"Unexploited" Jobs

[greymagik]

Hello all. Does anyone think there are some jobs that are not very exploitable, or at least has a low degree of exploitation? For instance, Teachers?

[NoOneIsIllegal]

Under capitalism, unless you own capital, you are exploited to an extent. All work differs; some jobs are much more exploitative than others. Some jobs can be "okay" while others "suck" but overall, in the workplace, there is still a hierarchy and you are selling your labor for profits.

[Amphictyonis]

Teachers can be exploited in the sense public schools are being closed down which makes class size in the schools that survive closure enormous and for any of the kids to learn the teacher must bust ass at school and grading papers etc after school.

http://www1.wsws.org/articles/2011/feb2011/detr-f26.shtml

I don't know about you but a classroom with 60 different kids every hour would be hard work.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Hello all. Does anyone think there are some jobs that are not very exploitable, or at least has a low degree of exploitation? For instance, Teachers?

Basically, teachers are still exploited in the sense that their labor adds value to the labor power of their students. The value of workers who can follow routines, show up at the same time every day adds value to labor power as a commodity - the more specialized the manual or mental skills, the more value the workers labor has. In the crudest way: a worker who can type and perform tasks already needs less training time by the bosses.

Teachers may not be proletarians in the strictest sense, but they are an exploited group of workers.

[Illuminati]

I think the closest you are going to get is some form of self-employment, at least then you are mostly just exploiting yourself ;)

[greymagik]

Thanks for the answers guys. :cool:

[chegitz guevara]

Exploitation in Marxism means something specific, that a surplus value is being extracted from your labor.

You might be in a job where you don't produce anything (a good or a service) but rather, your labor is used to realize the surplus value embodied in a commodity. A cashier, for example, adds no value to a good or service, but without one products can't be sold, and thus, the surplus value unrealized for the capitalist. The cashier is not exploited, but, due to her relations to the means of production (nothing to sell but her labor-power) is a proletarian.

[chegitz guevara]

I should add an addendum: My previous post looks only at workers individually, not as a class. As a class the whole working class is exploited, the rate of which can be measured. Individual workers within the class may be exploited at greater or lesser rates, and some not exploited at all as an individual. However, collectively, they are members of a section of society that is used to create and realize surplus value.

Hope that doesn't confuse things for you.

[ʇsıɥɔɹɐuɐ ıɯɐbıɹo]

How is a Union Leader exploited? I mean, it maybe a job, leading a union and they are paid by the union dues but they're working for people already being exploited, and their labour goes to reverse that.

The only one I could think of, I could be wrong.

[Hoplite]

How is a Union Leader exploited? I mean, it maybe a job, leading a union and they are paid by the union dues but they're working for people already being exploited, and their labour goes to reverse that.

The only one I could think of, I could be wrong.
Union leaders can easily be exploited. Forcing the union into uncomfortable bargaining positions, cause the union to look bad such that public opinion turns against them in case of a strike or other dispute.

ANY worker can be exploited.

[Jose Gracchus]

Basically, teachers are still exploited in the sense that their labor adds value to the labor power of their students. The value of workers who can follow routines, show up at the same time every day adds value to labor power as a commodity - the more specialized the manual or mental skills, the more value the workers labor has. In the crudest way: a worker who can type and perform tasks already needs less training time by the bosses.

Teachers may not be proletarians in the strictest sense, but they are an exploited group of workers.

Then how are teachers not "proletarians"? Do you have to build some industrial good or supply it to be a "proletarian"?

[chegitz guevara]

Then how are teachers not "proletarians"? Do you have to build some industrial good or supply it to be a "proletarian"?

No, you do not have to create a commodity to be a proletarian. The definition is one who has nothing to sell be his/her labor-power. It is defined by your relationship to the means of production.

[blake 3:17]

Then how are teachers not "proletarians"? Do you have to build some industrial good or supply it to be a "proletarian"?

No. The question is whether one is dependent on the commodification of their labour power.

Teachers would generally fall under the category of reproductive labourers.

There are other questions that come up around teachers, other educators, health care workers, etc., which can be looked at how they produce the conditions under which capital can grow and their varied social positions in regard to ideas, status and ideology.

[Niccolò Rossi]

I should add an addendum: My previous post looks only at workers individually, not as a class. As a class the whole working class is exploited, the rate of which can be measured. Individual workers within the class may be exploited at greater or lesser rates, and some not exploited at all as an individual. However, collectively, they are members of a section of society that is used to create and realize surplus value.

