Surplus Value Research Articles

The Formation Mechanism, Realistic Dimension and Evaluation System of the Value of Automatic Machine System

The value of automatic machine system is the compound value of the organic unity of the practical value form and the theoretical value form of sublating the logical power of capital that human (labor) sublates to the capitalist production mode, and it is manifested as the historical dialectical development law of labor (value) -- capital (surplus value) -- labor (value). The value evaluation of automatic machine system mainly includes human learning value and thinking value. Marx's thought on the value of automatic machine system adheres to the distinct problem-oriented consciousness, which is based on the development of nature, society and human thinking system, and responds to the requirements of the new era of intelligent system. It should be a prospective research topic in the field of value philosophy.

Toward a “Prodigious Revival of French Economics”? Allais, Debreu, and the Dead Loss Controversy (1943–51)

Abstract This article aims to trace the hitherto little-known controversy involving Maurice Allais, François Divisia, Harold Hotelling, and Gérard Debreu in the immediate postwar years. The controversy turned on “dead loss,” a measure of the maximum value of available surplus serving as a gauge of economic efficiency and social welfare. The protagonists argued about how it should be expressed mathematically, the hypothesis underpinning it, and its general significance. The paper draws heavily on unpublished materials (letters and notes) to unfold the different stages of the dead loss controversy and shows that it was driven by an intricate interlacing of technical advances in welfare economics with Allais's personal ambition to spearhead the revival of French economics. Eventually, this controversy (and the tense exchange between Allais and Debreu that came with it) proved a remarkable—although tacit—driving force behind Debreu's contributions of the early 1950s.

Consumer surplus analysis using the Travel Cost Method (TCM) at the Petrus Kafiar Beach tourist attraction, Manokwari Regency, West Papua

This study aims to determine the economic value of tourism objects and whether there is a consumer surplus at the Petrus Kafiar beach based on the Travel Cost Method (TCM). The consumer surplus value is obtained by using the Individual Travel Cost Method (ITCM) approach and willingness to pay to calculate the willingness to pay of tourists visiting Petrus Kafiar Beach. The value of WTP obtained is Rp. 23,358.21 per person per visit. Meanwhile, the average WTP (willingness to pay) per year for one visit is only Rp. 5,491.23. The results of the integral calculation to find the consumer surplus of visitors to the Petrus beach tourism object, the consumer surplus is ranged from Rp. 5,201.5 to Rp. 10,403.91 per individual/visit.

Time, (im)mobility and social reproduction: self-development of Chinese migrant women workers in Singapore

ABSTRACT This article uses time as an analytical frame to examine low-wage migrants’ aspirations and strategies in negotiating social mobility and reproduction under temporary migration regimes. Drawing on an ethnographic study of Chinese migrant women factory workers who actively pursue self-development during their sojourns in Singapore, this article demonstrates that time is central to understanding migrant women’s mobility aspirations and social reproduction strategies as well as the structural conditions that propel them to embark on self-development. It underscores the diversity of migrants’ experiences of time and the rhythms of their personal and family lives and how they are inextricably linked to temporal processes of migration and production. Through the temporal lens, the article also sheds light on the workings of temporary migration regimes under neoliberalism. It points out the contradiction between state attempts to constitute low-wage migrants as immobile labouring subjects and the temporal nature of migrant subject-making and skills development. It also shows how migrants’ pursuit of self-development and enactment of agency paradoxically play into the dominant ideology and become a site for surplus value extraction. The article contributes to the temporal approach to the intersection of migration, mobility and social reproduction.

The grand surplus value and repeated cooperative cross-games with coalitional collaboration

We propose a value for games with transferable utility, called the grand surplus value. This new value is an alternative to the Shapley value, in particular in games where, in the process of coalition formation, two overlapping coalitions can, at least hypothetically, guarantee their members their full worth simultaneously. Central is the concept of the grand surplus, which is the surplus that results when all coalitions, each lacking one player of the player set, no longer act individually but only cooperate as the grand coalition. All the axiomatizations presented have an analogous equivalent for the Shapley value, including the classics by Shapley and Young. Especially for a new class of games, called repeated cooperative cross-games with coalitional collaboration, the grand surplus value seems preferable to the Shapley value. A new concept, called multiple dividends, provides a close connection to the Shapley value.

