> Fikret Ceyhun wrote: > > > The other day I was at my dentist's office for checkup and > > cleaning. As the dental assistant was scraping my teeth I was thinking: is > > she blue collar or white collar worker? I know she is "unproductive" > > worker. Can someone care to comment? Gerald Levy wrote: > > (1) The color of a person's collar (blue, white, pink) does not determine > whether one's labour is productive or unproductive [of surplus value]. > > (2) Why do you "know" she is an unproductive worker? She's not working > for the state and being paid out of state revenues (unless there are > state-run dental services in North Dakota). She's not part of management, > is she? Her labour isn't for the purposes of realizing surplus value (e.g. > advertising), is it? > > Jerry > I agree with Jerry Levy. Even if you believe a more superficial account of "productive" labor, which is restricted to creative activities that physically transform some raw material, or subject, into a physical commodity existing in time and space separately from its producer, did not the activities of the hygenist physically transform your (assumed decaying) teeth? As an equivocation, the essence of your teeth may not have been transformed from their original normal condition of relative health. However, the process of decay the hygenist arrested certainly was. The person, like other medical practitioners, reestablish a normal condition of health (individually and socially defined), and in the production process physically, as well as emotionally, transform their patients (variable capital). The problem is not so much related to the transformed object being distinct from the worker, clearly patients are, it is just that the consumers of care are in the unique position of being a necessary part of the labor process. This last distinction, by the way, suggests to me that medicine offers consumers a unique view of the medical labor process. And inasmuch as capitalist social relations of production are typically obscured from the general public through market exchange, the emergence of capitalist structures in the health care system (prepaid managed care in particular) suggests patients will get a first hand account of the social relations of capitalist health care production. Jeff >
