Julio Huato:
> Frankly, I resented Novus calling me "homeboy" -- which in my untrained
> ears sounded like a nasty Dixiecratic put-down.
No, dude, it's like a totally ironic usage of archaic 1980s slang.
> Whatever the intention, it was uncalled for, because I had not attacked
> Novus personally at any point before.
Are you fucking kidding me? You called me an arrogant prick or something to that effect. Calling you a toolbox was mere retaliation.
> I find it ridiculous to reduce Marx's critique of political to the mere
> validation of the prejudices of the political economists,
It's not a validation of the prejudices of political economists at all. Did you actually read the passage from _Capital_ I quoted? Marx thinks it's a horrible fate to be a productive worker.
You, on the other hand, are trapped in the productivist paradigm that social subjects and their struggles are only supportable if they meet some kind of criteria of being "productive".
> Go tell working women, who have historically shouldered the tremendously > oppressive bulk of domestic labor under capitalism, that childrearing,
> food preparation at home, etc. are all nonproductive uses of their labor
They are not productive labour! Childrearing, food preparation, etc. are all useful activities, but "productive labour" in the Marxian sense is not a synonym for "useful activity".
You have a weird moral attachment to the phrase "productive", like its an affirmative category for Marx. It's not; it's a negative one.
Martin Glaberman aptly criticized this sort of thing when the likes of Harry Cleaver start referring to Chiapas peasants or university students as "productive workers". The unspoken assumption is that social struggles are only supportable if they are demonstrably "proletarian", even if it means doing real damage to the specificity of Marx's terms.