{"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":"286 / 287","pdf_page":156,"physical_index":156,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"b599aa5e1426501bb879b4c457814add80b6ba1d1f637cd9c62c4c226fd67744"},"chapter":"Acknowledgments","content":"Classical political economy, both Ricardian and Marxian, confronted a world in which the largest part of labor could still be reckoned as unproductive (according to the above definitions) because it did not contribute directly to the increase of capital. Much of the history of the capitalist nations during the past two centuries is the account of the destruction of these forms of labor, so that from a dominant share of social labor these forms have been reduced to an insignificant share. This is another way of saying what was pointed out earlier: that the capitalist mode of production has subordinated to itself all forms of work, and all labor processes now pass through the sieve of capital, leaving behind their tribute of surplus.\n\nHowever, all labor that enters into the capital accumulation process and is necessary for it is not thereby rendered productive. For it is also true that productive labor which serves as the foundation of capitalist society is labor which produces commodity value. just as capitalism, as a system, cannot escape from the productive processes upon which society is based, no matter how remote from production its upper reaches may become, so commodity value is the ultimate foundation upon which all forms of value—money, credit instruments, insurance policies, shares, etc., etc.—depend. For the capitalist who is in the business of producing commodity values, the aim is always to capture as great a margin over his costs as possible. But in order to do this, he must realize the commodity values, transforming them into money form. Thus even for the industrial capitalist, who is producing in order to sell, commercial functions arise within the firm. For the commercial capitalist, who, apart from the functions of distribution, storage, packaging, transportation, display, etc., simply buys in order to sell, this realization problem constitutes the essence of his business altogether.\n\nWith the routinization of the processes of producing value and surplus value, the attention of the capitalist is increasingly centered upon this realization problem, the solution of which becomes even more important than the creation of value. At the same time, as the surpluses created in production become ever more immense, the use of capital simply for purposes of credit, speculation, etc., increases enormously. In this latter case, what is involved is the appropriation of portions of the surplus commodity value which arises in production. These two functions, the realization and the appropriation by capital of surplus value, engage, as we have seen, enormous masses of labor, and this labor, while necessary to the capitalist mode of production, is in itself unproductive, since it does not enlarge the value or surplus value available to society or to the capitalist class by one iota.\n\nThe receivables clerk who keeps track of outstanding accounts, the insurance clerk who records payments, the bank clerk who receives deposits all of these forms of commercial and financial labor add nothing to the value of the commodities represented by the figures or papers which they handle. Yet this lack of effect is not due to the determinate form of their labors—the fact that they are clerical in nature. Clerical labor of similar and sometimes identical kinds is used in production, storage, transportation, and other such processes, all of which do contribute productively to commodity value, according to the division of productive labor into mental and manual sides. It is due rather to their occupation with tasks which contribute only to the realization of value in the market, or to the struggle of competing capitals over value, and its transfer and redistribution according to individual claims, speculations, and the “services” of capital in the form of credit, etc.\n\nLabor may thus be unproductive simply because it takes place outside the capitalist mode of production, or because, while taking place within it, it is used by the capitalist, in his drive for accumulation, for unproductive rather than productive functions. And it is now clear that while unproductive labor has declined outside the grasp of capital, it has increased within its ambit. The great mass of labor which was reckoned as unproductive because it did not work for capital has now been transformed into a mass of labor which is unproductive because it works for capital, and because the needs of capital for unproductive labor have increased so remarkably. The more productive capitalist industry has become—that is to say, the greater the mass of surplus value it extracts from the productive population—the greater has become the mass of capital seeking its shares in this surplus. And the greater the mass of capital, the greater the mass of unproductive activities which serve only the diversion of this surplus and its distribution among various capitals.\n\nModern bourgeois economics has completely lost the power to treat the question of productive and unproductive labor, in part because of this historical change. Since, in the days of Smith and Ricardo, unproductive labor existed primarily outside the ambit of capital, classical bourgeois economics found it wasteful, and urged its reduction to the minimum. But ever since the mass of unproductive labor has been virtually destroyed outside the corporation and recreated on a different foundation within it, bourgeois economics, which, as a branch of management science, views all things through the eyes of the bourgeoisie, finds it impossible to retain its old attitude. The modern corporation has developed unproductive labor in this form out of necessity, and out of necessity has given over the narrow and pennypinching ways of its predecessors, whose first rule was to “keep overhead down” and to devote all possible resources to production. “Spend millions to make millions\" has become the slogan, and this phrase, in all its variations in modern corporate chatter, is generally understood to indicate the spending of millions in marketing, advertising, promotion, speculation; these are the areas into which disposable corporate income is channeled, while production has become relatively routinized and expenditures in that field flow in measured and predictable amounts.\n\n286\n\nLabor and Monopoly Capital\n\nProductive and Unproductive Labor\n\n287","previous_page":155,"next_page":157}