Reading Anti-Oedipus + Capital #7: Axiomatics, The Differential Relations, Constant/Variable Capital and The Rate of Surplus-Value

Anti-Oedipus' Civilized Capitalist Machine and Capitalist Representation & Capital's Constant Capital and Variable Capital and The Rate of Surplus Value. this one was a long one..

Constant & Variable Capital

“That part of capital, therefore, which is turned into means of production[…], does not undergo any quantitative alteration of value in the process of production. For this reason, I call it the constant part of capital, or more briefly, constant capital” (C. pg, 317)

“That part of capital which is turned into labour-power does undergo an alteration of value in the process of production. It both reproduces the equivalent of its own value and produces an excess, a surplus-value, which may itself vary, and be continually being transformed from a constant into a variable magnitude. I therefore call it the variable part of capital, or more briefly, variable capital” (Ibid, emphasis added)

Constant capital is the part that correspond to the means of production, such as the machines and raw materials, that do not change in value during the production process. It only functions to facilitate the production process. Constant capital consists of the resources that remain unchanged in the production process, except for the depreciation because of usage. These elements transfer their value to the final product, yet they do not create new value: The value undergoes a metempsychosis, deserting the consumed body to occupy the newly created one. Their value is simply reproduced into the commodity, passed on(quick note: this reproduction is actually taken into account by the rate of surplus-value as variable capital, that is why, when analyzing the rate of surplus-value, the constant capital is set to zero). The value stays constant. “Constant capital represents that part of the wealth of the capitalist class with which it acquires and maintains a monopoly of property and access to the material means of production. Thereby it cuts the working class off from any possibility of producing its own livelihood in an independent way. It is a necessary precondition for the production of surplus­ value.” (C. pg, 33)

Variable capital is the part that correspond to labour-power. This part of Capital does actually fluctuate and varies in quantity. Unlike constant capital, variable capital does change in value during the production process. It not only reproduces its own value (the worker's wage) but also generates additional value, surplus-value. The ability to generate surplus-value is what makes this part of capital variable. “Only the labour-power of living labour produces additional value, including surplus-value. That is why Marx calls that portion of capital by which the capitalists buy the labour-power of the workers variable capital, for only that portion actually produces surplus-value.” (Ibid).

Basically, constant capital is the means for the production of value, but it does not generate new value. Variable capital, on the other hand, is the source of new value and surplus-value.

Differential Relation

“it is a direct relation between decoded flows whose respective qualities have no existence prior to the differential relation itself. The quality of the flows results solely from their conjunction as decoded flows; outside this conjunction they would remain purely virtual; this conjunction is also the disjunction of the abstract quantity through which it becomes something concrete. Dx and dy are nothing independent of their relation, which determines the one as a pure quality of the flow of labor and the other as a pure quality of the flow of capital.” (AO. pg, 249)

“This is the differential relation Dy/Dx, where Dy derives from labor power and constitutes the fluctuation of variable capital, and constant capital ("the definition of constant capital by no means excludes the possibility of a change in the value of its constituent parts"). It is from the fluxion of decoded flows, from their conjunction, that the filiative form of capital, x+dx, results.” (pg, 227)

This differential relation refers to the connection between the flow of labour (Dy) and the flow of capital (Dx). The quality of these flows does not exist prior to their conjunction in the differential relation. The flow of labour (Dy) relates to variable capital, as we said previously, the labour-power that generates surplus-value. However, in the differential relation, it is stripped of its human quality and reduced to an abstract flow. The flow of capital (Dx) is related to constant capital, although it also includes a dimension of capital that exceeds machinery and materials. The differential relation reveals how capital becomes an abstract force that seeks self-expansion(axiomatics?). Dx and Dy are interdependent; Dx is a quality of the flow of capital, and Dy is a quality of the flow of labour.

