On Wed, 14 Feb 2001, you wrote: > Gerry, > > Security guards may or may not be unproductive labourers. If employed by > businees out of its own pocket to protect the premises, then unproductive. > If employed by a company to protect others property, in which a profit is > made, then productive. It is not a question of the use value, but the > particular social relation. I agree with your (1) and (2). With regard to > (3) it doesn't matter who buys these weapons ( in Marx's simple > reproduction schema unproductive consumption is part of the process, and it > is well known eg that privately held hand guns/ rifles in the USA are > extraordinary in number when compared to NATO's ). Profit is made in their > production, and labour is 'productive' of capital ( and also often in > employing the secrurity guard) but the use values themselves produced > cannot re-enter the process of reproduction of capital. From the organic > side, the value side, - the relation from which we can actually undersatnd > appearances - this means that any productivity in this type of production > ( as opposed for example to bread) will not result in reduction of the value > of variable capital and cannot therefore promote the production of relative > surplus value. I find this treatment unstatisfactory as it causes the mass of unproductive expenditure in the national accounts to depend upon the degree of dis-aggregation of the ownership of firms. By simply hiving of divisions carrying out unproductive activities like accouniting and security guard activities, these activities get transformed into produtive labour. Presumably if churches chose to incorporate themselves as limited liability companies the work of priests would become productive. If regiments were privatised then the army would be productive. I think that the question of whether the labour contributes to the production of relative surplus value has to be the primary criterion, this is consonant with Smith's original intention when introducing the concept of unproductive labour. -- Paul Cockshott, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland 0141 330 3125 mobile:07946 476966 paul@cockshott.com http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/people/personal/wpc/ http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/index.html
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