Angelus Novus wrote:
> So here's the man himself again:
>
> "On the other hand, however, our notion of productive labour becomes narrowed. Capitalist production is not merely the production of commodities, it is essentially the production of surplus-value. The labourer produces, not for himself, but for capital. It no longer suffices, therefore, that he should simply produce. He must produce surplus-value...."
I forget the man's name (Sloan?), the first chairman of General Motors. He declared flatly: "GM doesn't make autos, it makes profits" (quoted from memory, probably not precise but it was that blunt).
And he didn't have to read _Capital_ to know that! The worker's wife, however, was producing food and a clean house, neither of which was the bearer of surplus value and hence her labor was unproductive. The reason women's struggles are so vital a part of the struggle against capitalims is _precisely_ beecause (in thier 'second job') they are unproductive -- i.e., they live in the real world rather than in Sloan's, a world where food is food and the action(cooking) expresses visibly its motive.
It is also possible that an explanation of the general consevatism of unions lies in this area. The struggle for a shorter working day is potentially revolutionary, because it is a a demand for freedom, while mere struggle for wages, however essential, merely asks for more comfortable conditions within capitalism and does not at all point beyond it.
Carrol