Well if the clerical labour is hired by a "for profit" company, then at the micro level at least it could be regarded as capitalist productive labour, though Marx often does not think so (the labour does not create new surplus value, but only facilitates its appropriation). Marx actually makes several different arguments about clerical labour. At one stage, he says about office employees in commerce that:
"Surplus value can in general only be created by labour, whose realization depends on its quantity, irrespective of whether this labour is, or is not, paid for. With the mercantile wage laborers, on the other hand, the value they add to the commodity is never greater than what they themselves cost; it depends not on their labour but on the value of their labour capacity. The capitalist can only extract surplus value from them in so far as he pays their labour capacity at less than its value, but reckons it among the items of cost at its value. This case does not belong here, where we always presuppose that the full values are paid." (MECW 33, p. 162). This suggests a far more sophisticated analysis of the economic relationship involved in wage labour than the usual Marxist stories. Wage labour can be hired above or below its value, it may or may not perform surplus labour, it may or may not create new surplus value, and it may or may not produce an alienable commodity. The question then is how all these circumstances are specifically combined. One of the difficulties in assessing the total mass of new surplus value consists of how exactly to draw the boundaries of capitalist commodity production. For Marx, "value" is lodged or represented only in labour-products, in commodities produced by labour. A value-relationship or value-proportion (Wertverhaltnis) is only a relationship between labour-products. Some workers are directed engaged in producing a commodity, others indirectly, since their services are indispensable and contribute to the production process, and there are many intermediate variations. Some services really consist of the supply of a product, and there are a number of different categories of services. Yet other kinds of labour represent only an administration cost or a maintenance cost, that does not add to the surplus value represented in a commodity. Pressed to its conclusion, the analysis suggests that for the purpose of explaining the real world of wage labour, the assumption that labour power sells at its value and that it produces surplus value as well as surplus labour is far too simple and abstract. The modalities of wage labour are very great. J.
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