Marxist theory of the capitalist public sector?

[jake williams]

I'm looking for theoretical perspectives on the role/significance/political economy of the public sector in capitalist societies. Specifically, vis-à-vis the class position(s) of people who work for a wage, but who don't directly produce private profit for a capitalist because they work for the state.

It seems like it should be easy to Google, but I haven't found anything. Most of what I have read in the past either makes some vague comment about how they're ultimately serving capitalists because they are reproducing conditions of capitalist production, or lazily asserts that because state managers have higher incomes than the workers they supervise, it's basically the same thing as commodity production.

Seems relevant given the proportion of wage workers in advanced capitalist societies who don't (directly) produce for private profit.

[cyu]

The ruling class is in charge of both the government and the economy. If private security isn't enough to defend the capitalist's estate, then they call in the public police force to prop up the system of wage slavery.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I'm looking for theoretical perspectives on the role/significance/political economy of the public sector in capitalist societies. Specifically, vis-à-vis the class position(s) of people who work for a wage, but who don't directly produce private profit for a capitalist because they work for the state.

It seems like it should be easy to Google, but I haven't found anything. Most of what I have read in the past either makes some vague comment about how they're ultimately serving capitalists because they are reproducing conditions of capitalist production, or lazily asserts that because state managers have higher incomes than the workers they supervise, it's basically the same thing as commodity production.

Seems relevant given the proportion of wage workers in advanced capitalist societies who don't (directly) produce for private profit.

Hmmm, yeah I'd like to read about that too... sorry don't have any suggestions that directly take up this issue.

I have been reading about management recently (Harry Braverman: "Labor and Monopoly Capital") but mostly in the context of privite business. The book is about 40 years old and so there might be more accurate information now, but he says that at the time, it's hard to get statistical information about some job types of this sort that would be useful for Marxists because the way the infromation is kept by business and sociologists creates a big amorphous group of different people who in terms of their relationship to the system could be ruling class, p. bourgoise bureaucrats, or just white collar prols. Until the 20th century, mostly owners and executives in capital were more likely the same people or the same family and would do most of management along with some clerks and specialists and whatnot. But any workers that are designated as managers or just office workers are more or less people who do work enhanceing profits through working in marketing or whatnot - the positions are made possible by increasingly subdivided and de-skilled jobs and the centralization of capital in capitalism of the corporate era.

He also describes how, as capitalism in commodity production generalizes certain types of work forms and certain relationships, this then is paralleled by other firms even if not intentionally rationalizing or in non-productive work. So I'd imagine this applies to some of the low-end sort of work done in the public sector: business creates cheap job designations for their internal management and then there is in society in general a labor force of white collar paper-pushers and clerks and data-entry and so on to draw on by all employers.

...I swear I was heading somewhere with this but I gotta go...

[Hit The North]

Capitalism is generalised commodity production and is, therefore, an intensification of private means of production, but capitalism also socialises labour. This is the contradiction from which the public sector should be viewed. The public sector is that part of the surplus that is ploughed into the reproduction of labour power (education, health and welfare, sanitation, etc.). It is a drain on that part of the surplus which is reinvested in accumulation and is, therefore, an unwelcome guest at capitalism's table. At best the capitalists tolerate it as a necessary evil but more and more are finding ways of apportioning it out to the private sector to a least give the impression of profitability (although operating surpluses are usually accrued through cuts to staff and dilution of services) and losses are offset by the public purse.

Some aspects of the public sector (armed forces, police forces, courts, etc.) are the result of the state arming itself to defend the prevailing relations; other aspects have been won, at least partially, from pressure below by workers (socialised health services, universal education, etc.).

[Hit The North]

Not read it, but this article (http://www.crvenakritika.org/english/151-the-state-and-capitalism-theories-of-public-goods) looks like it might be useful for the OP.

[Dagoth Ur]

If they trade their labor, which is a product, for a living they are proletarian. It doesn't matter what they do.

