Unproductive labour and exploitation
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Hi All
I am doing some reading around this topic at the moment, and wonder if people here might have some thoughts to contribute to deepen our understanding of it
Marx, of course, built upon but modified Adam Smith’s distinction between productive labour and unproductive labour (unlike Smith for example he felt that workers providing services that were sold on the market could be productive too, not just tangible goods). Productive workers are those workers who produce surplus value by producing commodities; unproductive workers are those who do not produce commodities or surplus value but are in effect paid out of surplus value. Examples of the latter would be commercial workers and state employees
There are several ways of interpreting this distinction. One extreme interpretation I’ve come across is that only those workers who are productive are exploited and constitute the working class. Unproductive workers who are not directly exploited but live off the proceeds of exploitation (surplus value) or the revenue of capitalists cannot by this definition be considered part of the working class. In Marx’s day for example there were about a million domestic (female) workers in Britain – significantly more than the total number of workers working in factories. Though they earned wages these domestic workers were not technically exploited according to this definition and do did not belong to the exploited class of capitalism – the working class
The composition and magnitude of unproductive labour has changed considerably since Marx – particularly in the advanced capitalist countries. Fred Mosely, a Marxist economist has argued that this development alongside increasing mechanisation and automation has been responsible for the falling rate of profit since the war in countries like the United States.
Other commentators like the guy I am reading at the moment – Zac Cope – argue that that the growth of unproductive labour in the advanced capitalist countries coupled with mechanisms such as “unequal exchange” means the entire workforce of those countries comprise a labour aristocracy that on balance is a net recipient of value and as such cannot be considered an exploited class. In other words the workers in the West live off the proceeds of exploitation of workers in the global South albeit to a far lesser extent than the capitalists
I think the argument is complete bunkum myself but a rebuttal of it hinges on the separation of this distinction between productive and unproductive labour, on the one hand, and the Marxist theory of exploitation on the other.
I think that can be done and there are suggestions in Marx’s own writings that he did not consider unproductive workers were not exploited even if the mode of exploitation was different, being more of an indirect nature. After all unproductive labour, though it does not produce value, is necessary for the realisation of values. Commodities dont just sell themselves. And state employees like teachers provide an indispensable service in helping to create a productive workforce available for capitalist exploitation.
The more tricky part of Cope’s argument is dealing with his assertions concerning the “hidden transfer” of value from the global South to the global north via the mechanism of “unequal exchange” which according to him has lifted the workers in the latter part of the world out of a condition of being exploited and has objectively aligned theirs interests with those of the capitalists in jointly exploiting the workers of the global South who now comprise over 80 percent of the global manufacturing workforce since the trend towards offshoring and contracting out manufacturing began a few decades ago.
Thoughts?
Isn’t this another expression of the Leninist “aristocracy of labour” where those in the developed world are bribed by imperialism to hold a complacent view about Third World exploitation.
Yet isn’t off-shore out-sourcing part of the worldwide division of labour and job competition and is restraining wage-growth in the First World.
But when for example workers in China organise to raise wages, capital simply re-deploys to even cheaper countries such as Myanmar and Cambodia so is there now a league table of aristocrats of labour?
In fact the cheap Asian sweat-shops have in many cases switched to African countries such as Ethiopia.
https://socialistbanner.blogspot.com/2019/05/sweat-shop-ethiopia.html
And I have ignored the internal re-location of jobs such as the shift in America to the right-to-work states in the south. So is the Seattle aristocrats higher wealth based on exploitation of Alabama “white trash” or upon unionisation and the resistance to higher rate of extraction of surplus value
robbo203 wrote: “Productive workers are those workers who produce surplus value by producing commodities; unproductive workers are those who do not produce commodities or surplus value but are in effect paid out of surplus value.”
I’d suggest that your ‘definition’ has serious problems, robbo.
I’d ask the question of that ‘definition’ – ‘Productive for who?’.
I think that you’d answer ‘Productive for surplus value’, and that ‘surplus value’ is an objective measure.
But, according to Marx, ‘surplus value’ is a social product, and so is not simply an ‘objective’ entity, but is as much a ‘subjective’ entity. If so, at that point, we can provide the answer ‘Productive for a subject’.
