Marxian political economy, with its firm grounding in the materialist conception of history and the theory of surplus value, has long stood as one of the most profound intellectual frameworks for analyzing the inner workings of capitalism. At its core, it unmasks the apparently neutral processes of production and exchange as deeply historical and contradictory, rooted in specific relations of class and exploitation. Through the concept of surplus value, Marx identified the hidden mechanism by which capital reproduces itself: the appropriation of unpaid labor from workers under the guise of wage exchange. This insight not only exposes the systemic basis of inequality but also provides the key to understanding the cyclical crises and long-term trajectory of capitalist development. Far from being an abstract or purely economic notion, Marx’s surplus value theory represents a fundamental law of motion of the modern world.
Yet the horizon of knowledge has vastly expanded since Marx’s time. Developments in quantum physics, complexity theory, systems science, and nonlinear dynamics have transformed our understanding of reality across physical, biological, and social domains. These sciences reveal a universe structured not by linear determinism but by interactions, contradictions, and emergent properties. Capitalism itself, as a complex adaptive system, cannot be fully grasped without attention to these deeper ontological patterns. This widening of scientific vision opens the possibility of reinterpreting Marx’s categories in a way that both preserves their explanatory power and expands their scope. The task is not to discard Marx but to rethink his categories in dialogue with contemporary knowledge, thereby revitalizing political economy as a living, evolving science.
It is in this context that Quantum Dialectics offers a new vantage point. As a contemporary philosophical framework, Quantum Dialectics situates all systems—whether subatomic particles, living organisms, or human societies—within the universal interplay of cohesive and decohesive forces. These forces, in constant contradiction, generate quantized structures of reality whose coherence and instability drive transformation. By applying this framework to Marxian political economy, surplus value can be understood not merely as an economic ratio or exploitation formula but as a quantized contradiction of cohesion and decohesion in the labor process. Cohesion manifests in the cooperative integration of labor, machinery, and knowledge that produces wealth, while decohesion emerges in the alienation, exploitation, and systemic crises inherent to the capitalist mode of production.
The purpose of this re-examination is to demonstrate that Marx’s insights are not relics of the nineteenth century or rigid dogma frozen in time, but rather dynamic theoretical tools capable of higher development. Marx himself worked dialectically, constantly rethinking categories as living contradictions rather than fixed formulas. To remain faithful to this spirit means subjecting Marxian political economy to the dialectical sublation demanded by new scientific knowledge. Quantum Dialectics provides the methodological means for such a sublation, enabling us to reinterpret the contradictions of surplus value in terms of universal dynamics of matter, motion, and emergence. In this way, Marxism is not abandoned but rearticulated as a higher level of coherence, capable of speaking to the crises and transformations of the twenty-first century.
Marxian political economy begins with a radical departure from the dominant economic theories of his time and, indeed, from much mainstream thought today. Whereas classical and neoclassical economics tend to present the economy as a neutral arena of exchange between autonomous individuals, Marx insisted that the economic structure of society is a historically determined system of production relations. Behind the apparent equality of commodity exchange lies a fundamental asymmetry: one class, the owners of capital, appropriates the surplus labor of another class, the workers. The theory of surplus value uncovers this concealed mechanism by showing how capital expands not through mere circulation of commodities, but through the extraction of unpaid labor time in the production process. Far from being an incidental feature, exploitation is the structural foundation of capitalism, the principle through which it reproduces itself.
This critique rests upon the philosophical and methodological foundation of dialectical materialism. Marx understood society not as a fixed or eternal order but as matter in motion, continually reshaped by internal contradictions. Social forms—such as wage labor, private property, or capital accumulation—are not abstract universals but historically specific configurations of material relations. They arise, develop, and ultimately dissolve according to the immanent tensions they contain. Dialectical materialism thus provides both the ontology (all reality is material and contradictory) and the method (analysis through contradiction and transformation) necessary for the critique of political economy. Surplus value is intelligible only within this dialectical framework, as the dynamic relation between labor, capital, and the historical trajectory of society.
Quantum Dialectics emerges as a contemporary development of this dialectical materialist tradition, one that takes seriously the profound scientific revolutions of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Rather than discarding Marx’s method, it extends and enriches it in light of discoveries in quantum physics, nonlinear dynamics, and complexity science. These fields demonstrate that reality at all levels is not governed by linear causality or static equilibrium but by fluctuating tensions, probabilistic interactions, and emergent structures. Quantum Dialectics interprets systems—whether physical, biological, or social—as composed of two fundamental, contradictory forces: cohesion, which stabilizes, integrates, and reproduces structures; and decohesion, which disrupts, fragments, and transforms them. Together, these forces generate quantized layers of organization, each with its own emergent properties that cannot be reduced to the lower level.
