>At 08:24 AM 1/27/02 -0800, Michael Perelman wrote:
>>Housework was only unproductive, for Marx, because it did not produce
>>surplus value -- that is, a very narrow interpretation of productive
>>within the context of capitalist values -- it did not denigrate housework.
>>
>>For example, the production of destructive goods would be productive.
>> --
>
>
>Kelly: could you elaborate what it means to say that it doesn't produce
>surplus
>value? i've not visited these debates in quite some time-- more than a
>decade ago. i do, though, recall reading a number of feminist critiques of
>marx/engels and marxists feminists' claims about housework as unproductive
>labor.
>
The productive labor dispute leads to all sorts of unfortunate offense taking because people misunderstand what Maex meant by p-labor. They read it as "contrivutes something to society." Naturally they get ticked when some Marxist male characterizes women's work as unproductive labor. But Marx just meant labor that produces surplus value, therefore, in capitalist society, by definition wage labor for capitalists. The work of lawyers, accountants, and public employeesis also unproductive by this definition. It is wage labor, some of it, but not for capitalists. Some of it, such as production of arms or tobacco, is socially harmful.
I think that the p/-un-p labor distinction fails to hold up, btw, or at least Marx's version of it does. I don't think you sort out value-producing labor for capitalists from other sorts of wage labor. There would be no value without lawyers to make the system of contracts and property rights work, accountants to keep track of the money, government bureaucrats to maintain the political superstructure--or people to do the domestic labor of reproduction. I don't think that anything in Marxist theory allows us to assign contribution quantities; rather, the system produces a total amount of valie, some of which is surplus (the share taken by the capitalists). So I'd drop the distinction insofara s we use the value categories at all.
jks
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