In the civilized capitalist machines, different flows, such as those of capital and labour, operate at different "powers," which can be understood as their relative capacity to influence the economic system, such as flows of financing, and flows of means of payment or income. This disparity is a qualitative one that shapes the relationship between the flows. (“Or if one of the flows finds itself subordinated and enslaved to the other, the reason is precisely that they are not to the same power (x and y2 for example), and that the relation is established between a power and a given magnitude” pg, 249.) The usage of the x and y2 illustrates how one flow can be raised to a higher degree of control and magnitude than another. In precapitalist social machines, signs of power were extra-economic(surplus-value of code), this is precisely because the “relations of alliance and filiation are determined as dominant in the so-called primitive societies, where the economic forces and flows are inscribed on the full body of the earth and are attributed to it.” (pg, 248). But, with captalism, these signs of power are directly economic(surplus-value of flux), the attention is not put into the relations of alliance and filiations, but into the fluxes of capital and labour. (“They become coefficients that are directly economic, instead of being doubles to the economic signs of desire and expressing for their part noneconomic factors determined as dominant. That the flow of financing is raised to an entirely different power from the flow of means of payment signifies that the power has become directly economic.” pg, 249). We can thus say that the flow of labour-power (Dy) finds itself subservient to the flow of capital(Dx), because Capital exerts a higher degree of power and magnitude over the flow of labour-power, as it controls the means of production and dictates the terms of employment(“We also saw that, at first, the subjection of labour to capital was only a formal result of the fact that the worker, instead of working for himself, works for, and consequently under, the capitalist.” C. pg, 448). Furthermore, the apparent objective movement of capital shows that the productive essence of the capitalist machine only functions in a necessarily monetary or commodity form that controls it.(“In a certain sense, capitalist economists are not mistaken when they present the economy as being perpetually "in need of monetarization," as if it were always necessary to inject money into the economy from the outside according to a supply and a demand. In this manner the system indeed holds together and functions, and perpetually fulfills its own immanence.” AO, pg, 239). This is why the investments of desire are integrated into the capitalist machine at the most primitive(intense germinal flux???) level: the level of flows. (“The wage earner's desire, the capitalist's desire, everything moves to the rhythm of one and the same desire, founded on the differential relation of flows having no assignable exterior limit, and where capitalism reproduces its immanent limits on an ever-widening and more comprehensive scale” Ibid.) This is one of the reasons that capitalism is built upon a surplus-value of flux, rather than a surplus-value of code.(“capital differentiates itself from any other socius or full body, inasmuch as capital itself figures as a directly economic instance, and falls back on production without interposing extraeconomic factors that would be inscribed in the form of a code.” pg, 249). As the flow of financing is raised to a different higher power than the flow of the means of payment, power has become directly economic, so there is no longer the need to ensure surplus-labour is merged qualitatively and temporally with labor itself into one and the same simple magnitude (the condition characterized by surplus value of flux).

Unlike other social machines, capitalism does not have an exterior limit(The exterior limit of the territorial machine was desiring-production as an absolute limit, which remained an exterior limit. The exterior limit of the barbarian machine was that a single organ might flow outside the despotic body). Instead, capitalism’s limits are imposed internally by Capital itself. Obviously, these limits are not fixed(if they were, they would stagnate the expansionary qualities of Capital), but are continuously reproduced and displaced, allowing the system to expand and evolve. (“it has interior limits under the specific conditions of capitalist production and circulation, that is, in capital itself, but it functions only by reproducing and widening these limits on an always vaster scale. The strength of capitalism indeed resides in the fact that its axiomatic is never saturated, that it is always capable of adding a new axiom to the previous ones.” pg, 250). Yet, capital does indeed have a limit. While capitalism indeed does not have a true exterior limit, schizophrenia is its absolute limit. This is because schizophrenia represents the total absolute decoding of flows, which capitalism, by its nature, seeks to contain and manage through its axiomatic structures, and its signs of power operating at different levels and degrees. (“The flows are decoded and axiomatized by capitalism at the same time. Hence schizophrenia is not the identity of capitalism, but on the contrary its difference, its divergence, and its death. Monetary flows are perfectly schizophrenic realities, but they exist and function only within the immanent axiomatic that exorcises and repels this reality. The language of a banker, a general, an industrialist, a middle or high-level manager, or a government minister is a perfectly schizophrenic language, but that functions only statistically within the flattening axiomatic of connections that puts it in the service of the capitalist order.” pg, 246). Capitalism is the relative limit of all social machines, and schizophrenia is the absolute limit.

Axiomatics

“How then does one explain the fact that capitalist production is constantly arresting the schizophrenic process and transforming the subject of the process into a confined clinical entity, as though it saw in this process the image of its own death coming from within?” (AO. pg, 245).

“It axiomatizes with one hand what it decodes with the other.” (AO. pg, 246).

