{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","title":"Labor and Monopoly Capital The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"0853459401","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","id":"bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","uuid":"bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","title":"Labor and Monopoly Capital The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century","normalized_title":"laborandmonopolycapitalthedegradationofworkinthetwentiethcentury","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"0853459401","isbns":["0853459401"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":183,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Labor%20and%20Monopoly%20Capital%20The%20Degradation%20of%20Work%20in%20the%20Twentieth%20Century","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802/search"},"page":{"printed_page":"285 / 284","pdf_page":155,"physical_index":155,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"6c7b2f166df6bb01453fc3e61a42a9221da662a280b3feb7748003c0516986e1"},"chapter":"Acknowledgments","content":"Chapter 19\n\nProductive and Unproductive Labor\n\nIn an earlier chapter devoted to the labor which produces services, we arrived at the conclusion that the existence of a working class as such does not depend upon the various concrete forms of labor which it is called upon to exercise, but rather its social form. Labor which is put to work in the production of goods is not thereby sharply divided from labor applied to the production of services, since both are forms of production of commodities, and of production on a capitalist basis, the object of which is the production not only of value-in-exchange but of surplus value for the capitalist. The variety of determinate forms of labor may affect the consciousness, cohesiveness, or economic and political activity of the working class, but they do not affect its existence as a class. The various forms of labor which produce commodities for the capitalist are all to be counted as productive labor. The worker who builds an office building and the worker who cleans it every night alike produce value and surplus value. Because they are productive for the capitalist, the capitalist allows them to work and produce; insofar as such workers alone are productive, society lives at their expense. 1f\n\nThe question then arises: What of those whose labor is unproductive? If, as Marx said, the difference between the Roman proletariat and the modern proletariat is that while the former lived at the expense of society, the latter supports society upon its shoulders, are unproductive workers to be omitted from the modern proletariat? To answer this question we must first gain a clear idea of the various kinds of unproductive labor that exist in capitalist society and their historical development.\n\nThe terms “productive” and “unproductive” labor derive from the extensive discussion which took place among the classical economists, and which Marx analyzed so thoroughly in the first part of his Theories of Surplus-Value, the uncompleted work that was drafted as a fourth volume of Capital. In order to understand the terminology it is necessary to grasp first of all that the discussion of productive and unproductive labor, as it was conducted by Marx, implied no judgment about the nature of the work processes under discussion or their usefulness to humans in particular or society at large, but was concerned specifically and entirely with the role of labor in the capitalist mode of production. Thus the discussion is in reality an analysis of the relations of production and, ultimately, of the class structure of society, rather than of the utility of particular varieties of labor.\n\nEssentially, Marx defined productive labor under capitalism as labor which produces commodity value, and hence surplus value, for capital. This excludes all labor which is not exchanged against capital. Self-employed proprietors—farmers, artisans, handicraftsman, tradesmen, professionals, all other self-employed—are according to this definition not productive workers because their labor is not exchanged for capital and does not directly contribute to the increase of capital.\\* Nor is the servant a productive worker, even though employed by the capitalist, because the labor of the servant is exchanged not against capital but against revenue. The capitalist who hires servants is not making profits, but spending them. It is clear that this definition has nothing to do with the utility of the labor employed, or even its concrete form. The very same labor may be either productive or unproductive, depending upon its social form. To hire the neighbor's boy to cut the lawn is to set in motion unproductive labor; to call a gardening firm which sends out a boy to do the job (perhaps even the same boy) is another thing entirely. Or, to put the matter from the point of view of the capitalist, to hire gardening labor to maintain his family's lawn is unproductive consumption, while to hire the very same gardening labor in order to realize a profit from its work is to set in motion productive labor for the purpose of accumulating capital.\n\nA moment's reflection will show the importance of this distinction for the evolution of capitalist society during the past two hundred years. The change in the social form of labor from that which is, from the capitalist standpoint, unproductive to that which is productive, means the transformation from self-employment to capitalist employment, from simple commodity production to capitalist commodity production, from relations between persons to relations between things, from a society of scattered producers to a society of corporate capitalism. Thus the distinction between productive and unproductive labor, which disregards its concrete form in order to analyze it as a social form, far from being a useless abstraction, represents a decisive point in the analysis of capitalism, and shows us once more how social forms dominate and transform the significance of material things and processes.\n\nThe tailor who makes a suit on order for a customer creates a useful object in the form of a commodity; he exchanges it for money and out of this pays his own expenses and means of subsistence; the customer who hires this done purchases a useful object and expects nothing for the money other than the suit. But the capitalist who hires a roomful of tailors to make suits brings into being a social relation. In this relation, the tailors now create far more than suits; they create themselves as productive workers and their employer as capitalist. Capital is thus not just money exchanged for labor; it is money exchanged for labor with the purpose of appropriating that value which it creates over and above what is paid, the surplus value. In each case where money is exchanged for labor with this purpose it creates a social relation, and as this relation is generalized throughout the productive processes it creates social classes. Therefore, the transformation of unproductive labor into labor which is, for the capitalist's purpose of extracting surplus value, productive, is the very process of the creation of capitalist society.\n\nProductive and Unproductive Labor\n\n285\n\n284\n\n\\* Even more, they fall outside of the distinction between productive and unproductive labor, because they are outside the capitalist mode of production. See the clear and comprehensive presentation of Marx's theory of productive and unproductive labor by Ian Gough.'","previous_page":154,"next_page":156}