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Theories of Surplus Value (German: Theorien über den Mehrwert) is a draft manuscript written by Karl Marx between January 1862 and July 1863. [1] It is mainly concerned with the Western European theorizing about Mehrwert (added value or surplus value ) from about 1750, critically examining the ideas of British, French and German political ...
Hence, Marx's use of Mehrwert has always been translated as "surplus value", distinguishing it from "value-added". According to Marx's theory, surplus value is equal to the new value created by workers in excess of their own labor-cost, which is appropriated by the capitalist as profit when products are sold.
Marx concludes that as value is determined by labour, and as profit is the appropriated surplus value remaining after paying wages, that the maximum profit is set by the minimum wage necessary to sustain labour, but is in turn adjusted by the overall productive powers of labour using given tools and machines, the length of the workday, the ...
Surplus value is therefore the [Marxist] disguise of profit which must be removed before the real nature of profit can be discovered. [7] Samuelson not only dismissed the labour theory of value because of the transformation problem, but provided himself, in cooperation with economists like Carl Christian von Weizsäcker, solutions.
Marx's first analysis of what surplus labour means appeared in The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), a polemic against the philosophy of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. [1] A much more detailed analysis is presented in the volumes of Theories of Surplus Value and Das Kapital.
The surplus value/product is the materialized surplus labour or surplus labour time while the necessary value/product is materialized necessary labour in regard to workers, like the reproduction of the labour power. [6] Marx called the rate of surplus value an "exact expression of the degree of exploitation of labour power by capital". [11]
Marx examined surplus value and showed it to be a necessity in capitalism. This surplus value is derived from the difference between the value the worker creates and the wage he earns. Chapter 16 looked into the ways in which the capitalist is able to increase surplus-value and takes a direct attack against economists Ricardo and Mill.
In Theories of Surplus Value (1862–1863), he discusses the problem very clearly. [58] His first attempt at a solution occurs in a letter to Engels, dated 2 August 1862. [59] In Capital, Volume I (1867) [60] he noted that "many intermediate terms" were still needed in his progressing narrative, to arrive at the answer.