absolutely right!
>Private sector workers' wages and benefits are paid out of profits
that they create. Public sector workers' wages and benefits are also
paid out of the same source: profits that private sector workers
create ...
>Jim says that public sector workers contribute indirectly to the
profits of the capitalist class as a whole, but that's only true for
some of the public sector workers' activities -- parts of education
and transportation, for instance -- that go into creating and
maintaining conditions for accumulation. Running a giant military, a
huge prison system, etc. -- thousands of times larger than minimal
necessity to create and maintain a secure business environment --
doesn't even indirectly contribute to accumulation: that's a straight
debit. <
is it so from a capitalist class perspective (which is how Marx defines "unproductive" labor)?
>... At worst, an imbalance creates a problem like what Aristide faced
in Haiti: a state, unable to tax, totally dependent on foreign aid to
pay for public sector workers and therefore absolutely vulnerable to
withdrawal of foreign aid and instabilities that the withdrawal begets
. . . finished off by a subsequent coup... <
I'd say that this problem is best understood in terms of the social situation in Haiti (an extremely underdeveloped nation that's extremely dependent on and dominated by the US) than in terms of "unproductive labor" concepts.
-- Jim Devine "The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side." -- James Baldwin
This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm