The Constitution of Non-Monetary Surplus Values

Abstract

The article rebuts the primacy of economic profit in advanced capitalist societies, and submits that the imperative to extract surplus value governs also the law and other social domains and is not merely a product of economic forces. Not only the economy but also the law and other function systems force each of their operations to generate a specific surplus value – but now explicitly non-monetary – beyond its immediate production of meaning. The object of the surplus orientation is the system’s own communication medium – power, truth/reputation, money, and juridical authority. The success of surplus pressures is responsible for the immensely productive forces unleashed in capitalism. However, they demonstrate an excessive ambivalence: immense productivity and its destructive dark side. Similar to the monetary profit pressure in the economy, (auto- and hetero-) destructive tendencies of non-monetary surplus pressures have multiplied in the law and in other areas of life. Political-legal counterstrategies combating the negative side of diverse societal surplus productions could be inspired from Karl Polanyi’s famous concept of false commodities and their replacement by non-market institutions.