Michael writes:
>
> Are not the 'maintenance' workers in a factory, *servicing* the plant
> and machinery typically productive?
It depends what you are talking about. I'm suggesting that most cleaning
services are a necessary cost of production, a faux frais of production,
which does not add new value to any product. Of course you can attach
multiple meanings to the word "service" so that any labour becomes a
"service" but that isn't very illuminating I think.
Michael writes:
the clear
> criterion of demarcation can only be production relations. The rest
> is empirical contingency of no more import than the fact that some
> labour employed by capital may turn out to not contribute to the
> creation of sv, because the (potential) commodity they produce fails
> (is in excess supply).
This may be true or false depending on how you construe "production
relations". For example, Marx insists, as I said before, on the fact that
no new value is created as a result of exchange processes themselves. The
labour involved in circulating (trading) commodities, capital and money is
not productive labour, it does not add value or surplus-value to the total
product, even although it occurs within capitalist production relations and
even although the extraction of surplus-labour is involved.
Regards
Jurriaan.