tristeham posted:

Frosted Flake posted:

I think probably OnlyFans is what's made this difficult for people to understand since since 2020, because undergrads making 100k a month are using the same language to describe themselves as middle aged women turning to prostitution for pocket money to feed their kids.

genericnick posted:

I'm pretty sure the average undergrad with an onlyfans isn't making 100k a year and I don't see why it makes a difference. It's also not illegal for any workers that make 100k to use the language of Marxism.

Cuttlefush posted:

yes it is

genericnick posted:

I'm pretty sure the average undergrad with an onlyfans isn't making 100k a year and I don't see why it makes a difference. It's also not illegal for any workers that make 100k to use the language of Marxism.

genericnick posted:

Actually computer touchers are one of the classes recognized by mao

crepeface posted:

stalin ftw

mila kunis posted:

im still confused as to what is or isn't productive labour. my understanding is that productive labour is anything that produces commodities. going back to vol 1, i think marx defined commodities as any socially desired use values - goods OR services, but not undesired stuff like mud pies - that have exchange values as well. so if providing sex is a service, and providing services counts as commodities, then isn't sex work also 'productive labour' in that respect

ThatBasqueGuy posted:

so if im to "read the thread" do i just go from page one and run it down ooorrr

mila kunis posted:

im still confused as to what is or isn't productive labour. my understanding is that productive labour is anything that produces commodities. going back to vol 1, i think marx defined commodities as any socially desired use values - goods OR services, but not undesired stuff like mud pies - that have exchange values as well. so if providing sex is a service, and providing services counts as commodities, then isn't sex work also 'productive labour' in that respect

Productive and Unproductive Labour -- Capitalist Production as the Production of Surplus Value, Economic Manuscripts -- Karl Marx posted:

[...]

Since the direct purpose and the actual product of capitalist production is surplus value, only such labour is productive, and only such an exerter of labour capacity is a productive worker, as directly produces surplus value. Hence only such labour is productive as is consumed directly in the production process for the purpose of valorising capital.

[...]

That worker is productive who performs productive labour, and that labour is productive which directly creates surplus value, i.e. valorises capital.

Only the narrow-minded bourgeois, who regards the capitalist form of production as its absolute form, hence as the sole natural form of production, can confuse the question of what are productive labour and productive workers from the standpoint of capital with the question of what productive labour is in general, and can therefore be satisfied with the tautological answer that all that labour is productive which produces, which results in a product, or any kind of use value, which has any result at all.

[...]

quote:

[484] Labour with the same content can therefore be both productive and unproductive.

Milton, for example, who did Paradise Lost, was an unproductive worker. In contrast to this, the writer who delivers hackwork for his publisher is a productive worker. Milton produced Paradise Lost in the way that a silkworm produces silk, as the expression of his own nature. Later on he sold the product for £5 and to that extent became a dealer in a commodity. But the Leipzig literary proletarian who produces books, e.g. compendia on political economy, at the instructions of his publisher is roughly speaking a productive worker, in so far as his production is subsumed under capital and only takes place for the purpose of the latter’s valorisation. A singer who sings like a bird is an unproductive worker. If she sells her singing for money, she is to that extent a wage labourer or a commodity dealer. But the same singer, when engaged by an entrepreneur who has her sing in order to make money, is a productive worker, for she directly produces capital.

quote:

The obsession with defining productive and unproductive labour in terms of its material content derives from 3 sources:

1) the fetishistic notion, peculiar to the capitalist mode of production and arising from its essence, that the formal economic determinations, such as that of being a commodity, or being productive labour, etc., are qualities belonging to the material repositories of these formal determinations or categories in and for themselves;

2) the idea that, considering the labour process as such, only such labour is productive as results in a product (a material product, since here it is only a question of material wealth);

3) the fact that in the real reproduction process — considered from the point of view of its real moments — there is a great difference, with regard to the formation, etc., of wealth, between labour which is expressed in reproductive articles and labour which is expressed in mere luxuries.

ThatBasqueGuy posted:

so if im to "read the thread" do i just go from page one and run it down ooorrr

dead gay comedy forums posted:

finally found the reference I wanted from the man himself:

and here what I was looking for specifically, the dialectical definition:



e: forgot to add the link

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/economic/ch02b.htm#485

ThatBasqueGuy posted:

so if im to "read the thread" do i just go from page one and run it down ooorrr

dead gay comedy forums posted:

finally found the reference I wanted from the man himself:

and here what I was looking for specifically, the dialectical definition:



e: forgot to add the link

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/economic/ch02b.htm#485

quote:

[CHAPTER IV] Theories of Productive and Unproductive Labour
We come now to the last controversial point in Adam Smith’s writings which we have to consider: the distinction between productive and unproductive labour.

