Re: Productive and Unproductive Labor

[glevy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Steve is right to say that the category unproductive labor was not used
in a pejorative sense by Marx.  Steve is rather more fond of quoting Marx
than I am, but I recall a passage of relevance where Marx said that it is
no great honor to be exploited as productive workers are. I believe that
most debates concerning productive vs. unproductive labor miss this
essential point.  Workers can be oppressed by capitalists even if their
labor is unproductive. Most unproductive wage-earners are also clearly
part of the working class, in my view.

The genesis of this thread began when I argued that *some* workers who are
employed in the financial services sector might be considered productive
laborers.  Paul  Z. took exception to that section of my post saying that
workers in that sector are unproductive laborers.  The issue, as I see
it, is whether there are any commodities produced by this sector which
are part of a process that generates surplus value.  I never claimed that
*all* workers employed in this sector could be viewed as productive,
however, I am willing to concede the point now that the labor force in
this branch of production is unproductive.  Yet, in so conceding, I
will also insist, as I have before,  that the issue of classification
frequently becomes very cloudy when we discuss concrete situations. There
are, for example, many workers who could be thought of as being partially
productive and partially unproductive (a situation I discussed in a post
on "College Professors and the Working Class").

Jerry



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