Ownership asymmetry forces non-owners to sell labour and yield surplus value

Evidence

There is nothing mystical or puzzling about the physical nature and function of fishing rods, tractors or industrial robots (i.e. of capital goods). However, capital’s nature as a provider of extractive power is less obvious. The extractive power it affords derives from the social relations between people with property rights over (and, therefore, autonomous access to) means of production (capitalists, landlords) and the rest. The asymmetry in capital ownership leaves those who do not own capital no alternative but to sell to capitalists their commodity labour (see 1.2.2 above), for a wage, and, in the process, to generate surplus value (see 1.4 below) for the capitalists. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 793

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The extractive power of capital is the load-bearing link Varoufakis will carry forward into the technofeudalism thesis; this definition of coercion-through-ownership-asymmetry is the hinge.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 793
• XREF: connects to: Profit comes from surplus value workers generate — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 103; Profit does not reward capital but results from labour’s dual nature — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 75; Surplus value is the gap between labour infused and labour bought — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 795 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Surplus value is the gap between labour infused and labour bought #expands (0.90) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 795
• Surplus value arises from the gap between labour time given and reproduction cost #corroborates (0.85) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1364
• Surplus-value emerges where equivalent exchange opens a gap over reproduction costs #qualifies (0.80) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1376
• Capital accumulation lowers profit rates unless exploitation intensifies via labour rationalisation #expands (0.75)