[lbo-talk] Unproductive labor

andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Thu Feb 14 10:10:51 PST 2008


I don't want to discussa lternative social arrangements and whether therewould be lawyers, insurance agents., etc, under socialism, communism, or whatever. I want a strictly, narrowly, scientific analysis of the concept of unproductive labor in modern capitalism. Can we keep to the point?

--- Wojtek Sokolowski <swsokolowski at yahoo.com> wrote:


>
> --- 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
>
>
>
>
____________________________________________________________________________________
> Looking for last minute shopping deals?
> Find them fast with Yahoo! Search.
>
http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>

____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list