Marxism and the Service sector

[Evo2]

Hello comrades


A general question that I have struggled with. How does marxism view workers in the service sector, for example a call centre advisor dealing with enquiries. This person doesn't produce anything, so how can they have surplus value extracted from them (and therefore be exploited)?

[Red_Banner]

The corporation is still using your time and work to make money.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Good question!

I think there's some diverse analysis around this, so don't take my word as Gospel, but:

The service sector contributes to the value of the product in ways that aren't immediately materially apparent, the same way that, for example, someone working in the transportation sector does. They change the product socially, and are a necessary part of realizing its value. For example, a shirt on a shelf isn't going to magically translate itself into money: it takes labour to enable that transaction. That's where the value comes from. In the case of tech support, the "tech support" is part of what a consumer is buying when they buy the product - it's therefore included in the price.

I hope that helps.

[#FF0000]

A general question that I have struggled with. How does marxism view workers in the service sector, for example a call centre advisor dealing with enquiries. This person doesn't produce anything, so how can they have surplus value extracted from them (and therefore be exploited)?

kapitalism101 has a good piece on this (http://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/who-is-exploited/)


What about service workers? Are services a commodity? Well a commodity doesn’t have to be embodied in a physical object to be a commodity. As long as it has a labor, use and exchange value it is a commodity. Tour guides produce commodities, prostitutes produce commodities.

[Art Vandelay]

Both replies have been good so far. This is actually something I did some thinking about recently, for example I work as a support worker for a guy with developmental disabilities. The commodity that I produce, is one that is ultimately consumed as I produce it, ie: at the end of the day I am not receiving wages for any tangible and physical commodity which can then be sold in the traditional sense, but rather in exchange for the commodity (physical, emotional, etc...support) I produce continually throughout the day, which is continually used up. The company I work for, gets contracted out by the Canadian government for these services, at which point they hire someone like me, who then only receives a portion of the full value of their work, in the form of their wages. Regardless of whether or not the commodity I produce has exchange value in the traditional sense is irrelevant; my relationship to the means of production (one of a wage slave), as well as the fact that I only receive a portion of the value I produce, makes me and other service workers proles.

[L.A.P.]

Marx wrote about how 'unproductive labor' is absolutely necessary for society as seen in the reasons already given above. It's just that now, productive labor has been offset into a whole region (i.e. China, Pakistan, Indonesia) so capital in the market can continue to expand itself, while the corporate bodies that most of this circulating capital goes to (i.e. US, UK, French corporations) employ masses of unproductive labor to perform services in the epicenters of capital. The truth of trickle-down economics is that the wealth the Western capitalists extracted from Third World labor trickles down in drops to the Western workers through services they provide. One of the awful consequences of this for the working class of the service economy is the general overproduction of commodities leading to the structural necessity of the surplus-population, or "permanently unemployed", to drive down wages and further extract surplus-value. The retail sector, what used to be dominated by the petit bourgeoisie, is interesting because it indicates the ruling class investing more in commodity capital (as in idle commodities waiting to be exchanged) than productive capital (manufacturing commodities) due to the general overproduction of commodities.



The capitalists are extracting more surplus-value than ever, but their rate of profit is still stagnant





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[L.A.P.]

......oh, and not to mention financialization





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[Evo2]

Thanks for the replies guys, think I've pretty much had my question answered :)