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Surplus product (german: Mehrprodukt, links=no) is an economic concept explicitly theorised by
Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
in his
critique of political economy Critique of political economy or critique of economy is a form of Social criticism, social critique that rejects the various social categories and structures that constitute the mainstream discourse concerning the forms and modalities of resourc ...
. Roughly speaking, it is the extra goods produced above the amount needed for a community of workers to survive at its current standard of living. Marx first began to work out his idea of surplus product in his 1844 notes on
James Mill James Mill (born James Milne; 6 April 1773 – 23 June 1836) was a Scottish historian, economist, political theorist, and philosopher. He is counted among the founders of the Ricardian school of economics. He also wrote ''The History of British ...
's ''Elements of political economy''. Notions of "surplus produce" have been used in economic thought and commerce for a long time (notably by the
Physiocrats Physiocracy (; from the Greek for "government of nature") is an economic theory developed by a group of 18th-century Age of Enlightenment French economists who believed that the wealth of nations derived solely from the value of "land agricultur ...
), but in ''
Das Kapital ''Das Kapital'', also known as ''Capital: A Critique of Political Economy'' or sometimes simply ''Capital'' (german: Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, link=no, ; 1867–1883), is a foundational theoretical text in Historical mater ...
'', ''
Theories of Surplus Value ''Theories of Surplus Value'' (german: Theorien über den Mehrwert) is a draft manuscript written by Karl Marx between January 1862 and July 1863. It is mainly concerned with the Western Europe, Western European theorizing about ''Mehrwert'' (add ...
'' and the ''
Grundrisse The ''Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie'' (''Foundations of a Critique of Political Economy'') is an unfinished manuscript by the German philosopher Karl Marx. The series of seven notebooks was rough-drafted by Marx, chiefly for ...
'' Marx gave the concept a central place in his interpretation of economic history. Nowadays the concept is mainly used in
Marxian economics Marxian economics, or the Marxian school of economics, is a Heterodox economics, heterodox school of political economic thought. Its foundations can be traced back to Karl Marx, Karl Marx's Critique of political economy#Marx's critique of politic ...
,
political anthropology Political anthropology is the comparative study of politics in a broad range of historical, social, and cultural settings. History of political anthropology Origins Political anthropology has its roots in the 19th century. At that time, thinkers ...
,
cultural anthropology Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. The portma ...
, and
economic anthropology Economic anthropology is a field that attempts to explain human economic behavior in its widest historic, geographic and cultural scope. It is an amalgamation of economics and anthropology. It is practiced by anthropologists and has a complex re ...
. The frequent translation of the German "" as "surplus" makes the term "surplus product" somewhat inaccurate, because it suggests to English speakers that the product referred to is "unused", "not needed", or "redundant", while most accurately "Mehr" means "more" or "added"—thus, "" refers really to the ''additional'' or "excess" product produced. In German, the term "Mehrwert" most literally means
value-added In business, total value added is calculated by tabulating the unit value added (measured by summing unit profit sale price and production cost">Price.html" ;"title="he difference between Price">sale price and production cost], unit depreciatio ...
, a measure of net output, (though, in Marx's particular usage, it means the
surplus-value In Marxian economics, surplus value is the difference between the amount raised through a sale of a product and the amount it cost to the owner of that product to manufacture it: i.e. the amount raised through sale of the product minus the cost ...
obtained from the use of capital, i.e. it refers to the net addition to the value of capital owned).


Classical economics

In ''
Theories of Surplus Value ''Theories of Surplus Value'' (german: Theorien über den Mehrwert) is a draft manuscript written by Karl Marx between January 1862 and July 1863. It is mainly concerned with the Western Europe, Western European theorizing about ''Mehrwert'' (add ...
'', Marx says in classical economics the "surplus" referred to ''an excess of gross income over cost'', which implied that the value of goods sold was greater than the value of the costs involved in producing or supplying them. That was how you could "make money". The surplus represented a net addition to the stock of wealth. A central theoretical question was then to explain the kinds of influences on the size of the surplus, or how the surplus originated, since that had important consequences for the funds available for re-investment, tax levies, the wealth of nations, and (especially)
economic growth Economic growth can be defined as the increase or improvement in the inflation-adjusted market value of the goods and services produced by an economy in a financial year. Statisticians conventionally measure such growth as the percent rate of ...
. This was theoretically a confusing issue, because sometimes it seemed that a surplus arose out of clever trading in already existing assets, while at other times it seemed that the surplus arose because new value was added in production. In other words, a surplus could be formed in different ways, and one could get rich either at the expense of someone else, or by creating more wealth than there was before, or by a mixture of both. This raised the difficult problem of how, then, one could devise a system for grossing and netting incomes & expenditures to estimate only the value of the new additional wealth created by a country. For centuries, there was little agreement about that, because rival economists each had their own theory about the real sources of wealth-creation—even if they might agree that the value of production must equal the sum of the new revenue which it generates for the producers. Political economy was originally considered to be a "moral science", which arose out of the moral and juridical ambiguities of trading processes themselves. It was analytically difficult to take the step from the incomes of individuals, the immediate source of which was rather obvious, to a consideration of the incomes of groups, social classes and nations. Somehow, a "system of transactors" showing aggregate sales and purchases, costs and incomes had to be devised, but just exactly how that system was put together, could differ a great deal, depending on "from whose point of view" the transactions were considered. The Physiocratic school, for example, believed that all wealth originated from the land, and their social accounting system was designed to show this clearly.


Marx's definition

In ''
Das Kapital ''Das Kapital'', also known as ''Capital: A Critique of Political Economy'' or sometimes simply ''Capital'' (german: Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, link=no, ; 1867–1883), is a foundational theoretical text in Historical mater ...
'' and other writings, Marx divides the new "social product" of the working population (the flow of society's total output of new products in a defined time-interval) into the ''necessary product'' and the ''surplus product''. Economically speaking, the "necessary" product refers to the output of products and services necessary to maintain a population of workers and their dependents at the prevailing standard of life (effectively, their total reproduction cost). The "surplus" product is whatever is produced in excess of those necessaries. Socially speaking, this division of the social product reflects the respective claims which the labouring class and the
ruling class In sociology, the ruling class of a society is the social class who set and decide the political and economic agenda of society. In Marxist philosophy, the ruling class are the capitalist social class who own the means of production and by exten ...
make on the new wealth created. Strictly speaking, however, such an abstract, general distinction is a simplification, for at least three reasons. *A society must usually also hold a fraction of the new social product ''in reserve'' at any time. These reserves (sometimes called "strategic stocks") by definition are not usually available for immediate distribution, but stored in some way, yet they are a necessary condition for longer-term survival. Such reserves must be maintained, even if no other excess to immediate requirements is produced, and therefore they can be considered a permanent reproduction cost, viewed over a longer interval of time, rather than as a true surplus. *An additional complicating factor is population growth, since a growing population means that "more product" must be produced purely to ensure the survival of that population. In primitive societies, insufficient output just means that people will die, but in complex societies, continually "producing more" is physically necessary to sustain a growing population (this is admitted by Marx in ''Capital, Volume III'', chapter 48 where he writes: "A definite quantity of surplus labour is required as insurance against accidents, and by the necessary and progressive expansion of the process of reproduction in keeping with the development of the needs and the growth of population, which is called accumulation from the viewpoint of the capitalist"). *At any time, a fraction of the adult working-age population does not work at all, yet these people must somehow be sustained as well. Insofar as they do not depend directly on the producers of the necessary product for their maintenance, they have to be sustained from communal or state resources, or by some other means. The concept of a social surplus product seems very simple and straightforward at first sight, but for social scientists it is actually a quite complex concept. Many of the complexities are revealed when they try to measure the surplus product of a given economic community.


