I think this term is worth unpacking. Marxist literature can use production
in two ways: production of surplus value (in this case a school teacher can
be productive if it is a private school), and production of "products of
labour" in general.
By no means have I worked out the details of division within the workforce. Nevertheless, my thinking tends towards direct application of mental and physical labor in the production of commodities as distinct from - say, administrative work necessary for the functioning of a modern corporation. Accountants, administrators of all types, engineer designers, material flow personnel generally are "white collar."
There work is of course important, but not the fundamental ingredient that creates the commodity.
There still remains a distinction between the person responsible for organizing all the blueprints in a facility and the machine-operator or assembler. In my general thinking, I tend towards the framework that says a teacher does not engage in the production of surplus value, although their labor and effort is extremely important. At best the teacher creates the conditions for a specified "quality" of labor-power to be sold in the market place. Once this labor power is purchased and put to work in the production of commodities, surplus value is realized.
Nevertheless, in the above example the division between direct and indirect engagement of production remains in contradistinction to administrative elements of the production process. The Board of directors of a corporation do not create surplus value, although their policies might yield profitability. A top notch auto designer might create a wonderful vehicle that sells well in the market place but in my estimate he does not create surplus value and is paid from the total mass of the social capital, generated in the process of production.
My point is not glorification of the "blue collar" but rather to concretely examine and present to an unconscious mass of workers a directional concept of the impact of technology on the production process. During the 1980s roughly 17 of 100 employed in the auto industry were white collar and today roughly 34 are white collar, with a previously existing quantity of labor producing more vehicles.
The directional tendency is towards increasingly valueless production. The 66% of the work force now produces more vehicles - say 10% more, than the 83% of the "blue-collar" section of the workforce, while the total employment number in the industry has shrunk in relationship to the total amount of vehicles produced and in absolute terms. The Chrysler group employed roughly 150,000 workers in the late 1970s building roughly 2 million vehicles and in 2000 produced 3.2 million vehicles with 125,000 workers, who are increasingly "white collar."
The point being that the polarization between wealth and poverty - talked about by Marx, is being expressed as the polarization within the working class and the reduction of the standard of living of the "lower stratum" or polarization between the better paid and least paid. The absolute polarization is the concentration of increasing wealth in the hands of individuals versus the mass of poverty stricken billions.
Periodically articles appear in the local paper (Detroit) with data, but I have no systematic way to accumulate this data.
Thanks
Melvin.