When this framework is applied to Marxian political economy, the theory of surplus value is reinterpreted as a quantized contradiction of cohesion and decohesion within the labor process. On the side of cohesion, we find the cooperative integration of social labor, the harnessing of technology, and the collective knowledge that amplifies productivity. These forces bind workers together into a productive whole that generates wealth beyond individual capacity. On the side of decohesion, however, lies the alienation of workers from their own product, the appropriation of unpaid labor by capitalists, and the systemic crises that periodically tear apart the fabric of social reproduction. Surplus value thus appears not simply as an economic differential between wages and value produced but as a dialectical node where cohesion and decohesion are quantized into the structural logic of capitalism itself.
Dialectical materialism, the philosophical core of Marxism, rests upon a set of interrelated principles that provide both an ontology of reality and a method for comprehending its transformations. The first principle is the primacy of matter, which affirms that the material world exists independently of human consciousness and that thought itself is an emergent property of complex material organization. Consciousness is not an immaterial substance or transcendental given; it arises from the neural, social, and historical processes through which matter organizes itself at higher levels of complexity. The second principle is that contradiction is the motor of change. Reality is never static but is always shaped by the interaction of opposing tendencies whose tension drives development. Stability and instability, integration and disruption, reproduction and transformation coexist within every system, and it is from their struggle that new forms emerge. The third principle is historical specificity, the recognition that social forms are not eternal or universal but products of determinate conditions. Capital, wage labor, and private property are not transhistorical categories but historically situated relations that came into being under specific circumstances and will, in time, be superseded.
Quantum Dialectics does not reject this foundation but sublates it, carrying forward its truths while rearticulating them in the language of contemporary science. In this framework, matter is not conceived as a homogeneous substrate but as layered into quantum strata, each characterized by minimal cohesive mass density and maximal decohesive potential. These strata—from subatomic particles to social systems—are structured by quantized tensions that give rise to emergent properties. Contradictions, therefore, are not merely conceptual devices but objective, quantized tensions between cohesive forces that stabilize and decohesive forces that disrupt. This duality operates across all levels: in physics as binding and disruptive forces, in biology as homeostasis and mutation, and in society as order and conflict. Historical specificity, too, is reformulated: it is expressed as the emergent coherence of social systems, each conditioned by the constraints and contradictions of its material base.
In this sense, dialectical materialism is not abandoned but expanded. Quantum Dialectics transforms it into a universal theory of coherence and decoherence, capable of interpreting the dynamics of physical, biological, and social reality within a single ontological framework. It retains the Marxian insistence on material grounding and contradiction, while extending their explanatory reach into domains of knowledge inaccessible in Marx’s own time. By doing so, it demonstrates that dialectical materialism is not a closed philosophy of the nineteenth century but a living, evolving methodology that can engage with the cutting edge of science and illuminate the complexities of contemporary existence.
Within the framework of Marxian political economy, the theory of surplus value constitutes the central key to understanding the essence of capital. For Marx, capital is not merely a collection of machines, money, or commodities, but a social relation structured around the extraction of surplus labor. The process begins with the purchase of labor-power, which Marx identified as a peculiar commodity: unlike other commodities, its use-value is the capacity to create new value. The capitalist pays the worker a wage equivalent to the value of labor-power, determined by the socially necessary labor time required to reproduce the worker’s subsistence. Yet in the course of production, labor does not merely reproduce this value—it produces a greater quantity of value than what is returned in wages. The difference between what the worker is paid and the new value created is surplus value, the hidden source of profit and the lifeblood of capitalist accumulation.
This mechanism is not an incidental feature of capitalism but its structural foundation. Capitalism thrives by institutionalizing a perpetual asymmetry between the reproduction of labor-power and the productivity of labor. The capitalist system ensures that labor always yields more value than it receives back, thereby securing the conditions for expansion. In this sense, surplus value is not simply an economic differential but a historically specific social relation that defines the capitalist mode of production. It is the pivot upon which the entire logic of capital turns, governing not only the extraction of profit but also the rhythms of investment, competition, technological change, and crisis.
The production of surplus value can be understood as consisting of two dialectically intertwined moments. On the side of cohesion, we observe the integration of workers into cooperative processes of production. Capital organizes labor collectively, combining the efforts of many individuals into a unified productive force. This cohesion is further amplified by technological innovation, scientific knowledge, and organizational techniques that enhance productivity. Machines and factory systems not only augment individual labor but also knit workers together into complex networks of interdependent activity, thereby creating the possibility of producing surplus beyond subsistence.
Yet alongside this cohesive moment lies the counterforce of decohesion. The very process that integrates workers into collective production simultaneously alienates them from its results. Labor becomes estranged from its product, from the act of work itself, and from the cooperative relations that might otherwise foster solidarity. Wages conceal the reality that a portion of labor-time is unpaid, appropriated by the capitalist as surplus. This expropriation destabilizes social reproduction by intensifying inequality, generating discontent, and periodically producing crises when the contradictions between production and consumption can no longer be sustained. Thus, what appears as a seamless system of production is in reality a contradictory unity of integration and alienation, cohesion and decohesion.
Capital, therefore, cannot be understood merely as a neutral or technical arrangement for producing goods. It must be seen as a dialectical unity of cohesion and decohesion, a contradictory quantization of social labor itself. On one side, it binds labor into cooperative, technologically advanced systems that unleash unprecedented productivity; on the other, it simultaneously fragments and alienates, channeling the fruits of collective effort into private appropriation. Surplus value is the precise expression of this contradiction, quantizing the tension between what labor gives to the system and what it receives in return. In this sense, capital embodies the very logic of dialectics: it is a system whose coherence is inseparable from its internal conflicts, and whose apparent stability masks the conditions of its eventual transformation.
Quantum Dialectics provides a novel reinterpretation of Marx’s theory of surplus value by situating it within the broader ontology of quantized contradictions. In this framework, surplus value is not simply a numerical excess of value produced over wages paid, nor merely an economic mechanism of exploitation, but rather a dialectical node in which the opposing forces of cohesion and decohesion are quantized into the very structure of the capitalist labor process. This reinterpretation deepens our understanding of surplus value by linking it to the universal dynamics of matter and motion, where every form of organization—whether atomic, biological, or social—emerges from the interplay of forces that simultaneously stabilize and destabilize.
On the side of the cohesive force, surplus value arises because the capitalist labor process integrates fragmented individual labors into a cooperative whole. Under capitalism, production becomes a collective endeavor, where each worker contributes to a complex web of interdependent tasks. Machines, scientific knowledge, and the organizational power of capital amplify this cooperation, enabling labor to produce value beyond what is necessary for the mere reproduction of the worker. This cohesion resembles the stabilizing role of forces in quantum systems: just as atomic structures are held together by strong and weak interactions, the capitalist mode of production binds labor into a system capable of generating surplus beyond subsistence. Without this integration, surplus value would not be possible, for isolated individual labor could never yield the same level of productivity as socially organized labor under conditions of technological mediation.
Yet, precisely at the moment when cohesion reaches its peak, the decohesive force reveals itself. The surplus that is collectively produced does not return to the workers who generate it but is alienated from them and appropriated by the capitalist. The stronger the cohesion of productive forces—the more advanced the machinery, the more sophisticated the science, the more interconnected the labor process—the greater the potential for decohesion in the form of alienation, inequality, and crisis. This is because the fruits of collective labor are concentrated in the hands of a minority, while the majority experience dispossession and estrangement. In Marxian terms, the contradiction between the socialization of production and the privatization of appropriation is intensified. In quantum dialectical terms, decohesion is not external to the system but immanent to its very integration: the same forces that generate cohesion also create the conditions for instability. Just as in quantum systems coherence can collapse into decoherence without an external shock, so too does capitalist cohesion generate its own potential for disruption.
In this sense, surplus value must be understood as more than a technical economic category. It is a quantum dialectical node—a point of condensation where cohesion and decohesion intersect and are quantized into the systemic logic of capitalism. Surplus value embodies the duality of the system: on one side, the integration of labor into a cooperative, technologically advanced whole; on the other, the alienation of that labor and the expropriation of its results. To describe surplus value in this way is to recognize that capitalism is not a smooth or neutral process of wealth creation but a contradictory structure whose stability is inseparable from its tensions. Surplus value, viewed through Quantum Dialectics, becomes the crystallization of capitalism’s deepest contradiction: the more it integrates and organizes labor into a productive totality, the more it generates the forces of disintegration that threaten to undo it.
Marx carefully distinguished between two primary forms of surplus value: absolute surplus value, which is generated by extending the length of the working day, and relative surplus value, which is produced by increasing productivity through technological and organizational improvements. These two forms represent not only different methods of extracting surplus but also distinct historical stages in the evolution of capitalist exploitation. Absolute surplus value belongs primarily to the early phases of capitalism, where capital’s power rested on the capacity to enforce longer hours of labor and more intense exertion. Relative surplus value becomes dominant in the later phases, where capital depends increasingly on machinery, scientific advances, and organizational efficiency to squeeze more value out of the same unit of labor-time.
Quantum Dialectics offers a new interpretive lens by understanding these forms as different layers of quantization in the contradiction between cohesion and decohesion. In the case of absolute surplus value, cohesion manifests as the sheer extension of labor-time: workers are bound into longer periods of production, which temporarily stabilizes capital’s capacity to extract value. Yet this cohesion is immediately counterbalanced by decohesion, expressed in physical exhaustion, declining productivity, and resistance by workers struggling for shorter hours and humane conditions. The contradiction here is stark and bodily, quantized in the direct confrontation between the limits of human endurance and the demands of capital accumulation.
With the transition to relative surplus value, the terrain of the contradiction shifts to a higher layer. Cohesion is now achieved not by lengthening the working day but by intensifying the productivity of labor through technological innovation, mechanization, and the rationalization of the labor process. Machines, science, and organization integrate workers into a more complex and efficient system, producing greater output in less time. Yet this very cohesion unleashes new forms of decohesion: alienation deepens as the worker becomes subordinated to the machine; unemployment rises as technology displaces human labor; crises intensify as productivity outpaces the capacity of markets to absorb commodities. Here, decohesion is not primarily physical but structural, emerging from the contradictions of social production itself.
At still higher layers of historical development, surplus value undergoes further quantization in the context of digital capitalism, automation, and artificial intelligence. Cohesion now takes the form of global integration, where supply chains, financial systems, and knowledge networks interconnect labor and capital across the entire planet. Digital platforms, algorithmic coordination, and artificial intelligence amplify productivity to unprecedented levels, creating new possibilities for surplus extraction. Yet this global cohesion simultaneously generates new and profound decohesive tendencies: precarity as workers are fragmented into unstable and insecure forms of employment; surveillance as digital technologies monitor and control labor; and ecological breakdown as globalized production pushes the biosphere to its limits. The contradictions of surplus value at this stage are no longer confined to the factory floor but extend to the planetary level, threatening the very conditions of human and ecological survival.
Each historical phase, therefore, represents not a simple linear progression but a quantum leap in the dialectical layering of surplus value. Absolute and relative surplus value, along with their contemporary extensions, are best understood as successive quantizations of the fundamental contradiction between cohesion and decohesion. At each layer, cohesion enables the system to reproduce itself more efficiently, while decohesion emerges as the destabilizing force that threatens its foundations. Surplus value, in this expanded perspective, is not a fixed formula but a dynamic contradiction that mutates, intensifies, and reconfigures itself as capitalism evolves.
Capitalist crises, when viewed through the lens of Quantum Dialectics, can be understood as phase transitions, analogous to the critical instabilities observed in quantum systems. In physics, when the balance of cohesive and decohesive forces within a system reaches a threshold, the system undergoes a qualitative transformation: particles reorganize, fields shift, or matter enters a new state. Similarly, in capitalism, crises emerge when the forces of decohesion—overproduction, unemployment, inequality, ecological strain—accumulate to the point that they overwhelm the cohesive structures that normally stabilize the system, such as markets, state regulation, and social institutions. At this critical juncture, the system can no longer reproduce itself in its existing form and enters a period of transformation.
In Marxian political economy, such crises are not random accidents or external shocks but expressions of the inner contradictions of surplus value. They represent moments where the very logic of capital—extracting unpaid labor while maintaining the conditions of social reproduction—turns against itself. It is in these ruptures that the possibility of sublation arises: the dialectical transcendence of the old form and the emergence of a new mode of production. Sublation (Aufhebung) implies both the negation of existing structures and the preservation of their essential elements in a higher synthesis. Thus, the overthrow of capital does not mean the destruction of productive forces but their reorganization in a way that liberates social cohesion from the private appropriation that previously distorted it.
