Surplus Product - Marxian Interpretation of The Historical Origin of The Surplus Product

Marxian Interpretation of The Historical Origin of The Surplus Product

For most of human prehistory, Marxian writers like Ernest Mandel and V. Gordon Childe argued, there existed no economic surplus product of any kind at all, except very small or incidental surpluses.

The main reasons were:

• that techniques were lacking to store, preserve, and package surpluses securely in large quantities or transport them reliably in large quantities over any significant distance;
• the productivity of labour was not sufficient to create much more than could be consumed by a small tribe;
• early tribal societies were mostly not oriented to producing more than they could actually use themselves, never mind maximising their production of output. Thus, for example, the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins estimated that the utilization by tribes of the "carrying capacity" of their habitat ranged from 7% among the Kuikuro of Amazonia to about 75% among the Lala of Zambia.
• different groups of people usually did not depend on trade for their survival, and the total amount of trading activity in society stayed proportionally small.

The formation of the first permanent surpluses are associated with tribal groups who are more or less settled in one territory, and stored foodstuffs. Once some reserves and surpluses exist, tribes can diversify their production, and members can specialise in producing tools, weapons, containers, and ornaments. Modern archaeological findings show that this development actually began in the more complex hunter-gatherer (foraging) societies. The formation of a reliable surplus product makes possible an initial technical or economic division of labour in which producers exchange their products. In addition, a secure surplus product makes possible population growth, i.e. less starvation, infanticide, or abandonment of the elderly or infirm. Finally, it creates the material basis for a social hierarchy, where those at the top of the hierarchy possess pretige goods which commoners do not have access to.