So, we have £10,000 (1,000 tons) of seed (c) and £10,000 (1,000 tons) of corn as wages. But, the output is £30,000 (3,000 tons) of corn – the advantage for illustration, here, is that the corn and the seed are the same thing – giving a surplus-value of £10,000, represented by 1,000 tons of corn/seed. As described above, in relation to the surplus product of 1,000 tons, it is partly attributable to Nature, and partly to labour. Think of Nature existing prior to the existence of Man, and so of labour. The universe evolved in accordance with a set of natural laws. It is not that additional matter and energy was created, but that existing matter and energy was transformed by these processes.
If we take the Earth, then, these same processes result in the development of organic matter, and from which organic life arises. Take, in this early Earth, a field containing grass. The grass produces grass seed, and the seed is spread across the land, so that, even millennia before the existence of Man or labour, what began, as say, 1 ton of grass seed, quickly becomes 10 tons of grass seed. It arises, not magically out of thin air, as the Physiocrats portrayed it, but as a result of the chemical transformation of matter and energy in one form to another. The surplus product – the multiplication of 1 ton of seed into 10 tons – is not really a surplus product at all, but a localised transformation of chaos and disorder into order. A process of self-organisation.
Long before settled agriculture, this natural transformation of chaos and disorder into order and structure created all of those free gifts of Nature. Because they were the free gifts of Nature, and often provide the greatest use-value, they simultaneously, had no value. The air we breathe has the greatest use-value, because, without it, we could not exist. But, it has no value. Nature provides it gratis. The same with water.
What Labour does is to facilitate the localised transformation of disorder into order. What appears as a surplus product is really just an increase in the quantity of use-values, the things that we determine as useful, but is really just, at the same time, a consumption of other use-values, which are less useful to us in their disordered, natural state.
As Marx sets out, in Capital I, the free gifts of Nature have no value other than use-value. Value is only created by labour, or, more correctly, value is labour. Similarly, surplus-value is, then, surplus labour. Surplus labour itself can be seen as part of this process of turning disorder into order. If there was no surplus labour performed, for one thing, populations could not grow, and, given that it is the existence of humans (and possibly other intelligent life-forms, elsewhere) that is the most effective means of transforming disorganised matter and energy into organised structures, it is that expansion of population that represents the most effective means of such transformation, even though humans have existed for only a blink of an eye, compared to the age of the Universe.
I wrote about this some time ago, in response to one of Brian Cox's TV programs, and I was interested to see, later, that he has changed his own opinion on the matter, wondering what the existence of intelligent life existing for billions of years could achieve in manipulating matter and energy on a cosmic scale.
Secondly, it is only the existence of surplus labour that enables a part of current production to be set aside so as to expand production in the next and subsequent years. That may be just additional seed that can be planted, or it may be the production of tools and so on that enable production itself to be more efficient so that a greater quantity of disorganised matter and energy can be transformed into new organised structures.
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