Surplus labour is a concept used by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. Karl Marx Karl Marx (May 5, 1818 Trier, Germany – March 14, 1883 London, UK) was an influential German philosopher, political economist, and revolutionary organizer of the International Workingmens Association. ... Political economy was the original term for the study of production and the relationships of buying and selling and their relationship to laws, customs and government. ...
It means labour performed in excess of the labournecessary to produce the means of livelihood of the worker ("necessarylabour").
The historical emergence of surplus labour is, according to Marx, also closely associated with the growth of trade (the economic exchange of goods and services) and with the emergence of a society divided into social classes.
Labour which is sufficiently productive so that it can perform surplus labour is, in a cash economy, the material foundation for the appropriation of surplus-value from that labour.
Socially necessarylabour time in Marx's critique of political economy is what regulates the exchange value of commodities in trade and consequently guides producers in their attempt to economise on labour.
Unlike individual labour hours in the classical labour theory of value formulated by Adam Smith and David Ricardo, the Marxian value is conceived as a fraction (or 'aliquot part') of society's labour-time.
The simplest definition of socially necessarylabour time is the amount of labour time performed by a worker of average skill and productivity, working with tools of the average productive potential, to produce a given commodity.
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