[Truth To Power]

When examining the c - m - c circuit, someone might make something to sell it in order to acquire another use value. In such a process, equal values are exchanged and no new value is made.

That's just self-evidently false. The value of what they made was created.

In the capitalist circuit of m - c - m’, the capitalist invests money in production of commodities and ends up with a greater amount of money than they initially had. The question is how do they acquire more than they started with.

By causing value to be produced.

The idea is that in exchange, one cannot create more value although individuals might benefit unequal exchange such as with merchant capital. Individuals profit, but the total isn’t increased, value merely changes places but there is no expansion of value.

Wrong. Total value was increased by production of what was exchanged.

So one looks to commodity production and not exchange for the origins of a surplus in the capital circuit. In examining production Marx considers that workers are paid for their labour power but produce with their labour a surplus product and value over and above their necessary labor for the equivalent in wages to purchase use values to survive.

Gibberish. The only reason to offer workers access to that economic opportunity they would not otherwise have had is to apply their labor to production of value greater than their wages.

I also believe that a surplus is made more clearly in past societies with the peasant or slave working to produce a surplus for a lord or master.

Because like all Marxists, you refuse to know the fact that the slave owner and landowner are not contributory roles, and only take, while the owner of producer goods increases production by his contribution thereof.

The relationship becomes obscured by a focus on equality of exchange but Marx’s maintains an equality of exchange of wages for labour power but recognizing that labour can produce more value than labour power unlike other commodities.

Gibberish.

[Wellsy]

@Truth To Power

[noemon]

In the capitalist circuit of m - c - m’, the capitalist invests money in production of commodities and ends up with a greater amount of money than they initially had. The question is how do they acquire more than they started with.

Only if one beats the equation of net profits after tax when tax alone now represents 40%-50% on revenue and that is without labour, material, energy, rent.

So the modern entepreneur has it quite rough as to sustain surplus value, mountains need to be climbed.

In this regular case, all surplus value and more produced by the merits of a product or more products carefully crafted and directed by said entrepreneur is passed on to the state, and that is in the supposedly most liberal places on earth.

[Truth To Power]

@Truth To Power

Were you under an erroneous impression that that could be of informational or entertainment value to anyone? (Of course, I am aware that its only real purpose is to help you avoid knowing the facts that prove your beliefs are false and evil.)

[Monti]

1- Marxist surplus-value is the difference between the labour value of the product (i.e. labour-time value) and the value of labour (Wage). The problem is that the labour-value does not make sense. In economics, the value is the normal price. But labour value is not the normal price. Marx had to admit this in the book III of « The Capital ». The crux is the process of equalisation of the rate of profit, which prevents selling products at their labour-value. Labour-value is nonsensical because value has no meaning outside the concept of price. But surplus-value is a by-product of labour-value, a corollary. This concept has thus no validity.

2- In Marx’s theory, the wage is the labour-value of labour. Labour is sold at its value as every good. The value of labour is the sum of the labour-values of the commodities consumed by the worker. We can consider this as the labour necessary to “produce” labour. The important fact is that labour is able to produce more value than its own value.

3- Are workers paid the value of their contribution? There are two opposite theories: surplus-value theory tells us that workers are deprived of surplus-value, but I showed that this concept lacks firmness. Marginal product theory tells us that each factor of production receives the equivalent of his contribution. But this theory has many shortcomings.

Here is the link to my article “Does Marginal Productivity Mean Anything in Real Economic Life?” :
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/92239/

[Wellsy]

1- Marxist surplus-value is the difference between the labour value of the product (i.e. labour-time value) and the value of labour (Wage). The problem is that the labour-value does not make sense. In economics, the value is the normal price. But labour value is not the normal price. Marx had to admit this in the book III of « The Capital ». The crux is the process of equalisation of the rate of profit, which prevents selling products at their labour-value. Labour-value is nonsensical because value has no meaning outside the concept of price. But surplus-value is a by-product of labour-value, a corollary. This concept has thus no validity.

This isn’t much of a critique as it simply dismisses the concept of value beyond price merely because there is a concept in which value is reduced to price.

It just poses that there is an alternative view and not against any argument which may be put forth for its existence.