The Basic Principles of Marxism with the Internet as a Carrier

We live in a real society today with the Internet as the carrier. Marxist philosophy is of great significance to the study of computer science and technology majors, such as the standardization of learning methods and the improvement of learning horizons. In order to study the ideology of the current Internet carrier, this study first introduces the ideology in the Internet scenario and again describes the basic principles of Marxism. Web text data were collected from both static and dynamic websites, and the data were initially preprocessed using the ICTCLAS word separation tool. After that, a text lexicon set related to Marxism was built and combined with the surplus value calculation formula. Analysis of the text data shows that the expectation error of the Internet population approximately obeys a positive-term distribution, and the online text data are feasible in the estimation of the influence of Marxism. The statistical results show that the percentage of serious philosophical discussions from 2017 to 2021 in which Marxism is mentioned has steadily increased from 62% to 78%, indicating that Marxism still has great influence to this day. For these three different attitudes toward Marxism, the number of comments agreeing and disagreeing differed significantly, indicating that different groups of people show very different attitudes toward Marxism.

Financialization and Debt: Much Worse Than Parasites

Starting from the two correct positions that, compared to the form of capitalism that preceded it, neoliberal capitalism has generally been more harmful to working people, and that in it finance plays a greater role in both scale and scope, some political economists argue that in neoliberalism financial capital is parasitic on nonfinancial (or “productive,” or “industrial”) capital. The central argument of this article is that, to the contrary, financial capital serves all capital through the various ways that it allows for neoliberalism to increase its appropriation of surplus value. To concretely support this position, the article considers a particular financial relation, debt, and indicates seven specific ways debt expansion facilitates neoliberalism’s pursuit of increased appropriation of surplus value. Secondarily, this article rejects any stated or implied policy implications from the parasitic financial capital thesis that present “productive capitalism” as the desirable alternative to the deleterious effects of financialized capitalism. JEL Classification: G00, G51, H63

Exploration on the Application and Practice of Marx's classic theory of Residual Value Based on The Perspective of Modern "Unmanned Factory"

The high production efficiency and low number of workers of the unmanned factory production model have increased some scholars' misunderstanding of Marx's theory of surplus value. The main body of this essay is the unmanned factory. The full text takes Marx's theory of surplus value as the theoretical basis. It conducts a historical exploration of the unmanned factory in different eras, and discusses the production relationship of the unmanned factory and staffing information. When discussing the source of surplus value in unmanned factories, it is considered that there are two labor methods, "human labor" and "intellectual labor", but the labor methods are different, and both labor methods can generate value. In fact, the surplus value of unmanned factories comes from three aspects: one is to squeeze the unnecessary labor of workers in human labor; the other is to squeeze the intellectual labor of scientific researchers that condensed into commodities; From the perspective of surplus value, unmanned factories seek high profits from the difference between the social average product value and the value of individual products produced efficiently. Therefore, Marx's theory of surplus value is applicable to unmanned factories, and the production machines of unmanned factories cannot create value. And it can be seen that the degree of exploitation of workers by capitalists under the unmanned factory mode has not weakened. At the same time, the impact of the unmanned factory model on workers is drawn, that is, the labor value of workers is degraded.

Everything Stays the Same while Everything Changes

Everything Stays the Same while Everything Changes

A Review: Pollinator Services and Its Economic Evaluation

Pollinators are a crucial part of our ecosystem which aids the life of almost all living organisms present in this universe, and their contributions are justifiable according to Paretian efficient conditions. Though the services are an inseparable part of our life, property rights issues have made it difficult to evaluate the real worth of their services by Coase guidelines, the possible externalities they put to this universe, and the actual impact that free raiders have caused. This paper is based on techniques to incorporate those hidden services in economic assessment and policy formulation. For the economic evaluation of their services, we can quantify their values based on people's willingness to pay for the service, which aids in estimating the market value of producer and consumer's surplus, and the cost of the alternate means to achieve the same services, through production factor method, etc. To identify the sustainability of these ecosystem services, the regulation of pesticide use has to be integrated with these services. Farmers should focus not only on monoculture, but also on intensive farming, chemicals, making the least use of GMOs, and following Permaculture techniques in living and cultivation.