Hope that doesn't confuse things for you.

This I think is critical. I'm not sure why your first reply got so many thanks when it's this one that is so much more insightful.

Nic.

[Die Neue Zeit]

All unproductive labour is technically not exploited. The question then becomes: What is productive work? (http://www.revleft.com/vb/real-austerity-ancient-t148741/index.html?t=148741) Contrast the public school teacher and the private arms manufacturer.

[Apoi_Viitor]

Self-employment.

[Vendetta]

For instance, Teachers?

Speaking as the son of a teacher, haaaaaaaw haw hardy har har.

[Demogorgon]

I have little patience for those who want to paint teachers as somehow separate from the working class. You may not like school but get a grip.

Anyway there seems to be some confusion as to what work and exploitation entails. Somebody mentioned cashiers suggesting they aren't adding any value, but they in fact are. Shops are providing the service of distributing goods and without cashiers that service could not go ahead, therefore they are vital to the production process for that service.

As for teachers they are providing a large number of services, most critically expanding the knowledge and skills of their charges without which they could hardly work at all. That makes them absolutely critical to the production process. They also provide other services too, such as providing supervision for children while their parents are at work and suchlike.

The best way to avoid making mistakes like this is to remind yourself of two things. First of all services are as important as goods and secondly tertiary production is still production.

As for non exploited jobs, not an easy one. Self employed people were suggested, but given "contracting" self employed people rather than hiring them is often a dodge to avoid minimum wage, maximum working week and payroll tax rules that isn't necessarily true.

On an individual basis someone who manages to get away with sleeping on the job, pulling sickies, turning up drunk and generally doing nothing productive whatosever isn't being exploited, but that doesn't really answer the question. The art of evading your supervisor is not a job and the question was about jobs not people.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I definitely do think most teachers are part of the general working class and public school teachers are definitely exploited and underpaid and forced to work for free often.

I was actually trying to avoid unnecessary debate when I said that maybe teachers are not specifically prols - because I've heard arguments from others on the left that they are not specifically proletarian workers. I think the argument about what kind of worker they are is not all that important practically during a time like this when their interests are in effect totally identical to workers and teachers are actually some of the more forceful fighters in the working class right now due to all the attacks on education. It's an interesting situation because the ruling class offensive is like a double attack on workers: the teachers themselves as well as the working class communities because their kids are effected too. Attacks on teachers have really helped engage a lot of really young people - in Wisconsin, 800 students marched out of class to join the protests.

[Jose Gracchus]

No, you do not have to create a commodity to be a proletarian. The definition is one who has nothing to sell be his/her labor-power. It is defined by your relationship to the means of production.

Modern American schools were organizationally modeled after classic Fordist factories, and their graduates go out and are sold to businesses as labor. The teacher adds value to labor as a commodity.

[chegitz guevara]

Anyway there seems to be some confusion as to what work and exploitation entails. Somebody mentioned cashiers suggesting they aren't adding any value, but they in fact are. Shops are providing the service of distributing goods and without cashiers that service could not go ahead, therefore they are vital to the production process for that service.

You are mistaking the valorization process for the production process. Value is added at production. Valorization does not add value to a good or service. It allows the capitalist to realize the surplus value locked in the commodity. The cashier does not provide a service for the customer, but for the capitalist.

Or, we might think of a household servant, like a maid or a butler employed at a capitalist's home. They certainly provide a use-value to the capitalist, but they do not produce any surplus value. In the Marxian way of understanding exploitation, such workers would not be considered exploited, although they are certainly proletarian. Of course, if they are employed by a company like American Maids, or some such, then they are exploited, because their service is being used to create an exchange-value, only part of which is returned to the worker.

[Demogorgon]

You are mistaking the valorization process for the production process. Value is added at production. Valorization does not add value to a good or service. It allows the capitalist to realize the surplus value locked in the commodity. The cashier does not provide a service for the customer, but for the capitalist.

Or, we might think of a household servant, like a maid or a butler employed at a capitalist's home. They certainly provide a use-value to the capitalist, but they do not produce any surplus value. In the Marxian way of understanding exploitation, such workers would not be considered exploited, although they are certainly proletarian. Of course, if they are employed by a company like American Maids, or some such, then they are exploited, because their service is being used to create an exchange-value, only part of which is returned to the worker.
No you are making a mistake that is made here very often and that is failing to understand that in economic terms goods and services are the same. That is to say it does not matter whether you are producing a good or a service, you are still producing something. This is a point people often find difficult, I have heard statements from all sorts of people from different political perspectives that services are somehow different or even "inferior" to goods, but it is a silly position.