And yes Marx assumes an equivalence of price and value in earlier volumes as a matter of simplified analysis where essentials are abstracted in such a way that it shows details not given with the inclusion of other details. Marx also thinks value and price routinely deviate in actually, which is what the gap emerges in later analyses .
https://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2014/05/03/on-labor-as-the-substance-of-value/

One of Bohm Bawerk’s chief complaints against Marx is that Marx ignores empirical evidence that contradicts his theory of value. BB argues that Marx himself contradicts his own theory of value laid out in volume one of Capital when later in Volume 3 he develops the theory of ‘prices of production’. I explain ‘prices of production’ in the chapter ‘Value and Price’. For now all that needs to be said is that in the theory of prices of production Marx shows how prices systematically deviate from values in the context of competition between capitals. BB sees this as an admission by Marx that in reality prices deviate from values. He takes this to be an empirical counter-factual that brings into question why labor should be the determinant of value.

BB makes repeated claims that Marx began with one theory of value and then later changed his mind when writing volume 3. We now know that Marx actually penned much of volume 3 before beginning work on volume 1. Marx was completely aware of the systematic deviation of prices from values when he introduced the concept of labor as the substance of value in the opening chapters of Capital. Clearly, to Marx, there is no contradiction between value and prices of production. Why does BB see things differently?

The answer to this question lies in the fact that BB is quite confused as to what value is in the first place. BB has conflated value and price. He thinks that Marx is arguing that the magnitude of price is determined by labor time. Thus if there is a systematic deviation of value and price this shows that other factors influence the magnitude of price. Therefor labor time cannot be the exclusive determinant of price.

However this is not Marx’s theory of value at all. Prices of production are prices which deviate from values (the commodity bears a price that is more or less than the labor time that entered into its production.) However prices of production are still a sum of value.

If I trade an apple pie worth 1 hour of labor for a piano worth 100 hours of labor I have sold my apple pie for far above its value. However both apple pie and piano are sums of value. The reason we can say that the exchange was an unequal exchange is because we know that both commodities have a value outside of their exchange value. Price is just a special form of exchange value, the exchange value of any commodity with the money commodity. If I trade my apple pie with money representing 100 hours of labor time then the same unequal exchange has taken place. And, once again, both the apple pie and the money represent sums of value.

If Marx had merely said that labor time is the primary determinant of commodity values then we could easily prove or disprove his theory with empirical studies of prices in relation to labor inputs. But Marx’s argument that labor is the substance of value is a different beast entirely. All money prices represent sums of value. These prices can be above or below the actual labor content of a commodity. This can happen through unequal exchange. It can happen through imbalances of supply and demand. And this happens systematically with prices of production. Regardless, none of these deviations stop prices from being sums of value or stop labor from being the content of this value.

What then can be done to empirically verify Marx’s theory of value? I do not believe there is any knock-down empirical proof that labor is the substance of value. However, the argument that labor is the substance of value suggests several tendencies/phenomena that can be empirically judged, to an extent. For one, even though prices systematically deviate from values this is a systematic deviation. They do so in a predictable way. This means that there are still correspondences between value and price. The chief correspondence is the fact that a decrease in labor time per unit produced (increases in efficiency) leads to falling unit prices. This is a prediction based on Marx’s theory of value and it is a prediction that is quite obviously borne out empirically again and again. Everyone is aware that commodity prices fall as labor becomes more productive.

[Monti]

The important sentences in the text of Wesley aere:
- "However prices of production are still a sum of value"
- "And, once again, both the apple pie and the money represent sums of value"
****
Marx imagined a concept of value different of the price of production, the name he gave to the normal price. From this labour-value, he deduced that only labour creates value and that labour is exploited because labour is deprived of the surplus-value.

But it is possible to explain the whole system of price, profit and wage without introducing labour-value and surplus-value. I could create a new concept, the weight of iron present in a product, which I name "sproutch" and observe that the sproutch included in wages is less than the sproutch produced by workers and conclude that they are exploited, because capitalists seize"surplus-sproutch". Marx's theory of exploitation is coherent, but coherent inside a conceptual world that comes from his imagination.

In Marx's theory, profit results from the redistribution of surplus-value. But surplus-value is an unnecessary concept. Profit could also result from the redistribution of the "surplus-sproutch".