“Axiomatics are a socio-economic apparatus that captures (reterritorializse) desire in the capitalist world-economy. Axiomatics function as a social machinery by implementing solutions quantitatively, as opposed to codes that have predefined solutions already built into the system. Axiomatics allow for a materialist account of application" by tracing the quantitative flows of the strata.” (Deepak Narang Sawhney’s PHD Thesis, Warwick University. Axiomatics: The Apparatus of Capitalism (1996).

How does the civilized capitalist machine prevent its dissolution into schizophrenia? Axiomatics! Capitalism uses an axiomatic that substitutes for traditional codes. These axiomatics allows capitalism to manage and channel flows, but it also creates internal contradictions and pressures, because to prevent the descent into schizophrenia, capitalism replaces traditional codes or overcodings with a rigorous axiomatic.

The axiomatics operates through abstract quantities and the differential relations we have just seen, because money remains as “an unlimited abstract quantity cannot be divorced from a becoming-concrete without which it would not become capital and would not appropriate production” (pg, 249), money is an “unlimited abstract quantity”, because political economy, thanks to Marx, has discovered an “abstract subjective essence of wealth, in labor or production” (pg, 258), and also, thanks to our Deleuze & Guattari, in desire as well. Money functions as a general equivalent that is indifferent to the specific qualities of flows. (“money as a general equivalent represents an abstract quantity that is indifferent to the qualified nature of the flows.” pg, 248). This abstraction of political economy of money as the unlimited abstract quantity has concrete value because it has a tendency toward concretization, through things like M-C-M’. (“The abstract itself posits the more complex relation within which it will develop "like" something concrete.”, pg, 227). Thus, capitalism transitions from simple quantity to differential relations. As we have seen that the differential relations are interdependent upon one another(although, one may be subservient to another), abstraction, then, shifts from being a variable relation between independent terms, to assuming independence and quality of the terms themselves, thereby influencing the relations' quantity. What were these past variable relations between independent terms? Simple commodity exchange. As it is “simple exchange inscribes commercial products as particular quanta of a unit of abstract labor.” (pg, 226). So, with classical marxism, abstract labour gets divided into qualified pieces to which a given determinate quantum corresponds. Value is often expressed in terms of a single commodity, where the relationship between two commodities might appear accidental. (“The isolated expression of A's value is thus trans­formed into the indefinitely expandable series of different simple expressions of that value.” C. pg, 154).

So, the capitalist axiomatic replaces codes from the territorial/barbarian social machines with axiomatics of abstract quantities in the form of money. This introduction of money into the social field disturbs(deterritorializes) coded and overcoded circuits of qualified flows, because, as we’ve already established, money is the abstract quantity that is indifferent to qualified flows. This general equivalence introduces a relation without limits, namely M-C-M’, because the circulation of money as capital has no limits, because it makes it possible to begin with money and end with even more money, turning the relation endless. This relation disrupts the finite and balanced nature of coded and overcoded flows, decomposing finite blocks of debt and destroying the codified bases of flows. Thanks to this, the capitalist axiomatic allows for direct relations between decoded flows of desire, unlike in other social formations, in which these were indirect relations between qualified flows: thus, the surplus-value of fluxes dethrones the surplus-value of code. But before these direct relations emerge(conjunction), these flows remain purely virtual, existing as potentials without defined qualities nor concrete effects. With the conjunctions of decoded flows, a disjunction between abstract quantities through with these relations become concrete quantities of value.