Use

In producing, people must continually maintain their assets, replace assets, and consume things but they also can create more beyond those requirements, assuming sufficient
productivity Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production proces ...
of labour. This social surplus product can be: *destroyed, or wasted *held in reserve, or hoarded *consumed *traded or otherwise transferred to or from others *reinvested Thus, for a simple example, surplus seeds could be left to rot, stored, eaten, traded for other products, or sown on new fields. But if, for example, 90 people own 5 sacks of grain, and 10 people own 100 sacks of grain, it would be physically impossible for those 10 people to use all that grain themselves—most likely they would either trade that grain, or employ other people to farm it. Since 5 sacks of grain are insufficient for 90 people, it is likely that the 90 people would be willing to work for the 10 people who own more grain than they can consume, in order to get some extra grain.


Economic growth

If the surplus product is simply held in reserve, wasted or consumed, no
economic growth Economic growth can be defined as the increase or improvement in the inflation-adjusted market value of the goods and services produced by an economy in a financial year. Statisticians conventionally measure such growth as the percent rate of ...
(or enlarged economic
reproduction Reproduction (or procreation or breeding) is the biological process by which new individual organisms – "offspring" – are produced from their "parent" or parents. Reproduction is a fundamental feature of all known life; each individual or ...
) occurs. Only when the surplus is traded and/or reinvested does it become possible to increase the scale of production. For most of the history of urban civilisation, excess foodstuffs were the main basis of the surplus product, whether appropriated through trade, tribute, taxation, or some other method.


Surplus labour

In Marxism, the existence of a "surplus product" normally assumes the ability to perform
surplus labour Surplus labour (German: ''Mehrarbeit'') is a concept used by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. It means labour performed in excess of the labour necessary to produce the means of livelihood of the worker ("necessary labour"). The "su ...
, i.e. extra labour beyond that which is necessary to maintain the direct producers and their family dependents at the existing standard of life. In ''Capital'', Vol. 1, chapter 9, section 4, Marx actually defines the capitalist surplus product exclusively in terms of the relationship between the ''value of necessary labour and surplus labour''; at any one time, this surplus product is lodged simultaneously in money, commodities (goods), and claims to labour-services, and therefore is not simply a "physical" surplus product (a stockpile of additional goods).


Economy of time

In Marx's view, as he expresses it in the
Grundrisse The ''Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie'' (''Foundations of a Critique of Political Economy'') is an unfinished manuscript by the German philosopher Karl Marx. The series of seven notebooks was rough-drafted by Marx, chiefly for ...
all economising reduces to the economy of human labour-time. The greater human
productivity Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production proces ...
is, the more time there is—potentially—to produce more than is necessary to simply reproduce the population. Alternatively, that extra time can be devoted to leisure, but who gets the leisure and who gets to do the extra work is usually strongly influenced by the prevailing
power Power most often refers to: * Power (physics), meaning "rate of doing work" ** Engine power, the power put out by an engine ** Electric power * Power (social and political), the ability to influence people or events ** Abusive power Power may a ...
and
moral A moral (from Latin ''morālis'') is a message that is conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader, or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim. A ...
relations, not just economics.


Human needs

The corollary of increasing wealth in society, with rising productivity, is that human needs and wants expand. Thus, as the surplus product increases, the necessary product per person also increases, which usually means an increase in the standard of living. In this context, Marx distinguishes between the ''physical'' minimum requirements for the maintenance of human life, and a ''moral-historical'' component of earnings from work. This distinction is however somewhat deceptive, for several reasons. *in more complex societies at least, minimum living costs involve social and infrastructural services, which also incur costs, and which are not optional from the point of view of survival. *Which goods can be considered "luxuries" is not so easy to define. For example, owning a car may be considered a luxury, but if owning a car is indispensable for travelling to work and to shops, it is a necessity. * Michael Hudson points out that in the modern United States, households spent only about a quarter of their income on directly purchasing consumer goods and consumer services. All the rest is spent on payments of interest, rents, taxes, loans, retirement provisions and insurance payments. Some of these financing payments could be considered "moral-historical" but some of them are a physical requirement since without them, people could die (for example, because they cannot get health care, or have no shelter).


Marxian interpretation of the historical origin

For most of human
prehistory Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of ...
, Marxian writers like
Ernest Mandel Ernest Ezra Mandel (; also known by various pseudonyms such as Ernest Germain, Pierre Gousset, Henri Vallin, Walter (5 April 1923 – 20 July 1995), was a Belgian Marxian economist, Trotskyist activist and theorist, and Holocaust survivor. He fo ...
and
V. Gordon Childe Vere Gordon Childe (14 April 189219 October 1957) was an Australian archaeologist who specialised in the study of European prehistory. He spent most of his life in the United Kingdom, working as an academic for the University of Edinburgh and th ...
argued, there existed no economic surplus product of any kind at all, except very small or incidental surpluses. The main reasons were: *that techniques were lacking to store, preserve, and package surpluses securely in large quantities or transport them reliably in large quantities over any significant distance; *the productivity of labour was not sufficient to create much more than could be consumed by a small tribe; *early tribal societies were mostly not oriented to producing more than they could actually use themselves, never mind ''maximising'' their production of output. Thus, for example, the anthropologist
Marshall Sahlins Marshall David Sahlins ( ; December 27, 1930April 5, 2021) was an American cultural anthropologist best known for his ethnographic work in the Pacific and for his contributions to anthropological theory. He was the Charles F. Grey Distinguished ...
estimated that the utilization by tribes of the "carrying capacity" of their
habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...
ranged from 7% among the
Kuikuro The Kuikuro are an indigenous people from the Mato Grosso region of Brazil. Their language, Kuikuro, is a part of the Cariban language family. The Kuikuro have many similarities with other Xingu tribes. They have a population of 592 in 2010, up ...
of the
Amazon basin The Amazon basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries. The Amazon drainage basin covers an area of about , or about 35.5 percent of the South American continent. It is located in the countries of Bolivi ...
to about 75% among the
Lala Lala may refer to: Geography * Lala language (disambiguation) Places * Lala (Naples Metro), an underground metro station in Naples, Italy * Lala, Assam, a town in Assam, India * Lala, Ilam, a village in Ilam Province, Iran * Lala, Lanao del No ...
of
Zambia Zambia (), officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern and East Africa, although it is typically referred to as being in Southern Africa at its most cent ...
. *different groups of people usually did not depend on trade for their survival, and the total amount of trading activity in society stayed proportionally small. The formation of the first permanent surpluses are associated with tribal groups who are more or less settled in one territory, and stored foodstuffs. Once some reserves and surpluses exist, tribes can diversify their production, and members can specialise in producing tools, weapons, containers, and ornaments. Modern archaeological findings show that this development actually began in the more complex hunter-gatherer (foraging) societies. The formation of a reliable surplus product makes possible an initial technical or economic
division of labour The division of labour is the separation of the tasks in any economic system or organisation so that participants may specialise (specialisation). Individuals, organizations, and nations are endowed with, or acquire specialised capabilities, and ...
in which producers exchange their products. In addition, a secure surplus product makes possible
population growth Population growth is the increase in the number of people in a population or dispersed group. Actual global human population growth amounts to around 83 million annually, or 1.1% per year. The global population has grown from 1 billion in 1800 to ...
, i.e. less starvation, infanticide, or abandonment of the elderly or infirm. Finally, it creates the material basis for a social hierarchy, where those at the top of the hierarchy possess prestige goods which commoners do not have access to.


