Biopolitics and the Problem of Surplus Population

Marx defined the value of labour power by the labour time socially necessary for its reproduction.But reproduction of labour time requires more than just the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of the power of an individual life, because labour power is to be reproduced beyond the living individual, at the scale of the population. Therefore,the value of labour power has a biopolitical dimension, which can be read through Marx's comments on biological reproduction of the workers, the inevitable exhaustion of the individual labour power, the mortality, death, and birth rate in the workers' families. The paper claims that if we take into account that biopolitical dimension, the value of labour power would depend also on surplus population. Building on that, I will try to demonstrate, in the context of fake news production, that the surplus labour channeled by the social media has transformed the biopolitical apparatuses of security into relays crucial to the operation of the labour market, and in that sense, that the reproduction of labour power has become productive, production and exploitation have become coextensive with life.