Unproductive labor

[subcp]

What is the relationship between surplus value extraction and unproductive labor? Trying to get a better handle on the classification of the large industries based on the reproduction of labor (education, health care, the public sector) and consumption of commodities (retail, service in general). Since workers in these industries are not producing for a wage, but instead distribute, service and/or maintain, what is the mechanism of exploitation (surplus value extraction) in relation to their work?

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I'd say that it's even more confusing than your question posits, since there is a sort of productive character to, for example, the labour of teachers - only what they produce is not a physical commodity but "knowledge" and "social" capital. Similarly, the retail worker might not "make" anything but they do produce a certain set of relationships. In our context, wherein capital has penetrated life far beyond the degree of "How do we make shit?" to really fundamentally constructing the whole of social life, saying things are "messy" is an understatement. Further, there are real differences within and between the fields you mentioned, having to do with access to capital in the form of loans, stocks, etc., and, hell, that's without getting into the stratification of labour along lines of race, gender, etc.
In short, what I'm getting at is that the distinction between productive and unproductive labour isn't clear cut, and their class character is fraught with complicating factors. Their relation to the creation of surplus value can't be understood individually, but only in relation to capital as a whole.
Yup.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

This is probably an oversimplification, and I am not entirely convinced of this idea myself, but it seems to me that much of what is usually understood as unproductive labour can be viewed as a sort of indirect production. After all, professions connected to retail, education etc. entail the socially useful expenditure of labour power that enables the production of commodities, albeit in an indirect manner. And I propose that the labour value of a lesson, for example, can be estimated as the amount of socially useful labour time that is saved due to that education. At least when it comes to certain subjects.

Alternately, one could view the lesson itself as a commodity, although not a physical one. Then the labour value of that lesson would be equal to the average time that is necessary to prepare and deliver the lecture (apologies for focusing on that particular example, but I think the extension to other fields is straightforward). Lessons in subjects that are particularly important to the processes of production, basic literacy and arithmetic for example, could entail additional labour value as per the first point.

[ckaihatsu]

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Productive and unproductive labour




Marx's critique

Karl Marx regarded land and labour as the source of all wealth, and distinguished between material wealth and human wealth. Human wealth was a wealth in social relations, and the expansion of market trade created ever more of those. However, wealth and economic value were not the same thing in his view; value was a purely social category, a social attribution.

Both in Das Kapital and in Theories of Surplus-Value, Marx devoted a considerable amount of attention to the concept of "productive and unproductive labour". He sought to establish what economic and commercial ideas about productive labour would mean for the lives of the working class, and he wanted to criticise apologetic ideas about the "productive" nature of particular activities. This was part of an argument about the source of surplus value in unpaid surplus labour. His view can be summarised in the following 10 points.

- work is not "naturally productive", both in the sense that it takes work to make work productive, and that productive work depends on tools and techniques to be productive.

- generally speaking, a worker is economically productive and a source of additional wealth to the extent that s/he can produce more than is required for his/her own subsistence (i.e., is capable of performing surplus-labour) and adding to a surplus product.

- the definition of productive and unproductive labour is specific to each specific type of society (for example, feudal society, capitalist society, socialist society etc.) and depends on the given relations of production.

- there exists no neutral definition of productive and unproductive labour; what is productive from the point of view of one social class may not be productive from the point of view of another.

- the only objective definition of productive labour is in terms of what is as a matter of fact productive within the conditions of a given mode of production.

- from the point of view of the capitalist class, labour is productive, if it increases the value of (private) capital or results in (private) capital accumulation.

- Capitalistically productive labour is therefore labour which adds to the mass of surplus value, primarily through profitably producing goods and services for market sale.

- no new value is created through acts of exchange only; therefore, although labour which just facilitates exchange is "productive" from the employer's point of view (because he derives profit from it), it is unproductive from the social point of view because it accomplishes only a transfer of wealth. This "unproductive" labour is accepted however because it reduces the costs of capital accumulation, or facilitates it, or secures it.

- the definition of productive and unproductive labour is not static, but evolving; in the course of capitalist development, the division of labour is increasingly modified, to make more and more labour productive in the capitalistic sense, for example through marketisation and privatisation, value-based management, and Taylorism.

- whether work has been productive can really be known only "after the fact" in capitalist society, because commodity-producing living labour is in most cases definitely valued by the market only after it has been performed, when its product (a good or service) is exchanged and paid for.


