The Key Concept of 'Surplus' in Economics
Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff
Democracy at Work
4.8 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 25 November 2025
⏱️ 31 minutes
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Summary
On today's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers an introduction to the key economic concept of "the surplus." He explains economic structures as ways of organizing the production and social distribution of the surplus. Then he briefly applies this concept to the economies of slavery and feudalism before focusing on the role of the surplus in capitalism. Finally, we use the surplus to delineate the ways alternative post-capitalist systems, such as socialism or communism, distribute it.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic |
| 0:26.8 | dimensions of our lives and those of our children. I'm your host, Richard Wolfe. |
| 0:33.5 | Quickly before we jump into today's program, I want to remind you that we have a companion |
| 0:39.1 | book that goes very well with these presentations, gives you a kind of in-depth or background |
| 0:46.1 | to what we do in each weekly program. |
| 0:49.6 | Its book is called Understanding Capitalism, and you can find out all about it by going to our website, |
| 0:56.4 | Democracy at Work.info slash books. And I want to also again remind you that Charlie Fabian |
| 1:04.9 | is awaiting your words about things you'd like to see on the program, problems you see that we could |
| 1:12.5 | address and so on. You can reach them at charlie.info-438 at gmail.com. |
| 1:20.9 | I want to jump in today to a program you have asked me to do about the theory that lies behind much of the work that we do |
| 1:31.2 | on this program. How do we get to collect the information, to assemble it, to organize it, to make |
| 1:39.3 | the presentations that you get as a finished product. |
| 1:44.7 | I'm glad you asked that question. |
| 1:46.2 | I should have done more in the way of theoretical explanation than I probably have done. |
| 1:53.1 | So I stand corrected and I appreciate it, and I'm going to do it today. |
| 1:58.5 | But I'm going to do it around a remark made not so long ago by President Trump. |
| 2:05.2 | He was repeating his often stated denunciation of the socialist candidate for mayor of New |
| 2:13.4 | York, Zoran Mamdani, who the polls that were indicating at the time of Mr. Trump's speech |
| 2:21.3 | would be the likely winner. |
| 2:23.6 | And Mr. Trump went out of his way to denounce him to say things like he would not permit, |
| 2:30.4 | he did not like, he wouldn't allow, as if a democratic decision requires him to allow |
| 2:37.7 | anything in the first place. |
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