Axiomatics quantifies problems and solutions by the already talked about method of abstraction, in this way axiomatics differ from codes, they are, instead, stratifying-machines, as Sawhney's PHD Thesis calls them. By quantifying its problems and solutions, the axiomatics “produce abstract change, while codes are always specific about particular outcomes” (A[Axiomatics: The Apparatus of Capitalism]. pg, 71). How? Through technical machines. (“While capitalism thus proceeds by means of an axiomatic and not by means of a code, one must not think that it replaces the socius, the social machine, with an aggregate of technical machines.” AO. pg, 250). These technical machines become part of constant capital, because precisely it does not create value, only transfers it. Let’s remember that “It[the capitalist mode of production] makes the machine responsible for producing a relative surplus value, while embodying itself in the machine as fixed capital.” (pg, 10). (“Marx makes use of this simple principle to show that the regime of technical machines is characterized by a strict distinction between the means of production and the product; thanks to this distinction, the machine transmits value to the product, but only the value that the machine itself loses as it wears out.” pg, 31). The value of technical machines does not increase during the production process, or the axiomatizing process. Technical machines facilitate the process of abstraction and quantification through enabling the measurement and standardization of production, which allows for problems to be quantified and addressed with abstract solutions. Technical machines are essential for the capitalist mode of production because it propels innovation within its own enclosures(internal limits), thus knowledge and specialized education become forms of capital themselves, knowledge capital. (“An innovation is adopted only from the perspective of the rate of profit its investment will offer by the lowering of production costs; without this prospect, the capitalist will keep the existing equipment, and stand ready to make a parallel investment in equipment in another area.” pg, 233). But wait, technical machines do produce surplus-value, machinic surplus-value. (“there is a machinic surplus value produced by constant capital, which develops along with automation and productivity, and which cannot be explained by factors that counteract the falling tendency—the increasing intensity of the exploitation of human labor, the diminution of the price of the elements of constant capital, etc.—since, on the contrary, these factors depend on it.” pg, 232). This does not mean it becomes variable capital, because this surplus value is not inherent to the machines themselves, as opposed to the surplus-value that labour-power creates, which is indeed inherent to labour-power, but arises from their integration into the capitalist system, which lowers production costs and increases profit, through innovations. Because, at the end of the day, it is “not machines that have created capitalism, but capitalism that creates machines, and that is constantly introducing breaks and cleavages through which it revolutionizes its technical modes of production.” (pg, 233). The usage of technical machines leads to a peculiar arrangement, in where labor is made adjacent to the technical machines, which is why, in theory, inscription no longer directly involves people. Deleuze and Guattari argue that Capitalism’s originality precisely resides here, in that the social machine has technical machines as constant capital “attached to the full body of the socius, and no longer men, the latter having become adjacent to the technical machines—whence the fact that inscription no longer bears directly, or at least in theory has no need of bearing directly, on men.” (pg, 251).

The State as the Regulator of Decoded Flows

It is the capitalist State which regulates decoded flows, including innovations by technical machines to ensure they don’t threaten the social field and align with the axiomatics. It completes the becoming-concrete of the abstract Urstaat, through its regulation of decoded flows. (“The capitalist State is the regulator of decoded flows as such, insofar as they are caught up in the axiomatic of capital. In this sense it indeed completes the becoming-concrete that seemed to us to preside over the evolution of the abstract despotic Urstaat: from being at first the transcendent unity, it becomes immanent to the field of social forces, enters into their service, and serves as a regulator of the decoded and axiomatized flows” pg, 252). This axiomatic is not an invention nor result of capital; it is capital itself.

The state has historically maintained a strong hold over the flow of production and mercantile exchange, to prevent its own production to escape State monopoly. Thus, the role of money becomes more attached to control by the State, rather than on commerce itself. Money is fundamentally inseparable from taxes, as the maintenance of the apparatus of the State. So, the State uses money circulation to render debt infinite, subordinating alliances and filiations under the despotic machine. To hide its power, the State dissimulates the dualism of money: money as means of payment and money as financing—which are the two aspects of the banking practice. This dissimulation expresses the capitalist field of immanence, the apparent objective movement where the subordinate form is no less necessary than the other.

The State forms a gigantic enterprise of anti-production within the heart of production itself, which is another determination of the capitalist field of immanence: anti-production being present at the heart of production, that “insinuates itself everywhere in the productive machine and becomes firmly wedded to it in order to regulate its productivity and realize surplus value” (pg, 235). This integration of anti-production into production makes the State capable of realizing capitalism’s supreme goal: to introduce lack where there is always too much, by effecting the absorption of overabundant resources. It’s a double movement: on the one hand, it doubles capital and the flow of knowledge, and the other, it doubles an equivalent flow of stupidity to effect absorption into the axiomatics and invalidate creative singularities.

The State also represses the schizophrenic process that capitalism sets in motion through its decoding of flows, by rendering subjects into clinical entities. The State involves creating neoterritorialities and giving archaic structures current functions: organizing or promoting regionalism or nationalism to create a sense of unity and control, even if these movements sometimes pose challenges to the State itself. Capitalism utilizes the Urstaat(an archaic structure being given a current function) to effect these reterritorializations, the State thus draws on traditional forms of authority and control to manage the contradictions and instabilities of capitalism. (“The paradox is that capitalism makes use of the Urstaat for effecting its reterritorializations. But the imperturbable modern axiomatic, from the depths of its immanence, reproduces the transcendence of the Urstaat as its internalized limit.” pg, 261).

