Surplus Product - Marx's Definition

Marx's Definition

In Das Kapital and other writings, Marx divides the new "social product" of the working population (the flow of society's total output of new products in a defined time-interval) into the necessary product and the surplus product. Economically speaking, the "necessary" product refers to the output of products and services necessary to maintain a population of workers and their dependents at the prevailing standard of life (effectively, their total reproduction cost). The "surplus" product is whatever is produced in excess of those necessaries. Socially speaking, this division of the social product reflects the respective claims which the labouring class and the ruling class make on the new wealth created.

Strictly speaking, however, such an abstract, general distinction is a simplification, for at least three reasons.

• A society must usually also hold a fraction of the new social product in reserve at any time. These reserves (sometimes called "strategic stocks") by definition are not usually available for immediate distribution, but stored in some way, yet they are a necessary condition for longer-term survival. Such reserves must be maintained, even if no other excess to immediate requirements is produced, and therefore they can be considered a permanent reproduction cost, viewed over a longer interval of time, rather than as a true surplus.

• An additional complicating factor is population growth, since a growing population means that "more product" must be produced purely to ensure the survival of that population. In primitive societies, insufficient output just means that people will die, but in complex societies, continually "producing more" is physically necessary to sustain a growing population (this is admitted by Marx in Capital, Volume III, chapter 48 where he writes: "A definite quantity of surplus labour is required as insurance against accidents, and by the necessary and progressive expansion of the process of reproduction in keeping with the development of the needs and the growth of population, which is called accumulation from the viewpoint of the capitalist").

• At any time, a fraction of the adult working-age population does not work at all, yet these people must somehow be sustained as well. Insofar as they do not depend directly on the producers of the necessary product for their maintenance, they have to be sustained from communal or state resources, or by some other means.

The concept of a social surplus product seems very simple and straightforward at first sight, but for social scientists it is actually a quite complex concept. Many of the complexities are revealed when they try to measure the surplus product of a given economic community.