The Theory of Surplus Value

In this concluding chapter we take a general overview of the main results that have emerged with respect to matters theoretical, empirical, and historiographical. Our primary concern is the surplus-value doctrine, for the theoretical core of Marx's enterprise must stand or fall with this kingpin of his system. Objections to the doctrine are clearly discernable in his own work. We surmise – and it is no more than a conjecture – that this dissatisfaction might help explain why Capital remained unfinished.

The “labor-power” concept, we first recall, was introduced to explain how it is that in the absence of monopsony – i.e., assuming a competitive exchange of “equivalents” in wage-rate determination – there can yet be a positive return to capital. The proposed solution requires that “labor capacity” and not “labor” be perceived as valued by the wage contract, the worker receiving a competitive return though the whole work day yields more than is required to cover the costs of his reproduction. The argument thus turns on the notion of surplus as comprising unpaid hours in a day's labor, a surplus that (as expressed in Capital 1) is “embezzled, because abstracted without return of an equivalent …” (MECW 35: 607). Unequal exchange is central to the matter considering that labor is excluded from ownership of property. But two points require emphasis.