Surplus-value emerges where equivalent exchange opens a gap over reproduction costs
Evidence
‘The surplus-value of the entrepreneur’, Adorno claims, ‘emerges where a gap is revealed in equivalent exchange, and indeed, where what the worker gets for his own commodity – labour-power, which also reproduces itself – is less than what he gives’. Here, where ‘exchange is by no means pure circulation anymore’ but instead ‘immediately relates to production’, exchange under capitalist conditions of production is revealed to be both just and unjust at the same time. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1376
Categorization
- DEFINE: Precise statement of where Adorno locates surplus-value: in the transition from circulation to production.
- XREF: connects to: Surplus value arises from the gap between labour time given and reproduction cost — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1364; Exchange creates value as genuinely as production does. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 228; Capitalist-worker exchange is formally equal but substantively unequal — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1365 (+9 more)
Broader Connections
- The exchange sphere’s apparent equality masks the extraction of surplus in production.
#expands(0.82) - Capitalist-worker exchange is formally equal but substantively unequal
#expands(0.80) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1365 - Market ideology conceals exploitation by making exchange stand in for production
#expands(0.80) - Exchange creates value as genuinely as production does.
#contradicts(0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 228 - Exchange itself, not utility or scarcity, creates economic value.
#contradicts(0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 261