Re: Productive and Unproductive Labor

[glevy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Paul Z. is right, the issue of productive vs. unproductive labor, is very
complex (and a post which just listed the literature on this
subject would be *very* long indeed).

> Jerry, I think the key is the word "surplus value".  To produce surplus
> value, value itself must be produced.  So what produces value?  Yes, it
> must be wage labor employed by capital (let's stay away from the problem
> of "private" versus "state" capital).  To produce value the product must
> sustain human life or be used to sustain human life .... (snip)

Concerning the last sentence, I'm not so sure.  A commodity, a product of
human labor which is produced for the purpose of exchange, has both
use-value and value sides. Paul's sentence above refers to the use-value
side of value in the sense that it suggests correctly that for a product
to have value it must also have use-value. Do we interpret this to mean
that commodities must be capable of being able to "sustain human life or
be used to sustain human life"?

A rather significant proportion of commodities might fail the above test.
I will stay away from examples at this time since, as Paul and I both know,
the issue can get very cloudy when we discuss whether individual workers
are productive or unproductive (of surplus value). Certainly commodities
must satisfy some human need, understood in a broad social sense, but
does that need that they must "sustain human life"?  I'm sure that we
could all come up with examples of commodities which might not fit this
designation like gloves to a hand.

Jerry


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