(I should say I'm a :LIB: and am reading the abridged Julian Borchardt version of Capital, so maybe there's an excised chapter that explains this or maybe there's a later chapter that does - I'm currently reading Decade of the Rate of Profit from Part II, chapters 13-15)
It seems that he insists surplus value is directly related to variable capital (i.e. labour), but other than semantically defining it that way, is this necessarily so? From the capitalist perspective how is labour really any different from any other input?
For instance, if one has a theoretical FALSC-style factory with no labour, surely one could still add surplus value to goods?
Imagine whole economy of self-repairing machines. Where would people get money or conversely what would be purpose of exploitation in it? If everything is free, why take human labor at all?
No, its not semantic, it’s the core of the argument of where it comes from. If you take the whole economy, and each production would compensate their workers for products sold, how can you extract profit in it? Let’s say I invest 2 million in restaurant, and pay 200k a month to workers, receiving 400k in sales:
A) I recoup 2 million, continue to pay workers 200k, and start taking 200k to my pocket
B) I recoup 2 million, start paying workers 400k, don’t get profit
Which capitalist would choose?
Of course it’s known, capitalist expects profits and projects it. But argument is without exploitation, there is no profit for capitalist (as a whole)