Surplus-labour
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Surplus labour (German: ''Mehrarbeit'') is a concept used 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 Political economy is the study of how economic systems (e.g. markets and national economies) and political systems (e.g. law, institutions, government) are linked. Widely studied phenomena within the discipline are systems such as labour ...
. It means labour performed in excess of the labour necessary to produce the means of livelihood of the worker ("necessary labour"). The "surplus" in this context means the ''additional'' labour a worker has to do in their job, beyond earning their keep. According to Marxian economics, surplus labour is usually uncompensated (unpaid) labour.


Origin

Marx explains the origin of surplus labour in the following terms: The historical emergence of surplus labour is, according to Marx, also 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 ...
(the economic exchange of goods and services) and with the emergence of a society divided into social classes. As soon as a permanent surplus product can be produced, the moral-political question arises as to how it should be distributed, and for whose benefit surplus-labour should be performed. The strong defeat the weak, and it becomes possible for a social elite to gain control over the surplus-labour and surplus product of the working population; they can live off the labour of others. Labour which is sufficiently productive so that it can perform surplus labour is, in a cash economy, the material foundation for the appropriation of
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 ...
from that labour. How exactly this appropriation will occur, is determined by the prevailing relations of production and the balance of
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 ...
between social classes. According to Marx, capital had its origin in the commercial activity of ''buying in order to sell'' and ''rents'' of various types, with the aim of gaining an income (a surplus value) from this trade. But, initially, this does not involve any capitalist mode of production; rather, the merchant traders and rentiers are ''intermediaries'' between non-capitalist producers. During a lengthy historical process, the old ways of extracting surplus labour are gradually replaced by ''commercial'' forms of exploitation.


Historical materialism

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 materialist phi ...
Vol. 3, Marx highlights the central role played by surplus labour: This statement is a foundation of Marx's
historical materialism Historical materialism is the term used to describe Karl Marx's theory of history. Marx locates historical change in the rise of class societies and the way humans labor together to make their livelihoods. For Marx and his lifetime collaborat ...
insofar as it specifies what the class conflicts in civil society are ultimately about: an economy of time, which compels some to do work of which part or all of the benefits go to someone else, while others can have leisure-time which in reality depends on the work efforts of those forced to work. In modern society, having work or leisure may often seem a
choice A choice is the range of different things from which a being can choose. The arrival at a choice may incorporate motivators and models. For example, a traveler might choose a route for a journey based on the preference of arriving at a give ...
, but for most of humanity, work is an absolute necessity, and consequently most people are concerned with the real benefits they get from that work. They may accept a certain rate of exploitation of their labour as an inescapable condition for their existence, if they depend on a wage or salary, but beyond that, they will increasingly resist it. Consequently, a
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 co ...
or legal norm develops in civil society which imposes ''limits'' for surplus-labour, in one form or another. Forced labour,
slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
, gross mistreatment of workers etc. are no longer generally acceptable, although they continue to occur; working conditions and pay levels can usually be contested in courts of law.


