From: Paul Cockshott (wpc@DCS.GLA.AC.UK)
Date: Tue Nov 25 2003 - 04:55:52 EST
-----Original Message----- An interesting thread, but I am puzzled by Paul C's implicit definition of productive labour: > > Paul: > > Who benefits from the labour spent on advertising and in finance? > It is pretty clearly not the classically defined productive > working class, and as such it looks like exploitation to me. [Michael Williams] How does this reconcile with the key characteristic of productive labour in CMP: that it is productive of surplus-value (which is, of course, based on exploitation)? michael ------------------------------------------------- This follows from my posts earlier this year where I have argued that for labour to be productive of surplus value it must be in a sector that directly or indirectly feeds into the wage bundle. The point being is that only in these cases do improvements in productivity produce relative surplus value. Thus in a 3 department model, with I= means of prod II= workers consumption, III= all other products one can see from the reproduction equations that if we assume uniform wage rates and working days across the economy then the size of the output of dept III is entirely determined in sectors I and II, since we have under simple or extended reproduction: total sv dept III s1+s2+s3 >= c3+v3+s3 It is clear that no technical change in dept III can increase the mass of sv. The labour of advertising since it does not enter into the real wage ( output of dept II ) must fall into dept III and be paid for out of the surplus raised in depts I and II. The productivity of depts I and II determine the potential size of dept III which is parasitic on them. The big increases in productivity of industry in the 2nd half of the 20th century led to substantial rise in the size of sector III, since only part of the gain in productivity was realised as higher real wages, a large part went as more surplus value.
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