capitalist apologists seek to mystify the production of surplus value (or, for them, profit); it seems to me that if socialists cannot demystify it then they have ceded the argument to capital and the "free market." Isn't that what science is about? Demystifying the appearance of things and getting to the reality.

[ar734]

Because the value of the goods they produce within that hour will be alot higher than the amount they are paid.

How do you prove that?

[ar734]

Just corrected the ridiculous confusion between profit and surplus value!

Luís Henrique

""Surplus-value and the rate of surplus-value are... the invisible essence to be investigated, whereas the rate of profit and hence the form of surplus-value as profit are visible surface phenomena" - Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 3, Pelican edition, p. 134"

From the Wikipedia article.

[Kadir Ateş]

I tend to agree with you and Artesian. But if the capitalist apologists seek to mystify the production of surplus value (or, for them, profit); it seems to me that if socialists cannot demystify it then they have ceded the argument to capital and the "free market." Isn't that what science is about? Demystifying the appearance of things and getting to the reality.

Marx did demystify those categories, that was the basic purpose of Capital, it was, after all, a critique of political economy. The economists "naturalized" the categories, as Smith and Ricardo did and saw there was a tension. Bastiat was unique in that he pretended that where S&R saw an antagonistic relation, he saw a "harmonizing" one.

[ar734]

Marx did demystify those categories, that was the basic purpose of Capital, it was, after all, a critique of political economy. The economists "naturalized" the categories, as Smith and Ricardo did and saw there was a tension. Bastiat was unique in that he pretended that where S&R saw an antagonistic relation, he saw a "harmonizing" one.

If Marx demystified surplus value, then why can't we use empirical observation to prove it? Einstein demystified the relation between energy, mass and light. But, if there had been no objective measurement of that relation it would still only be a theory.

If socialists cannot scientifically prove the existence and origin of surplus value then mystical explanations like marginalism will prevail.

Maybe it is an economic, social problem. As long as Economics and Business departments in universities are controlled by capitalists nothing will change. As well as propaganda outlets like the news and entertainment media.

[ZeroNowhere]

If Marx demystified surplus value, then why can't we use empirical observation to prove it? Einstein demystified the relation between energy, mass and light. But, if there had been no objective measurement of that relation it would still only be a theory.

If socialists cannot scientifically prove the existence and origin of surplus value then mystical explanations like marginalism will prevail.I believe that this is the kind of thing which Henryk Grossman was talking about when he attacked thinkers for their "incurable empiricism." Does Wittgenstein also have to prove the private language argument 'using empirical observation' in this sense? I certainly wouldn't wish to be tasked with proving that 205 + 843 = 1048 through such a method (of course, if I didn't get such a result, this wouldn't be a disproof, because it can't be disproved and hence proved empirically. It has a connection to reality in the same way as surplus-value, but not one derived from induction). If surplus-value is inherent to capitalism this can only be shown through demonstrating it from the nature of capitalism, and it would hardly be apt to reduce all 'scientific demonstration' to simply induction, which could not in fact demonstrate that something is inherent to capitalism, hence could not confirm the theory of value. Indeed, Marx's demonstration of surplus-value is very much a scientific demonstration, so long as one is not confining scientific demonstration to a narrow form of the same.

Edit: Incidentally, this may be relevant:


"Political economy can only be turned into a positive science by replacing the conflicting dogmas by the conflicting facts, and by the real antagonisms which form their concealed background."
- Letter to Engels, 1868.

[Kadir Ateş]

If Marx demystified surplus value, then why can't we use empirical observation to prove it? Einstein demystified the relation between energy, mass and light. But, if there had been no objective measurement of that relation it would still only be a theory. If socialists cannot scientifically prove the existence and origin of surplus value then mystical explanations like marginalism will prevail. Maybe it is an economic, social problem. As long as Economics and Business departments in universities are controlled by capitalists nothing will change. As well as propaganda outlets like the news and entertainment media. I don't think there's much to add to ZeroNowhere's post, I will say that the profession of economics evolved at a critical juncture in history when the the imposing forces of the market began to erode the deeply entrenched, established and (obvious) feudal institutions. As a serf, you knew exactly where you stood, were guaranteed by right a certain amount of sustenance for you and your family, so long as you produced a surplus for the local minister and lord. There was, as Marx would say, equal exchange (C-M-C), but not yet generalised production for a greater value beyond what inputs were injected into the production process beforehand (M-C-M').

A "Marxian economics" does not exist in so far as Marx was not trying to establish a way for the market to act more just, or even laying the blueprint for a future mode of production. His purpose was to critique the very language economists use in order to present the functioning of the market as a "rationally-organised" system which corresponds to a society composed of "rationally-minded" human beings.

[Paul Cockshott]

I certainly wouldn't wish to be tasked with proving that 205 + 843 = 1048 through such a method (of course, if I didn't get such a result, this wouldn't be a disproof, because it can't be disproved and hence proved empirically.
If you want you could with considerable tedium show that manually. And in doing that you would be pursuing a mechanical set of rules. So in principle the proof can be mechanised, ie done empirically on a computer.
When we deal with really large numbers we have no option but to resort to empirical methods using computers.

But political economy is not a formal science, even if orthodox economists do attempt to make it a purely deductive system. Instead political economy is a theory of part of the real world, and like any other science of the real its theories are only as good as their conformance with empirical data proves to be.

