--
On Tue, 22 Jun 1999 11:46:19 Doug Henwood wrote:
>It's hard enough, it seems, to define "productive" labor. But leaving that
>aside, what's the point of the category?
It provides us with the approriate framework to build accounting systems so that we can measure Marxian categories like the rate of surplus value, the rate of exploitation, productivity, rate of profit, etc (the whole point of Shaikh and Tonak's book "Measuring the Wealth of Nations"). You can not measure Marxian categories with Keynesian based accounting systems. In other words, the proper and painful understanding of the notion of productive/non-productive labor is not just an intellectual exercise but a necessary step in the building of marxian theory, the connection between theory and observable reality, the tool necessary to have a proper understanding of economic categories defined by historically determined social relations.
Angelfire for your free web-based e-mail. http://www.angelfire.com