Neolithic revolution

The first real "take off" in terms of surpluses, economic growth, and population growth probably occurred during what
V. Gordon Childe Vere Gordon Childe (14 April 189219 October 1957) was an Australian archaeologist who specialised in the study of European prehistory. He spent most of his life in the United Kingdom, working as an academic for the University of Edinburgh and th ...
called the
neolithic revolution The Neolithic Revolution, or the (First) Agricultural Revolution, was the wide-scale transition of many human cultures during the Neolithic period from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement, making an incre ...
, i.e. the beginning of the widespread use of
agriculture Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...
, from about 12,000 to 10,000 years ago onward, at which time the
world population In demographics, the world population is the total number of humans currently living. It was estimated by the United Nations to have exceeded 8 billion in November 2022. It took over 200,000 years of human prehistory and history for the ...
is estimated to have been somewhere between 1 and 10 million. Archaeologist Geoffrey Dimbleby comments:


Staple finance and wealth finance

As regards extraction of a surplus from the working population (whether as a tax, a tribute, a rent or some other method), modern anthropologists and archaeologists distinguish between "staple finance" and "wealth finance". They do not like the term "surplus product" anymore, because of its Marxist connotations and definitional controversies, but it boils down to the same thing. *In the case of ''staple finance'', the ordinary households supply staples (often foodstuffs, and sometimes standard items of craftwork) as a payment to the political centre or the property owner. This is a simple "payment in kind". The ruling elite owns the land, and receives shares of food produced by commoners in exchange for use rights. It is a simple system, though it creates logistical problems of physical storage and transport, as well as the needs to protect stores—from being raided, and from environmental hazards. *In the case of ''wealth finance'', the commoners do not supply staples, but rather ''valuables'' (wealth objects or prestige goods) or ''currencies'' which are more or less freely convertible in the exchange of goods. Usually currencies are found in state-organized societies; large states invariably use currency systems for taxation and payment. Valuables and currencies are much more portable, easily centralized, and they do not lose value through spoilage. The disadvantage is that they cannot be directly consumed; they have to be exchanged in markets for consumption goods. So, if markets are for some reason disrupted, wealth objects and currencies suddenly lose their value. The system of surplus-extraction might also be a mix of staple finance and wealth finance. The use of the term "finance" for the appropriation of a surplus is just as troublesome as the term "surplus product". Commoners required to pay a levy, tax or tribute to the landowners, on pain of imprisonment or death, obviously are not making an "investment" for which they get a return, but instead are forced to pay the cost of using a piece of land they do not own. The increasing economic division of labour is closely associated with the growth of
trade Trade involves the transfer of goods and services from one person or entity to another, often in exchange for money. Economists refer to a system or network that allows trade as a market. An early form of trade, barter, saw the direct excha ...
and goes together with an increasing a
social Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not. Etymology The word "social" derives from ...
division of labour The division of labour is the separation of the tasks in any economic system or organisation so that participants may specialise (specialisation). Individuals, organizations, and nations are endowed with, or acquire specialised capabilities, and ...
. As
Ashley Montagu Montague Francis Ashley-Montagu (June 28, 1905November 26, 1999) — born Israel Ehrenberg — was a British-American anthropologist who popularized the study of topics such as Race (classification of human beings), race and gender and their rel ...
puts it, "barter, trade, and commerce largely depend on a society's exchangeable surpluses." One group in society utilizes its position in society (e.g. the management of reserves, military leadership, religious authority, etc.) to gain control over the social surplus product; as the people in this elite group assert their social power, everyone else is forced to leave the control over the surplus product to them. Although there is considerable controversy and speculation among archaeologists about how exactly these early rulers came to power (often because of a lack of written records), there is good evidence to suggest that the process does occur, particularly in tribal communities or clans which grow in size beyond 1,500 or so people. From that point on, the surplus product is formed within a ''class'' relationship, in which the exploitation of surplus labour combines with active or passive ''resistance'' to that exploitation.


The state

To maintain
social order The term social order can be used in two senses: In the first sense, it refers to a particular system of social structures and institutions. Examples are the ancient, the feudal, and the capitalist social order. In the second sense, social order ...
and enforce a basic
morality Morality () is the differentiation of intentions, decisions and actions between those that are distinguished as proper (right) and those that are improper (wrong). Morality can be a body of standards or principles derived from a code of cond ...
among a growing population, a centralized
state State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...
apparatus emerges with soldiers and officials, as a distinct group in society which is subsidized from the surplus product, via taxes, tributes, rents and confiscations (including war booty). Because the ruling elite controls the production and distribution of the surplus product, it thereby also controls the state. In turn, this gives rise to a moral or religious
ideology An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones." Formerly applied pri ...
which ''justifies'' superior and inferior positions in the
division of labour The division of labour is the separation of the tasks in any economic system or organisation so that participants may specialise (specialisation). Individuals, organizations, and nations are endowed with, or acquire specialised capabilities, and ...
, and explains why some people are naturally entitled to appropriate more resources than others. Archaeologist
Chris Scarre Christopher John Scarre, FSA is an academic and writer in the fields of archaeology, pre-history and ancient history. He is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Durham and was head of its archaeology department 2010-2013. Early life Sc ...
comments: Archaeologist
Bruce G. Trigger Bruce Graham Trigger (June 18, 1937 – December 1, 2006) was a Canadian archaeologist, anthropologist, and ethnohistorian. He was appointed the James McGill Professor at McGill University in 2001. Life Born in Preston, Ontario (now part of ...
comments: Given the rather low labour-productivity of agrarian societies, a proportionally large amount of (surplus-)labour was needed in the ancient world to produce a relatively small amount of physical surplus. Archaeologist
Brian M. Fagan Brian Murray Fagan (born 1 August 1936) is a prolific British author of popular archaeology books and a professor emeritus of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Biography Fagan was born in England where he received hi ...
comments: According to Gil Stein, the earliest known state organizations emerged in
Mesopotamia Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...
(3700 BC),
Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
(3300 BC), the
Indus The Indus ( ) is a transboundary river of Asia and a trans-Himalayan river of South and Central Asia. The river rises in mountain springs northeast of Mount Kailash in Western Tibet, flows northwest through the disputed region of Kashmir, ...
Valley (2500 BC) and
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
(1400 BC). In various parts of the world, e.g.
Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
and
Australasia Australasia is a region that comprises Australia, New Zealand and some neighbouring islands in the Pacific Ocean. The term is used in a number of different contexts, including geopolitically, physiogeographically, philologically, and ecologica ...
, tribal societies and chiefdoms persisted for much longer before state formation occurred. Many modern states originated out of
colonialism Colonialism is a practice or policy of control by one people or power over other people or areas, often by establishing colonies and generally with the aim of economic dominance. In the process of colonisation, colonisers may impose their relig ...
. For example, the British empire at its largest contained a quarter of the world population. Many of the colonized countries originally did not have a state apparatus, only chiefdoms.


