Re: [OPE] Services (->Paula)[MESSAGE NOT SCANNED]

The reality is that the church in its heyday was a political institution
that was and still is part of the coercive mechanisms of ruling class. The
expense for this 'service' were/ are raised by taxation, rents, interest....
and only to the smallest degree 'offerings'. Ian has somehow moved into an
apolitical, classless society. Modern workers pay to go to the movies if
they have to, the process of ideolgical class warfare is different in this
case.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Zachariah" <davez@kth.se>
To: <wrighti@acm.org>; "Outline on Political Economy mailing list"
<ope@lists.csuchico.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 10:09 AM
Subject: Re: [OPE] Services (->Paula)[MESSAGE NOT SCANNED]

> Ian Wright wrote:
>>
>> Say priests organized themselves into for-profit companies and sold
>> their services to the working class. Their product is Christian-minded
>> men. Is their labor now productive?
>>
>> Behind my questions is the feeling that whether a particular kind of
>> concrete labor (e.g., shaving men, preaching to them, entertaining
>> them etc.) enters the real wage depends on worker demand. That can
>> change. Does that mean, therefore, that priestly-labor can be just as
>> "productive" as baker-labor?
>>
>> The real wage is conventional. So if by convention lots of workers buy
>> the services of priests, then a labor-saving innovation in preaching
>> (e.g., web-based broadcasting to the flock) reduces the reproduction
>> costs of the working class, and therefore produces relative
>> surplus-value.
>>
>
> At the extreme I'd say that such a service would be economically analogous
> to an entertainment service such as Hollywood movies. The latter is
> certainly today conventionally part of the real wage. A pretty good
> summary of the use-values that go into the real wage and constitute the
> material living standard in the advanced capitalist countries is given
> here:
>
> <http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpifaq.htm#Question_7>
>
> //Dave Z
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Received on Wed Jan 7 06:25:39 2009