[Wellsy]

The important sentences in the text of Wesley aere:
- "However prices of production are still a sum of value"
- "And, once again, both the apple pie and the money represent sums of value"
****
Marx imagined a concept of value different of the price of production, the name he gave to the normal price. From this labour-value, he deduced that only labour creates value and that labour is exploited because labour is deprived of the surplus-value.

But it is possible to explain the whole system of price, profit and wage without introducing labour-value and surplus-value. I could create a new concept, the weight of iron present in a product, which I name "sproutch" and observe that the sproutch included in wages is less than the sproutch produced by workers and conclude that they are exploited, because capitalists seize"surplus-sproutch". Marx's theory of exploitation is coherent, but coherent inside a conceptual world that comes from his imagination.

In Marx's theory, profit results from the redistribution of surplus-value. But surplus-value is an unnecessary concept. Profit could also result from the redistribution of the "surplus-sproutch".

You make the distinction of labour power and labour seem like a random and arbitrarily selected one.
My impression is that Marx makes a critique of mercantilism in that it can only produce unequal exchange as trade is not the source of expanded value in capitalism. It moves values around but the total amount of value is no greater, so he looked to production for some source of expanded value.

And labor intuitively is able to create a surplus above the wage necessary for the worker. This is quite clear in the case of past societies where the surplus is more explicit like the serf working land specifically for their lord and not themselves some part of the day. So one would have to argue against the notion that a surplus of labor is impossible to properly debase the emphasis on labor as the source of new and expanded value. Or perhaps argue how some other commodity or process is able to produce new value above itself. All societies labor, but labor has a particular social form in capitalism, work for a wage. This also makes a characterization where capital invested is also simply equivalent to what it purchases, they can get ripped off perhaps but that doesn’t create new value either and yet capitalists get profits and shareholders dividends where they explicitly benefit with no labor in the process.
https://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2014/04/28/intrinsic-value/

Unequal Exchange

Marx’s distinction between value and exchange value also allows us to theorize unequal exchange. What happens if commodity A worth 1 hour of labor exchanges for commodity B worth 2 hours of labor? Obviously the owner of commodity A wins out! We have two different sums of value, 1 hour and 2 hours. The exchange value of A is 2 hours and the exchange value of B is 1 hour. The exchange values are different than the values. When A trades for more than its value the owner of A receives a greater sum of value in exchange. The opposite happens for the seller of B who receives a lesser sum of value. We could not theorize unequal exchange without a concept of intrinsic value. For Bailey an exchange ratio is just an exchange ratio and it cannot be more or less equal or unequal because there is no intrinsic value being measured in the exchange process.

This distinction comes in handy later when we discuss deviations of price from value. Price after all is just the exchange value that a commodity has when it exchanges with money. Just as a commodity is a sum of value, so is money. [Footnote on money commodity and MELT] If a commodity’s price is greater than its value then the seller receives a greater sum of value in exchange than she parts with. Sometimes critics of Marx point to price-value divergences as if such divergences prove that value is being created by something other than the labor that created the commodity. But, as we have seen from the simple example of unequal exchange in the previous paragraph, labor has created the value of A and B. Whatever social forces have caused the exchange to be unequal (monopoly, imbalance in supply and demand, dishonesty, etc.) are not creating value. They are merely causing an unequal exchange to take place. This unequal exchange is still an exchange of two sums of value value created by labor. Such a distinction would not be possible with Bailey’s notion of relative value. But with Marx’s clear division between value and exchange value we can easily theorize how an exchange value can be different from a commodity’s intrinsic value while still holding to the idea that labor is the sole source of value.
…
3]

“…Bailey is a fetishist in that he conceives value, though not as a property of the individual object (considered in isolation), but as a relation of objects to one another, while it is only a representation in objects, an objective expression, of a relation between men, a social relation, the relationship of men to their reciprocal productive activity.”