In Adam Smith’s definition of what he calls productive labour as distinguished from unproductive labour, we find the same two-sided approach as we have found on every question up to now. Jumbled together in his presentation we find two definitions of what he calls productive labour, and to begin with we will examine the first, the correct definition.



[1. Productive Labour from the Standpoint of Capitalist Production: Labour Which Produces Surplus-Value]
Productive labour, in its meaning for capitalist production, is wage-labour which, exchanged against the variable part of capital (the part of the capital that is spent on wages), reproduces not only this part of the capital (or the value of its own labour-power), but in addition produces surplus-value for the capitalist, It is only thereby that commodity or money is transformed into capital, is produced as capital. Only that wage-labour is productive which produces capital. (This is the same as saying that it reproduces on an enlarged scale the sum of value expended on it, or that it gives in return more labour than it receives in the form of wages. Consequently, only that labour-power is productive which produces a value greater than its own.)

The mere existence of a class of capitalists, and therefore of capital, depends on the productivity of labour: not however on its absolute, but on its relative productivity. For example: if a day’s labour only sufficed to keep the worker alive, that is, to reproduce his labour-power, ||301| speaking in an absolute sense his labour would be productive because it would be reproductive; that is to say, because it constantly replaced the values ( equal to the value of its own labour-power) which it consumed. But in the capitalist sense it would not be productive because it produced no surplus-value. (It produced in fact no new value, but only replaced the old; it would have consumed it—the value—in one form, in order to reproduce it in the other. And in this sense it has been said that a worker is productive whose production is equal to his own consumption, and that a worker is unproductive who consumes more than he reproduces.)

Productivity in the capitalist sense is based on relative productivity—that the worker not only replaces an old value, but creates a new one; that he materialises more labour-time in his product than is materialised in the product that keeps him in existence as a worker. It is this kind of productive wage-labour that is the basis for the existence of capital.

<Assuming, however, that no capital exists, but that the worker appropriates his surplus-labour himself—the excess of values that he has created over the values that he consumes. Then one could say only of this labour that it is truly productive, that is, that it creates new values.>

quote:

“The labour of a menial servant” (as distinct from that of a manufacturer) “adds to the value of nothing … the maintenance of a menial servant never is restored. A man grows rich by employing a multitude of manufacturers; he grows poor, by maintaining a multitude of menial servants. The labour of the latter, however, has its value, and deserves its reward as well as that of the former. But the labour of the manufacturer fixes and realises itself in some particular subject or vendible commodity, which lasts for some time at least after that labour is past. It is, as it were, a certain quantity of labour stocked and stored up to be employed, if necessary, upon some other occasion. That subject, or what is the same thing, the price of that subject, can afterwards, if necessary, put into motion a quantity of labour equal to that which had originally produced it. The labour of the menial servant, on the contrary, does not fix or realise itself in any particular subject or vendible commodity. His services generally perish in the very instant of their performance, and seldom leave any trace or value behind them, for which an equal quantity of service could afterwards be procured. The labour of some of the most respectable orders in the society is, like that of menial servants, unproductive of […] value, and does not fix or realise itself in any permanent subject, or vendible commodity” (l.c., pp. 93-94 passim).

quote:

Here “productive of value” or “unproductive of value” is used in a different sense from that in which these terms were used originally. The reference is no longer to the production of a surplus-value, which in itself implies the reproduction of an equivalent for the value consumed. But according to this presentation the labour of a labourer is called productive in so far as he replaces the consumed value by an equivalent, by adding to any material, through his labour, a quantity of value equal to that which was contained in his wages. Here the definition by social form, the determination of productive and unproductive labourers by their relation to capitalist production, is abandoned. From Chapter IX of Book IV (where Adam Smith criticises the doctrine of the Physiocrats), it can be seen that he came to make this aberration as a result partly of his opposition to the Physiocrats and partly under their influence. If a labourer merely replaces each year the equivalent of his wages, then for the capitalist he is not a productive labourer. He does indeed replace his wages, the purchase price of his labour. But the transaction is absolutely the same as if this capitalist had bought the commodity which this labourer produces. He pays for the labour contained in the constant capital and in the wages. He possesses the same quantity of labour in the form of the commodity as he had before in the form of money. Its money is not thereby transformed into capital. In this case it is the same as if the labourer himself owned his conditions of production. He must each year deduct the value of the conditions of production from the value of his annual product, in order to replace them. What he consumed or could consume annually would be that portion of the value of his product equal to the new labour added to his constant capital during the year. In this case, therefore, it would not be capitalist production.

