wage-work / unwaged-work

[Lisa Rogers <eqwq.lrogers@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

From: djones@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (rakesh bhandari)
[snip]
Indeed I think the more important discussion would be about the
political nature of those who have endured or even grown up into
permanent unemployment.

I just found out that the Austro Marxist Max Adler dealt with this
question in 1933 as it was becoming evident that no upturn in the
business cycle was going to eliminate unemployment.  He raised
questions of the relation of these marginalized people to the
actively exploited workers.
***

This sounds interesting, _actively_ exploited vs. what?  I know that
one point Marx emphasized was that the unemployed were part of the
working class, and one of their 'relations' to the employed is that
the more unemployed there are, the lower the wages that anyone gets,
etc.  All part of the reserve army of labor.

This reminds me of Selma James' [and others'] distinction between
wage-work and unwaged-work.  Point is that even if one is not
receiving wages directly from a capitalist, or in addition to
wage-work, one may be doing a lot of unwaged-work that serves the
interests of capital.  Unwaged-work includes things such as producing
replacement workers and daily reproducing the labor power that was
expended at wage-work.

Lisa



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