The surplus activity and its product represent the difference between the quantity of production and the quantity of consumption. Thus, the surplus product is the source of all accumulation. The higher the value of the surplus product, the greater the possibilities for saving and investing, i.e. making means of production. The rate of surplus activity determines the potential for accumulation of meanings. However, saving does not necessarily mean investing. The amount of investment is defined by expectations regarding the surplus activity and its product, i.e. profit.
The relationship between investment and surplus activity/product constitutes the essence of profit. Although profit arises in traditional society, here it is not yet the basis for the organization of self-reproduction and is thus completely random in nature. At this early stage, it is obvious that the source of profit is uncertainty. The primitive division of meanings and the low rate of surplus activity characteristic of subsistence economy limit the possibilities of making profit. Here, production is viewed as a means of consumption rather than as a means of exchange and profit:
“Aristotle insists on production for use as against production for gain as the essence of householding proper; yet accessory production for the market need not, he argues, destroy the self-sufficiency of the household as long as the cash crop would also otherwise be raised on the farm for sustenance, as cattle or grain; the sale of the surpluses need not destroy the basis of householding. … In denouncing the principle of production for gain as boundless and limitless, ‘as not natural to man;’ Aristotle was, in effect, aiming at the crucial point, namely, the divorce of the economic motive from all concrete social relationships which would by their very nature set a limit to that motive” (Polanyi 2001, pp. 56-7).
Possession emerges at a very low rate of surplus activity. At this stage, small possessors cannot yet achieve a sufficient rate of surplus activity to set in motion a cycle of expanded self-reproduction; the appropriation of surplus activity/product remains the prerogative of the state and the nobility, who collect the surplus and spend it on status consumption (palaces and temples) or large-scale structures and administration (irrigation systems, standing army, tax apparatus, etc.):