Mike L writes:
Surplus value, in short, is invisible. It is essence. It is a
category discovered with the scientist's instrument, the power of abstraction. Profit, in contrast, is 'the form of appearance of surplus-value, and the latter can be sifted out from the former only by analysis' (Marx, 1981b: 139). Only by the process of proceeding from the concrete to the abstract can we develop an understanding of surplus value (and thus its surface form). Profit, Marx noted, is 'a transformed form of surplus value, a form in which its origin and the secret of its existence are veiled and obliterated.'<
I'd avoid the word "essence." Instead, I'd say that surplus-value is a _shared characteristic_ of industrial profits, commercial profits, interest, and rent. It's invisible but it's there. Without the exertion of surplus-labor (the production of surplus-value), those types of income could not be received except as pure redistributions. The word "essence," unfortunately, has idealist connotations. On the other hand, "shared characteristics" focuses on the real-world, empirical, phenomena without seeing them as mere reflections on Plato's cave wall. There is something in the real world that is shared by these real-world phenomena. I'm tired, so I won't try to emulate Engels by bringing in an analogy from chemistry. -- Jim Devine / "Crime seems to change character when it crosses a bridge or a tunnel. In the city, crime is taken as emblematic of class and race. In the suburbs, though, it's intimate and psychological - resistant to generalization, a mystery of the individual soul." -- Barbara Ehrenreich
