Surplus value is the gap between labour infused and labour bought
Evidence
Surplus Value is the difference that an employer retains after producing and selling a unit of commodity X. More precisely, it is the difference between (a) the value infused into a unit of X by the experiential labour necessary to produce it and (b) the value of the amount of commodity labour that the employer had to buy to produce that same unit of X. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 795
Categorization
- DEFINE: Precise definition of surplus value essential to the later distinction from platform rent extraction.
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 795
- XREF: connects to: Profit comes from surplus value workers generate — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 103; The value-price gap is the permanent engine of capitalist crisis, not a logical flaw — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 103; Profit does not reward capital but results from labour’s dual nature — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 75 (+10 more)
Broader Connections
- 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
#corroborates(0.80) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1376 - Distinguishing labour-capacity from labour resolves the wage contradiction Marx inherited
#expands(0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1359 - Competition drives price toward exchange value determined by embedded labour
#expands(0.72) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 787 - Service industries can extract surplus value and prolong capitalism’s viability
#expands(0.72) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 132 - Capitalist profit also depends on unpaid domestic labor
#expands(0.70) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 106