From: gerald_a_levy (gerald_a_levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Sat Nov 08 2003 - 08:30:38 EST
> I must admit I do not understand the distinction between productive > and unproductive labour. I tend to think that if someone is willing to > pay for some labour then it is productive in the economic sense, > irrespective of whether that labour is productive from some moral or > utilitarian point of view. Ian: Productive labour concerns which wage-earners who are employed by capital produce surplus-value. Other wage-earners may be unproductive (of surplus value) if they are employed by the state (and are therefore paid out of revenues) or if their wages represent a deduction from profit. This was not intended to be a 'moral' or 'utilitarian' distinction. In developing this distinction Marx's focus (surplus value/ class exploitation) was quite different from the focus of Adam Smith (namely, what labour increases national wealth). You write above that you tend to believe that "if someone is willing to pay for some labour then it is productive in the economic sense." Then you must believe that _state employees_ are productive of surplus value since the state pays for their labour time? (Or -- a less meaningful question -- what about all of the young people who are employed part-time by working-class families to 'baby-sit' their own children or mow their lawns or shovel their snow? Someone is obviously willing to pay for their labor -- does that mean that they are productive of surplus value?) > But I am looking at it this way: in principle a capitalist can create > value by their labours, just like anyone else. But surplus value is > precisely value workers do not receive -- but capitalists do. So > although some capitalists may create value they are not exploited > because they receive any surplus value created in the form of profits. Before turning to your example below, let us address _why_ capitalists come to be put on payroll. There are often significant tax and benefit advantages for capitalists of being considered _for legal purposes_ to be "employees". For instance, health insurance costs and a pension and 'business costs' (including transportation and travel expenses) may now be paid for by the company rather than being paid for out of the personal income of the individual. This is simply an accounting trick to give themselves more perks and avoid paying a certain amount of taxes -- in no meaningful economic sense could these capitalists be said to be productive of surplus value. Now let's turn to your "concrete example": > Here's a concrete example: a firm of 10 employees and 1 capitalist > owner. The owner works a normal day just like the workers, and > performs similar tasks. The product contains the labour of 11 workers. > But the revenue from that product isn't split into 11 roughly equal > shares. > There are 10 wage incomes and 1 profit income. Assuming profits > are made, the capitalist owner gets it, and is therefore not exploited. > What's wrong with this? To begin with, what's wrong with this is that you selected a hypothetical example (rather than a "concrete" one) concerning ... small business. The petty-bourgeoisie is not one of the "two major classes" in capitalist society and it is a class which, due to the process of the concentration and centralization of capital, become less and less "major" alongside the accumulation of capital. I can think of _no_ concrete example of where any _major_, i.e. non-petty, capitalist performs "similar tasks" in the production process as wage-earners who are productive of surplus value. Yet, they typically _are_ on payroll for the reasons I indicated above. Returning to your hypothetical example and expanding upon it. To begin with, suppose that there are 1,000 wage-earners (rather than 10) and 1 capitalist. Now, suppose -- we are getting far-fetched!; maybe there's a plot for a silly Hollywood film here -- that the identity of the 1 capitalist isn't known to the workers and that the capitalist hires herself as a wage-earner (!) and goes to work on an assembly line actually performing "similar tasks" as the rest of the wage-workers. Does she _now_ (under these absurdly unrealistic circumstances) produce surplus value? In this hypothetical circumstance, we could in effect treat the 1 woman as if she was 2 women -- in her secret life _as a wage-earner_ she could be productive of surplus value and in her more meaningful role she would be a capitalist who lives off the surplus value created by others. Talk about Dr. Jeckyl and Ms. Hyde! Yet, in the world of _small_ business such anomalies are possible: e.g. there are workers who are employed by capital during the day and own and operate their own business after work (indeed, inflation and/or mass poverty may push workers in some parts of the world into doing this as a way of supplementing their income). Thus, it is possible for 1 person to be both productive of surplus value and not productive of surplus value but in those instances those individuals are splitting their time performing qualitatively different economic functions. In solidarity, Jerry
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