In regards to the source of profit, most you’ll hear is revenue - expenses and little analysis of the components of production which is kind of left s a black box with inputs and outputs. Labour power is simply dismissed or left out of the analysis and so the question of its origin’s isn’t given much attention, it simply is.
And the observation of price in relation to supply and demand isn’t misplaced but still superficial.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/pilling/works/capital/pilling4.htm#Pill5

For Hegel a concept was primarily a synonym for the real grasping of the essence of phenomena and was in no way limited simply to the expression of something general, of some abstract identity discernible by the senses in the objects concerned. A concept (if it was to be adequate) had to disclose the real nature of a thing and this it must do not merely by revealing what it held in common with other objects, but also its special nature, in short its peculiarity. The concept was a unity of universality and particularity. Hegel insisted that it was necessary to distinguish between a universality which preserved all the richness of the particulars within it and an abstract ‘dumb’ generality which was confined to the sameness of all objects of a given kind. Further, Hegel insisted, this truly universal concept was to be discovered by investigating the actual laws of the origin, development and disappearance of single things. (Even before we take the-discussion further, it should be clear that here lay the importance of Marx’s logical-historical investigation of the cell-form of bourgeois economy, the commodity.) Thought that was limited to registering or correlating empirically perceived common attributes was essentially sterile – it could never come anywhere near to grasping the law of development of phenomena. One crucial point followed from this which has direct and immediate importance for Capital. It was this: the real laws of phenomena do not and cannot appear directly on the surface of the phenomena under investigation in the form of simple identicalness. If concepts could be grasped merely by finding a common element within the phenomena concerned then this would be equivalent to saying that appearance and essence coincided, that there was no need for science.

Price often gets explained by past prices, its own origins is left mystical.
https://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/bukharin-on-the-subjectiveobjective-value-debate/

This leads to Bukharin’s central critique of the Austrain school, a point he will repeat in many forms throughout the book: that the theory of marginal utility is inherently circular in its logic. Our estimations of value are always based on a pre-existing world of prices. Our value estimates are not just based on an abstract desire for the use-value of commodities. Commodities also have exchange-values and these are very much in our mind when we form our preferences. It is circular reasoning to insist that subjective preferences determine exchange value when exchange value also determines subjective preferences.
…
The second thing I like about Bukharin’s point here is his critique of the “historical” defense of circularity. It could be argued that circularity of subjective value theory is not a theoretical problem because this pre-existing world of prices is itself the result of subjective decisions, and those decisions were based on a previous set of prices themselves the result of another past set of decisions, and so on, resolving the problem of circularity to merely a historical description of the movement of prices… Indeed Bohm-Bawerk uses such an approach to explain “substitution prices” and later the Austrian von Mises would use this historical method to create an Austrian theory of the value of money. Bukharin objects. He says that this is actually an abandonment of theory, replacing theory with mere idiographic depictions. Merely stating that events happen in historical succession does not prove anything about causation, does not prove any essential economic laws. (3)

[Monti]

Following Marx, only labour creates new value; capital does not. What is the justification of this assertion? It is the theory of labour-time value that Marx thought to have found in classical political economy. So, you cannot argue of all value being created by labour to prove that the concept of labour-value is a sensible concept. It would be a circular reasoning.

It is possible to state a theory based on capital symmetrical to Marx's one. The use of capital is a character present in every production. Let us than state that the value of the product is proportional to capital used (not less true than the same with labour). So we have defined the "capital-value" of commodities. But the capitalist gets an interest that contains less capital-value than the value of the product. So the capitalist is exploited by the entrepreneur or by the wage earner. This theory is as false as Marx's one. It is perfectly symmetrical. If one is valid or erroneous, the other one is also.

When we speak of value in this debate, it is always exchange value. But another concept is use-value. Indeprendently of the theory of exchange value we adhere to, it is clear that both capital and labour contribute to use-value. And as Marx admitted, there is no exchange value without use-value.

I would add that Marx was wrong in asserting that Ricardo believed in the labour-value theory. For Ricardo, it was only an approximation. Following him, the period of production influences the exchange value. It was a means to introduce capital in the theory of value.

Paul Samuelson's analysis:
https://cooperative-individualism.org/samuelson-paul_understanding-the-marxian-notion-of-exploitation-1971-jun.pdf

[Wellsy]

Following Marx, only labour creates new value; capital does not. What is the justification of this assertion? It is the theory of labour-time value that Marx thought to have found in classical political economy. So, you cannot argue of all value being created by labour to prove that the concept of labour-value is a sensible concept. It would be a circular reasoning.

