Labor, Capital, and Surplus Value (Schumpeterizing Marx, Marxisizing Schumpeter)
Labor, Capital, and Surplus Value (Schumpeterizing Marx, Marxisizing Schumpeter)

Summary/Abstract: The legacy that Marx’s critique of political economy has bequeathed us who are thinking in a non-Marxian time, the time of supermodern capitalism, is a contradictory set of problems. Within it, one can criticize both the solutions proposed by Marx and the problems he raised; and first and foremost, what Marx unproblematically assumes to be self-evident. This is precisely what is at stake in my theory of surplus value – clearly incommensurable with Marx’s – that I have long summarized in the aphorism “Schumpeterizing Marx, Marxisizing Schumpeter”. Nevertheless, the theory of structures of mediation – being a critical theory of supermodern capitalism – follows, perhaps with quite a few caveats, the lessons of the revolutionary form of science that Marx has bequeathed us. I’ll say it again: the society we live in is not the one whose historical fate is critically theorized in Capital; nor is it Weber’s “modern capitalism” – what at the beginning of the previous century he called “the most fateful force in our modern life”; we live in supermodern capitalism and our problem is its historical fate; or, to put it more theoretically, its historical limits. My paper proceeds from those traps that the Marxian problematic has set beneath his theories of value and surplus value, goes through the theory of surplus value that I propose in opposition to that of Marx, and, finally, suggests the scenarios which the future has in store for us beyond these historical limits.

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