labour which did not produce surplus value was of no use in this respect-it was "unproductive".
In all this, he was careful to make it clear that the "productiveness" of labour did not depend on the physical form or how socially useful the product was. What mattered was its ability to create surplus value-nothing else. "This distinction between productive and unproductive labour", he wrote in one of his notebooks, "has nothing to do with either the particular speciality of the labour or with the particular use value in which . . . [it] . . . is incorporated" .3
Marx's distinction was not between material production and what today are categorised as "services". Some "services" have a use value that is bought and sold as a commodity on the marketor make a useful addition to some other commodity. These have an exchange value which is determined by the socially necessary labour time needed to produce them and so can provide capitalists with new surplus value. They are therefore productive. Acting in a film, for instance, is productive insofar as it creates a use value (adding to people's enjoyment and so improving their living standard) that is sold profitably as a commodity by the capitalist who employs the actor. Similarly, moving things from where they are made to where they can be consumed, as is done by some transport workers, is productive, since it is in effect part of the process of completing their production. By contrast, actors who appear on television to urge people to buy a particular good are not productive, since their labour does not create new use or exchange values. It merely aids in the selling of goods that have already been produced.
Guglielmo Carchedi has rightly argued:
The category "services" only confuses matters and should be dropped. "A service is nothing more than the useful effect of a use value, be it of a commodity, or be it of labour" [according to Marx].4 Therefore, "services" encompass productive labour (hotels, entertainment) and unproductive labour (advertising, market research) <sub>. . .</sub> 5
In his first discussions on the issue in the early 1 860s Marx assumed, like Smith, that unproductive labour is concerned with services provided by individuals for the upper classes.6 These included providing "entertainments", dealing with "physical infirmities" (doctors) and "spiritual weakness" (parsons), and resolving "the conflict between private interests and national interests" (eg statesmen, lawyers, police and soldiers). The last sort were regarded "by the industrial capitalists themselves" as incidental expenses of production to be kept down to the most indispensable minimum and provided as cheaply as possible.7
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Understanding the System: Marx and Beyond