I can vaguely guess your reasoning for your conclusion here as you don’t unpack your sense of Marx that much. But there are reasons in treating labour as significant as it is integral to Marx’s conception of humans and isn’t arbitrarily selected.
[url]d-scholarship.pitt.edu/10867/1/VWills_ETD_2011.pdf[/url]

The first premise of all human existence and, therefore, of all history, [is that humans] must be in a position to live in order to be able to "make history". But life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself. And indeed this is an historical act, a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life24

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/en/jordan2.htm

For the understanding of Marx a different point is, however, important. The Marxian conception of nature, of man, and man’s relation to nature disposes of many traditional epistemological problems. Marx neither needs to prove existence of the external world, nor disprove its existence. From his point of view both these endeavours are prompted by false assumptions concerning the relation of man to nature, by considering man as a detached observer, setting him against the world or placing him, as it were, on a totally different level. For man, who is part of nature, to doubt the existence of the external world or to consider it as in need of proof is to doubt his own existence, and even Descartes and Berkeley refused to go to such a length.
This conclusion is of considerable significance for the interpretation of Marxian philosophy. As Marx refused to dissociate nature from man and man from nature and conceived man not only as part of nature but also nature in a certain sense as a product of man’s activity and, thus, part of man, Marx’s naturalism has no need of metaphysical foundation.

Labor is the precondition of human existence at every stage, but it takes a particular form where workers do not produce things for their use value but work for an employer to get money in order to acquire use values.
To treat labor as somehow insignificant ant is to render human life an absurdity.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1868/letters/68_07_11-abs.htm

Every child knows a nation which ceased to work, I will not say for a year, but even for a few weeks, would perish. Every child knows, too, that the masses of products corresponding to the different needs required different and quantitatively determined masses of the total labor of society. That this necessity of the distribution of social labor in definite proportions cannot possibly be done away with by a particular form of social production but can only change the mode of its appearance , is self-evident. No natural laws can be done away with. What can change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws assert themselves. And the form in which this proportional distribution of labor asserts itself, in the state of society where the interconnection of social labor is manifested in the private exchange of the individual products of labor, is precisely the exchange value of these products.

This is a premise that humans have always labored but assumes a particular form under capitalism. Here I have not shown the connection of labor to surplus value but emphasize its necessity.

It is possible to state a theory based on capital symmetrical to Marx's one. The use of capital is a character present in every production. Let us than state that the value of the product is proportional to capital used (not less true than the same with labour). So we have defined the "capital-value" of commodities. But the capitalist gets an interest that contains less capital-value than the value of the product. So the capitalist is exploited by the entrepreneur or by the wage earner. This theory is as false as Marx's one. It is perfectly symmetrical. If one is valid or erroneous, the other one is also.

This sounds very much a fixation on a formal symmetry and simply disregards an analysis of production. A bit like the corn theory of value criticism. Which treats the value theory of Marx is simply a mathematical or quantitative approach-and misses his sociological critique otherwise one entirely ignores his criticism of commodity fetishism where objects are treated as having qualities which are actually the activity between people mediated by commodities.

The position of labor and a possible surplus is intuitive but I don’t see how capital itself can be framed as exploited between some necessary and surplus in production in the same manner. Again, the very issue of exchange as being between equivalents and at most only producing unequal exchange emphasizes that the shift between money and a commodity doesn’t create new value.

Marx maintains such equivalence of exchange in distinguishing labour power from labor performed. The capitalist pays a wage for labour power not labor and saw the law of equal exchange prevails but the use value of labour power creates value and can produce more than its own worth.

Does a concept of capital power make any sense in production? Is there a gap between potential capital or its capacity for exchange and actual exchange creating a surplus? No, capitals or moneys function is precisely in exchange and that alone, it does not create more value except to the fictitious capitalist speculators.
I can’t see it the surplus between not having yet exchanged money for tools and materials of production and having done so. Money trades for its equivalent and makes no mew value.

