>> 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)?
It seems to me that the military, the prison system, etc. that are far larger than minimal necessity to create and maintain a secure business environment contribute indirectly to accumulation of only the sectors of the capitalist class that benefit from them (through government contracts, outsourcing, etc.), not the capitalist class (even a "national" capitalist class, to the extent that it is still possible to speak about it) as a whole.
Without a distinction between productive and unproductive labor, you can pretty much see everyone who breathes in a still functioning capitalist economy (functioning however low a level) as productive -- from pickpockets to judges, to take Marx's example from Grundrisse. But a capitalist economy that predominantly consists of the likes of judges and pickpockets can't last, unless it depends on foreign aid.
>> ... 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.
Take Venezuela, for instance. While oil prices remain high, the government can use windfalls to create unproductive public sector employment (missions, coops, etc.) to meet social needs, decrease unemployment, subsidize the Cuban economy, etc. But once oil prices go down? Fidel boasts of Cuba as "a nation becoming a university": "what began as an unattainable dream -- to see a nation become a university -- is today a reality" (qtd. in José A. de la Osa, "Aggressions Have Become a Great School for Our People," Granma, 9 February 2004). But a nation can't become a university in a capitalist world (if a nation didn't need any imports, it would be another story, but that is impossible, even if the nation operates on a predominantly socialist basis).
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>