Profit does not reward capital but results from labour’s dual nature

Evidence

It is not just labour that has a dual nature. The dominant propaganda today and while I was growing up is that profit is the price, or reward, of a thing called capital, and that people who have capital – such as tools, raw materials, money, anything that can be used to produce saleable goods – make a profit by deploying it, in the same way a worker makes a wage by deploying her labour. But the conclusion that profit results from labour’s contradictory twin natures led me to reject this notion, too. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 75

Categorization

• XREF: Direct rebuttal of neoclassical and folk economics’ view that profit rewards capital; aligns with Marx’s critique of capital mystification. — connects to: Fascist-era economists defined profit as capital’s own productivity, not worker exploitation — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 1127; Profit arises from labour’s uncommodifiable experiential dimension; Capital accumulation lowers profit rates unless exploitation intensifies via labour rationalisation (+10 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 75

Broader Connections

• Distinguishing labour-capacity from labour resolves the wage contradiction Marx inherited #expands (0.85) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1359
• 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
• Capital accumulation lowers profit rates unless exploitation intensifies via labour rationalisation #qualifies (0.80)
• Surplus value is the gap between labour infused and labour bought #expands (0.80) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 795
• The falling rate of profit forces capitalists to intensify labor exploitation #qualifies (0.80) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2376
• Ownership asymmetry forces non-owners to sell labour and yield surplus value #expands (0.75) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 793
• Capital accumulation drives the profit rate down by reducing human labor per unit #qualifies (0.75) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 1031