In Marxist theory surplus value is the value created by individual labour which is left over, or remains in the product or services produced, after the employer has paid the costs of hiring the worker. Surplus value is the additional value or surplus value which the worker produces but does not get paid for, allowing the capitalist owner to expand their capital. "Surplus value" is a translation of the German word "Mehrwert", which simply means value added. Karl Marx uses the term Mehrwert to describe the yield, profit or return on production capital invested. Marx's use of Mehrwert has always been translated as "surplus value", distinguishing it from "value-added."
Absolute surplus value is the surplus value generated by increasing the length of the Working day, thus increasing the surplus labour time. Relative surplus value is the surplus value generated by cutting wages or reducing the cost of living, thus reducing workers’ Necessary labour time in proportion to the surplus value extracted.
The production of surplus value is directly related to the rate of exploitation of workers in the workplace. The production of absolute surplus value entails an increase in the amount of total value produced, by intensifying the work done, by limiting breaks, and supervision by management.
The production of relative surplus value is produced through the reduction of the value of labor power by means of improvements in the production of goods, considered the appropriation of productivity gains by the capitalist class. In relative surplus value, the working day and wage remain the same, and the value of labor power falls leaving a higher surplus value. Relative surplus value is achieved by the introduction of better machinery, and a better organization of the workplace.
The Counterfactual Method of Marx's Theory of Surplus value - Perri S. Abstract: The aim of this paper is to show that Karl Marx supports his theory of surplus value by developing a counterfactual argument, that is, by comparing the 'normal' state of a capitalist economy against a hypothetical state in which no surplus is produced. Marx then divides his analysis of value into three successive steps:
the first deals with the production of new value in the sphere of production;
the second with the process of creation of surplus value, both in the sphere of production and in the sphere of circulation; and
the third with the process of equalisation of the rate of profit, which is accomplished via capitalist competition in the sphere of circulation.
Social process of production, pumps a definite quantity of surplus-labour out of the direct producers, or labourers; capital obtains this surplus-labour without an equivalent, and in essence it always remains forced labour. This surplus labour appears as surplus value, and this surplus value exists as a surplus product.
In a capitalist society, surplus value, or surplus product, is divided among capitalists as dividends proportionate to the share of the social capital each holds. In this form surplus value appears as average profit which falls to the share of capital, an average profit which in turn divides into profit of enterprise and interest, and which under these two categories may fall into the laps of different kinds of capitalists. - Abstract from: The Trinity Formula - marxists.org.
Surplus Value, Unemployment and Industrial Turbulence
A Statistical Application of the Marxian Model To Post-War Japan
Yoshio Sugimoto.
The paper examines in quantitative terms how powerful such Marxian concepts as the amount
and rate of surplus value and the size of the industrial reserve army of labour are in accounting for levels of industrial turbulence.
Emotional labour and surplus value
Panikkos Constanti, Paul Gibbs.
Abstract: The employee's behavior requires 'emotional labour' [Hochschild, 1983] where the front-line
employee has to either conceal or manage actual feelings for the benefit of a successful
service delivery. The implication is not necessarily of equality or mutual benefit but of
satisfaction for the customer and profit for the management. The article discusses whether
the service employee is being exploited in this three-way relationship, and how surplus
value accrues and its benefit distributed.
Absolute surplus-value. (a) Labour-process and the process of producing surplus-value.
(b) Constant capital and variable capital. (c) Absolute surplus-value. (d) Struggle for
the normal working-day. (e) Simultaneous working-days (number of simultaneously employed
labourers). Amount of surplus-value and rate of surplus-value (magnitude and height?).
Relative surplus-value. (a) Simple co-operation. (b) Division of labour. (c) Machinery.
etc.
Combination of absolute and relative surplus-value. Relation (proportion) between
wage-labour and surplus-value. Formal and real subsumption of labour under capital.
Productivity of capital. Productive and unproductive labour.
Reconversion of surplus-value into capital. Primitive accumulation. Wakefield’s
colonial theory.