My Surplus-Value Theory as a Critique of the Idea That Bataille is a Capitalist

05/15/2021

[NOTE: Read my essay On Marx]

Within the system of capitalism, the excess (or waste) of labor-power’s expenditure takes the form of surplus-value which is the origin of profit. Many have argued that Georges Bataille is a capitalist, but the issue with this claim is the very fact that capitalism, a system of profit, depends on profit for its existence and expansion. The reason this is an issue because surplus-value is therefore an imperative or pure heterogeneity, like fascism, in that the homogeneous system of capitalism is aided by the heterogeneity of surplus-value which is assimilated by the homogeneous system in the form of profit. So labor-power’s expenditure of the proletarian body’s energy (impure heterogeneity) → surplus-value, the excess of labor-power’s expenditure (pure heterogeneity) → profit (homogeneity). Therefore, capitalism is a socially homogeneous system as well as, on a structural level, a system predicated on the assimilation of heterogeneity into homogeneity which is like the unknowable becoming known, an operation Bataille rejected. Thus, Bataille would reject capitalism at its starting points: the production process which requires the expenditure of labor-power, the extraction of surplus-value, and profit.