The State adds axioms to manage crises, such as those of market instability, the State plays an upmost important role in regulating axiomatized flows concerning production, the economy, and surplus value absorption. It is always ready to create new axioms for every situation, for every revolution. (“it is always prepared to add more axioms, it adds axioms for many other things besides, things that are much smaller, tiny even, absurdly insignificant; it has a peculiar passion for such things that leaves the essential unchanged. The State is thus induced to play an increasingly important role in the regulation of the axiomatized flows, with regard to production and its planning, the economy and its "monetarization," and surplus value and its absorption (by the State apparatus itself).” pg, 253).

A great example that the State adds axioms to everything is by axiomatizing class struggle, the capitalist axiomatic integrates both the bourgeoisie and the working class in the reproduction of its limits, the bourgeoisie decodes castes and statuses, serving the great mutant decoded flow. The great mutant flow is "cut off from goods". This means the focus is on abstract wealth accumulation rather than traditional forms of enjoyment or consumption, thus the bourgeois field of immanence does away with enjoyment as an end, and it establishes "an unrivaled slavery, an unprecedented subjugation” HA! . As capitalism is born out of the conjunction of the differential relations: it integrates the proletariat and the bourgeoisie through the relationship between the flow of financing(bourgeoisie) and the flow of income of wages(proletariat). The actual theoretical opposition isn’t in class struggles, but between decoded flows entering a class axiomatic on the full body of capital, and decoded flows that free themselves from this axiomatic. “The opposition is between the class and those who are outside the class.” (pg, 255). Therefore, there is only one class, as the concept of class is defined as the negative of codes, and the bourgeois is the primary agent of decoding, actively breaking down codes to increase capital accumulation, thus the bourgeoisie leads the struggle against codes, it merges with the generalized decoding of flows that characterizes capitalism.

Finally, as we’ve discussed previously, the State appropriates desire itself, ensuring that wages, capital, and overall economic activity align with the capitalist field of immanence. This occurs at the level of flows, integrating desire into the capitalist order, remember the surplus-value of flux. To requote: “The wage earner's desire, the capitalist's desire, everything moves to the rhythm of one and the same desire, founded on the differential relation of flows having no assignable exterior limit, and where capitalism reproduces its immanent limits on an ever widening and more comprehensive scale” pg, 239). This appropriation does not occur at the level of ideology, but of desire, because it is achieved through monetary flows and relations. The desire for flows, the differential relationships between flows(payment and financing), and breaks in flows is mobilized by capitalism through previously unknown conditions of money. (“Flows, who doesn't desire flows, and relationships between flows, and breaks in flows?—all of which capitalism was able to mobilize and break under these hitherto unknown conditions of money.” pg, 229). The bank controls the whole system and the investment of desire, this is due to the fact that banking operations extends beyond overseeing the mode of production, but also to financial operations and the specific modes of circulation of credit money. The dualism of money—means of payment and the structure of financing—is expressed best through the banking system, which participates in both. Because through bank credit, it enables a dematerialization of money based on the circulation of drafts rather than physical currency. This credit money passes through a circuit where it gains and loses value as an exchange instrument(means of payment), establishing conditions of flux and reflux that give capitalist form to infinite debt. This is where the State comes in, it ensures the convertibility of credit money through direct ties to gold or indirect centralization, which involves guaranteeing credit, maintaining uniform interest rates, and unifying capital markets. Banks connect commercial capital, financial capital, and industrial capital by allocating capital and resources. They direct financial flows toward productive activities, they also exert selective pressure on technical machines’ innovations within industrial capital.

Merchant and Industrial Capital

Merchant capital is “continually speculating with the maintained territorialities, so as to buy where prices are low and sell where they are high” (pg, 227). Before the civilized capitalist machine, merchant capital is merely a relationship of alliance with “noncapitalist production; it enters into the new alliance that characterizes precapitalist States”. Merchant capital, alongside usurer’s capital, appear before the primary modern form of capital. Merchant capital influences production by turning into an industrialist in occupations based on commerce, or by making artisans into employees. Merchant capital used to exist in the interstices of the pre-existing social body because it is “overcoded and even repressed by the previous characteristics and modes of inscription of a socius considered in its specific mode of production, which knows nothing of and does not recognize abstract labor.” (pg, 227).