A design turn: on post-truth society and the use of design

In a world with deliberate distortion of the reality to create and shape public opinion and influence social attitudes, objective facts, and logical arguments are losing to emotions and personal beliefs. This post-truth world abides by the rules of volatility, fluctuation, and surplus value that in turn, condemn some aspects of the referentiality of language to the law of obsolescence. It is imperative to conduct how this process affects design, and uncover whether it plays a vital part since, to some extent, design involves the cultivation of emotions in the development of solutions. Literature shows that insincerity exists in the design and advertising industry and the fact that the world works in the way that we design it. Therefore, designers must uphold their social responsibility to create a better world. It is shown that emotions are critical drivers of the designs. Also, it is demonstrated that design is a public language that settles objectives, interests, instruments, and affections held individuals to create political competence and dialogue.

Feminist podcasting: a new discursive intervention on gender in Mainland China

ABSTRACT The recent decade has witnessed thriving discourses of feminism on social media in mainland China. Feminist podcasting rose in popularity in 2019. By analyzing 35 podcasts, I sketch a landscape of Chinese feminist podcasting in terms of discussion subjects, content, and business mode. Through close textual analysis of Surplus Value (剩余价值) and Bie Renxing (别任性), supplemented by interviews with three feminist podcasters, I will argue that feminist podcasting combines academic depth and social immediacy, complementing feminist discourse in both academia and popular culture. Its subscription technology offers a bargaining chip to feminist podcasters, perhaps more than any other social media, to negotiate with censoring power. The pleasure of evading and teasing the authorities is not only felt by podcasters but also shared among listeners, leading to a consolidation of the host-audience alliance.

Racial Capitalism and the Border

AbstractWhat is racial capitalism? This is a term that comes up frequently in the articles in this all-too-timely special essay on Exiles, Migrants, and Refugees. With the help of Cedric Robinson, Jodi Melamed, and Robin D. G. Kelley—and loosely modeled on Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s famous definition of racism—this commentary defines racial capitalism as a system for the production of surplus value through the maintenance and exaggeration of human group differences, made possible by the movement of large groups of people. The commentary then considers how this term guides the contributors of this special issue in thinking about a wide range of historical periods, geographical locations, and groups of people as they have experienced, again and again, a physical mobility that has been coerced or compulsory more often than voluntary. As much as racial capitalism might keep such groups apart from others, it also brings them into contact with one another and makes new social relations possible. It concludes with a call for greater attention to climate change and its significance for understanding the growing strength of anti-immigrant populism and the militarization of national borders all over the world.

Financialisation as the development of fictitious capital in developing and developed economies

Abstract In this paper, we discuss financialisation as the development of fictitious capital in more developed and less developed countries. The controversies surrounding the meaning of fictitious capital require a preliminary discussion on its conceptual definition, which is done by means of an analysis of the relationship between real and fictitious capital within the labour theory of value. Once theoretically explained why the relative autonomy of circulation from production supports financialisation as the development of fictitious capital, we focus on the limits of this relative autonomy, which is something objectified in economic crises. Relevant data were gathered to determine how the concentration of financial investments in fictitious capital in a few markets was able to underpin its enormous and lasting development, even though this fictitious capital, by definition, does not generate surplus or new (labour) value. Furthermore, the analysis of net capital flows between developed and developing countries also demonstrates that the latter are net donors of capital. Therefore, it is possible to verify the relationship between the development of fictitious capital and the increase of inequality between countries.

State-of-the-Art Multimodality Imaging in Sudden Cardiac Arrest with Focus on Idiopathic Ventricular Fibrillation: A Review.

Idiopathic ventricular fibrillation is a rare cause of sudden cardiac arrest and a diagnosis by exclusion. Unraveling the mechanism of ventricular fibrillation is important for targeted management, and potentially for initiating family screening. Sudden cardiac arrest survivors undergo extensive clinical testing, with a growing role for multimodality imaging, before diagnosing “idiopathic” ventricular fibrillation. Multimodality imaging, considered as using multiple imaging modalities as diagnostics, is important for revealing structural myocardial abnormalities in patients with cardiac arrest. This review focuses on combining imaging modalities (echocardiography, cardiac magnetic resonance and computed tomography) and the electrocardiographic characterization of sudden cardiac arrest survivors and discusses the surplus value of multimodality imaging in the diagnostic routing of these patients. We focus on novel insights obtained through electrostructural and/or electromechanical imaging in apparently idiopathic ventricular fibrillation patients, with special attention to non-invasive electrocardiographic imaging.