Unequal exchange

Marx acknowledged that surplus labour may not just be appropriated directly in ''production'' by the owners of the enterprise, but also in ''trade''. This phenomenon is nowadays called
unequal exchange Unequal exchange is used primarily in Marxist economics, but also in ecological economics (more specifically also as ecologically unequal exchange), to denote forms of exploitation hidden in or underwriting trade. Originating, in the wake of ...
. Thus, he commented that: In this case, more work effectively exchanges for less work, and a greater value exchanges for a lesser value, because some possess a stronger market position, and others a weaker one. For the most part, Marx assumed equal exchange 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 materialist phi ...
, i.e. that supply and demand would balance; his argument was that even if, ideally speaking, no unequal exchange occurred in trade, and market equality existed, exploitation could nevertheless occur within capitalist relations of production, since the value of the ''product'' produced by
labour power Labour power (in german: Arbeitskraft; in french: force de travail) is a key concept used by Karl Marx in his critique of capitalist political economy. Marx distinguished between the capacity to do work, labour power, from the physical act of w ...
exceeded the value of labour power itself. Marx never completed his analysis of the world market however. In the real world, Marxian economists like
Samir Amin Samir Amin ( ar, سمير أمين) (3 September 1931 – 12 August 2018) was an Egyptian-French Marxian economist, political scientist and world-systems analyst. He is noted for his introduction of the term Eurocentrism in 1988 and considered ...
argue, unequal exchange occurs all the time, implying ''transfers'' of value from one place to another, through the trading process. Thus, the more trade becomes "globalised", the greater the ''intermediation'' between producers and consumers; consequently, the intermediaries appropriate a growing fraction of the final value of the products, while the direct producers obtain only a small fraction of that final value. The most important unequal exchange in the world economy nowadays concerns the exchange between agricultural goods and industrial goods, i.e. the
terms of trade The terms of trade (TOT) is the relative price of exports in terms of imports and is defined as the ratio of export prices to import prices. It can be interpreted as the amount of import goods an economy can purchase per unit of export goods. An i ...
favour industrial goods against agricultural goods. Often, as
Raul Prebisch Raul, Raúl and Raül are the Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Galician, Asturian, Basque, Aragonese, and Catalan forms of the Anglo-Germanic given name Ralph or Rudolph. They are cognates of the French Raoul. Raul, Raúl or Raül may re ...
already noted, this has meant that more and more agricultural output must be produced and sold, to buy a given amount of industrial goods. This issue has become the subject of heated controversy at recent
WTO The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization that regulates and facilitates international trade. With effective cooperation in the United Nations System, governments use the organization to establish, revise, and e ...
meetings. The practice of unequal or unfair exchange does not presuppose the capitalist mode of production, nor even the existence 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 ...
. It only presupposes that goods and services of unequal value are traded, something which has been possible throughout the whole history of human trading practices.


Criticism of Marx's concept of surplus labour

According to economist Fred Moseley, "neoclassical economic theory was developed, in part, to attack the very notion of surplus labour or surplus value and to argue that workers receive all of the value embodied in their creative efforts." Some basic modern criticisms of Marx's theory can be found in the works by Pearson, Dalton, Boss, Hodgson and Harris (see references). The
analytical Marxist Analytical Marxism is an approach to Marxist theory that was prominent amongst English-speaking philosophers and social scientists during the 1980s. Described by G. A. Cohen as "non-bullshit Marxism", members of this school seek to apply the ...
John Roemer John E. Roemer (; born February 1, 1945 in Washington, D.C., to Ruth Roemer and Milton Roemer, namesake of Roemer's law) is an American economist and political scientist. He is the Elizabeth S. and A. Varick Stout Professor of Political Scien ...
challenges what he calls the "fundamental Marxian theorem" (after
Michio Morishima was a Japanese heterodox economist and public intellectual who was the Sir John Hicks Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics from 1970–88. He was also professor at Osaka University and member of the British Academy. In 1976 he ...
) that the existence of surplus labour is the necessary and sufficient condition for profits. He proves that this theorem is logically false. However, Marx himself never argued that surplus labour was a ''sufficient'' condition for profits, only an ultimate ''necessary'' condition (Morishima aimed to prove that, starting from the existence of profit expressed in price terms, we can deduce the existence of surplus value as a logical consequence). Five reasons were that: *profit in a capitalist operation was "ultimately" just a financial claim to products and labour services made by those who did not themselves produce those products and services, in virtue of their ownership of private property (capital assets). *profits could be made purely in trading processes, which themselves could be far removed in space and time from the co-operative labour which those profits ultimately presupposed. *surplus labour could be performed, without this leading to any profits at all, because e.g. the products of that labour failed to be sold. *profits could be made without ''any'' labour being involved, such as when a piece of unimproved land is sold for a profit. *profits could be made by a self-employed operator who did not perform surplus labour for somebody else, nor necessarily appropriated surplus labour from anywhere else. All that Marx really argued was that surplus labour was a ''necessary feature'' of the capitalist mode of production as a general social condition. If that surplus labour did not exist, other people could not ''appropriate'' that surplus labour or its products simply through their ownership of
property Property is a system of rights that gives people legal control of valuable things, and also refers to the valuable things themselves. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property may have the right to consume, alter, share, r ...
. Also, the amount of unpaid, voluntary and housework labour performed outside the world of business and industry, as revealed by
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, suggests to some feminists (e.g.
Marilyn Waring Dame Marilyn Joy Waring (born 7 October 1952) is a New Zealand public policy scholar, international development consultant, former politician, environmentalist, feminist and a principal founder of feminist economics. In 1975, aged 23, she beca ...
and
Maria Mies Maria Mies (born 1931, Steffeln, Rhine Province, Prussia, Germany) is a German professor of sociology and author of several feminist books, including ''Indian Women and Patriarchy'' (1980), ''Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale'' (1986) ...
) that Marxists may have overrated the importance of industrial surplus labour performed by salaried employees, because the very ability to perform that surplus-labour, i.e. the continual reproduction of
labour power Labour power (in german: Arbeitskraft; in french: force de travail) is a key concept used by Karl Marx in his critique of capitalist political economy. Marx distinguished between the capacity to do work, labour power, from the physical act of w ...
depends on all kinds of supports involving unremunerated work (for a theoretical discussion, see the reader by Bonnie Fox). In other words, work performed in households—often by those who do not sell their labour power to capitalist enterprises at all—contributes to the sustenance of capitalist workers who may perform little household labour. Possibly the controversy about the concept is distorted by the enormous differences with regard to the world of work: *in Europe, the United States, Japan and Australasia, *the newly industrialising countries, and *the poor countries. Countries differ greatly with respect to the way they organise and share out work, labour participation rates, and paid hours worked per year, as can be easily verified from ILO data (see also Rubery & Grimshaw's text). The general trend in the world division of labour is for hi-tech, financial and marketing services to be located in the richer countries, which hold most
intellectual property rights Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...
and actual physical production to be located in low-wage countries. Effectively, Marxian economists argue, this means that the labour of workers in wealthy countries is valued higher than the labour of workers in poorer countries. However, they predict that in the long run of history, the operation of the law of value will tend to equalize the conditions of production and sales in different parts of the world.


