The idea of “surplus labor” is just a rhetorical trick to avoid taking responsibility for one’s own productivity. It assumes that the worker creates all value and that anything the business earns above wages is “stolen.” But if that were true, then workers could simply pool their labor, form their own companies, and outperform every capitalist firm overnight. They don’t. Not because they’re oppressed, but because labor alone doesn’t create value. Value comes from: • risk • capital investment • knowledge • strategy • coordination • innovation • entrepreneurship If “surplus labor” were real, then the reverse should also be acknowledged: When a company fails, why don’t they ever call it insufficient labor? Why don’t workers say: “We didn’t generate enough value to sustain the business; that’s on us”? Because that would require admitting: • value isn’t automatic • wages are not guaranteed by effort alone • markets judge results, not intentions Most businesses fail. Not because the owners “exploited” the workers, but because the value created wasn’t high enough to sustain both wages and operations. Workers never claim “insufficient labor” because surplus labor was never an economic concept to begin with — it was a moral accusation, designed to: • avoid self-responsibility • frame earning as theft • and justify entitlement to someone else’s success If labor alone created all value, communists wouldn’t need capitalism to leech from. They’d outperform it. They don’t. And that fact alone is the final refutation.