"Devine, James" wrote:
>
>
> I don't know the context of this, but it seems to miss a lot of the
> current situation. (I won't argue against or for "post-Fordism" as a
> description.) Labor seems pretty important to Wal-Mart, General Motors,
> Microsoft, etc., etc. Maybe there's less factory labor in the US and
> other core countries than there used to be, but a lot has shifted to
> China and other "non-core" places. Labor is still central to the
> picture.
{It's been quite a while since I reread the passages in Capital (I think
Vol. 2) on which the following is based, so I don't know how accurate
those references are.)
Labor that is involved _solely_ in realizing surplus value does not add
value -- e.g., much (not all) retail labor. But the production of a
commodity _includes_ delivering it to the purchaser. (A shirt in
warehouse at some seaport is not, for me here in Bloomington, of any use
or value. So the labor of transporting it to Bloomington, and the labor
of putting it where I can obtain it within B/N, adds value to the
product. So some part of the labor of Wal-Mart employees is adding value
to a shirt sold there, not merely realizing surplus value. Hence part of
the sales effort at Wal-Mart is a deduction from the value of the shirt
as manufacured, but some part of that "sales effort" is actually adding
value as well. My point is that even with imported products _part_ of
the surplus value is produced in the u.s., not in the nation where the
factory production takes place.
More. At one time large numbers of people raised their own grain, milled
it, baked their bread or boiled their porrage. Then the flour industry
sprang up. Now people bought flour, but many still baked their own
bread. The flour clearly contained surplus value. Then a further
intermediate step was created: the baker baked the bread and the
consumer paid for that added value. No one ever labeled Pillsbury a
service industry. Nor did anyone ever label the maker of Wonderbread a
service industry. Then another intervention occurred. Denny's bought the
bread and turned it into sandwiches which people bought there. Why isn't
Dennys the same as Pillsbury and Wonderbread? If Dennys is labelled
purely a "service" rather than a productive enterprise, then .....
There is still an _immense_ amount of surplus labor being exploited in
the U.S. It may look different (and it probably is in non-union
enterprises) but its every bit as much "productive labor" in the marxian
sense as were GM & Ford workers in the 1930s. How much of what _seems_
to be (in 19th century terms) merely part of the sales effort is part of
the surplus-value creating activity?
I have no idea whether the concept of productive/non-productive labor
(surplus-value creating/non-surplus value creating) is of any use in
calculating prices and the allocation of scarce resources: but I suspect
it has a great deal to do with the social relations (and hence with the
culture) of capitalism still. _Economics_ is too narrow a discipline to
tell us very much about the social organization of an advanced
capitalist economy.
Carrol