So in emphasis of value is that one pays workers, one does not pay a wage for machines, materials or even live stock to work, they are owned outright if not rented. And one can be ripped off but this point says nothing for the basis of growth in value through labour above labour power compared to a a shift in gains and loss of value of unequal exchange.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch06.htm

The change of value that occurs in the case of money intended to be converted into capital, cannot take place in the money itself, since in its function of means of purchase and of payment, it does no more than realise the price of the commodity it buys or pays for; and, as hard cash, it is value petrified, never varying. [1] Just as little can it originate in the second act of circulation, the re-sale of the commodity, which does no more than transform the article from its bodily form back again into its money-form. The change must, therefore, take place in the commodity bought by the first act, M-C, but not in its value, for equivalents are exchanged, and the commodity is paid for at its full value. We are, therefore, forced to the conclusion that the change originates in the use-value, as such, of the commodity, i.e., in its consumption. In order to be able to extract value from the consumption of a commodity, our friend, Moneybags, must be so lucky as to find, within the sphere of circulation, in the market, a commodity, whose use-value possesses the peculiar property of being a source of value, whose actual consumption, therefore, is itself an embodiment of labour, and, consequently, a creation of value. The possessor of money does find on the market such a special commodity in capacity for labour or labour-power.
By labour-power or capacity for labour is to be understood the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description.

When we speak of value in this debate, it is always exchange value. But another concept is use-value. Indeprendently of the theory of exchange value we adhere to, it is clear that both capital and labour contribute to use-value. And as Marx admitted, there is no exchange value without use-value.

Machines, tools and other materials are necessary to the production of specific use values but this isn’t saying much about capitalist production for profit however as humans of course have always labored to produce as much but the issue is how profit comes from production. And the investment in other commodities doesn’t show itself as producing new value on the face of it like labour power which outs to use such material factors of production to change commodities into new more valuable forms.

I would add that Marx was wrong in asserting that Ricardo believed in the labour-value theory. For Ricardo, it was only an approximation. Following him, the period of production influences the exchange value. It was a means to introduce capital in the theory of value.

Paul Samuelson's analysis:
https://cooperative-individualism.org/s ... 71-jun.pdf

I don’t quite follow in disbelief of a labor theory of value and the sense that it is only an approximation. So he found it analytically useful but disagreed with it? Seems more convoluted than the sense he tried to earnestly bring the law of value as based upon value in connection to other areas of the economy so all would be subsumed by it in principal but experienced difficulties when theorizing rent. He even disregarded with international competition with the idea of interest rates reaching some natural rate that would eliminate temporary flows of capital into a more productive country.

[Truth To Power]

1- Marxist surplus-value is the difference between the labour value of the product (i.e. labour-time value) and the value of labour (Wage).

I.e., the additional value caused by the contribution of producer goods by their owner, use of the locational advantages provided by government, the community and nature (which the landowner does not contribute but is legally privileged to charge for), and the producer's labor of arranging for all the factors to be applied to the production process.

The problem is that the labour-value does not make sense.

That is the uniform problem with all of Marxism: it is a towering, elaborate edifice of anti-concepts contrived to prevent use of concepts based on fact, logic, and reality.

In economics, the value is the normal price. But labour value is not the normal price. Marx had to admit this in the book III of « The Capital ».

Where he also had to admit that it is the landowner, not the factory owner, who takes all the profit that results from exploitation of the worker.

The crux is the process of equalisation of the rate of profit,

A process that does not exist.

which prevents selling products at their labour-value. Labour-value is nonsensical because value has no meaning outside the concept of price. But surplus-value is a by-product of labour-value, a corollary. This concept has thus no validity.

A roundabout way of arriving at the fact that "surplus labor value" is nothing but a Marxist anti-concept.

2- In Marx’s theory... The value of labour is the sum of the labour-values of the commodities consumed by the worker.

That is of course just baldly false, and has no basis in fact, logic or economics.

We can consider this as the labour necessary to “produce” labour. The important fact is that labour is able to produce more value than its own value.

When aided by the contributions of producer goods by their owner, the locational advantages by government, the community and nature, and the employer's arranging for all the factors to be applied to production.

3- Are workers paid the value of their contribution? There are two opposite theories: surplus-value theory tells us that workers are deprived of surplus-value, but I showed that this concept lacks firmness.

It lacks validity.

Marginal product theory tells us that each factor of production receives the equivalent of his contribution. But this theory has many shortcomings.

Most notably the fact that being legally entitled to charge for permission to use a factor is very much not the same thing as contributing that factor. Government could name a private owner of the earth's atmosphere, as it has named private owners of land and other natural resources, and its owner could then charge everyone else the market rent for permission to breathe -- i.e., everything they own or will ever own. That would not mean the atmosphere's owner was contributing the atmosphere, any more than landowners contribute the land nature provided.