Further, if one defines various social subjects, like proletariat and bourgeoisie, then we’d have ‘Productive for exploiters’ and ‘Productive for exploited’.
I think that your fundamental problem is that you accept a definition which has been provided by the bourgeoisie as a supposedly ‘objective measure’, and so your definition starts with ‘Production for exploiters’, rather than a definition for us, the exploited majority.
‘Surplus value’ cannot be measured, because it’s not a pre-existing ‘object’, but something that changes with class struggle. Measures and measurement change.
We have to define ‘productive’, before we can begin to examine our notions of ‘Unproductive labour and exploitation‘.
Isn’t this another expression of the Leninist “aristocracy of labour” where those in the developed world are bribed by imperialism to hold a complacent view about Third World exploitation.
Yes but Lenin’s labour aristocracy theory did not deny that workers in the developed capitalist countries were exploited. Cope’s theory on the other hand does and on the grounds that workers there are the net recipients of value rather than creators of value
I am still trying to figure out Cope’s reasoning for this. He claims for example that through the mechanism of unequal exchange when ” goods enter into imperialist-country markets, their prices are multiplied several fold, sometimes by as much as 1,000%.” On the face of it that seems to suggest that workers the “imperialist-country markets” will need substantially higher incomes to afford these products anyway by comparison with the “oppressed countiries” – to use Leninspeak – where they are available at a fraction of the price.
LBird I am simply using Marx’s definition of productive workers as follows without making any assumptions
From volume I of Capital: ‘That labourer alone is productive, who produces surplus value for the capitalist, and who thus works for the self expansion of capital…Hence the notion of a productive labourer implies not merely a relation between work and useful effect, between labourer and product of labour, but also a specific, social relation of product, a relation that has sprung up historically and stamps the labourer as the direct means of creating surplus-value”
I understand the point you are making about the inherent difficulty of “objectively” measuring surplus value. You cannot measure abstract labour in the way that you can concrete labour with a stop watch. It is a constantly shifting industrial average which only reveals itself, so to speak, in aposteriori fashion in the exchange ratios of commodities – their prices – in the long run
Cope’s argument is that GDP based figures, which are measurable, conceal or obscure the value transfers that are happening through global spatial economy and that differential productivity rates between groups of workers in different parts of the world are thoroughly misleading precisely they are couched in terms of value added to GDP. Yes, we can infer from pure theory that workers in more capital intensive industries are more productive (and hence more highly paid) than in labour intensive industries and that there will be a redistribution of surplus value from the latter to the former via the tendency for profit rates to equalise. But how exactly one is supposed to measure all this I cannot see. Yet his argument depends on being able to measure this “value transfer” from the global south to global north which he says cannot be done using GDP data
From what you’ve replied, robbo, you seem to agree with the point I was making.
Which, as you say, leads us to Cope:
“Cope’s argument is that GDP based figures, which are measurable…“.
This is simply the same problem, as saying “Cope’s argument is that Ghost-based figures, which are measurable…“.
If one believes in ‘ghosts’, they ‘are measurable’.
The point is, just what is being ‘measured’.
“Yet his argument depends on being able to measure this “value transfer”…“.
I wouldn’t give his ‘argument’ much credence, robbo… ‘measurement’ always requires a ‘measurer’ and their ‘measures’… and all three are social products.
My advice is to interrogate his political, philosophical and ideological beliefs, prior to trying to understanding his ‘measuring’. If you take his assumptions, theories and concepts without critical examination, you’ll fail to see the weaknesses of his ‘argument’.
If you take his assumptions, theories and concepts without critical examination, you’ll fail to see the weaknesses of his ‘argument’.
I can assure you that’s exactly what I am not doing – taking his assumptions etc without critical examination. I am particularly concerned with his argument about unproductive labour and exploitation and already have noted a number of inconsistences if not downright contradictions in what he has to say. If people here want to look at the argument go to the link below. I suggest focus on Part 2 – Global Value Transfer and Stratified Labour Today” – which gets to the heart of the argument. Much of the rest is just sociologising.
It is evidently a key book in the so called anti-imperialist milieu and in some respects deeply hostile to the outlook of revolutionary socialism. It is a worth a read for that very reason.
https://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/books/Economics/DividedWorldDividedClass_ZakCope.pdf
robbo203 wrote: “I am particularly concerned with his argument about unproductive labour and exploitation…“.
