Thanks Claus for your reply, which I can hardly disagree with. I wonder
however if a two-sector model of the economy (Dept 1 + 2) is still an
appropriate convention. I am thinking we need to incorporate these days
some more sectors, such as arms production, luxury production, and gold
production. But that is a separate issue really.
In solidarity
Jurriaan
At 04:00 PM 9/16/99 -0300, you wrote:
>Thank you for your answer.
>
>Jurriaan wrote:
>
>> Thank you Claus Germer for your comment. You write:
>>
>> In the aggregate, advertising consists of a
>> >specific way of spending a fraction of the surplus value of the economy,
>> >which ends up in an expansion of department II of the economy.
>>
>> Question: Why only Department II (sector producing consumer goods) ?
>
>I didn't say that only DII will suffer an expansion as a result of the
>increase in unproductive labour. But I may have implied it. In effect, as
>DII expands, DI has obviously to expand the production of the constant
>capital needed by DII. What I intended was to highlight the fact, first,
>that the production of commodities that are used in advertising - as well
>as in any other strictly commercial activity - are in effect the product of
>productive labour (when resulting from wage labourers, of course), there
>not being a contradiction with the fact that they are employed in
>unproductive sectors, which was the point you had raised; second, that the
>expansion of unproductive labour means an expansion of the share of
>surplus-value which is devoted to personal instead of productive
>consumption (since it could alternatively be employed in the expansion of
>productive capital), through the wages payed to the unproductive workers.
>
>Your question, however, raises a point that I didn't have in mind: how
>differently would departments I and II expand if the unproductive workers
>were employed by productive capitals? On the one hand, it is possible that
>their total wages would not be different, so their effect upon DII would be
>the same. The effect upon DI would depend on the composition of capital in
>both cases. It seems reasonable to assume that the organic composition of
>capital in productive uses would be higher, in which case DI would expand
>more. Perhaps the relevant difference is that unproductive labor itself
>does not creat value, which it would if productively employed. As
>unproductive workers, they don't reproduce their wages and don't produce
>surplus-value either.
>
>Claus Germer
>cmgermer@sociais.ufpr.br
>Departamento de Economia
>Universidade Federal do Paraná
>Rua Dr. Faivre, 405 - 3º andar
>80060-140 Curitiba - Paraná
>Brasil
>
>Tel: (041) 360-5214 - Ufpr
> (041) 254-3415 Res.
>
>
>
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