Energy, surplus and the economic process

This paper analyses the economic process through the concept of surplus, combining insights from ecological economics, Marxist political economy and anthropology. Humans, we argue, appropriate surplus energy with their labor from nature and apply it to transform matter into goods and services, with entropy increasing along the way. How societies distribute and expend their surpluses gives them some of their signature features. In hierarchical societies, the ruling classes control a great share of the surplus and expend it in ways that reproduce their power. Economic growth, a distinctive feature of capitalist civilization, is the result of the ruling capitalist class investing surplus in the means of production in order to make more surplus. Surplus is extracted both via technological innovation that increases productivity and by social domination that reduces the share of surplus that goes back to workers or nature. Growth, however, is not only a material process but also a hegemonic story told by the capitalist class to dress its private interest as general interest, legitimating control over the destiny of surplus. Our framework proposes a political, ecological-economic theory of growth, provides a foundation for analyzing degrowth, and sheds new light on longstanding debates between ecological economists and Marxists.