Going back to the question of a cashier, they are part of the production process forming the very end of the service provided by a shop, that is the provision of goods to the customer in return for payment above that which the shop paid for the goods in the first place. Now you can argue whether or not that service is good for society, but the fact remains that it does exist and people are availing themselves of it, therefore it is being produced. The cashiers are a vital part and their labour does indeed add to final cost of the good. If they cease to become vital, that is to say as self service checkouts become more common, then their labour will no longer be needed to complete the service and the cost will reduce.

[Meridian]

Going back to the question of a cashier, they are part of the production process forming the very end of the service provided by a shop, that is the provision of goods to the customer in return for payment above that which the shop paid for the goods in the first place. Now you can argue whether or not that service is good for society, but the fact remains that it does exist and people are availing themselves of it, therefore it is being produced. The cashiers are a vital part and their labour does indeed add to final cost of the good. If they cease to become vital, that is to say as self service checkouts become more common, then their labour will no longer be needed to complete the service and the cost will reduce.
The term "cashier" implies that receiving payment and returning change is all that the job entails, which might be true in some cases. However, many workplaces requires the cashier to also perform other jobs, such as preparing or finalizing products for the customers, and other service depending on what type of work place it is.

Even the interaction between the cashier and the customer is indeed important to the production process, it is the final step. By providing service to the customer they do create value for the capitalist in a manner which is not just "to realize the surplus value locked in the good". I would agree that they are as much a part of the production as the industry which produces the goods.

[Demogorgon]

The term "cashier" implies that receiving payment and returning change is all that the job entails, which might be true in some cases. However, many workplaces requires the cashier to also perform other jobs, such as preparing or finalizing products for the customers, and other service depending on what type of work place it is.

Even the interaction between the cashier and the customer is indeed important to the production process, it is the final step. By providing service to the customer they do create value for the capitalist in a manner which is not just "to realize the surplus value locked in the good". I would agree that they are as much a part of the production as the industry which produces the goods.Oh yeah, absolutely. I was simplifying a bit in order to boil the argument down to the crux of the matter.

[chegitz guevara]

No you are making a mistake that is made here very often and that is failing to understand that in economic terms goods and services are the same. That is to say it does not matter whether you are producing a good or a service, you are still producing something. This is a point people often find difficult, I have heard statements from all sorts of people from different political perspectives that services are somehow different or even "inferior" to goods, but it is a silly position.

No, I'm not making that mistake. You are making the mistake of equating all services. A service service may be a commodity or it might not, just as a good may or may not be a commodity. It depends entirely on whether or not the thing is created as an exchange-value or a use-value. The labor-power of a cashier is not used to add value to a commodity (whether a good or a service). It is used to realize the suplus value inherent in that commodity.

Read Capital.

Again, the cashier, in this example, does not do a service for the consumer, by taking his money. The cashier does a service for the capitalist, helping the capitalist turn C into M'. The capitalist already has the full surplus value of his capital, locked up in the form of commodities. They need merely be exchanged so that the capitalist can realize that surplus value in the form of money. The exchange value of the commodity is not increased by the presence of someone to take my money.

[Demogorgon]

No, I'm not making that mistake. You are making the mistake of equating all services. A service service may be a commodity or it might not, just as a good may or may not be a commodity. It depends entirely on whether or not the thing is created as an exchange-value or a use-value. The labor-power of a cashier is not used to add value to a commodity (whether a good or a service). It is used to realize the suplus value inherent in that commodity.

Read Capital.

Again, the cashier, in this example, does not do a service for the consumer, by taking his money. The cashier does a service for the capitalist, helping the capitalist turn C into M'. The capitalist already has the full surplus value of his capital, locked up in the form of commodities. They need merely be exchanged so that the capitalist can realize that surplus value in the form of money. The exchange value of the commodity is not increased by the presence of someone to take my money.
You are using fancy terms here to obscure a simple mistake. The cashier may indeed be providing a service to the capitalist, but then again any worker is providing a service to the capitalist, providing your labour is a service after all. Moreover claiming that a cashier isn't adding exchange value is just silly. To be a little technical, the cashiers labour is being added to the process (even if you don't feel the customer benefits), to put it simply, the cashier's work has to be reflected in what the end good or service costs to exchange because their wages have to come from somewhere. All else being equal a shop that manages to get by with less cashiers (maybe using self service) will be able to sell its products for cheaper. That is just common sense. Turned into the jargon you are keen to use this is because less labour is now going into the process.

