Charles Brown wrote: > > guards and dealers definitely produce use-values; otherwise no-one > would pay them. But, at least in Marxian political economy, they do > not produce surplus-value. The guard simply preserves property rights, > while the cashier transfers them. The worker who produces > surplus-value -- who might be a service-worker, contrary to Adam Smith > -- actually creates new property rights, which are held by the > employer. > > ^^^^^^^ > CB: If they produce use-value, then they produce exchange-value. > Use-values are the thing in which exchange-value exists. If they > produce exchange-value , then they can be exploited out of > surplus-value.
No -- only a _commodity_ can have exchange value, and there is a great deal of highly useful labor in any society which does not create any sort of commodity (product or service) and thus produces no exchange value. Teachers produce workers but they do not produce a commodity, and hence are unproductive labor. And while the police force as a whole is a criminal outfit, devoted to the repression of labor, _some_ copes on _some_ occasions, willy nilly, serve a socially useful purpose (e.g., intervening in a domestic quarrel before murder results), but they are unproductive whether they are performing their core (repressive) service or their incidental useful services. > > The use-value a security guard produces is the absence of having some > means of production or commodities stolen, that is preservation of > possession, preservation of appropriation of the commodities and > therefore preservation of surplus value for the capitalist. > Appropriation or possession of the commodities is just as much a > necessary condition for expropriation or exploitation of surplus value > as the labor producing the value. Yes. It is absolutely necessary to capital but it is NOT productive labor. Carrol