[ZeroNowhere]

If you want you could with considerable tedium show that manually. And in doing that you would be pursuing a mechanical set of rules. So in principle the proof can be mechanised, ie done empirically on a computer.
Not necessarily. As Wittgenstein commented, if the counting ended up giving a different result, it would be wrong, in which case there's no question of empirical validation. Insofar as the result would in this case form a criteria of correctness for the supposed empirical demonstration, it could not be in actual fact an empirical proof or demonstration. As such, there is no question of conformance to empirical data, because empirical data cannot show that a mathematical sum is correct per se. Mathematics gains its sense from the world, but not through inductive demonstration, rather because it is composed of abstractions which gain their sense from the concrete. It is not a purely deductive system, insofar as it takes its material from outside of it (and language cannot have a sense internal to itself), but on the other hand how it treats these is not simple induction so much as it is analysis.

[Kadir Ateş]

Incidentally, I believe it was Henryk Grossman who said he could calculate exactly when the socialist revolution would come through an empirical analysis of the falling rate of profit. Really, as great a theoretician as he was, it's garbage like this that makes you laugh/die a little bit inside.

[ZeroNowhere]

Incidentally, I believe it was Henryk Grossman who said he could calculate exactly when the socialist revolution would come through an empirical analysis of the falling rate of profit. Really, as great a theoretician as he was, it's garbage like this that makes you laugh/die a little bit inside.Having read Grossman's book, I don't recall him saying that per se. He did say that he could predict when the stage of collapse would come, but he was perfectly aware that crises had taken place without revolution following. This prediction, however, was based on a model with certain factors kept constant and such, while in reality such prediction in reality would require many factors to be taken into account, as well as various external influences and so on, and as such couldn't be exact, although it could be done in approximate form by making certain assumptions and averages. He did form a formula, quite famously, but this applied to the model and could apply with exactitude only to it.

Really, if I want to laugh/die a little bit inside due to Marxist theoreticians, I think that there's far better choices than Grossman, and a lot of them.

[Kadir Ateş]

ZeroNowhere, I concede to your better knowledge on the issue, I must have been mistaken in thinking it was social revolution, when he meant collapse. Thanks for the correction!

[ZeroNowhere]

ZeroNowhere, I concede to your better knowledge on the issue, I must have been mistaken in thinking it was social revolution, when he meant collapse. Thanks for the correction!To be honest, I think that the use of the word 'collapse' can be a bit confusing, although it may just be an issue of the connotations of the word in English. This is compounded by the fact that Grossman does in fact connect crisis with capitalism's end, the latter often being referred to as 'collapse' in English at least, although not in the sense of crisis being by itself equivalent to capitalism's end, which it clearly is not. In addition, the final section, which constitutes a description of the relation between crisis and the proletarian movement as the subjective element of revolution, has not been translated into English, so English presentations of it are often coloured by this fact.

It's always seemed strange that his main theoretical work remains not fully translated into English while intellectual powerhouses like Stalin have their whole corpus fully translated (to be fair, I believe that some of Marx's works are also untranslated, although at least all of his major published books are). This is especially strange given that there's a full Spanish translation, which I read, but nobody's ever bothered to translate him into English, as far as I know.

[Zanthorus]

I believe that some of Marx's works are also untranslated,

Last I checked the untranslated portions of Marx's (And Engels') works come out at the same size (Around fifty volumes) as the existing MECW. Off the top of my head, Kevin Anderson mentioned that Marx's notebooks on India which are highly significant in that Marx attacks the idea that India was ever 'feudal' (Which was the opinion of certain other historians of the period) and posits a historical development for India which was removed from that of Western Europe (Rather than presenting a Eurocentric narrative in which non-western societies are understood through the lens of European historical development). In addition, Anderson points to aspects of Marx's analysis of the Indian village commune's as being similar to his analysis of the Russian, and there are a couple of places where Marx hints that his analysis of the Russian commune's applied to India as well, which would mean the positing of the possibility for certain countries to avoid capitalist development was not merely confined to Russia.

[ar734]

But political economy is not a formal science, even if orthodox economists do attempt to make it a purely deductive system. Instead political economy is a theory of part of the real world, and like any other science of the real its theories are only as good as their conformance with empirical data proves to be.

The bizarre mathematics orthodox economists use...most seem to me to be complete nonsense. I remember reading somewhere that this mathematics was completely self-referential. Also, the graphs they use. They never put the data labels, etc. on the graphs, or provide any data sets to back up the graphs. I don't think they could have made the graphs even with excel. For instance, Marshall's price/demand/supply curve graph. How do they get away with it?

BTW, I notice that you are from Scotland. Do they remember Duchess Sutherland and her enclosures? I read in Wiki that the primitive accumulation/enclosure had been disproved.

[Paul Cockshott]

The bizarre mathematics orthodox economists use...most seem to me to be complete nonsense. I remember reading somewhere that this mathematics was completely self-referential. Also, the graphs they use. They never put the data labels, etc. on the graphs, or provide any data sets to back up the graphs. I don't think they could have made the graphs even with excel. For instance, Marshall's price/demand/supply curve graph. How do they get away with it?

It is complete nonsense and all made up. It relies heavily on what is termed non-constructive maths, so the proofs do not relate to the real world.


BTW, I notice that you are from Scotland. Do they remember Duchess Sutherland and her enclosures? I read in Wiki that the primitive accumulation/enclosure had been disproved.
The enclosures are well remembered. No primitive accumulation has not been disproved, it was a historical reality. Walking high glens you see the ruins of settlements that were cleared even to this day.

[ar734]

The enclosures are well remembered. No primitive accumulation has not been disproved, it was a historical reality. Walking high glens you see the ruins of settlements that were cleared even to this day.

Amazing. The BBC ought to do a series about it. It would explain why the "manor" always looks out on open fields of grazing land divided by hedges and trees. The cottages were all burned down to make way for sheep. To the Manor Born indeed.