Capitalism does not start until capital directly appropriate production and until both financial capital and merchant capital are specific functions corresponding to a division of labor in the capitalist field of immanence. (“But capitalism doesn't begin, the capitalist machine is not assembled, until capital directly appropriates production, and until financial capital and merchant capital are no longer anything but specific functions corresponding to a division of labor in the capitalist mode of production in general. One then re-encounters the production of productions, the production of recordings, and the production of consumptions—but precisely in this conjunction of de-coded flows that makes of capital the new social full body, whereas commercial and financial capitalism in its primitive forms merely installed itself in the pores of the old socius without changing the old mode of production.” pg, 226). Industrial capital is precisely what defines capitalism, as it represents the tighter control over the means of production through its conjunction of decoded flows through a differential relation, which crowns Capital as the new social full body, as it got into the level of flows and desire(remember that the sociuses are differentiated from one another by the way in which they code desire). Industrial capital thus offers a new filiation that is a “constituent part of the capitalist machine, in relation to which commercial capital and financial capital will now take the form of a new alliance by assuming specific functions.”. The principal elements of industrial, as Marx identified them, are the deterritorialized workers, with only their labour-power to sell, decoded money that has become capital and is capable of buying it. Industrial capital sees money as a means to get more money(M-C-M’). This transition occurs when capital becomes filiative instead of alliance capital, which is when money begets money. (“In brief, the capitalist machine begins when capital ceases to be a capital of alliance to become a filiative capital. Capital becomes filiative when money begets money, or value a surplus value—Value in process, money in process, and, as such, capital. Value suddenly presents itself as an independent substance, endowed with a motion of its own, in which money and commodities are mere forms which it assumes and casts off in turn. Nay more: instead of simply representing the relations of commodities, it enters now, so to say, into relations with itself. It differentiates itself as original value from itself as surplus-value” (pg, 227). Thus, as industrial capital is concerned with relations itself, we can see that it is concerned with the differential relations of Dy/Dx. The conjunction of decoded marks the new social body.

This is why D&G say that capitalism is inherently industrial, since it concerns itself with decoded flows, the direct appropriation of production by Capital is what truly defines the civilized capitalist machine, this machine isn’t fully actualized until production is arrogated into Capital and merchant and financial capital become specific functions in its mode of production. Although, being industrial at heart, capitalism functions as merchant capital, because merchant capital is characterized by its “buy low, sell high”, that operates in the sphere of circulation, it is the capital of exchange and circulation; capitalism functions as this to ensure surplus-value through commodity exchange. Although industrial capital is indeed filiative, it can only function through an alliance by commercial and financial capital, because it relies on financial capital for investment and credits(remember the crucial role that the Banks play in the capitalist machine by embodying the dualism of money). Therefore, industrial capital also needs the other types of capital in order to function within its axiomatics.

The Rate of Surplus-Value

“The capital advanced is consequently reduced from c+v to v, and instead of the value of the product (c+v)+s we now have the value produced (v+s). Given that the new value produced = £180, a sum which consequently represents the whole of the labour expended during the process, if we subtract £90 from it, being the value of the variable capital, we have £90 left, the amount of the surplus-value. This sum of £90, or s, expresses the absolute quantity of surplus-value produced. The relative quantity produced, or the ratio in which the variable capital has valorized its value, is plainly determined by the ratio of the surplus-value to the variable capital, and expressed by s/v. In our example this ratio is 90/90, or 100 per cent. This relative increase in the value of the variable capital, or the relative magnitude of the surplus­ value, is called here the rate of surplus-value” (C. pg, 324)

The rate of surplus is the ratio of exploitiation of labour-power by capital. It is the ratio of surplus-value to variable capital (s/v). It does not concern constant capital because constant consists of the means of production, and therefore does not create new surplus-value, variable capital, which is used to purchase labour-power, is unique because labour-power can produce new value exceeding its own value(by being expended for more time than it is paid for). The capitalist pays the worker the value of their labor power but extracts more value from them during the labour process. This difference is surplus-value. Therefore, we can say that surplus-value is created by living labour and represents the unpaid portion of the worker's labour. The rate of surplus-value (s/v) therefore directly reflects the degree to which labor-power is exploited by capital. To simplify, by excluding constant capital from the calculation, the rate of surplus-value isolates the contribution of living labour to the creation of new value, this shows the pure extent to which capital appropriates surplus-labour from workers. (“We know that the value of the constant capital is transferred to the product, and merely re-appears in it. The new value actually created in the process, the 'value-product', is therefore not the same as the value of the product; it is not, as it would at first sight appear, (c + v) + s or £410 constant + £90 variable + £90 sur­plus, but rather v + s or £90 variable + £90 surplus” pg, 321).