Incidentally if Marx actually had maintained that people doing various services were not exploited, that would simply have meant that Marx was wrong, not that they weren't exploited.

[Die Neue Zeit]

No, I'm not making that mistake. You are making the mistake of equating all services. A service service may be a commodity or it might not, just as a good may or may not be a commodity. It depends entirely on whether or not the thing is created as an exchange-value or a use-value. The labor-power of a cashier is not used to add value to a commodity (whether a good or a service). It is used to realize the suplus value inherent in that commodity.

Read Capital.

Again, the cashier, in this example, does not do a service for the consumer, by taking his money. The cashier does a service for the capitalist, helping the capitalist turn C into M'. The capitalist already has the full surplus value of his capital, locked up in the form of commodities. They need merely be exchanged so that the capitalist can realize that surplus value in the form of money. The exchange value of the commodity is not increased by the presence of someone to take my money.

There are papers critiquing Capital's approach to productive/unproductive labour. Simply put, there are productive and unproductive services, but there are also productive and unproductive goods.

[chegitz guevara]

You are using fancy terms here to obscure a simple mistake. The cashier may indeed be providing a service to the capitalist, but then again any worker is providing a service to the capitalist, providing your labour is a service after all. Moreover claiming that a cashier isn't adding exchange value is just silly. To be a little technical, the cashiers labour is being added to the process (even if you don't feel the customer benefits), to put it simply, the cashier's work has to be reflected in what the end good or service costs to exchange because their wages have to come from somewhere. All else being equal a shop that manages to get by with less cashiers (maybe using self service) will be able to sell its products for cheaper. That is just common sense. Turned into the jargon you are keen to use this is because less labour is now going into the process.

Labor can be added to a process that does not create exchange value. That's the whole . fucking . point. And if their labor does not create exchange value, they cannot be exploited. It may be a necessary cost, it may contribute to the cost of the commodity, just like every other input, but only creative labor is exploitable.

[Demogorgon]

Labor can be added to a process that does not create exchange value. That's the whole . fucking . point. And if their labor does not create exchange value, they cannot be exploited. It may be a necessary cost, it may contribute to the cost of the commodity, just like every other input, but only creative labor is exploitable.
You are going to fall flat on your face trying to draw the line between creative and non creative labour. Not to mention the unfortunate implications your view has given most people in the Western world now work in the tertiary sector. Besides as I pointed out, a cashier is contributing to the exchange value, because it would be different without their input. All jargon stripped away that is the basic fact that remains.

[punisa]

If you are aiming for a list of jobs were exploitation is minimal you're not in luck..
virtually all jobs are exploitable.

The only thing that comes to my mind is some form of self-employment.
The tricky part is that you would need capital to start your own business, but there are certain entrepreneurial careers you might pursue without huge start-up funds.

If you own access to the internet there is a huge amount of free resources which you could use to educate yourself in certain technical skill, such as web development, 3D modeling, video production etc.
Your skills become your assets and you can sell these for a price.

Now you become your own exploiter in a way... but I guess it's easier then if someone else exploits you :lol:
I guess it all comes down to what kind of person you really are - if you can't stand authority of any sort, I'd say self-employment is suitable.

[chegitz guevara]

Besides as I pointed out, a cashier is contributing to the exchange value, because it would be different without their input. All jargon stripped away that is the basic fact that remains.

The fact that you said it does not make it true. What you need to prove your case is to show that, ceterus parabus, shops with cashiers make more profit than those without.

[Demogorgon]

The fact that you said it does not make it true. What you need to prove your case is to show that, ceterus parabus, shops with cashiers make more profit than those without.
As it happens a shop that tried to get by without cashiers-at least in the days before self service checkouts-wouldn't be making much profit at all for obvious reasons, but that is not the crux of the issue.

