From: Paul Cockshott (wpc@DCS.GLA.AC.UK)
Date: Mon Oct 03 2005 - 03:58:37 EDT
Diego
In my opinion, we need to distinguish between two different things; a)
labour can be productive or unproductive of surplus value; b) labour can
produce things or services that are necessary in all kinds of societies
or "contingents" (i.e., necessary only in class societies or
specifically in capitalist societies). So that we have 4 possibilities.
I illustrate them via some (not exhaustive) examples:
"Necessary" labour
"Contingent" labour
Productive labour
A) Productive+necessary labour
Iron, cars..., transport and distribution services; legal,
financial... services; teachers and physicians and other workers in
private firms; employees in public (like in private) firms
...
B) Productive+contingent labour
Rolls Royce and other luxuries,
Marketing services
Gold or credit money
Tanks, missiles, weapons...
Waged prostitutes
Private and public policy
...
Unproductive labour
C) Unproductive+necessary labour
Teachers, physicians... and many other workers in Public Administration
Domestic labour
Autonomous workers
...
D) Unproductive+contingent labour
Pure circulation
Autonomous prostitutes
...
Paul
I see problems with both the vertical and horizontal divisions that you
use.
First consider the vertical dividing line between necessary and
contingent
labour.
You classify financial and legal services as 'non-contingernt' and
therefore necessary
in all kinds of societies according to your definition. I would contest
that. Legal services
exist primarily to contest claims of property right. In a communist
country these private
property right claims would not exist and thus there would be no need
for lawyers to
enforce or contest such claims.
Financial services also exist to manage claims to private property
right, and as such
are specific to a regime of private ownership. Again they would not
exist in a communist
economy where there would be no share ownership and thus no share
brokers etc.
Now consider the horizontal dividing line between productive and
unproductive
labour. Why do you classify financial and legal services as productive?
I would content that even in a capitalist society, financial and legal
services
are unproductive of surplus value.
Consider the banks, they have two sources of income: bank charges made
for carrying out transactions, and interest revenue. For the UK which
has
a very large financial sector, the accounts show that bank charges only
cover
a small part of the operating expenses of the banks.
The fact that the banks make an overall net profit is due to their
interest
income, the fact that they charge interest on loans, but either offer
no,
or very little interest on current account balances. This along with
their
ability to create money enables them to grab a portion of the surplus
value created in the productive sector.
According to Marx, interest is a deduction from the total surplus value
created in the productive sector- which is divided into interest and
profit of enterprise. But this division is a subdivision of surplus
value.
Charging interest does not create surplus value.
Since the workers in the banking sector are paid out of a share of
surplus
value, they can not create surplus value themselves. Their wages do
not constitute variable capital. Instead they are analogous to feudal
retainers paid out of the revenues of the propertied classes.
We have had previous discussions on this list on unproductive
labour, in 1998 , 2001, and 2003 at least, but this is the first time
that I have seen the position you are advocating being put forward.
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