Carrol Cox wrote:
Being pretty innocent of technical knowledge in economics I would not
venture to comment on the economics if this, but a couple historical
points.
The distinction might have made more sense when a huge sector of the
work force was made up of domestic servants (and when far more
'production' of use values went on in the home).
this was Adam Smith's context, why he defined unproductive labor in
terms of producing services. Marx, on the other hand, would see
domestic servants as "unproductive" because they don't produce
commodities and thus don't produce surplus-value.
But there are other "unproductive" types in Marx, e.g., those who
simply transfer property titles from one person to another and
security guards and the like who simply protect property rights,
rather than producing new use-values.
Also it would seem relevant in the light of Fredy Perlman's argument (in
his commentary on Rubin) that the theory of value was concerned not with
prices at all but with (nearly exact quote from memory) how living human
activity is distributed under give historical conditions.
I wish more people had read that.
If that is
one's focus, then it might be useful to identify at least roughly the
human activity which is either "non-capitalist" (home labor) or
concerned with the division among capitalists of surplus value rather
than creation of it.
yes, non-capitalist labor (i.e., labor not under capital's rule) is
unproductive _for capital_ since they don't produce surplus-value.
However, it might be unproductive for another mode of production
(e.g., serfs might be productive for feudalism).
again, I wonder what use all this is?
--
Jim Devine / "The crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil
of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An
exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who
is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his
future career." -- Albert Einstein.