Socio-economic inequality between people

The ''size'' of the surplus product, based on a certain level of productivity, has implications for how it can possibly be shared out. Quite simply, if there is not enough to go around, it cannot be shared equally. If 10 products are produced, and there are 100 people, it is fairly obvious they cannot all consume or use them; most likely, some will get the products, and others must do without. This is according to Marx and Engels the ultimate ''reason'' for socioeconomic inequality, and why, for thousands of years, all attempts at an
egalitarian society Egalitarianism (), or equalitarianism, is a school of thought within political philosophy that builds from the concept of social equality, prioritizing it for all people. Egalitarian doctrines are generally characterized by the idea that all hum ...
failed. Thus they wrote: But it would be erroneous to ''simply'' infer the pattern of socioeconomic inequality from the size of the surplus product. That would be like saying, "People are poor because they are poor". At each stage of the development of human society, there have always been different possibilities for a more equitable distribution of wealth. Which of those possibilities have been realised is not just a question of technique or productivity, but also of the assertion of power, ideology, and morals within the prevailing system of
social relations A social relation or also described as a social interaction or social experience is the fundamental unit of analysis within the social sciences, and describes any voluntary or involuntary interpersonal relationship between two or more individuals ...
governing legitimate cooperation and competition. The wealth of some may ''depend'' on the poverty of others. Some scarcity is truly ''physical'' scarcity; other scarcity is purely ''socially constructed'', i.e. people are excluded from wealth not by physical scarcity but through the way the social system functions (the system of property rights and distributing wealth that it has). In modern times, calculations have been done of the type that an annual levy of 5.2% on the fortunes of the world's 500 or so billionaires would be financially sufficient to guarantee essential needs for the ''whole world population''. In money terms, the world's 1,100 richest people have almost twice the assets of the poorest 2.5 ''billion'' people representing 40% of the world population. In his famous book ''
Capital in the Twenty-First Century ''Capital in the Twenty-First Century'' (french: Le Capital au XXIe siècle) is a book written by French economist Thomas Piketty. It focuses on wealth and income inequality in Europe and the United States since the 18th century. It was initially ...
'',
Thomas Piketty Thomas Piketty (; born 7 May 1971) is a French economist who is Professor of Economics at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Associate Chair at the Paris School of Economics and Centennial Professor of Economics in the Int ...
suggests that if present trends continue, there will be an even more gigantic concentration of wealth in the future. In that case, there is no real ''physical'' scarcity with regard to the goods satisfying basic human needs anymore. It's more a question of political will and social organisation to improve the lot of the poor, or, alternatively, for the poor to organise themselves to improve their lot.


In capitalist society

The category of surplus product is a
transhistorical Transhistoricity is the quality of holding throughout human history, not merely within the frame of reference of a particular form of society at a particular stage of historical development. An entity or concept that has transhistoricity is said to ...
economic category, meaning it applies to any society with a stable division of labour, and a significant labour productivity, ''regardless'' of how exactly that surplus product is produced, what it consists of, and how it is distributed. That depends on the
social relations A social relation or also described as a social interaction or social experience is the fundamental unit of analysis within the social sciences, and describes any voluntary or involuntary interpersonal relationship between two or more individuals ...
and
relations of production Relations of production (german: Produktionsverhältnisse, links=no) is a concept frequently used by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their theory of historical materialism and in ''Das Kapital''. It is first explicitly used in Marx's publish ...
specific to a society, within the framework of which surplus labour is performed. Thus, the exact forms taken by the surplus product are specific to the type of society which creates it.


Historical dynamics

If we plotted economic growth or population growth rates on a graph from, for example, the year zero, we would obtain a tangent curve, with the sharp bend occurring in the 19th century. Within the space of 100 years, a gigantic increase in productivity occurred with new forms of technology and labor-cooperation. This was, according to Marx, the "revolutionary" aspect of the capitalist mode of production, and it meant a very large increase in the surplus product created by human labour. Marx believed it could be the material basis for a transition to
communism Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
in the future, a form of human society in which all could live to their potential, because there was enough to satisfy all human needs for everybody. Economic historian
Paul Bairoch Paul Bairoch (24 July 1930 in Antwerp – 12 February 1999 in Geneva) was a (in 1985 naturalised) Swiss economic history, economic historian of Belgian descent who specialized in urban history and historical demography. He published or co-authored ...
comments: Economic historian
Roberto Sabatino Lopez Roberto Sabatino Lopez (October 8, 1910 – July 6, 1986) was an Italian-born American historian of medieval European economic history. He taught for many years at Yale University as a Sterling Professor of History. Early life and education Ro ...
adds that:


From surplus product to surplus value

Specific to the surplus product within capitalist society, as Marx discusses in
Das Kapital ''Das Kapital'', also known as ''Capital: A Critique of Political Economy'' or sometimes simply ''Capital'' (german: Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, link=no, ; 1867–1883), is a foundational theoretical text in Historical mater ...
, are these main aspects (among others): *The surplus product itself no longer consists simply of "physical" surpluses or tangible
use-value Use value (german: Gebrauchswert) or value in use is a concept in classical political economy and Marxist economics. It refers to the tangible features of a commodity (a tradeable object) which can satisfy some human requirement, want or need, or ...
s, but increasingly of tradeable
commodities In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them. The price of a comm ...
or assets convertible into
money Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context. The primary functions which distinguish money are as ...
. Claims to the social product are realised primarily through purchase with money, and the social product itself can be valued in money prices. The economising and division of the necessary and surplus product between different uses, and between different social classes, is increasingly also expressed in quantities of
money Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context. The primary functions which distinguish money are as ...
units. The emphasis is on maximising wealth as such, based on calculations in terms of abstract price relations. *There is an increasingly strong connection between the surplus product and
surplus value In Marxian economics, surplus value is the difference between the amount raised through a sale of a product and the amount it cost to the owner of that product to manufacture it: i.e. the amount raised through sale of the product minus the cost ...
, so that, as the capitalist mode of production expands and displaces other ways of producing, surplus-value and the surplus-product become to a large extent identical. In a purely capitalist society they would be completely identical (but such a society is unlikely ever to exist, other than in economic models and analogies). *The ability to claim the surplus value created in production through the production of new output, in the form of profit income, becomes very dependent on market sales and buying power. If goods and services fail to sell, because people have no money, the business owner is left with surpluses which are useless to him, and which very likely deteriorate in value. This creates a constant need to maintain and expand market demand, and a growing world market for products and services. *Competition between many different private enterprises exerts a strong compulsion to accumulate (invest) a large part of the surplus product to maintain and improve market position, rather than consume it. Failure to do so would drive business owners out of business. For Marx, this was the main cause behind the gigantic increase in economic growth during the 19th century. *The corollary of the enormous increase in physical productivity (output of goods) is that a larger and larger component of the social product, valued in money prices, consists of the
production Production may refer to: Economics and business * Production (economics) * Production, the act of manufacturing goods * Production, in the outline of industrial organization, the act of making products (goods and services) * Production as a stati ...
and
consumption Consumption may refer to: *Resource consumption *Tuberculosis, an infectious disease, historically * Consumption (ecology), receipt of energy by consuming other organisms * Consumption (economics), the purchasing of newly produced goods for curren ...
of
services Service may refer to: Activities * Administrative service, a required part of the workload of university faculty * Civil service, the body of employees of a government * Community service, volunteer service for the benefit of a community or a p ...
. This leads to a redefinition of wealth: not just a stock of assets, but also the ability to consume services enhancing the quality of life (note: many activities called "services" supply tangible products). *The dialectic of scarcity and surplus gradually begins to invert itself: the problem of optimal allocation of scarce resources begins to give away to the problem of the optimal allocation of ''abundant'' resources. High productivity leads to excess capacity: more resources can be produced than can be consumed, mainly because buying power is lacking among the masses. This can lead to dumping practices. At the same time, the ownership of wealth becomes strongly concentrated, shutting out huge masses of people from owning any significant assets. *The bourgeoisie as a ''ruling class'' is historically rather unusual, because it emerges and exists separately from the state, rather than ''being'' the state (like many earlier ruling classes). The different and competing fractions of the bourgeoisie mandate others (usually professional middle-class people, such as lawyers and economists) to govern for them as a "political class" or polity; the bourgeoisie itself is mainly preoccupied with doing business. Ordinarily, the business class gets rich from business, and not from imposing taxes and tributes themselves (that would often be regarded as a criminal protection racket, not valid trade). The bourgeois state typically lacks ownership of an independent economic base sufficient to self-finance its own activities; it perpetually depends on levying taxes with consent of the population, and on loans from the bourgeoisie. With the bourgeois state, taxpayers have the possibility of electing their own representatives to state office, which means that they can in principle influence the taxation system and the justice system generally. That possibility has rarely existed in non-capitalist states; there, any criticism of the state means that the critic is fined, imprisoned or killed. Marx believed that, by splitting purely economic-commercial considerations off from legal-moral, political or religious considerations, capitalist society for the first time in history made it possible to express the ''economic'' functions applying to all types of society in their purest forms. In pre-capitalist society, "the economy" did not exist as a separate
abstraction Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process wherein general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ("real" or "concrete") signifiers, first principles, or other methods. "An abstr ...
or
reality Reality is the sum or aggregate of all that is real or existent within a system, as opposed to that which is only imaginary. The term is also used to refer to the ontological status of things, indicating their existence. In physical terms, r ...
, any more than long-term mass
unemployment Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for Work (human activity), w ...
existed (other than in exceptional cases, such as wars or natural disasters). It is only when the "cash nexus" mediates most resource allocation, that "the economy" becomes viewed as a separate domain (the domain of commercial activity), quantifiable by means of money-prices.


Socialist economy

A
socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...
society, Marxian economists argue, also has a surplus product from an economic point of view, insofar as more is produced than is consumed. Nevertheless, the creation and distribution of the surplus product would begin to operate under different rules. In particular, how the new wealth is allocated would be decided much more according to popular-democratic and egalitarian principles, using a variety of property forms and allocative methods that have proved practically to correspond best to meeting the human needs of all. 20th century experience with economic management shows that there is a broad scala of possibilities here; if some options are chosen, and others not, this has more to do with who holds political power than anything else.


Measurement

The magnitude of the surplus product can be estimated in stocks of physical
use-value Use value (german: Gebrauchswert) or value in use is a concept in classical political economy and Marxist economics. It refers to the tangible features of a commodity (a tradeable object) which can satisfy some human requirement, want or need, or ...
s, in money prices, or in labour hours. If it is known: *what and how much was produced in a year, *what the
population Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be a city or town, region, country, continent, or the world. Governments typically quantify the size of the resident population within their jurisdiction using a ...
structure is, *what
incomes Income is the consumption and saving opportunity gained by an entity within a specified timeframe, which is generally expressed in monetary terms. Income is difficult to define conceptually and the definition may be different across fields. For ...
or
earnings Earnings are the net benefits of a corporation's operation. Earnings is also the amount on which corporate tax is due. For an analysis of specific aspects of corporate operations several more specific terms are used as EBIT (earnings before interes ...
were received, *how many hours were worked in different
occupations Occupation commonly refers to: *Occupation (human activity), or job, one's role in society, often a regular activity performed for payment *Occupation (protest), political demonstration by holding public or symbolic spaces *Military occupation, th ...
, *what the normal actual
consumption Consumption may refer to: *Resource consumption *Tuberculosis, an infectious disease, historically * Consumption (ecology), receipt of energy by consuming other organisms * Consumption (economics), the purchasing of newly produced goods for curren ...
pattern is, *what the producers pay in terms of
taxes A tax is a compulsory financial charge or some other type of levy imposed on a taxpayer (an individual or legal entity) by a governmental organization in order to fund government spending and various public expenditures (regional, local, or ...
or
tribute A tribute (; from Latin ''tributum'', "contribution") is wealth, often in kind, that a party gives to another as a sign of submission, allegiance or respect. Various ancient states exacted tribute from the rulers of land which the state conqu ...
then measures of the necessary product and surplus product can in principle be estimated. However it is never possible to obtain mathematically exact or fully objective distinctions between necessary and surplus product, because social needs and investment requirements are always subject to moral debate and political contests between social classes. At best, some statistical ''indicators'' can be developed. In
Das Kapital ''Das Kapital'', also known as ''Capital: A Critique of Political Economy'' or sometimes simply ''Capital'' (german: Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, link=no, ; 1867–1883), is a foundational theoretical text in Historical mater ...
, Marx himself was less concerned with measurement issues than with the
social relations A social relation or also described as a social interaction or social experience is the fundamental unit of analysis within the social sciences, and describes any voluntary or involuntary interpersonal relationship between two or more individuals ...
involved in the production and distribution of the surplus product. Essentially the techniques for estimating the size of the surplus product in a capitalist economy are similar to those for measuring
surplus-value In Marxian economics, surplus value is the difference between the amount raised through a sale of a product and the amount it cost to the owner of that product to manufacture it: i.e. the amount raised through sale of the product minus the cost ...
. However, some components of the surplus product may not be marketed products or services. The existence of markets always presupposes a lot of non-market labour as well. A physical surplus product is not the same as surplus ''value'', and the magnitudes of surplus product, surplus labour and surplus value may diverge.


