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

[andie nachgeborenen]

Sort of, but as it's usually understood Marx's notion
of productive labor involves value producing labor
that creates material goods. This seems doubly
arbitrary -- why restrict productive labor to the
production of material goods -- if it has to be value
producing, why not services and intangible goods? And
why does productive laboir have to be value producing?
It's nor productive id your compnay loses money? It's
not productive even if it is a material goof of the
sort that might be poroduced in the private sector
(i.e., not a public good) but is produced by the govt
or not for profit? And why the production of public
gboods nor productive labor anyway? The whole
distinction is a mess. 

It's supposed to get ath the idea that you have to
produce enough food, clothes, tools, etc., to have a
working capitalist economy, but you won't have that
without public goods, legal servives, accountants,
police, etc., anyway. True, you can't eat legal
services (which, btw. are produced in the private
sector for profit for the most part), but you can't
have property rights, contracts, erc., and other
equipment necessary for a capitalsist economy without
them either. Likewise roads.  Or childcare. So I think
we should write off thi dintinction asa  bad idea.

If there;s a problem with the facr that union density
is dropping like a stone in the private sector, it's
not because the Revo depends especially on the
self-organization of productive, value-producing
labor.  It's because there are a lot of private
serctor workers and without the the union movement's
much weaker.

--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:


> Nathan Newman wrote:
> 
> >This is a bizarre definition of "productive" to
> begin with.
> 
> I've always wondered if this usage was an instance
> of Marx's irony - 
> taking the classical distinction between productive
> & unproductive, 
> and turning it into a critique of both capitalism
> and its economics. 
> It doesn't matter what kind of "crappy shit" (as he
> put it in the 
> Grundrisse) you make, just as long as you make a
> buck for the boss.
> 
> Doug
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> 

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