Post by maoista on Feb 10, 2004 20:49:54 GMT -5
4. Productive vs. unproductive labor
Though we disagree with their agenda ignoring the national question, Anwar Shaikh and E. Ahmet Tonak have provided the best summary of the difference between productive and unproductive labor that we know of at the moment.(7) In particular, they argue that in the sectors of distribution (excluding some transportation), social maintenance and reproduction and personal consumption, any labor that occurs is not productive sector labor.(8)
On the INTERNET and on the streets, MIM encounters the common vulgar Marxist question, "if the labor aristocracy is not producing surplus-value, then why do the capitalists hire it?" According to these apologists for the bourgeoisified workers, the workers must be exploited (producing surplus-value) or they would not be hired. The reasoning is similar to saying, one capitalist won't work with other capitalists or the petty-bourgeoisie if they are not producing surplus-value, which is obviously false in itself. Obviously individual capitalists can't get everything they want or there'd only be one capitalist-him or her. The individual capitalists cannot manipulate the realities of the class structure at will either. For example, as Poulantzas has pointed out, not all capital is monopoly capital even in imperialist societies and there continues to be a petty-bourgeoisie.
Shaikh and Tonak, as Marx before them, show that capitalists have to hire salespeople and guards. The government also hires workers. These occupations produce nothing, and cannot produce surplus-value. Within the capitalist system, they help the capitalists make or appropriate profit, but they do not produce surplus-value.
...
full doc at:
www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/mt/imp97/imp97a4.html
Though we disagree with their agenda ignoring the national question, Anwar Shaikh and E. Ahmet Tonak have provided the best summary of the difference between productive and unproductive labor that we know of at the moment.(7) In particular, they argue that in the sectors of distribution (excluding some transportation), social maintenance and reproduction and personal consumption, any labor that occurs is not productive sector labor.(8)
On the INTERNET and on the streets, MIM encounters the common vulgar Marxist question, "if the labor aristocracy is not producing surplus-value, then why do the capitalists hire it?" According to these apologists for the bourgeoisified workers, the workers must be exploited (producing surplus-value) or they would not be hired. The reasoning is similar to saying, one capitalist won't work with other capitalists or the petty-bourgeoisie if they are not producing surplus-value, which is obviously false in itself. Obviously individual capitalists can't get everything they want or there'd only be one capitalist-him or her. The individual capitalists cannot manipulate the realities of the class structure at will either. For example, as Poulantzas has pointed out, not all capital is monopoly capital even in imperialist societies and there continues to be a petty-bourgeoisie.
Shaikh and Tonak, as Marx before them, show that capitalists have to hire salespeople and guards. The government also hires workers. These occupations produce nothing, and cannot produce surplus-value. Within the capitalist system, they help the capitalists make or appropriate profit, but they do not produce surplus-value.
...
full doc at:
www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/mt/imp97/imp97a4.html