Social valuation of labour

Although it is nowadays possible to measure the number of hours worked in a country with reasonable accuracy, there have been few attempts by social statisticians to estimate the surplus product in terms of labour hours. Very interesting information has become available from
time use survey A time-use survey is a statistical survey which aims to report data on how, on average, people spend their time. Objectives The objective of the Time-Use survey is to identify, classify and quantify the main types of activity that people engag ...
s however on how people in society on average spend their time. From this data, it is evident just how much modern market economies in reality depend on the performance of ''unpaid'' (i.e. volunteered) labour. That is, the forms of labour that are the subject of commercial exploitation are quantitatively only a sub-set of the ''total'' labour which is done in a society, and depend on non-market labour being performed. This in turn creates a specific and characteristic way in which different labour activities are ''valued'' and prioritised. Some forms of labour can command a high price, others have no price at all, or are priceless. Nevertheless, all labor in capitalist society is influenced by value relations, irrespective of whether a price happens to be imputed to it or not. The ''commercial'' valuation of labor may not necessarily say anything though about the ''social'' or ''human'' valuation of labor.


Decadence

Marxian theory suggests decadence involves a clear waste of a large part of the surplus product from any balanced or nuanced human point of view, and it typically goes together with a growing indifference to the wellbeing and fate of other human beings; to survive, people are forced to shut out from their consciousness those horrors which are seemingly beyond their ability to do anything about anymore. Marx & Engels suggest in ''The German Ideology'' that in this case the
productive forces Productive forces, productive powers, or forces of production (German: ''Produktivkräfte'') is a central idea in Marxism and historical materialism. In Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' own critique of political economy, it refers to the combinat ...
are transformed into destructive forces. According to Marxian theory, decaying or
decadent The word decadence, which at first meant simply "decline" in an abstract sense, is now most often used to refer to a perceived decay in standards, morals, dignity, religious faith, honor, discipline, or skill at governing among the members of ...
societies are defined mainly by the fact that: *The gap between what is produced and what could potentially (or technically) be produced (sometimes called the "
GDP Gross domestic product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced and sold (not resold) in a specific time period by countries. Due to its complex and subjective nature this measure is often ...
gap" or "output gap") grows sharply. *A very large proportion of the surplus product is squandered, or devoted to luxury consumption, speculative activity, or military expenditures. *All sorts of activities and products appear which are really useless or even harmful from the point of view of improving human life, to the detriment of activities which are more healthy for human life as a whole. *Enormous wealth and gruesome poverty and squalor exist side by side, suggesting that society has lost its sense of moral and economic priorities. The ruling elite no longer cares for the welfare of the population it rules, and may be divided within itself. *A consensual morality and sense of trust has broken down, criminality increases, and the ruling elite has lost its legitimacy in the eyes of the people, so that it can maintain power only by the crudest of methods (violence, propaganda, and intimidation whereby people are cowed into submission). *A regression occurs to the ideas, values, and practices of an earlier period of human history, which may involve the treatment of other people as less than human. *The society "fouls its own nest" in the sense of undermining the very conditions of its own
reproduction Reproduction (or procreation or breeding) is the biological process by which new individual organisms – "offspring" – are produced from their "parent" or parents. Reproduction is a fundamental feature of all known life; each individual or ...
. Marxian scholars such as
Ernest Mandel Ernest Ezra Mandel (; also known by various pseudonyms such as Ernest Germain, Pierre Gousset, Henri Vallin, Walter (5 April 1923 – 20 July 1995), was a Belgian Marxian economist, Trotskyist activist and theorist, and Holocaust survivor. He fo ...
argued this condition typically involves a stalemate in the balance of power between
social classes A social class is a grouping of people into a set of hierarchical social categories, the most common being the upper, middle and lower classes. Membership in a social class can for example be dependent on education, wealth, occupation, inco ...
, none of which is really able to assert its dominance, and thus able to implement a constructive programme of action that would ensure real social progress and benefit the whole population. According to
Herbert Marcuse Herbert Marcuse (; ; July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a German-American philosopher, social critic, and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied at the Humboldt University ...
, a society is "sick" if its basic institutions and relationships are such that they make it impossible to use resources for the optimal development of human existence. However, there is a lot of controversy among historians and politicians about the existence and nature of decadence, because ''value judgements'' and
biases Bias is a disproportionate weight ''in favor of'' or ''against'' an idea or thing, usually in a way that is closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair. Biases can be innate or learned. People may develop biases for or against an individual, a group, ...
about the meaning of human progress are usually involved. In different periods of history, people have defined
decadence The word decadence, which at first meant simply "decline" in an abstract sense, is now most often used to refer to a perceived decay in standards, morals, dignity, religious faith, honor, discipline, or skill at governing among the members of ...
in very different ways. For example,
hedonism Hedonism refers to a family of theories, all of which have in common that pleasure plays a central role in them. ''Psychological'' or ''motivational hedonism'' claims that human behavior is determined by desires to increase pleasure and to decr ...
is not necessarily decadent; it is decadent only within a certain context. Thus, accusations of decadence may be made which only reflect a certain ''moral feeling'' of social classes, not a true
objective Objective may refer to: * Objective (optics), an element in a camera or microscope * ''The Objective'', a 2008 science fiction horror film * Objective pronoun, a personal pronoun that is used as a grammatical object * Objective Productions, a Brit ...
reality.


