On Fri, 18 Jun 1999 16:08:21 Carrol Cox wrote:
>P.S. Marx took his basic theory of productive labor from Smith, and
>Smith was not above using the ambiguity of the phrase as part of his
>fight against priests and nobles. I don't think that figures in Marx's
>discussion.
I'm not familiar with the work of this author by the name of Marx you're refering to, but a 19th century writer with a similar last name and first name Karl wrote the following regarding Adam Smith's definition of productive labor:
"Had Adam Smith adhered with full consciousness to the analysis of surplus -value which in substance is to be found in his work-which is created only in the exchange of capital against wage-labour- it would have followed that productive labour is only that wich is exchanged against capital: never labor which is exchanged with revenue as such. In order for revenue to be exchanged against productive labor, it must first be transformed into capital. But taking as his starting-point one aspect of the traditional view-that productive labour is labour which directly produces material wealth of any kind-and at the same time combining with this his distinction in so far as it is based on the exchange of either capital for labour or of revenue for labour, with Smith the following become possible: the kind of labour for which capital is exchanged is always productive (it always creates material wealth, etc.). The kind of labour which is exchanged for revenue may be productive or it ! may not; but the spender of revenue as a rule prefers to set in motion directly unproductive labour rather than productive. One can see how Adam Smith, by this compound of his two distinctions, very much weakens and blunts the principal distinction"
(Theories of Surplus Value, Part I, Chapter IV, page 258)
Therefore, it is for Adam Smith and not for Karl Marx that a mob hitman is a productive laborer.
Fabian
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