Surplus_Value_Theory

Surplus Value Theory Surplus-Value Theory The increase over the original value of the money that is put into circulation is called by Marx surplus value. The fact of this "growth" of money in capitalist circulation is common knowledge. Indeed, it is this "growth" which transforms money into capital, as a special and historically determined social relation of production. Surplus value cannot arise out of commodity circulation, for the latter knows only the exchange of equivalents; neither can it arise out of price increases, for the mutual losses and gains of buyers and sellers would equalize one another, whereas what we have here in not an individual phenomenon but a mass, average and social phenomenon. To obtain surplus value, the owner of money must find in the market a commodity. Its consumption is labor, and labor creates value. The owner of money buys labor power at its value, which, like the value of every other commodity, is determined by the socially necessary labor time requisite for its production (example, the cost of value, labor, surplus, capital, money, production, power, product, owner, must, creates, commodity, circulation, worker, variable, time, therefore, social, process, phenomenon, part, out, latter, hours, growth, expended, determined, cost, capitalist, arise, yet, work, without, whose, whole, whereas