Surplus value

[RedFred]

Can anyone make a simple explanation of Surplus value?

[ComradeRed]

Can anyone make a simple explanation of Surplus value? I believe Marx defined it in Das Kapital (vol. I) as:


All surplus-value, whatever particular form (profit, interest, or rent), it may subsequently crystallize into, is in substance the materialization of unpaid labor. The secret of the self-expansion of capital resolves itself into having the disposal of a definite quantity of other people’s unpaid labor.

From Das Kapital, Chapter 18, vol. I (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch18.htm) by Karl Marx (1867).

So basically, surplus value is profit, rent and interest. That's the shortest version.

The surplus value is derived from exploitation of the workers, etc. etc. etc.

[Coggeh]

These things are really hard to define so I'll put it as simple as I possibly can :)

Surplus Value comes from surplus product .

An example of surplus product would be when a worker works for 8 hours and in 6 hours his labour creates enough value for that product and his subsequent wage so the remaining 2 hours are essentially unpaid labour.

In other words a worker earns the value of his wage in 6 hours but works for 8 .The value of the remaining 2 hours is called surplus value , i.e the profit taken by the bourgeois . :)

[mikelepore]

Surplus value is all production except for wages. Surplus value includes capitalist's profits, capitalist's expenses paid to other capitalists such as advertising and brokerage, worker's taxes, and capitalist's taxes. All of this is wealth that workers produce but is expropriated from them under capitalism.