[lbo-talk] Unproductive Workers = The Best Organized in the USA

[andie nachgeborenen]

I don't think the concepts of "productive" and
"unproductive" labor hold water. Lots of
"unproductive" labor is not only necessary for the
production of material goods and necessary services,
e.g., accounting, legal, marketing, and transportation
services -- but is also a source of profist, as my
senior partners can tell you. Lots of public sector
labor is "productive," not necessarily in producing
goods and services for profit, but in producing them
nonetheless. And of course lots of capitalist
enterprises fail to produce either goods or services,
or when they do do to produce them for profit -- I'm
working ona  bit of a big bankruptcy case right now. 

ALl that said, it's not good when private sector union
density goes into free fall, contrary to NN's admitted
Pollyannishness, the union movement is in terrible
fucking condition, with ripple effects on the rest of
us. And public sector unionism doesn't "make up for
it," not because it's "unproductive labor" -- not
because govt workers can't stop the wheels from
turning, but because we need to organize the private
sector and win some battles over capital head to head
-- someday. (Putting it taht way doesn't conceded the
utility of the (un)prodyctive labor concept, but it is
a fact that private sector workers face capital
directly in a way that public sector workers do not.

--- Jim Devine <jdevine03 at gmail.com> wrote:


> On 1/18/06, Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
> wrote:
> >You have to look at "productive" and "unproductive"
> activities
> without taking on a moralist outlook. <
> 
> 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
> 
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