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

I think this is a practical question: does religion enter into the necessary
consumption of the working class, ie without religion would labour power not
be reproduced? We should not accept individual prejudices here. I am
inclined to say believing in God does assist in the reproduction of labour
power.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ian Wright" <wrighti@acm.org>
To: "Outline on Political Economy mailing list" <ope@lists.csuchico.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 12:17 AM
Subject: Re: [OPE] Services (->Paula)[MESSAGE NOT SCANNED]

>> My take on this is the opposite, no change in social relations can change
>> an
>> unproductive activity into a productive one. The activities of soldiering
>> and priestcraft are inherently unproductive. Even if one organised
>> companies
>> of mercernaries or companies of priests for hire to short staffed
>> dioceses
>> their unproductive nature would not change.
>
> 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.
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Received on Wed Jan 7 04:55:36 2009