Here is the link to my article “Does Marginal Productivity Mean Anything in Real Economic Life?” :
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/92239/

It means that mainstream neoclassical economics considers being legally entitled to deprive the productive of what they would otherwise have, such as atmospheric air, land, or use of the alphabet -- is the same as contributing it to the production process.

[Truth To Power]

You make the distinction of labour power and labour seem like a random and arbitrarily selected one.

No. It is a deliberately disingenuous, deceitful, and dishonest one.

My impression is that Marx makes a critique of mercantilism in that it can only produce unequal exchange as trade is not the source of expanded value in capitalism. It moves values around but the total amount of value is no greater, so he looked to production for some source of expanded value.

But of course, Marx's claim is objectively false. Value is by definition what something would trade for. Usually, it is very close to price. When a merchant can buy something in one market and sell it for significantly more in another, obtaining a profit, he is creating the additional value through arbitrage. Normally there are costs associated with transferring the item between markets, including the risk that the item will not sell for enough to recoup the expense of moving it to the other market. These costs reduce the profit obtained.

And labor intuitively is able to create a surplus above the wage necessary for the worker.

As is investment in producer goods and access to opportunities like better quality land, which employers arrange for workers.

This is quite clear in the case of past societies where the surplus is more explicit like the serf working land specifically for their lord and not themselves some part of the day. So one would have to argue against the notion that a surplus of labor is impossible to properly debase the emphasis on labor as the source of new and expanded value.

No, that is just another Marxist non sequitur fallacy. In a condition of nature, a day's labor might produce a day's consumables. But if the worker has secure, exclusive tenure (provided by the local government) on some suitable land, the same day's labor might produce two or three days' consumables. The additional value has indisputably been created by government, not the worker. Similarly, if an investor provides the worker with some simple farm tools, the exact same day's labor might now produce five or ten days' consumables. The additional value has indisputably now been created by the investor, not the worker. And when it is an employer who arranges for the worker to get access to both the land and the tools, it is the employer who is creating the additional value produced, not the worker. The worker is merely providing one factor whose value is determined by the market.

Or perhaps argue how some other commodity or process is able to produce new value above itself.

See above for the proof that those who provide the worker with opportunity he would not otherwise have had are the ones creating the additional value, not the worker.

All societies labor, but labor has a particular social form in capitalism, work for a wage.

No, wages -- the returns to labor -- exist in all economies and all human societies. Capitalism differs from other economic systems in having a large population of nominally free but landless workers who, to survive, must labor for employers just to get access to economic opportunity -- land and other natural resources -- that would otherwise have been available.

This also makes a characterization where capital invested is also simply equivalent to what it purchases, they can get ripped off perhaps but that doesn’t create new value either and yet capitalists get profits and shareholders dividends where they explicitly benefit with no labor in the process.

No, that is false. See above, where I proved that when a worker uses producer goods that enable increased production, it is the investor who contributed those producer goods who increases the value produced, not the worker, who is performing no more labor than before. The investor has merely made the worker's labor more productive. Likewise, when government grants the worker secure, exclusive tenure at a suitable location, it is not the worker who has increased the productivity of his labor thereon, it is government. To deny such indisputable facts of objective physical reality is self-evidently not only absurd, but dishonest and evil -- i.e., Marxist.

In regards to the source of profit, most you’ll hear is revenue - expenses and little analysis of the components of production which is kind of left s a black box with inputs and outputs.

Of course that is baldly false, as proved above, where I provided the objectively correct analysis showing how the employer, investor, and government, as well as the worker, contribute to the value produced. The only one who does not contribute anything to production is the landowner (the land was already there anyway), who is just legally entitled to pocket the lion's share of the value produced by workers, investors, government and employers.

Labour power is simply dismissed or left out of the analysis and so the question of its origin’s isn’t given much attention, it simply is.

"Labor power" is nothing but an absurd and invalid Marxist anti-concept contrived to prevent use of the valid concept of the additional value created by the contributions of government, employers, and investors to production rather than workers.

And the observation of price in relation to supply and demand isn’t misplaced but still superficial.

There is nothing superficial about it any more than F=MA is superficial.

<absurd and disingenuous Marxist garbage snipped>

Price often gets explained by past prices, its own origins is left mystical.

Garbage. Past prices are just a convenient way to measure the intersection of supply and demand without having to construct individual supply and demand curves every time.