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 05:14:55 2009