Again, given what you’ve written, we seem to agree upon the need for philosophical criticism of Cope’s work.
I’d advise you to define both your and his concepts, so that we have ‘robbo-unproductive-labour’ and ‘robbo-exploitation’, contrasted with ‘Cope-unproductive-labour’ and ‘Cope-exploitation’.
So, in your concern quoted above, which pairs of concepts are you using, his or yours, or do you consider Cope’s to be identical with yours?
It’d be very easy for any worker reading this, to assume that ‘unproductive labour’ and ‘exploitation’ are already fixed, objective, unchanging, non-dynamic terms, which can simply be ‘accepted as read’.
This would be a big mistake for any socialist to make.
We always lose arguments where we begin debates by accepting the ‘terms and conditions’ of our opponents’ making. Unsurprisingly enough.
I think we have to be a little flexible on the controversy between productive labor vs unproductive labor, and probably Karl Marx would have done the same things, because on his time industrial workers prevailed over the unproductive labors, but in our time most of the works belong to the unproductive sectors ( around 75% ) and as L Bird has indicated surplus value as a social value, and workers in our time are economical exploited in all spheres of our society, and directly or indirectly they produce surplus value
I’d advise you to define both your and his concepts, so that we have ‘robbo-unproductive-labour’ and ‘robbo-exploitation’, contrasted with ‘Cope-unproductive-labour’ and ‘Cope-exploitation’.
Well, I would go along with Marx in saying that unproductive labour is labour that does not produce surplus value but is paid for out of surplus value. Where I disagree with Cope is in his suggestion that unproductive labour is not exploited. Unproductive labour might not itself produce surplus value but it is necessary for the realisation of surplus value. Commodities dont sell themselves. Capitalism needs unproductive workers as well as productive workers. Both are part of the working class which encompasses all those who are obliged to sell their working abilities for a wage or salary in order to live and exploitation itself is a class wide phenomenon. It cannot be simply be understood in terms of a single business exploiting its own workforce. It is social and it applies to ALL workers whether they do unproductive work or productive work and whether they live in the global north or the global south
Economical explotación is extraction of surplus value, therefore, if unproductive labor is exploited they also produce surplus value
Economical exploitation is extraction of surplus value, therefore, if unproductive labor is exploited they also produce surplus value
Well, not according to Marx. Marx is quite clear that unproductive workers dont produce surplus value. If that is the case and if unproductive workers are exploited, would it not be better to say exploitation involves any that enables the extraction of an economic surplus. This would cover both the direct producers of surplus value and unproductive workers
I am sure we have had this discussion before, haven’t we?
“Unproductive” (but “non-productive” might be a better description) workers, as those whose labour does not produce surplus value, can still be said to be exploited, only not for surplus value but in the sense of carrying out surplus labour.
The non-productive work that individual capitalist firms or the capitalist class as a whole has to have done to keep their system going, as to circulate commodities or for national and local government, costs them money, which they seek to minimise. One way to do this is for them to get those they employ in these tasks to work longer than is needed to replace the value of their labour power; which means that some of the work these workers do will be unpaid and reduce the cost of the work. These workers are being exploited for this unpaid, cost-saving labour.
The other way out of the dilemma is to argue that, as the costs of circulation and of government, are necessary from a capitalist point of view to keep the whole system going, the whole capitalist class is exploiting the whole working class without distinguishing between those who actually create surplus value and those who don’t. In other words, the work of the whole working class is necessary for the capitalist class to extract and share out surplus value.
marcos wrote: “Economical explotación is extraction of surplus value, therefore, if unproductive labor is exploited they also produce surplus value“.
I have to agree with marcos’ definition, here.
That is, there is an unbreakable link between ‘surplus value’ and ‘exploitation’. One can’t ‘exist’ without the other. It’s hard to think of ‘exploitation’ not producing ‘surplus value’ (surely that’s what makes it ‘exploitation’), and likewise think of ‘surplus value’ not being produced by ‘exploitation’ (otherwise, ‘surplus value’ could be produced by non-exploited labour, or, indeed, machines). Marx was talking about a parasitic social relationship, when he was writing Capital.
