Surplus value always takes the form of a surplus product, but a surplus product does not always constitute surplus value, as I have set out elsewhere. For example, a slave produces no new value, but they produce use values greater than the use values required for their own reproduction. They thereby produce a surplus product. But, this surplus product does not constitute surplus value. The same applies in relation to the physical production of a pack animal, or a machine. If we take a society such as that envisaged by Marx in The Fragment on Machines, where production was fully automated, no new value, and so no surplus value, is produced. But, such an incredibly productive society would produce a huge surplus product.
A peasant who spends 10 hours per day producing use values may only need to spend 8 hours producing the use values required for their own reproduction. The other 2 hours is thereby surplus labour, which results in the production of a surplus product. But, it does not constitute surplus value in the capitalist sense, because the peasant has also expended this additional 2 hours of labour-time. They have not obtained something for nothing, in the way the capitalist does by appropriating unpaid labour. In other words, they do not obtain 10 hours of value having only advanced 8 hours of value in exchange for it, as is the case with the capitalist who advances 8 hours of labour in the form of wages, and obtains in return 10 hours of labour, and so appropriates 2 hours of surplus labour, as unpaid labour.
Marx's example, here, I don't think is correct. He says,
“A product may contain no surplus-value, as, for example, in the case of a peasant who owns his own implements as well as his own land and only works exactly the same amount of time as any wage-worker does to reproduce his own wages, say six hours. In a good year, he might produce twice as much [as usual]. But the value would remain the same. There would be no surplus-value, although there would be surplus product.” (p 370)
But, this is wrong. The surplus value is equal to the new value created less the value of labour-power. Originally, the peasant works for six hours, and creates six hours new value. But, they must work for six hours to reproduce their labour-power. It has a value of six hours, so surplus value is zero. If their output doubles they now reproduce the value of their labour-power in 3 hours (say 10 kilos of corn), whilst they continue to produce 6 hours of new value (20 kilos of corn). So, they, thereby produce not only a surplus product of 10 kilos of corn, but also a surplus value of 3 hours. It arises due to the production of relative surplus value, as the value of their labour-power falls. Its only that this surplus value is still labour they have undertaken not something that comes to them gratis.
Variable-capital, as Marx sets out, in Capital II, consists of the means of subsistence, wage goods, in the hands of the capitalist class. But,
“In itself it was already a mistake on the part of Cherbuliez to represent variable capital in the “passive” and purely material form of means of subsistence, that is, as use-value, a form which it obtains in the hands of the workers. If, on the other hand, he had considered it in the form in which it actually appears, namely, as money (as the form in which exchange-value, i.e., a certain amount of social labour-time as such, exists), then [he would have seen that] for the capitalist it represents the labour which he exchanges for it (and, as a result of this exchange of materialised labour for living labour, the variable capital would be set in motion and would grow); variable capital in the shape of labour—but not if it is regarded as means of subsistence—becomes an element of productive capital.” (p 371)
In other words, as Ramsay correctly observed, the means of subsistence do not themselves take part in the productive process. The value of these means of subsistence do not somehow expand into a greater value during that process. The means of subsistence merely result in the reproduction of labour-power. The labour-power is bought in exchange for those means of subsistence. But, that purchase first takes the form of the payment of money wages, of a certain amount of exchange value equal to a given amount of labour-time.
As Marx says, once viewed in these value terms, rather than in use value terms, it becomes clear that a certain quantity of labour-time buys labour-power of an equal value, but, in doing so, it gains command over a greater quantity of labour, because this labour-power can produce a greater quantity of new value than required for its own reproduction. Its not the means of subsistence that enter the productive process, as productive-capital, but the labour that is bought with those means of subsistence/wages.
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