Marx accordingly made, explicitly or implicitly 10 distinctions relevant to defining productive labour in a capitalist mode of production:

- commodity production, versus other production

- capitalist production versus non-capitalist production

- production versus circulation (exchange)

- production for profit, versus non-profit production

- productive consumption versus unproductive consumption

- material (tangible) production, versus non-material production

- production of use values, versus production of exchange-values

- production of value, versus appropriation of revenue

- production of income, versus distribution of income

- production versus destruction


In most cases, using these distinctions, it would be obvious whether the labour was capitalistically productive or not, but in a minority of cases it would be not altogether clear or controversial. In part, that is because the division of labour is not static but constantly evolving. The general criterion which Marx suggests is that:

"If we have a function which, although in and for itself unproductive, is nevertheless a necessary moment of [economic] reproduction, then when this is transformed, through a division of labour, from the secondary activity of many into the exclusive activity of a few, into their special business, this does not change the character of the function itself" (Capital Vol. 2, Penguin ed., p. 209).

Obviously, functions falling outside capitalist production altogether would not be capitalistically productive.

Generally, Marx seems to have regarded labour as mainly unproductive from the point of view of capitalist society as a whole, if it involved functions which have to do purely with:

- the maintenance of a class-based social order as such (legal system, police, military, government administration).

- the maintenance and securing of private property relations (police, security, legal system, banking, accounting, licensing authorities etc.).

- operating financial transactions (in banking, financing, commercial trade, financial administration)

- insurance and safety.

- criminal activity.


Such activities were an inevitable cost to capitalist society which had to be met from reserves and from current income. This didn't necessarily mean that unproductive functions are not socially useful or economically useful in some sense; they might well be, but they normally did not directly add net new value to the total social product, that was the point, they were a (necessary) financial cost to society, paid for by a transfer of value created by the productive sector. Thus, they represented an appropriation or deduction from the surplus product, and not a net addition to it. Obviously, unproductive activities could stimulate productive activities however (for example, the production of security installations). Many unproductive costs are accepted by business, either because they involve activities which lower total business costs, and thereby indirectly contribute to income, or because they are unavoidable in doing business.

In the division of labour of modern advanced societies, unproductive functions in this Marxian sense occupy a very large part of the labour force; the wealthier a society is, the more "unproductive" functions it can afford. In the USA for example, one can calculate from labour force data that facilitating exchange processes and processing financial claims alone is the main activity of more than 20 million workers. Legal staff, police, security personnel and military employees number almost 5 million workers.




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productive_labor#Marx.27s_critique

[subcp]

In our context, wherein capital has penetrated life far beyond the degree of "How do we make shit?" to really fundamentally constructing the whole of social life, saying things are "messy" is an understatement.That's exactly what I've been trying to explore further (not just the process by which the commodity form, the 'spectacle-commodity society', have changed the world humans inhabit, but the mechanism's by which the law of value penetrates all aspects of life over time). I was afraid this was the case- that the literature on the subject is as sparse and conflicting as value-form theory etc.

The news of the mass closure of swathes of retail outlets, strip malls, etc. that are going on now and will accelerate in the future (GameStop closing 850 stores, JC Penney's closing 250-350, Radioshack, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, dozens of retail chains closing thousands and thousands of US stores now and in the next year or 2) means there may be industrial wastelands like the ones in Flint, MI and Braddock, PA and Akron, OH- but now it looks like there will be similar skeletons of dying industry in the form of vacant big box stores and strip malls to dot the landscape (the US is gonna look like a scooby doo ghost town- the Cleveland hastily made tourism video is quite accurate).

It seems like a very important subject for our times; especially now that workers in service and specifically retail are rebelling for the first time for the most part (aside from minor 1 company disturbances and strikes during the civil rights era)- especially outside the complete domination of trade unions. This seems like an area that is not being adequately analyzed and assessed- everything from the composition of the workforce (by age, education level), size of the workforce, contemporary struggles (like Black Friday at Wal-Mart, strikes at Wal-Marts subsidiaries, unorthodox union organizing), unemployment rate (especially youth and minority unemployment), poverty wages and little benefits in the context of crisis and rising costs of living, etc.

I wonder if the transfer of value to people or things that are not in circulation (like your example of a teacher, or Facilities Management department workers of a hospital, the shelf stocker in the hospital pharmacy) is just another example of 'dead capital' (in that the value created by labor doesn't enter circulation to become new capital) or related to a concept similar to moral depreciation (but applied to the substinence-reproduction of labor rather than machinery). For retail specifically (like shelf stocker in a hospital pharmacy or cashier at Walmart) it would make sense that it is the last step before capital becomes currency and profit. Hard to find a place to start.