Criticisms


Three basic criticisms

*At the simplest level, it is argued that in trade, one man's gain is another man's loss; so if we subtracted total losses from total gains, the result would be zero. So how, then, can there be any surplus, other than goods which fail to be traded? It is not difficult to show that the gains and losses may not balance out, leading to economic crises, but many arguments have been given to show that there are only "coincidental" or "temporary" surpluses of some kind. Yet, peculiarly, even on a crude estimate of
value added In business, total value added is calculated by tabulating the unit value added (measured by summing unit profit sale price and production cost">Price.html" ;"title="he difference between Price">sale price and production cost], unit depreciatio ...
, the
gross output In economics, gross output (GO) is the measure of total economic activity in the production of new goods and services in an accounting period. It is a much broader measure of the economy than gross domestic product (GDP), which is limited mainly t ...
value of production equals more than the value of labour and materials costs. If a surplus does not exist, it becomes difficult to explain how economic growth (the growth of output) can occur, and why there was more to distribute than there had been (see
surplus-value In Marxian economics, surplus value is the difference between the amount raised through a sale of a product and the amount it cost to the owner of that product to manufacture it: i.e. the amount raised through sale of the product minus the cost ...
). Somehow, more comes out of production than went into it. The answer is that much of surplus comes out of human labor, which is a 'renewable resource'; the first form of surplus in many societies, excess food, comes from innovations in agriculture that allow farmers to produce more than they will consume. *The denial that a surplus product exists, therefore tends to focus more on the exact definition of it, i.e. "surplus" in relation to what exactly? For example, is undistributed profit really a "surplus", or is it a cost of production? Some ecologists also argue that we should produce no more than we really need, in an ecologically responsible way. This raises the question of how we can ''objectively'' know whether something is really "surplus" or not—at best we can say that something is surplus ''relative'' to a given set of verifiable human needs, conditions, uses or requirements. In this sense, Siegfried Haas argues for example that surplus is the quantity of natural and produced goods that remains in a society after a year (or other defined time period) when basic biological needs are met and social or religious obligations are fulfilled. Anthropologist Estellie Smith defines the surplus as "the retained resources of production minus consumption" or as ""material and non-material resources in excess of what is culturally defined as the current optimum supply". *Another type of criticism is that the very notion of surplus product is purely relative and circumstantial, or even subjective, because any person can regard something as a 'surplus' if he has command or effective control over it, and is in a position where he can use it in whatever manner he thinks appropriate—even although ''others'' would not regard it as "surplus" at all. In this sense, it might appear as though the concept of "surplus product" is primarily a ''moral concept'' referring to a propensity of human beings "to reap where they did not sow", whether criminally/immorally, with a legally tolerated justification, or by asserting brute power.


Four advanced criticisms

*A different sort of problem is, that the broad division of the annual new social product in net terms, into consumer items and investment items, ''does not directly map onto the value of costs and revenues generated in producing it''. From the social point of view, accounting for what is a "cost" and what represents an "income" is always somewhat controversial, since the costs incurred by some correspond to the income receipts of others. The exact procedures adopted for "grossing and netting" flows of income, expenditures and products always reflect a theory or interpretation of the social character of the economy. Thus, the categories used may not accurately reflect the real relationships involved. *The Cambridge economist
Piero Sraffa Piero Sraffa (5 August 1898 – 3 September 1983) was an influential Italian economist who served as lecturer of economics at the University of Cambridge. His book ''Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities'' is taken as founding the neo- ...
returned to the classical economic meaning of "surplus", but his concept differs from Marx's in at least three important ways: (1) The ''substance'' of Sraffa's surplus is not a claim on the surplus labour of others but a ''physical'' surplus, i.e. the value of physical output ''less'' the value of physical inputs used up to produce it, in abstraction from price changes (roughly, like a "standard valuation" in national accounts); (2) The ''magnitude'' of the surplus in Sraffa's model is exclusively ''technologically'' determined by the physical replacement requirements of the economy—and not by power or class relationships—so that the more efficient the economy becomes, the more surplus is created; (3) The form of Sraffa's surplus includes ''both'' the gross profit component ''and'' the value of goods and services consumed by workers, so that the distribution of the physical surplus between capitalists and workers occurs after a fixed quantity of surplus has already been produced. In a joint work,
Paul Baran Paul Baran (born Pesach Baran ; April 29, 1926 – March 26, 2011) was a Polish-American engineer who was a pioneer in the development of computer networks. He was one of the two independent inventors of packet switching, which is today the dom ...
and
Paul Sweezy Paul Marlor Sweezy (April 10, 1910 – February 27, 2004) was a Marxist economist, political activist, publisher, and founding editor of the long-running magazine ''Monthly Review''. He is best remembered for his contributions to economic theory ...
follow Sraffa and define the economic surplus as "the difference between what a society produces and the costs of producing it". Marxists have often replied that this view of the matter just stays at the level of double-entry bookkeeping (where the uses of funds balance against the sources of funds), among other things because it makes the surplus simply equal to net
value-added In business, total value added is calculated by tabulating the unit value added (measured by summing unit profit sale price and production cost">Price.html" ;"title="he difference between Price">sale price and production cost], unit depreciatio ...
in double-entry accounting terms. The "accounting point of view" itself is never questioned because, in an effort to make concepts "scientifically more exact", accounting methods are inevitably used. *The existence of a surplus product usually involves ''power relations'' among people, who assert what is surplus and what is not, in a perpetual contest over how the social product of their labor ought to be divided up and distributed. In this context, Randall H. McGuire, a Marxist archaeologist, emphasizes that: :Anthropologist
Robert L. Carneiro Robert Leonard Carneiro (June 4, 1927 – June 24, 2020) was an American anthropologist and curator of the American Museum of Natural History. His Circumscription Theory explains how early political states may have formed as a result of intera ...
also comments: :Several authors have therefore argued that "it is not the surplus which generates stratification, but stratification which generates surplus by activating an unrealized potential for surplus in the productive system". *It is argued by several anthropologists, archaeologists and historians that we should not automatically assume that the producer of a surplus "does not need" (has no use for) what he exchanges or hands over as a tribute to a lord, employer or state functionary. Goods may be extracted from the direct producers which are not at all "surplus" to their own requirements, but which are appropriated by the rulers "at the expense" of the lifestyle of the direct producers in a "zero-sum game". It all depends on the intensity of exploitation. So, for example, a law might stipulate that peasants must pay a fixed quantity of their products as a tax, regardless of whether the harvest has been good or bad. If the harvest was bad, the peasants might be left with insufficient products for their own needs.


