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

[Leigh Meyers]

Jim Devine wrote:
> On 1/18/06, Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> wrote:
>> I am not sure if the title "unproductive" is tongue in cheek, but
>> even if it  is not, it is still inappropriate.  Would you say,
>> tongue in cheek or not, > "Spics and n-words are the best organized
>> workers in the USA?" 
> 
>> Calling government workers unproductive is an invective straight out
>> of the  neo-liberal propaganda handbook, and if I were to name only
>> one thing in the  world "bullshit" that would be on a very short
>> list... 
> 
> Marx used a concept of unproductive labor (seemingly in order to
> confuse the reader and to produce seemingly endless debates amongst
> academic Marxists). But he was clear that it was not a matter of honor
> to be a productive laborer (under his definitions) -- and thus not a
> matter of dishonor to be an unproductive one. ("To be a productive
> worker is therefore not a piece of luck, but a misfortune." --
> CAPITAL, vol. I, ch. 16.)
> 
> For Marx, a worker is "productive" if she or he produces
> surplus-value. An unproductive worker does not do so. This differs
> from the concept of Smith _et al_, who saw unproductive workers as
> producing socially unneeded use-values (e.g., the work of personal
> servants).

Who's doing the 'on-the-fly' defining of  'productive' vs 'unproductive' anyway?
The 'employing class' when it comes to wages, unions, labor, et al.

The US government felt that the native American way of communal
farming of land was unproductive, as was hunter-gathering. The
government did it's best by withholding allotments, holding up
trusts, more, to enforce their concept of 'productive land use'.

It wasn't more productive for the community... almost without exception,
the old ways were more functional in every way. It was purely an attempt
to create a more 'productive' workforce for exploitation.

Even if that 'exploitation' was simply the creation of a viable tax base.
[It was alot more than that... forced cultural assimilation, but I would digress.]

Leigh
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