The issue is that you do not seem to understand what production is, or at least you understand it far too narrowly. In fact the default position ought to be that any hired Labour is being exploited because capitalists would not bother hiring it if there wasn't anything in it for them. To prove a particular type of hired work is not exploited you would need to have particular reason for doing so. Metaphysical notions of exchange value already being "complete" before it is "unlocked" do not really cut it particularly as there would still be clear value in the service of unlocking it.

I have a question for you, given that you do not seem to think that tertiary sector service jobs are not being productive in the strict sense and given that in most Western countries the tertiary sector is dominant, does that mean that the West has reached the happy situation where most workers are no longer exploited?

[chegitz guevara]

As it happens a shop that tried to get by without cashiers-at least in the days before self service checkouts-wouldn't be making much profit at all for obvious reasons, but that is not the crux of the issue.

Which is the whole point about valorizing labor. The socially necessary labor time locked up in the commodity (whether a good or a service) cannot be realized by the capitalist without other workers doing non-productive, and therefore, non-exploitable, labor. The capitalist can't make a profit if the cashier doesn't sell the product, but the labor of the cashier doesn't add anything to the the total amount of socially necessary labor time embodied in the commodity.


The issue is that you do not seem to understand what production is, or at least you understand it far too narrowly. In fact the default position ought to be that any hired Labour is being exploited because capitalists would not bother hiring it if there wasn't anything in it for them. To prove a particular type of hired work is not exploited you would need to have particular reason for doing so. Metaphysical notions of exchange value already being "complete" before it is "unlocked" do not really cut it particularly as there would still be clear value in the service of unlocking it.

It's not metaphysical notions. The commodity has the same exchange value regardless of whether or not a cashier takes your money or an independent shop keeper sells it to you, or it falls off the back of a truck. The price of the same commodity may vary across shops, but that doesn't mean anything when it comes to exploitation. Are workers who sell a pair of jeans more exploited at a high end shop than those who sell the same pair of jeans at a overstock store, simple because the price is higher? No. The amount of surplus value embedded in the jeans is identical in each store. Only the price is different.


I have a question for you, given that you do not seem to think that tertiary sector service jobs are not being productive in the strict sense and given that in most Western countries the tertiary sector is dominant, does that mean that the West has reached the happy situation where most workers are no longer exploited?

Reread all of my pots, then decide whether or not you ever should have asked this question in the first place.

Seriously, go read the old man.

[Demogorgon]

Which is the whole point about valorizing labor. The socially necessary labor time locked up in the commodity (whether a good or a service) cannot be realized by the capitalist without other workers doing non-productive, and therefore, non-exploitable, labor. The capitalist can't make a profit if the cashier doesn't sell the product, but the labor of the cashier doesn't add anything to the the total amount of socially necessary labor time embodied in the commodity.

You are simply trying to talk around the issue. Defining what is socially necessary and what is not is arbitrary. Capitalism requires buying snd selling to distribute goods, therefore a cashier is doing something "necessary" in that regard. Trying to prove something else is using word games.


It's not metaphysical notions. The commodity has the same exchange value regardless of whether or not a cashier takes your money or an independent shop keeper sells it to you, or it falls off the back of a truck. The price of the same commodity may vary across shops, but that doesn't mean anything when it comes to exploitation. Are workers who sell a pair of jeans more exploited at a high end shop than those who sell the same pair of jeans at a overstock store, simple because the price is higher? No. The amount of surplus value embedded in the jeans is identical in each store. Only the price is different.

How exactly does one "embed" value? If you shake it hard enough does it fall out? This is metaphysical gobbledygook.

Your particular example is mistake in that you think you can talk about exchange value of each individual good, that is to say that you can talk about a particular pair of jeans and find particular value "embedded" in them, whatever that might mean. Actually what you get is an exchange value for jeans that prices are fluctuating around, particularly where price discrimination is involved (as in the case of high end stores charging their snobbish customers more). What matters is the value of jeans in general which in a particular pair will come from the average amount of labour to make a pair. That labour includes the labour involved in the final sale.


Reread all of my pots, then decide whether or not you ever should have asked this question in the first place.

Seriously, go read the old man.
An answer if you please. You have claimed that checkout operators at least are not exploited, whether or not you meant to say that, I am not sure, but you did, so do you believe that the tertiary sector jobs are being exploited or not?

Incidentally, while we are at it, what exactly are you seeing as the "socially necessary" or "creative" labour anyway? Are people transporting raw material in that category? What about those transporting the final good? What about those whose job it is to fix the machines when they stop working? I have at various times seen people claim that these jobs are not in this category, so what do you think?

