Re: [Marxism] Productive labor (was Marx on management)

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jurriaan Bendien wrote:
>
>
>
> Following Marx's last comments in Cap. Vol. 1, the same activity can be
> productive or unproductive from the point of view of the capitalist system,
> depending on whether it is performed for private profit or not. But this
> view of the matter does not cohere very well with the concept applied in
> Cap. Vol. 2, which suggests that some activities are intrinsically
> productive or not productive, and that this fact does not change, if a
> component of the labour of many workers becomes the specialised fulltime
> occupation of some.

Where in Vol. II does Marx state or imply this?

The major discussion of this distinction occurs in Vol. IV (Theories of
Surplus Value).

One comment. Capitalist social science consistently makes two
assumptions (sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly):

1. All social activity can, in principle, be explained in terms of the
actions of individuals.
2. The aim of all social theory is to explain the actions of
individuals.

This discussion is contaminated by these assumptions whenever the writer
tries _either_ to move from the description of an individual action to a
description of the abstractions productive/unproductive labor _or_ to
move from the description of productive/unproductive labor to understand
the activity of an isolated individucal. This fundamental assumption of
a world made up of unrelated particulars only externally related is what
Christoper Caudwell usefully labelled "The Bourgeois Illusion."

Perhaps Jurriaan, who seems to have the texts of Marx at his fingertips,
can correct the following mangled quotation and cite its location: "The
concrete is the intersection of many abstractions."

Carrol


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