> For people who use what would be considered technical language, the
> lack of a normative (standard +-) meaning is a hinderance to
> communication of key concepts, which could be intentional for a
> variety of different reasons and innumerable motives. But I believe
> it would, due to causing inefficency in that *communication*,
> create a net negative effect on the discussion at hand [...if any
> mutually 'productive' [heh!] discussion of: 'productive' vs
> 'unproductive' was a point of interest, it would be best to have
> terminology that holds still for more than one debate [:>]
If the terms are confusing, we can invent different ones: e.g., profit-making labor and non-profit-making labor. (A bit more verbose than Marx's, but the new ones leave less room for confusion, I think.) One part of non-profit-making labor is done at home (often by women) for no compensation, another part of non-profit-making labor is done for wages by government workers, and yet another part is done for wages or for no compensation in the NGO sector. The drive of capitalism, especially at the present stage, is to commodify as much of domestic and government work as possible, to have it done in the private sector to make profits for capitalists.
Marvyn wrote:
> Further to this, I'm still waiting for an answer from Yoshie or
> anyone else as to how you would justify the right to collective
> bargaining and strike rights for these workers if they are indeed
> an "unproductive" drain on society.
Non-profit-making labor (unproductive labor in Marx's terminology) isn't necessarily a drain on society. Some kinds of non-profit- making labor (e.g, teaching in public schools) promote social welfare; other kinds (e.g., soldiers making an unjust war) diminish it. Non-profit-making labor can be a drain on profits, though: e.g., if US workers succeed in transforming the US health care system into a single-payer universal health care system, a lot of what has been done in the private sector for profits either becomes unnecessary or gets transformed into non-profit-making labor, depending on how the transformation is made.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>