[jake williams]

If they trade their labor, which is a product, for a living they are proletarian. It doesn't matter what they do.
I'm inclined to agree, but at a certain point this might be a kind of legalism. There are politicians and bankers and CEOs who are paid salaries, rather than collecting income from the interest on assets. Legalistically, they're not paid for any commodity other than their own labour power, and insofar as bankers and CEOs extract surplus value, it's an artifact of economic organization (because the income the company that employs them comes from extracting surplus value directly or indirectly, but they don't do it "themselves") rather than from owning the company (in the case of a lot of CEOs, and a lot of bankers).

The thing is, most private sector employees and most public sector employees receive a wage (again, including many CEOs and bankers), and workers in both sectors "produce value" (excluding CEOs, bankers, and others).

But whereas in the private sector workers produce exchange value for a capitalist, in the public sector workers produce use values, mostly for other workers (in education and, in Canada, in healthcare).

Only in edge cases do public sector workers produce any exchange value in some sense for capitalists (privatized companies, privatized research products, etc.). And while many public sectors produce use values for capitalists (especially, say, the state proper, ie. the police and the army), directly producing use values for someone entails a very different dynamics, politically and economically, than commodity production.

A lot of my interest in the question relates to the potential political and economic consequences of a union movement centred in the public sector.

[cyu]

There are politicians and bankers and CEOs who are paid salaries, rather than collecting income from the interest on assets. Legalistically, they're not paid for any commodity other than their own labour power


http://everything2.com/user/ryano/writeups/Running+Dog

A running dog, be it a person or state, was a servile entity which did the bidding of greater powers, in order to stay in their good books. The analogy is pretty clear: in exchange for food, protection and other rewards, a greyhound will mindlessly run great distances at great speeds in pursuit of some fabricated lure.

;)

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Braverman (1974) is a staple work on deskilling.

In addition, have a browse: http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=public+sector&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5

I will go up in the loft this afternoon and find my reference list from uni - I did it as a 3rd year undergrad module so have a pretty comprehensive list of books and articles which you'll find interesting.

[Thirsty Crow]

Capitalism is generalised commodity production and is, therefore, an intensification of private means of production, but capitalism also socialises labour. This is the contradiction from which the public sector should be viewed.
Sure, you could view it from this perspective. But it's not at all clear how the original conception of the socialization of labor - which is predicated on the effect of capital itself in that it breaks down the autonomy of the artisan class and forces greater and greater numbers of laborers into large productive units, where a distinct technical division of labor occurs and acts as the basis for this socialization - relates to the formation of the public sector.



The public sector is that part of the surplus that is ploughed into the reproduction of labour power (education, health and welfare, sanitation, etc.). It is a drain on that part of the surplus which is reinvested in accumulation and is, therefore, an unwelcome guest at capitalism's table. This is a common argument that I believe to be defective. The point is not that capitalists constantly seek absolute surplus labor - precisely the opposite, as relative surplus labor (through the distinctly capitalist real subsumption of labor - the development of productivity that enables a rise in the rate of exploitation without the need for lengthening the working day and intensifying labor as the most important levers for accumulation; of course, that doesn't entail at all that absolute surplus labor is a thing of the past) becomes the dominant mechanism in capital accumulation and social reproduction.

Weren't the productivity deals behind the post-WWII creation of the welfare state the basis for the latter?

This would mean that it is incorrect that such guarantees for social reproduction of labor power are inherently a problem for capitalism as you imply here; this view doesn't take into account the phenomena of the cycles of accumulation, where crisis conditions do indeed make of the welfare state a problem, there's no doubt. But this only means that the welfare state becomes a problem for capital under certain conditions. On the contrary, under different conditions the welfare state is a most welcome guest for capital.

I think that this can even be ascertained in the case of the likes of the British mining monopoly which was very practical for private capital in that, in the best of times, it supplied raw material for production at quite an affordable rates.