Quantum Dialectics further clarifies that such transformations cannot be reduced to mechanical inevitabilities. Just as quantum transitions require specific conditions and probabilities, social transformations are the result of emergent syntheses, shaped by contradictions but mediated through human struggle, collective agency, and systemic reorganization. Crises open the possibility for revolutionary change, but the actual trajectory depends on the capacity of social forces to recognize contradictions, organize coherently, and project new forms of social order. In this sense, crises are both objective breakdowns and subjective opportunities: the breakdown of cohesion within capital creates the conditions for new forms of cohesion to be forged at a higher level.
The contradiction of surplus value, in this framework, can only be truly transcended when labor is no longer treated as a commodity. As long as human capacity to work is bought and sold on the market, the dialectical tension between cohesion and decohesion will inevitably reproduce exploitation and alienation. The emancipation of labor requires that the cohesion of social production—the cooperative power of collective labor, science, and technology—be liberated from the decohesion of capitalist appropriation. This would allow the productive forces developed under capitalism to be reoriented toward human needs and ecological balance rather than profit. In Quantum Dialectical terms, such a transformation represents not the abolition of contradiction but its reconfiguration into a higher synthesis, where the creative tension of cohesion and decohesion is no longer subordinated to the logic of capital but serves the broader project of human emancipation.
Marxian political economy, anchored in the theory of surplus value, continues to provide an indispensable lens for grasping the inner mechanics of capitalism. It reveals that the apparent neutrality of markets and production conceals a structured relation of exploitation, in which surplus labor is systematically appropriated by capital. Dialectical materialism supplies the philosophical and methodological foundation for this analysis, grounding it in the primacy of matter, the centrality of contradiction, and the historical specificity of social forms. Yet, as with all scientific frameworks, dialectical materialism must be renewed in the light of new knowledge. The revolutions in quantum physics, complexity theory, and systems science demand that we extend Marx’s method to engage with a world understood not in terms of linear causality, but in terms of contradictions, emergence, and layered organization.
Quantum Dialectics offers this renewal by reinterpreting surplus value as a quantized contradiction between cohesive and decohesive forces within the labor process. Cohesion manifests in the collective integration of labor, technology, and knowledge that produces surplus beyond individual subsistence. Decohesion emerges in the alienation, exploitation, and crises that result from the expropriation of this surplus. Rather than treating surplus value as a static economic category, Quantum Dialectics situates it as a dynamic node where opposing forces intersect and crystallize into the structural logic of capital. This reframing allows us to see surplus value not only as the essence of capitalism but also as a universal instance of how contradictions generate systemic organization and instability across different layers of reality.
In this perspective, the historical phases of capitalism can be understood as successive layered quantizations of the surplus value contradiction. From absolute surplus value based on the extension of labor-time, to relative surplus value rooted in technological innovation, and finally to the digital, automated, and globalized capitalism of today, each stage represents a higher quantization of cohesion and decohesion. At every layer, the forces that bind labor into more integrated and productive forms simultaneously generate new contradictions that destabilize the system. Thus, capitalist history is not a smooth progression but a series of dialectical leaps, where surplus value mutates into new forms while retaining its underlying contradiction.
Crises, in this framework, emerge as phase transitions. Just as quantum systems undergo qualitative transformations when decohesion overwhelms coherence, capitalist crises occur when the contradictions of surplus value push the system beyond its limits. These crises are not mechanical breakdowns but moments of radical possibility, in which new forms of organization can emerge. The revolutionary potential of such moments lies in their capacity to reconfigure the contradiction itself, opening the possibility for social systems to transcend the commodification of labor and liberate the cohesion of collective production from the decohesion of private appropriation.
In this way, Marx’s theory of surplus value, when reinterpreted through Quantum Dialectics, becomes more than a critique of capitalism. It evolves into a universal framework for understanding social transformation within the layered structure of reality. By situating political economy within the dynamics of cohesion and decohesion, Quantum Dialectics bridges the insights of Marx with the findings of contemporary science, offering a comprehensive ontology that unites physical, biological, and social systems. The result is not the abandonment of Marx but his renewal: a higher synthesis in which surplus value theory remains central, yet rearticulated as part of a dialectical theory of the universe itself.
QUANTUM DIALECTICS - BLOG ARTICLES 
Leave a comment