[StalinFanboy]

Union leaders can easily be exploited. Forcing the union into uncomfortable bargaining positions, cause the union to look bad such that public opinion turns against them in case of a strike or other dispute.

ANY worker can be exploited.

That is not economic exploitation, and union bosses are not workers. often times they make huge salaries off of dues and shit.

[chegitz guevara]

An answer if you please.

I wrote an answer to that question at the very beginning of this thread. Your laziness is not my problem.

It's also clear you have no understanding of the concept of value.

[Demogorgon]

I wrote an answer to that question at the very beginning of this thread. Your laziness is not my problem.

It's also clear you have no understanding of the concept of value.
The question is clear. You wrote "A cashier is not exploited [but is] a proletarian". For the third time, does this apply to the tertiary sector in general and if so does this mean that most first world proletarians are not exploited?

I don't really mind if you fling insults at me or say I don't understand this or that, I just want an answer.

[chegitz guevara]

Since you can't be arsed to scroll to the TOP OF THE THREAD


Exploitation in Marxism means something specific, that a surplus value is being extracted from your labor.

You might be in a job where you don't produce anything (a good or a service) but rather, your labor is used to realize the surplus value embodied in a commodity. A cashier, for example, adds no value to a good or service, but without one products can't be sold, and thus, the surplus value unrealized for the capitalist. The cashier is not exploited, but, due to her relations to the means of production (nothing to sell but her labor-power) is a proletarian.


I should add an addendum: My previous post looks only at workers individually, not as a class. As a class the whole working class is exploited, the rate of which can be measured. Individual workers within the class may be exploited at greater or lesser rates, and some not exploited at all as an individual. However, collectively, they are members of a section of society that is used to create and realize surplus value.

Hope that doesn't confuse things for you.

[Demogorgon]

Since you can't be arsed to scroll to the TOP OF THE THREAD
Perhaps I am not clear. Those posts do not answer my question, partly because they are in contradiction with one another. If workers are individually unexploited, one could say they are still exploited as a class if they made up a relatively small proportion, but in many developed countries the tertiary sector is a big part of the economy. So does that still apply? And if so how can it be reconciled with so many being individually unexploited?

It seems to me your position is not so far removed from third worldism. A country which may be using cheaper labour abroad for much of its raw production with its own workers being involved in tertiary production would, by your definition be exploiting foreign-as opposed to its own-workers. That is not a position with which I have much sympathy, but it is where your position seems to lead.

[chegitz guevara]

While it might seem to be leading towards a third worldist position, keep in mind that third worldism posits that first world workers are exploiters of third world proletarians and are not exploited in any way, as a class.

Now, it could be argued (is) that tertiary sector workers are exploiting productive workers, since they are paid out of the surplus value generated by the productive workers. But tertiary sector workers are still proletarians. They must sell their labor-power for their survival. They own neither the commodities nor the capital, and are not in an exploitive position vis-à-vis other workers. They have no power.

What about the unemployed. No one buys their labor power or puts it to use. They are proletarians by virtue of their relationship to capital. And they are paid out of the surplus generated by the productive workers. It would be hard to argue that the unemployed exploit the workers (though the right does make that very claim).

So let me blow your noodle for a second and point out that capitalists can exploit other capitalists. In actuality, capitalists can usurp surplus value that other capitalists have exploited from their own workers. This is the relation that the finance sector has over the industrial sector, for example. This is what destroyed the American auto industry.

As for it being contradictory that some proletarians are exploited and others are not. Capitalism is a system full of contradictions. This is what will lead to its demise. What the growing mass of non-productive workers points out is that capitalism has grown vastly productive. At the same time, it is having ever increasing difficulty in realizing that surplus value. They shift that burden on to us via economic crises.

But it also points to the fact that, there is already a hell of a lot of work that could be abolished if we got rid of the market. One of my comrades locally did a quick and dirty calculation and estimates that all things being equal, we could move to a ten hour work week without a corresponding drop in wealth. This roughly parallels what Gus Hall (yeah, yeah) pointed out in the 80s, which was that the average worker only gets back one quarter of the value s/he generates.

