RE: [OPE] Services (->Paula)

 Jurrian
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Essentially Marx argues, that "value" can be lodged only in labour-products - and insofar as just trading these products does not increase the total amount of products that exist, trading activity cannot create new value - it only transfers already existing value. This seems intuitively obvious, but in practical reality much value would not exist except for trading activity.
 
Paul
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I dont see that this is the case. All trade does is change the ownership of already existing value
Trade must be distinguished from transport of course.
 
Jurrian
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This problem is analogous to the problem of estimating "value-added" in national accounts - except that for Marx, what is primarily relevant is whether the value is "added" to CAPITAL, rather than to GROSS OUTPUT. Labour is productive, if it makes capital grow, even quite irrespective of whether it makes output grow - whether it makes output grow, is relevant only insofar as it makes capital grow.
 
Paul
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I agree with this. That is why I say only the basic sector can be productive since it is the basic sector that determines the rate of profit ( provided that one includes the reproduction of labour power in the basic sector). The rate of profit sets the upper limit on the rate of accumulation.
Jurrian
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The final definite statement which we have from Marx on the topic occurs in Capital Vol. 1:

"That labourer alone is productive, who produces surplus-value for the capitalist, and thus works for the valorization of capital. If we may take an example from outside the sphere of production of material objects, a schoolmaster is a productive labourer when, in addition to belabouring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of in a sausage factory, does not alter the relation. Hence the notion of a productive labourer implies not merely a relation between work and useful effect, between labourer and product of labour, but also a specific, social relation of production, a relation that has sprung up historically and stamps the labourer as the direct means of creating surplus-value. To be a productive labourer is, therefore, not a piece of luck, but a misfortune."

This statement tells us several things, inter alia:

(1) In principle it does not matter for Marx's PUPL definition whether "material objects" are produced or not.
(2) The very same activity which is "unproductive" outside the capital relationship, becomes "productive" if it is inside it.
(3) The concept of a productive worker is defined by (a) a relationship between work and useful effect (b) a social relation of production.
(4) The nature of the work and its "useful effect" must be such that it is possible to extract a surplus value from it, so that it indeed "generates a new income".
Paul
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I am of course familiar with the passage. And I agree that whether something is productive does not depend on whether it is
a material product. Services like teaching can certainly be part of the basic sector, since education is necessary for the
reproductionn of labour power.
The critical issue is whether on a social level a given activity is such that new surplus value, not simply a transfer of existing surplus value, can occur. What comes out of the Sraffian analysis is that activities in the non basic sector can not raise the overall mass of profit.
Jurrian
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But this does not ipso facto have anything to do with economic growth.
 
Paul
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Are you really contending that Marx thought that capital accumulation had nothing to do with economic growth?
 
 
Jurrian
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Of course capital can accumulate through a redistribution of the capital stock - all that means is that "my gain is your loss". I accumulate capital at your expense, my pile of assets increases, as your pile of assets decreases, in a zero sum game.
 
Paul
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Well what you are alluding to is what Marx ironically called 'primitive accumulation' by which common property was privately appropriated. I say ironically since by showing the real history of original capital formation he was countering the appologetics that capital had arisen from personal thrift.
But within an already existing capitalist economy no such net accumulation is possible since the losses to one capitalist are offset by the gains of another. Thus for example, stock market speculation can never itsellf lead to capital accumulation. The discussion of accumulation in productive labour is in the context of already developed capitalist economy, were that not the case Marx would have labeled piracy as productive labour.

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