Necessary labour refers to the portion of the working day during which the worker produces the value equivalent to the value of their own labor-power, i.e of their wages. Necessary labour-time and labour is the labour and time necesssary to reproduce the value advanced by the capitalist, therefore necessary labour is the labour expended during the necessary labour-time. This labour covers for the cost of their subsistence. Surplus-labour is after the necessary labour ends, but the working day continues(surplus-labour time). It is where surplus-value is produced by the worker, exclusively for the capitalist. The production of this value goes beyond the value of their own labour-power, which is why it is not accounted for in the worker’s wages, and therefore, is a surplus that the capitalist takes. We can then say that surplus-value is a “congealed quantity of surplus labour-time, as nothing but ob­ jectified surplus labour” (pg, 325). The extension of the working day (absolute surplus-value) or the reduction of necessary labour-time (relative surplus-value) increases the amount of surplus labor extracted by the capitalist.

But, the rate of surplus-value is not an expression for the absolute magnitude of exploitation. For example, if the necessary labour = 5 hours and surplus labour = 5 hours, the degree of exploitation is 100%. The amount of exploitation is measured by 5 hours. If, on the other hand, the necessary labour = 6 hours and the surplus labour = 6 hours, the degree of exploitation remains as before 100 per cent, while the actual increase in the amount of exploitation has only been of 20%, namely from 5 to 6 hours.

We can see how the concept of the rate of surplus-value relates to the social and economic axiomatics of the capitalism field of immanence. The rate of surplus-value highlights the disparity between flows of capital(Dx) and labour(Dy), which is not canceled out but continually displaced within capital’s own internal limits, driving the capitalist process. (“It[surplus-value] cannot be defined by the difference between the value of labor capacity and the value created by labor capacity, but by the incommensurability between two flows that are nonetheless immanent to each other, by the disparity between the two aspects of money that express them, and by the absence of a limit exterior to their relationship—the one measuring the true economic force, the other measuring a purchasing power determined as "income."“ AO. pg, 237).

Let’s see this disagreement between the classical Marxist surplus-value and the Deleuzoguattarian surplus-value of flux into more detail. Deleuze and Guattari modify the definition of surplus value in terms of machinic surplus-value of constant capital(remember that technical machines do produce surplus while being constant capital), which distinguishes itself from the human surplus value of variable capital and from the nonmeasurable nature of this aggregate of surplus value of flux. The surplus-value of flux arises from the conjunction of decoded flows and is not limited to human labour-power. Surplus-value of flux acknowledges that machines "work", namely technical machines, and produce value, especially with automation and increased productivity(innovations), as capitalism creates technical machines and introduces breaks and cleavages through which it revolutionizes its technical modes of production. The decoding of flows in capitalism has freed and deterritorialized flows of code, leading to the internalization of these flows within the automatic machine's structure. (“Hence there is a machinic surplus value produced by constant capital, which develops along with automation and productivity, and which cannot be explained by factors that counteract the falling tendency—the increasing intensity of the exploitation of human labor, the diminution of the price of the elements of constant capital, etc.—since, on the contrary, these factors depend on it.” pg, 232).

Surplus-value of flux also emcompasses the duality of money—means of payment and financing. Money as means of payment represents the worker’s wages, impotent money signs of exchange value, a flow of means of payment relative to consumer goods and use values, money here is related with an limited imposed range of products. Money as flows of financing represents the signs of the power of capital, a system of differential quotients of production that bear witness to a prospective force or to a long-term evaluation, it functions as an axiomatic of abstract quantities, it is directed toward the adaptation of flows of production to the disjunctions of capital. Money as means of payment is enclosed within the axiomatic system of capital, which corresponds to the worker. Money as flows of financing is what controls the axiomations of abstract quantities: it determines how much money is given to the worker. There is a fundamental asymmetry between flows of labour and the flows of capital with no assignable exterior limit, they’re incommesurable, and, as we know, capitalism has no exterior limit, only an interior limit that is capital itself, which it reproduces by always displacing; therefore, there is no commensurability or exterior limit between scientific or technical labour(machinic surplus-labour; constant capital; Dx) and the profit of capital(human surplus-value; variable capital; Dy) that inscribes itself with another sort of writing. (“the flows of code that are "liberated" in science and technics by the capitalist regime engender a machinic surplus value that does not directly depend on science and technics themselves, but on capital—a surplus value that is added to human surplus value and that comes to correct the relative diminution of the latter, both of them constituting the whole of the surplus value of flux that characterizes the system.” pg, 234). Thus, knowledge, information, and specialized education are parts of capital, just like the elementary labour of the wage-worker.