[ʇsıɥɔɹɐuɐ ıɯɐbıɹo]

....safety inspector for roller coaster rides would be kinda hard to exploit, I mean sure you can let the man go on an unsafe roller coaster ride but other than that it's pretty hard to exploit a man who loves what he does. There are people who would pay to be the first to ride the super-gigantic, ultra-fast hyper-scary roller coaster and this man gets money to scream his lungs out on every one...

[ZeroNowhere]

I think the closest you are going to get is some form of self-employment, at least then you are mostly just exploiting yourself ;)"Some of the labour which produces commodities in capitalist production is performed in a manner which belongs to earlier modes of production, where the relation of capital and wage labour does not yet exist in practice, and therefore the category of productive and unproductive labour , which corresponds to the capitalist standpoint, is entirely inapplicable."

This applies to self-employed, individual labourers; that is, labourers working individually using their own, individual means of production, rather than working collectively. They aren't 'exploited' because they produce in a manner belonging to pre-capitalist social formations.

In any case, this (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/economic/ch02b.htm) may help here. For example:


The capitalist production process is not merely a process of the production of commodities. It is a process which absorbs unpaid labour, making the means of production into means for the absorption of unpaid labour.

It emerges from what has been said so far that to be productive labour is a quality of labour which in and for itself has absolutely nothing to do with the particular content of the labour, its particular usefulness or the specific use value in which it is expressed.

Labour with the same content can therefore be both productive and unproductive.

Milton, for example, who did Paradise Lost, was an unproductive worker. In contrast to this, the writer who delivers hackwork for his publisher is a productive worker. Milton produced Paradise Lost in the way that a silkworm produces silk, as the expression of his own nature. Later on he sold the product for £5 and to that extent became a dealer in a commodity. But the Leipzig literary proletarian who produces books, e.g. compendia on political economy, at the instructions of his publisher is roughly speaking a productive worker, in so far as his production is subsumed under capital and only takes place for the purpose of the latter’s valorisation. A singer who sings like a bird is an unproductive worker. If she sells her singing for money, she is to that extent a wage labourer or a commodity dealer. But the same singer, when engaged by an entrepreneur who has her sing in order to make money, is a productive worker, for she directly produces capital. A schoolmaster who educates others is not a productive worker. But a schoolmaster who is engaged as a wage labourer in an institution along with others, in order through his labour to valorise the money of the entrepreneur of the knowledge-mongering institution, is a productive worker. Yet most of these kinds of work, from the formal point of view, are hardly subsumed formally under capital. They belong rather among the transitional forms.


The difference between productive and unproductive labour consists merely in whether labour is exchanged for [I]money as money or for money as capital.'Productive labour' here means productive of surplus-value. Of course, I believe that Marx points out in volume II that even in cases where labour is not 'productive' in this capitalist sense, nonetheless it will still be paid less than the general value-product which the same work-hours would produce in productive labour. A productive labourer may produce for 8 hours and only be paid a magnitude equal to the value produced by 4, in accordance with the value of labour-power, and in this case this constitutes their use to the capitalist, who uses them not to accumulate use-values, which he does not particularly care about, but to create products which may be exchanged to make a profit. On the other hand, a non-productive wage-labourer, whose use to the buyer is to provide a use-value or concrete service rather than value, may still work for 8 hours and only be paid the same amount as the productive labourer, given that this is the value of labour-power.


With non-material production, even if it is conducted purely for the purpose of exchange, purely produces commodities, two things are possible:

1) it results in commodities which exist separately from the producer, hence can circulate in the interval between production and consumption as commodities; this applies to books, paintings, and all the products of artistic creation which are distinct from the actual performance of the executant artist. Here capitalist production is applicable on a very restricted scale. In so far as these people do not employ assistants, etc., in the manner of sculptors, they mostly work (if they are not independent) for merchant etc., capital, e.g. for booksellers; this is a relation which itself constitutes merely a form transitional to a mode of production capitalist only in form. The fact that it is precisely in these transitional forms that the exploitation of labour reaches its highest level does not alter the situation at all;

2) the product is inseparable from the act of producing it. Here too there is only a restricted field for the capitalist mode of production, and it can in the nature of things only take place in a few spheres. (I need the doctor, not his errand boy.) In educational institutions, for example, teachers may well be merely wage labourers for the entrepreneur who owns the teaching factory. But similar cases do not need to be considered when dealing with capitalist production as a whole.
Hence, capitalism does develop into such fields of 'non-material production', but not as thoroughly as in material production.


it's pretty hard to exploit a man who loves what he does.Not necessarily.