OK...here's something that's got me stumped: the distinction between "surplus" and "surplus value," especially after the capitalist mode of production. I've read from more than one person now that according to Marx (or at least a particular reading of him), after the capitalist mode of production is abolished, it's possible for production to generate a "surplus" that can be accumulated, but that "surplus value" would no longer exist. My questions are:
(1) Suppose that "surplus" refers to the actual use-values produced over and above what's consumed. Why can't I use the term "surplus value" to refer to the *magnitude* of that surplus relative to some metric (not necessarily money, just to make things looser)?
(2) Say the answer to question (1) is no, for whatever reason. OK, fine. So then we've got a surplus of use-values which is not quantified as "surplus value."
Then I have to ask: well, without this quantification, how am I or whatever organization through which production is rationally planned able to figure out if we're actually producing a surplus or deficit? If it's been decided that production should accumulate for the social reserve fund, how do I determine what the reserve fund contains? Worst of all, how can it be determined if improper accumulation/exploitation hasn't crept in through the back door?
My intuition is that by taking about "surplus" rather than "surplus value" simply emphasizes the experience of production after capitalism -- workers become the subjects and agents of the productive process rather than capital seeming to have those roles -- but that "surplus value" as a measure of what -- IF ANY -- surplus the producers choose to create has to persist.
So that surplus and the measure of that surplus are under the control of the producers, rather than being expropriated from them -- and this control is what's intended by the phrase "transparent economic relationships." In other words not direct production for use, but a division of labor organized by the producers.
Yes? No? Maybe? -- Curtiss
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