----- Original Message -----
>From: <zarembka@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
To: <ope-l@galaxy.csuchico.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 1999 1:32 PM
Subject: [OPE-L:1222] Re: Advertising and productive labour
>The labor power purchased by capitalists to
> engage labor power to produce that ad (secretaries, draftspersons, video
> specialists, designers, bookkeepers, ads for the ad business, ...) results
> in a nothing. When I remark on that to my students, none (or almost none,
> excepting apologists for capitalism) defend the result as the product of
> productive labor.
As I see it, the epthet '(un)productive' is not meant to be a defense of
anything. It is intended as a 'scientific' category to capture that which is
(un)productive of surplus-value. The desirability or not of the use-value of
the product, on any critieria beyond the bare fact that it must have one in
order to be a commodity, has nothing to do with it.
As Jurriaan put it:
> >Incidentally, the problematic of productive labour in capitalist society
> >is different from the problematic of socially useful labour in socialist
> >society.
Michael
____________________
Dr Michael Williams
Economics and Social Sciences
De Montfort University
Milton Keynes
UK
[This message may be in html, and any attachments may be in MSWord 97. If
you have difficulty reading either, please let me know.]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Feb 27 2000 - 15:27:09 EST