value. Thus, TSSI’ s claim to have returned Marx’ s analysis to wholeness and an analytical totality, casting-off all charges of internal inconsistency against Marx, is blatantly incorrect and screams of ideological bias, from the get go. For example, according to Andrew Kliman,“ TSSI deduces Marx’ s conclusion that surplus labor is the exclusive source of profit— in every case, without exception”[ 1 ]. This is one of the many fundamental premises of TSSI. However, Marx stated, within the logical confines of Capital( Volume 1) that
Capitalist production … in capitalist agriculture is a progress in art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil. Capitalist production … only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process production by simultaneously sapping the original sources of all wealth, the soil and the worker.[ 2 ]
Essentially, according to Marx, wealth, i. e., surplus value, is generated through sapping the soil and workers of value. The soil and the worker are, for Marx, the sole founts of surplus value, that is, for any value, not just the exploitation of labor-time. Consequently, this flies directly in the face of TSSI, but more importantly, this flies directly in the face of Marx, himself, who continually repeats throughout Das Capital that“ labor is the source of all wealth”[ 3 ], i. e., value. The same applies for TSSI, wherefore, repeatedly Andrew Kliman, reminds us that“ value is [ solely ] determined by labor-time”[ 4 ]. This is an internal-logical-inconsistency in Marx’ s analysis, which invariably skews the numbers and his holy trinity of economic equalities, pertaining to the law of value. As a result, once again, we have an internal-logical contradiction, i. e., a logical inconsistency, within Marx’ s analysis, which rattles the Marxist law of value to the core.
This internal inconsistency rattles Marx’ s labor theory of value because when values, i. e., wealth, escape the strict confines of labor-time calculations, the Marxist trinity of economic equalities can go awry. It is for this reason that Kliman has reduced Marx’ s law of value to the strict confines of labor-time in the sense that all sorts of unquantifiable values, derived from the land and soil, devoid of labor-time, can magically augment values and prices, by seeping into the capitalist-system, unannounced and unquantified. Contrary to Kliman, and in line with Marx, it is more appropriate to conceive that capital makes labor and the earth produce, and labor and the earth produce surplus value, due to the fact, contrary to TSSI, the source of surplus value, by Marx’ s own statements, is both the earth and labor-power, not strictly labor-power, itself. This explains why total values and total prices do not equate, or could ever equate, unless huge TSSI arbitrary readjustments are applied to Marx’ s analysis and premises, beginning with his fundamental premise that the soil, i. e., the natural environment, does produce value, value which in some instances is devoid of any labor-time.
For example, in Capital( Volume 2), when Marx was looking for the original source of surplus value found in the market, i. e., the circulation sphere, which could account for the paradox that capitalists receive more value in return to what they inject into the market, on a yearly basis, discovered that the extra surplus value in the market, which is devoid of labor-time, originates from Gold. Namely, that the mineral itself, gold, like labor-power, was throwing more value into circulation, i. e., the market, than the value it was being assigned in return, by capitalists, through the calculation of labor-time within gold production. Meaning, that gold