Mapping Racial Capitalism: Implications for Law

The theory of racial capitalism offers insights into the relationship between class and race, providing both a structural and a historical account of the ways in which the two are linked in the global economy. Law plays an important role in this. This article sketches what we believe are two key structural features of racial capitalism: profit-making and race-making for the purpose of accumulating wealth and power. We understand profit-making as the extraction of surplus value or profits through processes of exploitation, expropriation, and expulsion, which are grounded in a politics of race-making. We understand race-making as including racial stratification, racial segregation, and the creation of sacrifice zones, which reflect the strategies and outcomes of profit-making. The structural features of racial capitalism thus are mutually constitutive: profit-making processes create and reinforce the making of racial meaning, while race-making, underwritten by white supremacy, structures and facilitates the economic processes of profit-making. Together, they constitute a global system dependent on the unbridled extraction of wealth from both humans and nature.

L2 grit and language mindsets as predictors of EFL learners’ attitudes toward effectiveness and value of CALL

This article reports on a study that examined the relationship between language learners’ L2 grit and language mindsets and their attitudes toward CALL. The participants of the study were 625 EFL learners (male = 165, 26.4%; female = 460, 73.6%) with the mean age of 24.4 years (SD = 1.74). They were asked to respond to questionnaires on language mindsets, L2 grit, and attitudes toward CALL. The data were analyzed through regression and structural equation modeling (SEM). The results indicated that fixed mindsets predicted the effectiveness of CALL negatively and exhibition to CALL positively, whereas growth mindsets positively predicted the effectiveness of CALL. The results also indicated that persistence of effort positively predicted surplus value of CALL and teacher’s influence on CALL, and consistency of interest predicted degree of exhibition to CALL.

Effects of the rule of law and central bank independence on economic inequality and surplus value

ABSTRACT In this study, panel data, which were obtained from 36 countries, are utilized to empirically explore the factors that affect economic inequality before redistribution through taxes and social security. Our estimations reveal that legal origin influences the resolution of the paradox in which economic inequality before redistribution is high, although redistribution is low. Simultaneously, the Gini coefficient before redistribution can be lowered by strengthening the rule of law in countries with English legal origin, which is not the case in countries with other legal origins. In countries with French legal origins, strengthening the rule of law will increase the redistribution function. Furthermore, the rule of law, as well as central bank independence, can reduce economic inequality. The rule of law exhibits a negative relationship with the rate of surplus value, and the rate of surplus value exhibits a negative association with central bank independence. Simultaneously, the rule of law and central bank independence synergistically reduce economic inequalities. Thus, a weak rule of law, coupled with the absence of central bank independence, will promote monetary easing policies, which favours politicians. Moreover, inappropriate monetary easing policies would increase the control of companies over workers and promote exploitation.

A Model of Economic Growth and Long Cycles

The purpose of this article is to derive an endogenous growth and cycles model that integrates the general law of capital accumulation, the reserve army of labor, technological change, devaluation of capital, and the law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit. The phase space of this model is analyzed by estimating its equilibrium solutions and exploring its economically meaningful stability properties. The so derived endogenous growth-and-cycles model is then simulated with realistic parameter values. The solutions of our model display periodicity, which may be treated as long cycles like attractors conditioned by the long-run movement of profitability. The salient feature of our model is the growth of the rate of surplus value, which becomes the regulating variable of our system for it explains the deviations from equilibrium and at the same time provides a realistic solution to Harrodian instability. JEL Classification: C61, E11, E32, O41

Wordliness, Worlds, And Worlding of Literature

Based on Said’s understanding of literature’s worldliness, Hayot’s concept of literary worlds, and Cheah’s interpretation of worlding, the article – itself an example of “traveling theory” (Said) – proposes to treat world literature in a “secular” perspective, i.e., as an asymmetrical world-system that conditions a transcultural and translinguistic semiosis of literary worlds. The literary world-system, which arises from and is dependent on and responsive to the modern world-system of capitalism (see Warwick Research Collective) channels interliterary exchange in a way that is homologous to the economic inequality between the centers, which are capable of accumulating surplus value, and the peripheries, which enable the global dominance of the centers by providing the market, labor, and resources for the goods produced or distributed by the centers.