Todays Washington Post reports, in the entertainment section, that Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson blame the attack on the World Trade Center on the ACLU, abortionist, People for the American Way and federal judges "throwing God out of the public square." Falwell said "God continues to life the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve." "Jerry that's my feeling," said 700 Club host Pat Robertson. A White House official called the remarks "inappropriate." -----Original Message----- From: Jim Devine [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2001 7:08 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:17060] (un)productive labor At 01:40 PM 9/13/01 -0500, you wrote: >Jim Devine wrote: > > * I disagree with Adam Smith's view that services are unproductive. > >I would like to see more on this. In addition, some things that are >called "service" look an awful lot like factories to me. Why should one >call the production of food in a MacDonalds "service labor" while the >production of food in a Kraft factory or a Pillsbury mill is "productive >labor." Both equally change matter, so even at a vulgar level both seem >equally productive. I don't think Michael Perelman likes discussions of this this, so here's a nutshell version: (1) to both Smith & Marx, "productive" basically refers to producing profits for capitalists. (2) to Smith, services weren't productive, because they didn't produce physical objects. But he was referring to the hiring of personal servants, not people at McDonalds. I think his argument is severely flawed, as did Marx. (3) to Marx, it's the physical nature of the product that's crucial to determining the (un)productive nature of the labor. It's whether or not they contribute to the aggregate surplus-value. So service workers could be productive. However, there are some other jobs (such as stock brokers) which aren't productive, because they involve merely redistributing surplus-value. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
