tl;dr-I want to argue that rather than the end of neoliberalism, we are witnessing the restructuring in which it will become stronger than before. This is operated by fictitious capital, which should not be seen as an unproductive excess to the real productive capitalist process, but a vital part of its ability to evolve, adapt, and overcome crisis.
First some background on productive and unproductive labor. Let's take the example of a petty commodity producer. Assume that an hour’s labor produces $1 of value. The producer must undertake 4 hours of labor to reproduce their labor-power. That is the value of their labor-power is $4. They actually work for 8 hours, thereby producing $4 of new value, and so producing a surplus value of $4, embodied within a surplus product. So far, this all falls into the realm of productive labor.
But, the producer also has to spend time sending this surplus product to market, to be sold, and thereby to realize the money equivalent of this surplus value. Let us say it takes 2 hours for the producer to take the commodity to market and sell it. That means that the peasant has a cost of $2 in marketing the commodity, time that is taken up not in production, but in the
circulation of the capital. This is unproductive labor. In fact, the producer has $2 tied up during this time that is not taking part in production, yet this $2 adds nothing to the value of the commodity.
Now, let's imagine a merchant comes along and buys the $8 of output of the peasant producer, for $7(below its value), but is able to sell this output in just half an hour. The merchant is able to make a profit. They sell the commodity at its value of $8, having paid only $7 for it, and having expended just half an hour $0.50 in selling it. Their realized profit is then equal to $0.50. The profit of the merchant derives not from exploiting the producer, but from the fact that they own enough money to do this, and because they can reduce the selling costs of the producer. This is the basis of finance capital and commercial profits. Finance Capital does not produce additional surplus value, but does increase the
mass of realized profit. Not only does it do that, because as above, it frees up the time of the producer to be engaged in production, and thereby creating additional surplus value, it does so, because for industrial capital, i
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