--- Tahir Wood <twood at uwc.ac.za> wrote:
> Tahir: I would prefer to leave the question of
> institutions open and
> deal with the essential questions first. This does
> mean abstracting from
> the institutions or systems that one knows, whether
> real or imaginary,
> and focusing instead on human need. From this
> perpsective there are two
> essentially productive activities: producing the
> means of production and
> producing the means of consumption. Anything else
> should be situated in
> relation to these. To me insurance is fairly remote
> from these. So,
> leaving aside the question of whether insurance is
> essential to
> capitalism - and I think it is - one asks the deeper
> question, is it so
> closely linked to human need that it would need to
> exist in ANY system?
> I think not. Growing food, for example, provides a
> point of contrast. I
[WS:] I think you seem to confound an activity with its instituional form in a historical society, and that leads your argument astray. Insurance business as we know it is a particular instituional arrangement in a specific historical context, but that arrangement serves a general human need - namely having peace of mind especially while embarking on a risky endeavour.
Under a different social historical conditions, that need for peace of mind was satisfied by a different instituional arrangeemnt, e.g. by magical rituals, offerings to gods, divinations performed by professional shamans or priests, etc. (cf. Bronislaw Malinowski's work on Trobriand Islanders). Under state socialism, that need was satisfied by the practice and ritual of central planning. In a capitalist system, the institutional agents dealing with the peace of mind need is private insurance companies.
So it seems to me that the need is universal and it is met diffrently in different social setings. It therefore makes little sense to consider the provision of peace of mind unproductive - either in general or in a particular institutional arrnagement (i.e. as private insuarnce but not as state planning, or vice versa). The fact remians that people need peace of mind when embarking on risky yet productive activties, and without that peace of mind they would be less likely to engage in these productive activties. From that POV, providing peace of mind while not dirctly productive, enables productive activties and by that virtue it is productive inasmuch as it does so.
That brings back to the point of specific institutional arrangements in which these production-enabling activties are performed. It makes little sense to consider any general human activties in abstraction i.e. as food producing or peace of mind providing. We must instead focus on particular instituional forms of these activities e.g. food production by slash and burn agriculture, by a feudal demesne, by a capitalist agribusiness, or by a socialist cooperative. Same for the provision of peace of mind, human motivation, reproduction of labour power etc.
What is more, these instituional forms cannot be considered in isolation but only in a larger systemic context in which they operate. Private insurance makes no sense under socialism, but it makes perfect sense under capitalism, so when we talk about productivity, we must consider productivity and efficiency of the entire systems as a whole. This can be compared to marshes - they may be "unproductive" from the point of view of agriculture or housing developer, but they play a vital an productive role in the ecosystem - so we need to consider the value of the entire ecosystem ves that of the artifical environment created by developers.
So in sum, I do not buy your argument that certain types of activities are by nature unproductive while other are by nature productive. It all depends on the instituional context. A feudal mode of food production or slash and burn agriculture would be utterly unproductive in a modern economy, while insurance would be rather productive in a modern capitalist society (but not so under socialism.) Likewise, entertainment or caregiving may be productive if they serve the reproduction of labour power, but they may also be counterproductive if they inhibit productive activties.
Tahir:
> disappear. What is
> more to the point is whether the work/play
> distinction that is now so
> important is really essential. Things that are now
> considered to be more
> like work, might in a communist world come to seem
> more like play. This
> does not mean that they would not be productive
> activities. Sport,
> exercise and recreation are analogous here. Contrast
> this with your own
> example of the used car salesman. It seems a long
> shot to insist that
> this activity would be needed in any imaginable
> society, particularly
> one that is better than the present. So I prefer to
> abstract from known
> systems in order to derive a means of criticising
> them, rather than to
> relativise in the way that you do. "Costs" smack too
> much of the
> time-is-money type of thinking for my liking.
[WS:] I do not think we disagrre that much about the conclusions, but there is disagreement how to reach them. You seem to agree that specific activities must be examined in a specific social-historical context, and yet you profess the need to abstract them from that context. Why? You can analyze and compare diffrent systems without going to hyper-abstractions. What need does that hyper-abstraction serve other than condemmning sertain types of activties (e.g. used car salesman:) as 'wrong under any condition" or "unnatural?"
Which brings us back to my initial assertion about emotive prefrences toward certain types of activties that seem to be driving at least some analyses of "productive" vs. "unproductive" labor. I did not mean it as ad hominem - only as a point that if we do not have such priors, nothing would stop us from considering any activity as potentially productive under some sets of circumstances, even is it is peddling used cars, insurance, religion or drugs.
Again, the point is not to condemn an activity but to see how it is organized different social systems, and to compare systems as wholes rather than individual activities.
Wojtek
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