D. Foss writes: >> I note with some amazement that one of your correspondents suggested that a >> burger--flipper in a final-stage fast-food assembly plant "adds $1 to the >> value of each hamburger." The application of bourgeois economic categories >> was not at all what I was getting at: that was the conceptual transfer of an >> activity, food preparation, from the sphere of "biological reproduction" and >> "domestic consumption" to "productive labour in commodity production" - by >> Marx's definition in the sphere of material production - by the sheer fact >> of its having been industrialized and monetized. <<
It’s not Marx who transferred food preparation to the sphere of commodity production. It’s the development of capitalism that did so. If he talked about burger-flippers, he would simply be describing this process. He himself might mention the separation of food preparation from normal human life and its subjection to capitalist control as a form of alienation. >> As I said yesterday. the configuration of the human behavioural repertory >> in Marx's day, and still, very largely, today, reflects patriarchal sexism >> in the organization of "life," as some called it. What was not paid for was >> not "work"; what was "work" was done outside the home, and pretty much - to >> minimize incongruities - by men. << Feminists have criticized Marx, who fails on this level partly because he wrote before modern feminism was even invented. (It’s a bit like those who lambaste Marx for using anti-Semitic language when the taboo against such language is a late 20th century phenomenon.) But scholars such as Mike Lebowitz (“Beyond Capital”) find that Marx was a feminist in many ways, especially by the standards of his day. Sometimes he went over the top (IMHO), describing women’s status as being like slavery. In any event, in the world that Marx analyzed, the patriarchal organization of life (as this author describes it) was a fact of life. In the capitalist system – in the absence of family allowances and the like – it’s the activity that is paid for (working for capitalists) has a higher social status than labor that isn’t paid for (taking care of your own kids, etc.) It’s money that makes the capitalist world go around: if the mom has no independent income, she’s likely to have inferior status vis-à-vis the dad. It is true that Marx looked at production from the male point of view: he saw capitalism’s development as creating new competitors for male workers in the form of women and children working in factories, undermining the male workers’ wages. But he also saw the latter as being super-exploited. >> Sex was mentioned as another activity shifting in its category-placement: in >> Victorian times, as today, a highly-monetized labour market for sex partners >> - male as well as female - existed. Yet till this very day, female >> practitioners have vainly sought the respectability of the appellation "sex >> workers"; male ones have been slow to organize ever since Theodosius the >> Great burned the "homosexual prostitutes of Rome" at the stake in 391. Now, >> it should not take any reminding that one of the two principal denotations >> of "labour" is that prolonged series of spasms and contractions undergone by >> women - till almost yesterday, at the risk of their lives - in giving birth; >> and that is the most centrally important event or occurrence in social >> reproduction, by comparison wherewith, all other production is but metaphor. >> << I don’t understand this point. >> Rivers of ink were spilled throughout the history of workers' movements, >> socialist parties, and Marxist theory, on the question of defining >> productive labour. By the twentieth century, a ceiling of no more than >> one-third of all workers were employed in factories; a large and >> rapidly-growing percentage were employed in offices, wholesale and retail >> sales, technical and highly skilled occupations requiring specialized >> advanced training or education, and managerial, professional, and >> administrative positions below policy-making levels. Were these "workers," >> performing "productive labour," and consequently potential converts to >> socialism or allies of the factory working class or not? ...<< It's absolutely true that rivers of ink were wasted on the topic of "unproductive" labor, It's not a normative concept from a Marxian point of view. Marx did not see “productive labor” as something to be honored more than “unproductive labor.” He clearly didn’t see one group as having more revolutionary potential than the other. These perspectives were tacked on to Marx’s views later on. At one point, he said that being a productive laborer could be a curse. In any event, for Marx, the distinction between productive and unproductive labor is determined by the workings of capitalism: my labor is “productive” if and only if I produce surplus-value for the capitalist. I don’t have to be male or work in a factory or have a blue collar. I don’t have to produce goods as Adam Smith saw it. I can produce services. What’s important is that I produce surplus-value. And, even though Marx gave a lot of attention to factory workers (which for some reason were salient during the Industrial Revolution), that doesn’t mean that all of the one that fit his categories work in narrowly-defined “factories.” A McDonalds’ or and office can just as much be a factory as a machine shop. The key thing is the use of the division of labor and/or machinery under the control of the capitalists. No blue collar is required. No dark satanic mill is required. I have to go. -- Jim Devine / If you're going to support the lesser of two evils, at the very least you should know the nature of that evil. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