Karl Marx versus Adam Smith

Adam Smith found the origin of the division of labour in the "natural" human propensity to truck, barter and exchange. He stated that "the certainty of being able to exchange all that surplus part of the produce of his own labour, which is over and above his own consumption, for such parts of the produce of other men's labour as he may have occasion for, encourages every man to apply himself to a particular occupation, and to cultivate and bring to perfection whatever talent or genius he may possess for that particular species of business". In Marx's view, commercial trade powerfully stimulated the growth of a surplus product, not because the surplus product is itself ''generated'' by trade, or because trade itself ''creates wealth'' (wealth has to be ''produced'' before it can be distributed or transferred through trade), but rather because the final purpose of such trade is
capital accumulation Capital accumulation is the dynamic that motivates the pursuit of profit, involving the investment of money or any financial asset with the goal of increasing the initial monetary value of said asset as a financial return whether in the form o ...
, i.e. because the aim of commercial trade is to grow richer out of it, to accumulate wealth. If traders did not get an income out of trading (because their sales revenue exceeds their costs) they would not engage in it. Income growth can, ultimately, only occur if the total stock of assets available for distribution itself grows, as a result of more being produced than existed before. The more surplus there is, the more there is that can be appropriated and traded in order to make money out of it. If people just consume what they produce themselves, other people cannot get rich from that. Thus, because the accumulation of capital normally stimulates the growth of the
productive forces Productive forces, productive powers, or forces of production (German: ''Produktivkräfte'') is a central idea in Marxism and historical materialism. In Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' own critique of political economy, it refers to the combinat ...
, this has the effect that the size of the surplus product which can be traded will normally grow also. The more the trading network then expands, the more complex and specialized the
division of labour The division of labour is the separation of the tasks in any economic system or organisation so that participants may specialise (specialisation). Individuals, organizations, and nations are endowed with, or acquire specialised capabilities, and ...
will become, and the more products people will produce ''which are surplus to their own requirements''. Gradually, the old system of
subsistence production A subsistence economy is an economy directed to basic subsistence (the provision of food, clothing, shelter) rather than to the market. Henceforth, "subsistence" is understood as supporting oneself at a minimum level. Often, the subsistence econo ...
is completely destroyed and replaced with commercial production, which means that people must then necessarily trade in order to meet their needs ("market civilization"). Their labour becomes ''social labour'', i.e. co-operative labour which produces products for others—products which they don't consume themselves. It is, of course, also possible to amass wealth simply by ''taking it off other people'' in some way, but once this appropriation has occurred, the source of additional wealth vanishes, and the original owners are no longer so motivated to produce surpluses, simply because they know their products will be taken off them (they no longer reap the rewards of their own production, in which case the only way to extract more wealth from them is by ''forcing'' them to produce more). It's like killing the goose that lays the golden egg. In ''The Wealth of Nations''
Adam Smith Adam Smith (baptized 1723 – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish economist and philosopher who was a pioneer in the thinking of political economy and key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. Seen by some as "The Father of Economics"——— ...
had already recognized the central importance of the division of labour for economic growth, on the ground that it increased
productivity Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production proces ...
("industriousness" or "efficiency"), but, Marx suggests, Smith failed to theorize clearly ''why'' the division of labour stimulated economic growth. *From the fact that an efficient division of labour existed between producers, no particular method of ''distributing'' different products among producers necessarily followed. In principle, given a division of labour, products could be distributed in all kinds of ways—market trade being only one way—and how it was done just depended on ''how claims to property happened to be organised and enforced'' using the available technologies. Economic growth wasn't a logically necessary effect of the division of labour, because it all depended on what was done with the new wealth being shared out by the producers, and how it was shared out. All kinds of distributive norms could be applied, with different effects on wealth creation. *Smith confused the ''technical'' division of work tasks between co-operatively organized producers, to make production more efficient, with the system of property rights defining the ''social'' division of labour between different
social classes A social class is a grouping of people into a set of hierarchical social categories, the most common being the upper, middle and lower classes. Membership in a social class can for example be dependent on education, wealth, occupation, inco ...
, where one class could claim the surplus product from the surplus labour of another class because it owned or controlled the
means of production The means of production is a term which describes land, labor and capital that can be used to produce products (such as goods or services); however, the term can also refer to anything that is used to produce products. It can also be used as an ...
. In other words, the essential point was that the social division of labour powerfully promoted the production of ''surpluses'' which could be alienated from the producers and appropriated, and those who had control over this division of labour in fact promoted specific ways of organizing production and trade precisely for this purpose—and not necessarily at all to make production "more efficient".Michael Perelman "The Curious Case of Adam Smith's Pin Factory". Paper presented at the 41st Annual Meetings of the History of Economics Society. University of Quebec, Montreal June 20–22, 201

Andre Gorz (ed.). ''The division of labour''. Harvester, 1976. This reader contains the important article by
Stephen Marglin Stephen Alan Marglin is an American economist. He is the Walter S. Barker Professor of Economics at Harvard University, a fellow of the Econometric Society, and a founding member of the World Economics Association. Background Marglin grew up in ...

"What do bosses do?"
* Smith's theoretical omissions paved the way for the illusion that ''market trade itself generates economic growth'', the effect of that being that the real relationship between the production and distribution of wealth became a mystery. According to Marx, this effect in economic theory was not accidental; it served an ideological justifying purpose, namely to reinforce the idea that ''only market expansion can be beneficial for economic growth''. In fact, the argument becomes rather tautological, i.e. market expansion is thought to be "what you mean" by economic growth. The logical corollary of such an idea was, that all production should ideally be organized as ''market-oriented'' production, so that all are motivated to produce more for the purpose of gaining wealth. The real aim behind the justification however was the ''private accumulation of capital'' by the owners of property, which ''depended'' on the social production of a surplus product by others who lacked sufficient assets to live on. In other words, the justification reflected that market expansion was normally ''the main legally sanctioned means'' in capitalist society ''by which more wealth produced by others could be appropriated by the owners of capital'', and that for this purpose any other form of producing and distributing products should be rejected.
Economic development In the economics study of the public sector, economic and social development is the process by which the economic well-being and quality of life of a nation, region, local community, or an individual are improved according to targeted goals and o ...
then became a question of how private property rights could be established everywhere, so that markets could expand (see also
primitive accumulation In Marxian economics and preceding theories,Perelman, p. 25 (ch. 2) the problem of primitive accumulation (also called previous accumulation, original accumulation) of capital concerns the origin of capital, and therefore of how class distinct ...
). This view of the matter, according to Marx, explained precisely why the concept of the social surplus product had vanished from official economic theory in the mid-19th century—after all, this concept raised the difficult political and juridical question of what ''entitles'' some to appropriate the labour and products of others. Markets were henceforth justified with the simple idea that even if some might gain more than others from market trade, all stood to gain from it; and if they didn't gain something, they would not trade. Marx's reply to that was essentially that most people were in a position where they necessarily had to trade, because if they didn't, they would perish—without having much control over the terms of trade. In that respect, the owners of capital were in a vastly stronger position than workers who owned only some personal belongings (and perhaps some small savings).


See also

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Economic surplus In mainstream economics, economic surplus, also known as total welfare or total social welfare or Marshallian surplus (after Alfred Marshall), is either of two related quantities: * Consumer surplus, or consumers' surplus, is the monetary gain ...
*
Labour theory of value The labor theory of value (LTV) is a theory of value that argues that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of " socially necessary labor" required to produce it. The LTV is usually associated with Marxian e ...
*
Law of value The law of the value of commodities (German: ''Wertgesetz der Waren''), known simply as the law of value, is a central concept in Karl Marx's critique of political economy first expounded in his polemic ''The Poverty of Philosophy'' (1847) against ...
*
Operating surplus Operating surplus is an accounting concept used in national accounts statistics (such as United Nations System of National Accounts (UNSNA)) and in corporate and government accounts. It is the balancing item of the Generation of Income Account in ...
*
Productive and unproductive labour Productive and unproductive labour are concepts that were used in classical political economy mainly in the 18th and 19th centuries, which survive today to some extent in modern management discussions, economic sociology and Marxist or Marxian ec ...
*
Rate of exploitation In Marxian economics, the rate of exploitation is the ratio of the total amount of unpaid labor done (surplus-value) to the total amount of wages paid (the value of labour power). The rate of exploitation is often also called the rate of surplus ...
*
Value product The ''value product'' (VP) is an economic concept formulated by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy during the 1860s, and used in Marxian social accounting theory for capitalist economies. Its annual monetary value is approximately equa ...


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Surplus Product Marxian economics Marxist terminology Anthropology