See also

* Abstract labour and concrete labour * Capital accumulation * Capitalist mode of production *
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 power Labour power (in german: Arbeitskraft; in french: force de travail) is a key concept used by Karl Marx in his critique of capitalist political economy. Marx distinguished between the capacity to do work, labour power, from the physical act of w ...
*
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 ...
*
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 eco ...
*
Reserve army of labour Reserve army of labour is a concept in Karl Marx's critique of political economy Political economy is the study of how economic systems (e.g. markets and national economies) and political systems (e.g. law, institutions, government) are l ...
*
Spatial mismatch Spatial mismatch is the mismatch between where low-income households reside and suitable job opportunities. In its original formulation (see below) and in subsequent research, it has mostly been understood as a phenomenon affecting African-American ...
* Surplus product * Surplus value


Notes


References


''Capital'', Volume I
* ttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch47.htm ''Capital'', Volume III*Karl Marx, "The character of surplus labour

*George Dalton (February 1961). "Economic theory and primitive society". ''American Anthropologist'', LXIII, no. 1, 1–25. * * * *Marvin Harris, Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture. Random House 1979. *Geoffrey Hodgson, Capitalism, Value and Exploitation (Martin Robertson, Oxford, 1982). *Ernest Mandel, Marxist Economic Theory, Vol. 1. London: Merlin Press, 1968. *Karl Marx,
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 materialist phi ...
. *Bonnie Fox (ed.), Hidden in the Household: Women's Domestic Labour Under Capitalism, Women's Press, 1980. *Stephen A. Resnick and Richard D. Wolff, Knowledge and Class: A Marxian Critique of Political Economy (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1987). *Jill Rubery and Damian Grimshaw, The Organization of Employment; An International Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. *Fred Moseley paper

*Harry W. Pearson, "The economy has no surplus" in "Trade and market in the early empires. Economies in history and theory", edited by Karl Polanyi, Conrad M. Arensberg and Harry W. Pearson (New York/London: The Free Press: Collier-Macmillan, 1957). *John Roemer, ''Analytical foundations of Marxian Economic Theory''. Cambridge University Press, 1981. {{Marxist & Communist phraseology Labour economics Marxian economics