Surplus

“ This surplus is the fund from which the enjoyments, as distinguished from the necessaries of the producers, are provided; it is the fund from which all are subsisted who are not themselves engaged in production, and from which all additions are made to capital. The capital of the employer forms the revenue of the laborers, and, if this exceeds the necessaries of life, it gives them a surplus which they may either expend in enjoyments or save. ”

“ The dearer the consumers in one country pay for the surplus produce of another, the cheaper they necessarily sell that part of their own surplus produce with which, or, what comes to the same thing, with the price of which they buy it. ”

“ And yet he calls this quantity needed by society a surplus—viz. as measured against the producer’s personal requirements for his own product, and is consequently able to demonstrate brilliantly that any amount of commodity ‘surplus’ can be exchanged for a corresponding ‘surplus’ of other commodities. ”

“ As they are the means by which alone commerce can exercise its comfort-distributing office, to deprive it of these means, is evidently to stab commerce precisely in its vital part. Both are produced by people, both are manufactures, and exchanges of one for a surplus of the other, will equally reflect an additional value on both, as on any other exchanges of useless surpluses. ”

“ The surplus-value generated in the process of production by C, the capital advanced, or in other words, the self-expansion of the value of the capital C, presents itself for our consideration, in the first place, as a surplus, as the amount by which the value of the product exceeds the value of its constituent element. ”

“ By the removal of the unnecessary mouths, and by exacting from the farmer the full value of the farm, a greater surplus, or, what is the same thing, the price of a greater surplus, was obtained for the proprietor, which the merchants and manufacturers soon furnished him with a method of spending upon his own person, in the same manner as he had done the rest. ”

“ What are the considerations to be observed by a man in deciding whether or not he should adopt money-making—that is, the acquisition of a surplus beyond his current needs—as one of his definite aims in life? ”

“ And so the producers, who are more favourably placed, obtaining the same price as those who are less advantageously situated for commodities which have cost less to produce and to place on the market, have a surplus in hand, which competition for the enjoyment of their advantages compels them to hand over to those who have their control and disposal. ”

“ And as the quantity of the necessaries of life, that are or can be consumed by the rich, are limited, and in the purchasing of which a small part only of their wealth can be expended, the surplus they are naturally inclined to lay out in procuring the conveniences, the elegancies, and luxuries of life. These are the produce of the more refined manufactures of different kinds ”

“ Besides this equivalent, which he gives for the portion of agricultural labor consumed by him, and this supply of manufactured commodities for his own consumption, he furnishes still a surplus, which compensates for the use of the capital advanced, either by himself or some other person, for carrying on the business. ”

“ If the surplus is no more than this, none but large masses of capital will be employed productively; and if it did not even amount to this, capital would be withdrawn from production, and unproductively consumed, until, by an indirect consequence of its diminished amount, to be explained hereafter, the rate of profit was raised. ”

“ The creation of surplus-value, and therefore the conversion of money into capital, can consequently be explained neither on the assumption that commodities are sold above their value, nor that they are bought below their value. ”

“ The portion of the product that represents the surplus-value, (one-tenth of the 20 lbs., or 2 lbs. of yarn, in the example given in Sec. 2,) we call "surplus-produce." Just as the rate of surplus-value is determined by its relation, not to the sum total of the capital, but to its variable part; in like manner, the relative quantity of surplus-produce is determined by the ratio that this produce bears, not to the remaining part of the total product, but to that part of it in which is incorporated the necessary labour. ”

“ Such a view of the process of exchange indeed leaves no room for a commodity surplus inside the country. Any product of a worker’s annual labour must, from this point of view, represent a certain quantity of material of which it is made, of tools which have been used in its manufacture, and of the products which served to maintain the workers during the period of production. ”

“ But the same amount of demand and the same price, which enable this least productive portion of capital barely to replace itself with the ordinary profit, enable every other portion to yield a surplus proportioned to the advantage it possesses. ”

“ There is a surplus beyond immediate consumption from the products of all the industries in the world: what shall be done with this surplus? If certain classes of people could have their way, what is now surplus would all be consumed by the end of the year. ”

“ They go to exchange the surplus of one produce which we can spare, for surplusses of other kinds which they can spare and we want; which they can furnish on better terms, and more to our mind, than Great Britain or her friends. ”

“ The third category which represents the surplus above what the farmer is required to produce in order to keep his farm, will constitute a surplus of production applicable to exchange for luxuries and foreign goods. ”

“ Within the vitals of the economic system upon which it subsists the plutocracy has found a source of never-ending torment in the form of a constantly increasing surplus.
2. The Knotty Problem of Surplus
The present system of industry is so organized that the worker is always paid less in wages than he creates in product. A part of this difference between product and wages goes to the upkeep and expansion of the industry in which the worker is employed. Another part in the form of interest, dividends, rents, royalties and profits, goes to the owners of the land and productive machinery. ”

