Re: [OPE-L] basics vs. non-basics and financial services

[Diego Guerrero <diego.guerrero@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Are you saying then that the steel used for bombers or missiles are the
result of unprodutive labour, and the same for the machines or furnaces used
fot he steel, etc.? This vertical-integration approach seems to me useful
for other purposes but not for defining unproductive labour. I don't think
that Sraffa's and Marx's conception of unproductive labour are compatible,
don't you agree?


----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Cockshott" <wpc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <OPE-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, October 03, 2005 10:03 PM
Subject: Re: [OPE-L] basics vs. non-basics and financial services



5) In all cases such record keeping constitutes what marx called the

unproductive faux frais of the mode of production.



Would not be armaments also faux frais ot the capitalist mode of production?
However, arms firms or private security services firms, or firms creating
advertisements, etc., are capitalist firms that exploit their workers and
extract their surplus value.
-----------------
I believe this idea to be a mistake. One can demonstrate from the
reproduction schemes in volume 2 that surplus value can only be
generated in the departments generating means of production or
workers consumption goods. The mass of surplus value can not
be altered by activities in the 3rd sector producting luxuries etc.


This is the same basic point that Sraffa is making about his
basic sector.

I dont have space to demonstrate this right now, but there is
an article by Dave Z and I comming out in Science and Society shortly
where we demonstrate this.

I will try and respond to the other points you make tomorrow.