The organism–environment boundary of capital

Clair Quentin

Chapter 5 in Capital, Revenue and the Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics of Value, 2026, pp 67-83 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter anatomizes the distinction between workers who produce surplus thermodynamic depth and workers who absorb it; a production boundary which is comparable to the one drawn by the classical political economists. The key difference between that production boundary and received Marxist doctrine on unproductive labor is that all labor not quantitatively implicated in the output at the point of exchange is outside the boundary, rather than only such other labor that also falls to be treated as forming part of the ‘sphere of circulation’. The production boundary described in this chapter is characterized as constituting, on a social level, the organism–environment boundary of the production of commodities by means of commodities understood as a ‘xenobiological’ entity.

Keywords: Value; Productive Labor; Unproductive Labor; Dematerialized Economy; Services; Production Boundaries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035359998
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