“ The directing motive, the end and aim of capitalist production, is to extract the greatest possible amount of surplus-value, [14] and consequently to exploit labour-power to the greatest possible extent. ”

“ The surplus value in production is trifling and seems large only because concentrated in comparatively few hands. The surplus of ages is concentrated in the structures which we see all about us, and in the commodities ready or partly ready for consumption and which will disappear in a short time. ”

“ A larger part of their own surplus-product, always increasing and continually transformed into additional capital, comes back to them in the shape of means of payment, so that they can extend the circle of their enjoyments; can make some additions to their consumption-fund of clothes, furniture, &c., and can lay by small reserve-funds of money. ”

“ Whatever surplus any portion of agricultural capital produces, beyond what is produced by the same amount of capital on the worst soil, or under the most expensive mode of cultivation, which the existing demands of society compel a recourse to, that surplus will naturally be paid as rent from that capital, to the owner of the land on which it is employed. ”

“ In consequence, the commodities annually produced by society as a whole can be resolved completely, as to value, into the two components: wages and surplus value. Here the category of capital has disappeared all of a sudden; society produces nothing but income, nothing but consumer goods, which it also consumes completely. ”

“ The surplus, too, whether small or great, is usually torn from the producers, either by the government to which they are subject, or by individuals, who by superior force, or by availing themselves of religious or traditional feelings of subordination, have established themselves as lords of the soil. ”

“ If commodities, or commodities and money, of equal exchange-value, and consequently equivalents, are exchanged, it is plain that no one abstracts more value from, than he throws into, circulation. There is no creation of surplus-value. ”

“ These artificers are fed by the surplus food which has been taken by the government and its agents as their share of the produce. So literally is this the case, that in some countries the workman, instead of taking his work home, and being paid for it after it is finished, proceeds with his tools to his customer's house, and is there subsisted until the work is complete. ”

“ Rent, Interest, and Industrial Profit are only different names for different parts of the surplus value of the commodity, or the unpaid labour enclosed in it, and they are equally derived from this source, and from this source alone. ”

“ The surplus value which has been appropriated, after it has successfully cast off its commodity-form in the market, appears as a given amount of money. This money-form is the form of its absolute value, the beginning of its career as capital. ”

“ Assuming capitalist methods of production, the value of his product yields him a surplus over and above his expenses, that surplus value which does not replace his capital but constitutes [Pg 54] his net income, which he can consume completely without encroaching upon his capital and which is thus his fund of consumption. ”

“ In every period, indeed, of every society, the surplus part both of the rude and manufactured produce, or that for which there is no demand at home, must be sent abroad, in order to be exchanged for something for which there is some demand at home. ”

“ When there was a visible tendency to produce a glut of any commodity, that tendency should be checked by directing the youth at the government schools into other trades; and the yearly surplus of commodities should be the principal means of government provision for the poor. ”

“ The continual increase of the surplus produce of their land would, in due time, create a greater capital than what would be employed with the ordinary rate of profit in the improvement and cultivation of land; and the surplus part of it would naturally turn itself to the employment of artificers and manufacturers, at home. ”

“ On the other hand, if the mass of labour-power employed, or the amount of variable capital, increases, but not in proportion to the fall in the rate of surplus-value, the mass of the surplus-value produced, falls. ”

“ Of the net profits of persons in business, a part, as before observed, may be considered as interest on capital, and of a perpetual character, and the remaining part as remuneration for the skill and labor of superintendence. The surplus beyond interest depends on the life of the individual, and even on his continuance in business, and is entitled to the full amount of exemption allowed to terminable incomes. ”

“ For if we analyze each of these changes—if instead of interest on capital we read surplus of products which remains after maintenance of labourers; if we so interpret large interest or large surplus to imply labour expended with 307the greatest results; and if labour expended with the greatest results means muscular action so directed as to evade obstacles as far as possible; we see that all these commercial phenomena are complicated motions set up along lines of least resistance. ”

“ When he and his family have been fed from the produce of the farm (and perhaps clothed with materials grown thereon, and manufactured in the family) he may, in respect of the supplementary remuneration derived from the sale of the surplus produce, be compared to those labourers who, deriving their subsistence from an independent source, can afford to sell their labour at any price which is to their minds worth the exertion. ”

“ The producer of no more than average capacity is therefore making out of you a surplus profit, which would be quite unnecessary in any well-arranged society." Such an argument is a gross caricature of the marginal conception. ”

“ If the surplus earnings are expended, they will be used either in meeting the higher prices of customary commodities, or in meeting these advanced prices and also in purchasing additional commodities. ”

“ The part of the surplus produce, which, during the good years finds its way into the market, must be much greater than under that scheme; since nobody will have nearly so great a motive to reserve it. ”