This can be put simply for workers. Marx regards the bourgeoisie as vampires, and the proletariat as their victims. In line with this metaphor, we can regard ‘exploitation’ as ‘biting of the neck with the purpose of drawing blood to sustain a vampire’, and ‘surplus value’ as ‘blood drawn by a neck-biting vampire in its compulsion to survive’.
robbo203 wrote: “If that is the case and if unproductive workers are exploited, would it not be better to say exploitation involves any that enables the extraction of an economic surplus. This would cover both the direct producers of surplus value and unproductive workers”
Yes, I agree with you here, robbo.
But then, if we follow your suggestion, why differentiate between ‘productive’ and supposedly ‘unproductive’?
If for any political purpose you required a distinction, why not ‘directly productive’ and ‘indirectly productive’, and lose the unhelpful category of ‘unproductive’, which labels many workers, who work hard all their lives, as seemingly morally tainted?
Again put simply, do you think that the Ford bosses could get along with only car workers (‘productive’) and have no-one to clean the shithouses in their mansions (‘unproductive’)?
And once this issue is settled, where does Cope stand on this ‘exploitative social relationship’? Does he personally clean the shithouses in his academy, or just simply label this work as ‘unproductive’? And pat those workers on the head?
Can the bosses survive with dirty bogs?
That is, there is an unbreakable link between ‘surplus value’ and ‘exploitation’. One can’t ‘exist’ without the other. It’s hard to think of ‘exploitation’ not producing ‘surplus value’ (surely that’s what makes it ‘exploitation’), and likewise think of ‘surplus value’ not being produced by ‘exploitation’
The problem with this, LBird, is that if you assume there is an “unbreakable link” exploitation and the production of surplus value then where does that leave workers who do not produce surplus value in Marx’s account? Are they not therefore exploited? I would say they are and the fact that they are unproductive has got nothing to do with it.
You ask why then differentiate between ‘productive’ and supposedly ‘unproductive’? Marx actually talked of workers being “productive” in the sense that you probably have in mind – that is, productive of use values. But he also used the term productive in another more specific sense – productive of surplus value . He argued that surplus value was peculiar or unique to capitalism, in other kinds of class society the economic surplus takes other forms
So contrary to what you say its actually quite easy to think of ‘exploitation’ not producing ‘surplus value’. In feudalism the serfs were exploited but they did not produce surplus value. I mention this because of there are some strands of Marxism like the (late) analytical Marxist G A Cohen who insisted that Marx’s labour theory of value has little bearing on the question of exploitation (Cohen himself seems to have regarded capitalist exploitation as not dissimilar to feudal exploitation)
In a sense you are correct. The production of surplus value lies at the capitalist exploitation. But is only a necessary not a sufficient condition of the latter. This is because surplus value has to be realised in circulation and for that you need unproductive workers. Capitalism without unproductive workers in this sense would simply not be able to function.
Why I am banging about this? Its because I think the matter has quite significant implications. Cope and his ilk are arguing that in effect the workers of the Global North are not exploited but constitute a “labour aristocracy” and that, in effect, their material interests are aligned with the metropolitan capitalists in exploiting the low paid workers of the global South. This is a surprisingly common sentiment and flourishes among handwringing liberals who go on about how “we” in the “West” live such a privileged and pampered existence at the expense of the rest of the world. As if poverty doesn’t exist in the West and privilege doesn’t exist in the non-West.
One of the arguments Cope uses to support his thesis is precisely this argument about unproductive labour. The bulk of workers in the West are now unproductive -they dont produce surplus value – and we are invited to infer from this that they are therefore not exploited. Manufacturing in particular has been steadily relocated and outsourced to the global South over the past few decades. It is, thus, in the global South where more and more productive work is to be found and where wages are a fraction of the wages in the global North (Cope argues that this is not a reflection of differences in productivity and that such differences are far less than might be supposed)
There are many aspects of his argument which simply do not add up to my mind. But the important thing to note about it concerns what we can infer from what he is saying. Cope’s “Anti-imperialism” is emphatically positing that the basic cleavage in contemporary capitalist society as being not between the global working class and the global capitalist class but rather between what Lenin called the oppressor or imperialist countries and the oppressed countries. Obviously that is a view to which we would be fundamentally opposed!
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