Human labour is the exclusive source of surplus value
the verdict
REFUTED
the evidence says no
refutedsupported
the weight of evidence
4 sources for · 1 against
The retrieved sources partially support the view that labor is tied to surplus value and profit, but also indicate that not all commodities and values derive exclusively from human labor.
Profit: Surplus Value 53 how does it come about that M* is larger than M? What is the source of the producer’s … is this increase of value, this surplus value, which is the source of capitalist profit. Returning to … theory, waged labour alone is the source of profit. But in actual fact, it is the most highly mechanized
work is the source of new value, profits and capital. Marx acknowledged explicitly that not all commodities are products of human labour; all kinds of things
In classical political economy and especially Karl Marx's critique of political economy, a commodity is any good or service ("products" or "activities") produced by human labour and offered as a product for general sale on the market. Some other priced goods are also treated as commodities, e.g. human labor-power, works of art and natural resources, even though they may not be produced specifical
Variable capital used up to produce it.
Fixed and circulating constant capital used up per unit.
Incidental expenses which cost labour-time (faux frais of production).
Surplus value per unit.
These components reflect respectively labour costs, the cost of materials and operating expenses including depreciation, and generic profit.
In capitalism, Marx argues, commodity values are commercially expressed as the prices of production of commodities (cost-price + average profit). Prices of production are established jointly by average input costs and by the ruling profit margins applying to outputs sold. They reflect the fact that production has become totally integrated into the circuits of commodity trade, in which capital accumulation becomes the dominant motive. But what prices of production simultaneously hide is the social nature of the valorisation process, i.e. how an increase in capital-value occurs through production.
Likewise, in considering the gross output of capitalist production in an economy as a whole, Marx divides its value into these four components. He argues that the total new value added in production, which he calls the value product, consists of the equivalent of variable capital, plus surplus value. Thus, the workers produce by their labor both a new value equal to their own wages, plus an additional new value which is claimed by capitalists by virtue of their ownership and supply of productive capital.
By producing new capital in the form of new commodities, Marx argues the working class continuously reproduces the capitalist relations of production; by their work, workers create a new value distributed as both labour-income and property-income. If, as free workers, they choose to stop working, the system begins to break down; hence, capitalist civilisation strongly emphasizes the work ethic, regardless of religious belief. People must work, because work is the source of new value, profits and capital.
Therefore, millet and sorghum production declined. Cash cropping was developed in response to the need of European economies for tropical products. However, colonization as a tool to obtain these raw materials was highly inefficient and associated with a considerable misuse of public funds. Together with cash cropping extension was created a network of intermediaries of large European corporations and shopkeepers who would efficiently drain all the earnings from cash cropping away from productive agricultural investments. It made possible the birth of local bourgeoisies and states dedicated almost exclusively to the extraction of a surplus value from the peasantry through cash cropping. It led to a displacement of the role of women; by attributing to them the less profitable food crops, the new production system managed to feed local cities and migrant workers at low cost. Cash cropping provides indirectly a new mean of exploiting women's labor.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Published in World review of nutrition and dietetics (1991)
part of an argument about the source of surplus value in unpaid surplus labour. His view can be summarised in the following 10 points. work is not "naturally
Productive and unproductive labour are concepts that were used in classical political economy mainly in the 18th and 19th centuries, which survive today to some extent in modern management discussions, economic sociology and Marxist or Marxian economic analysis. The concepts strongly influenced the construction of national accounts in the Soviet Union and other Soviet-type societies (see Material
work is not "naturally productive", both in the sense that it takes work to make work productive, and that productive work depends on tools and techniques to be productive.
generally speaking, a worker is economically productive and a source of…
Section 1. The Labour-Process or the Production of Use-Values The capitalist buys labour-power in order to use it; and labour-power in use is labour itself. The purchaser of labour-power consumes it by setting the seller of it to work. By working, the latter becomes actually,...
Everything we examined (5) — 4 independent sources
This check searched the claim as stated. It did not run a separate search for evidence against it.