THEORIES OF SURPLUS VALUE is the 4th volume in Karl Marx' (1818-83) monumental DAS KAPITAL (CAPITAL). Divided into three parts, this compelling work reviews classic economic analyses of labor & value (Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas R. Malthus etc), focusing on the concept of surplus value--the difference between the full value of a worker's labor & the wages received for that labor. This is a key concept for Marx, since capitalism maintains its power thru controlling surplus value.
With the help of Friedrich Engels, German philosopher and revolutionary Karl Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1867-1894), works, which explain historical development in terms of the interaction of contradictory economic forces, form many regimes, and profoundly influenced the social sciences.
German social theorist Friedrich Engels collaborated with Karl Marx on The Communist Manifesto in 1848 and on numerous other works.
The Prussian kingdom introduced a prohibition on Jews, practicing law; in response, a man converted to Protestantism and shortly afterward fathered Karl Marx.
Marx began co-operating with Bruno Bauer on editing Philosophy of Religion of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (see Democritus and Epicurus), doctoral thesis, also engaged Marx, who completed it in 1841. People described the controversial essay as "a daring and original piece... in which Marx set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom." Marx decided to submit his thesis not to the particularly conservative professors at the University of Berlin but instead to the more liberal faculty of University of Jena, which for his contributed key theory awarded his Philosophiae Doctor in April 1841. Marx and Bauer, both atheists, in March 1841 began plans for a journal, entitled Archiv des Atheismus (Atheistic Archives), which never came to fruition.
Marx edited the newspaper Vorwärts! in 1844 in Paris. The urging of the Prussian government from France banished and expelled Marx in absentia; he then studied in Brussels. He joined the league in 1847 and published.
Marx participated the failure of 1848 and afterward eventually wound in London. Marx, a foreigner, corresponded for several publications of United States. He came in three volumes. Marx organized the International and the social democratic party.
People describe Marx, who most figured among humans. They typically cite Marx with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, the principal modern architects.
Bertrand Russell later remarked of non-religious Marx, "His belief that there is a cosmic ... called dialectical materialism, which governs ... independently of human volitions, is mere mythology" (Portraits from Memory, 1956).
Well, it took me as long to read this work as it did for Marx to write it. In sum total all four volumes of "Capital" took me three years with interruptions to read. Three years that I will not ever regret devoting my time to in this way. Marx' understanding of the nature of capitalism is simply brilliant although not perfect. As a student of business and history it is clear to me that he recognized and anticipated much of the developments in economics, business, and marketing in the 20th century, and failed to understand that human will makes an understanding of history a very bad crystal ball. In "Capital" you find little of Marx the social revolutionary but much of the empirical scientist. It is his work in this area that lead to Keynes learning to respect an economist that he had been taught to despise.
As the fourth volume of "Capital", "Theories of Surplus Value" is divided into three "books" that cover the theories and developments of value among the classical economists from James Steuart and French physiocrats through Smith and Ricardo to Malthus and Hodgskins to Richard Jones or the first 150 years of political economy and the transformation of trade into Mercantilism and Colonialism and that into the Industrial Revolution and the First Era of Globalization. His evaluation of the growth of economics alone is invaluable but his reliance on empirical study over modeling is a lesson the current field of economics would do well to reflect upon. It is evident from this work that he well deserves his position as a classical economist equal to Adam Smith and Ricardo.
There are many critics of Marxism but in reality few critics of Marx the economist because there are two very different aspects to Marx, a fact that those who do not read "Capital" are doomed to make. Perhaps his foremost critic is David Hackett Fischer in his work, "The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History" because he attacks Marxism from the same basis that Marx rest his work upon - empiricism. However, he makes errors because his understanding of Marx is superficial, for instance, "...as scholars begin to discover that processes of exchange may have played much of the role that Marx attributed to the means of production." However, Marx as he reiterates in "Theories of Surplus Value" sees exchange and especially exchange-value as critical to capitalism as personified in M to C to M' where M equals the monetized capital, C the commodification of capital, and M' the realization of capital returning as investment plus monetarized surplus value. But Fischer's work does firmly establish that Marx' dialectical model of inequality "..as a consequence of structural changes in economic systems...." is not the sole mechanism determinate of inequality in human history.
For anyone wishing to understand Marx and the history of economics this is a critical and demanding read. It is also a primer on the world we move through as creatures of the capitalist system.
These volumes further one's knowledge of how Marx's critique of political-economy are based squarely on the fact that there are only two sources of wealth in the world: labour and nature. Marx shows how confused and confusing the dutiful professors, clergymen and sycophants of Capital are when it comes to understanding the capitalist system. The economics' departments are still full of apologists for the rule of Capital, for the class rule of their employers. Once a reader has fully digested CAPITAL Vol I, chapter one, enough knowledge has been gained to be able to read THEORIES OF SURPLUS VALUE cogently.
A lot of interesting stuff in here. Detailed critique of Ricardo&co, provocative observations on the definition of productive labor. Reflections on primitive accumulation as a continuing process, Christianity and capitalism etc. But be warned the section on Rodbertus's theory of rent is rather painful.
Excellent as how capital accummulation is done and how surplus value arises and it is the main point of exploitation because labour sold is the exchange value but labour power is its use value which adds to the profit.