Nevil Maskelyne posted:

I've heard that he had a speech impediment and spoke English with an Irish accent because his tutor was Irish. I never met the guy though so I dunno

Goes to show the power of the written word in the time before audio and video recording were the standard.

dead gay comedy forums posted:

finally found the reference I wanted from the man himself:

and here what I was looking for specifically, the dialectical definition:



e: forgot to add the link

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/economic/ch02b.htm#485

Orange Devil posted:

So TL;DR, whether labour is productive or unproductive has less to do with what the product of that labour is than with the social relations within which that labour takes place. Is that right?

Cpt_Obvious posted:

If your work makes someone else rich, it's "productive" labor.

I think.

Cpt_Obvious posted:

If your work makes someone else rich, it's "productive" labor.

I think.

dead gay comedy forums posted:

In true philosophical fashion, Marx is being rigorous to define the category of "productive labor" in relation to capital and capitalism. It's a thoroughly different from our everyday usage of the word "productive", because we use it in a very flexible way in many different contexts - and you totally should keep using it that way.

He had to go really strict there to make it a strong categorical definition. That's why I fetched the explanation from the Economic Manuscripts, because he added those three points about the obsession with asserting productivity. His strict definition is imho great to showcase how difficult that idea is in its root; his great trick there is doing absolutely no moral qualification about this notion of productivity.

It's Milton's example: Paradise Lost is completely unproductive labor according to this theory, because it made no capital. Yet it's a great artistic work of tremendous cultural value.

In Training posted:

since I finally wrapped up Capital I have the time now to finally dig into some shorter works I been meaning to read for ages. Starting with Socialism Utopian and Scientific. think this is the first engels I've read beyond Editors Notes and Footnotes from vols II&III

crepeface posted:

did Marx talk about child rearing, household work or just... giving birth in the context of labour (pun intended)?

my dad posted:

Screaming Queens is a documentary on the Compton's Cafeteria riot, which predates Stonewall by a few years. It goes over the plight of trans women in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, often forced to engage in prostitution in order to survive, and culminating in a riot in the one social space they ended up sharing in common. You should be able to find it on Youtube in its entirety.

my dad posted:

So with that in mind, let me reiterate what dgcf says above in slightly different words (correct me if I'm misinterpreting something)

rodbeard posted:

Eagerly awaiting Frosted Flakes coming back with an excuse to hate these women leftishly.

rodbeard posted:

Eagerly awaiting Frosted Flakes coming back with an excuse to hate these women leftishly.

my dad posted:

Screaming Queens

dead gay comedy forums posted:

so not only that, but also imperialism imposes indirect costs by making our own stuff more expensive to ourselves because said dumbassery

BillsPhoenix posted:

Reply to the P/I thread, which felt like the a derail there as it's burgers.

A recentish change with western imperialism has added so many indirect/tangential costs, it's getting harder to even see a benefit for the exploiting nation (US) as a whole.

Foreign bribes have always been a minimal cost, but internal bribes - via superpacs, have skyrocketed. Where as foreign bribes can at least be argued as having value for the Imperialist, domestic can not.

Shipping costs, supply chain costs for a single corporation discounts the full cost to the stealing nation. Ships, trucks, labor, etc is a limited resource. By creating an excessively long chain, the burgers may be cheaper, but every other product using these resources has an increased cost. While measurable, McD has incentive to not report, and will use aforementioned bribery to ensure it won't get regulated, creating recursive domestic bribery costs as competitors for these items use bribes to get their own priorty/reduced costs of these items.

A discrete example of how excessive this recursive bounce has become is the USN and Panama canal. Traffic in the canal is so heavy, they auction of passage priority, generating billions in revenue. The USN is not exempt and will pay the auction fees, which is then a direct cost increase to the imperialists population which is supposed to be exploiting Brazil for cheaper beef.

It's very difficult to ascertain how much these extra costs end up being vs producing the beef locally, but the economic benefit to the imperialist nation's population is questionable. Globally it's catastrophically dumb, evil, and inefficient.