Surplus-value of flux is defined by the incommensurability between two flows that are nonetheless immanent to each other. One flow is the immense deterritorialized flow(flow of financing) constituting the full body of capital, described as an instantaneous creative flow that banks create spontaneously as a debt owing to themselves, a creation ex nihilo with a power of mutation that does not enter into income. The other aspect of money represents the reflux(flow of payment), its relationship with goods as soon as it acquires purchasing power through distribution to workers or production factors, through allotment in the form of incomes. This brings us into nominal wages, which fail to embrace the totality of the national income, with a great quantity of revenues escaping wage earners. These revenues are tapped by firms, forming an uninterrupted flow of raw profit, constituting an undivided quantity flowing over the full body. The deterritorialized flow of capital, created by banks, does not enter into the income of wage earners. Instead, wage earners receive a "reflux" in the form of nominal wages, which is the money they can use to purchase goods. Ensuring that nominal wages do not capture the entirety of the economic value produced.

In the surplus-value of flux, no one is robbed! This is because the distribution of salaries (the reflux) creates purchasing power, instead of presupposing it. The finance capitalist represents the "instantaneous creative flow" of capital but does not have purchasing power themselves, this flow is a creation ex nihilo, spontaneously created by banks as a debt. The industrial capitalist represenst the "afflux of profit," but profits don't penalize the flow that creates incomes. (“"Who is robbed?" is the serious implied question that echoes Clavel's ironic question, "Who is alienated?" Yet no one is or can be robbed—just as, according to Gavel, one no longer knows who is alienated or who does the alienating. Who steals? Certainly not the finance capitalist as the representative of the great instantaneous creative flow, which is not even a possession and has no purchasing power. Who is robbed? Certainly not the worker who is not even bought, since the reflux or salary distribution creates the purchasing power, instead of presupposing it. Who would be capable of stealing? Certainly not the industrial capitalist as the representative of the afflux of profit, since "profits do not flow in the reflux, but side by side with, deviating from rather than penalizing the flow that creates incomes." pg, 238).

We can see that classical Marxism primarily attributes surplus-value to the exploitation of human labour(“Only the labour-power of living labour produces additional value, including surplus-value.” C. pg, 33), while Deleuze and Guattari broaden the scope to include machinic contributions(“there is a machinic surplus value produced by constant capital, which develops along with automation and productivity, and which cannot be explained by factors that counteract the falling tendency[…]It seems to us, with the same indispensable incompetence, that these problems can only be viewed under the conditions of the transformation of the surplus value of code into a surplus value of flux.” AO. pg, 232). This machinic surplus value cannot be explained solely by the ratio of exploitation of human labou[the rate of surplus-value] or counteracting factors like increased intensity of labor. In classical Marxism, machines do not create new value but only transfer their existing value. Deleuze and Guattari, as we’ve already said, argue that machines can generate surplus value through automation and increased productivity, because, as we’ve also already said, flows of code in science and technics are subjected to a social axiomatic, specifically the world capitalist market, which is stricter than scientific axiomatics or old codes, so that the introduction of innovations are delayed until the market justifies large-scale exploitation.

Classical Marxism seeks to quantify surplus-value through the difference between the value-product and wages(“The surplus-value generated in the production process by C, the capital advanced[..] The capital C is made up of two components, one the sum of money c laid out on means of production, and the other the sum of money v expended on labour-power; c represents the portion of value which has been turned into constant capital, v that turned into variable capital.” C. pg, 320) whereas Deleuze and Guattari emphasize the incommensurability and non-measurable nature of surplus-value of flux.(“The definition of surplus value must be modified in terms of the machinic surplus value of constant capital, which distinguishes itself from the human surplus value of variable capital and from the nonmeasurable nature of this aggregate of surplus value of flux. It cannot be defined by the difference between the value of labor capacity[wages] and the value created by labor capacity[value-product], but by the incommensurability between two flows that are nonetheless immanent to each other, by the disparity between the two aspects of money that express them, and by the absence of a limit exterior to their relationship—the one measuring the true economic force, the other measuring a purchasing power determined as "income." AO. pg, 237).