1 Introduction

Why is the distinction between productive labor and unproductive labor necessary in the first place? Bourgeois public opinion―as well as petty bourgeois public opinion―is either completely unaware of its real importance, or they think that this distinction is nitpicking dogmatism, detached from reality, or just plain nonsense. In fact they want to erase or sweep away this distinction. For the bourgeoisie the distinction between productive and unproductive labor does not actually exist. They consider all labor under capitalism―no matter how empty or contemptible that “labor” may be―as productive labor. Therefore any conceptual distinction between productive and unproductive labor is lost.

For socialists, however, this distinction is essential. It would be no exaggeration to say that without making such a distinction socialism is impossible. This is because socialism is, above all, the reorganization of the productive labor that has raised productive power to the highest level under capitalism. Socialism is only possible on the basis of productive labor that has reached the highest social level.

In bourgeois society, attempts have been made to approach this problem from the extremely distorted angle of considering “what is the source of national income.” The modern bourgeois theory of “national income” is not totally unrelated to the concept of productive labor. But this understanding of productive labor is “somewhat” different than the Marxist concept of productive labor.

The Marxist concept of productive labor (the so-called “original” definition) is that labor which produces material goods―and not simply labor but social (socially necessary) labor. Service labor is generally not included. The bourgeois concept, by contrast, includes both labor in general, which is exchanged with capital to produce a profit, as well as labor which is not exchanged with capital and therefore create no profit for capital nor “produces” any useful service for “society” (e.g. the “labor” of police officers and soldiers, and the “labor” of the general employees within the structure of the state, etc.)

Marx considers not only the former meaning of the concept of productive labor (the original definition), but also the latter meaning of the concept (the historical or formal definition). However, this is based on the understanding that the labor that is exchanged with capital also, overall (in terms of being the dominant form), coincides with productive labor in the “original” meaning. At the same time, Marx also fully understands the limitations or restrictions in the historical definition (which stem from the historical formal definition).

It is worthwhile here to provide a brief introduction to the bourgeois concept of productive labor. By “bourgeois,” I am referring here not to the theories of Adam Smith―which Marx thoroughly criticized―but rather to that of post-classical school, i.e. vulgar bourgeois economics.

Modern theories of “national income” date from Keynesianism, but Keynes’ teacher Marshall already defined national income as the pure sum of tangible and intangible commodities encompassing all varieties of services, that are produced year in and year out by the labor and capital in a particular country working upon that country’s natural resources (Principles of Economics). This is the prototype for the bourgeois concept of “national income”. The concept of “tangible and intangible commodities encompassing all varieties of services” is today is still repeated almost word for word in all of the bourgeois conceptions of “productive labor.”

The “official” view of the state is precisely the same. “National income is the (value-added) net outcome produced by the people of a country within a certain period.” However, in this case production is not limited to the material production, but rather includes whatever “creates all kinds of wealth and services.” (White Paper on National Income, 1963, p. 222.)

Furthermore, it can be said:

The net outcome produced by the activity of the national economy in a certain time period (for example one year) can be seen from two aspects: The aspect of production and the aspect of income. In terms of production, this is the sum total of the value amount of the new wealth and services added through production in a certain period. In terms of income, this is the total of all of the income (wages, profit, interest, rent, etc.) earned through production in a certain period.…National income, in the so-called wider sense of the term, is a concept that encompasses both of these aspects.” [Kokumin shotoku riron (Theory of National Income), Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, p. 19]

Such views, however, are held not only by bourgeois scholars, but also by many “Marxist economists.” The position of the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) is also essentially the same. That is, they are satisfied to count the “labor” of any Tom, Dick, or Harry as productive labor. If a soldier is supplied by the state he is still seen as a productive worker. They would argue that since this soldier is engaged in the sacred work of protecting the state, thereby providing a valuable “service,” there is no reason to see his “labor” as unproductive. Thus, for the JCP the “labor” that presently exists in society is everything, the superlative. That is, the greatest thing is that which exists and that which exists is the greatest thing. Here all fundamental and essentially criticism towards capitalist society has been completely eliminated, leaving nothing more than a tailing after the current situation.

This is just like how the bourgeoisie defines a commodity as everything which has value (really a price) and is provided through exchange. That is, in other words whether it is land, stocks, bonds or what Marx referred to as “conscious,” makes no difference in their being commodities. In this concept they are unaware of the limitations of a “formal definition,” and for this reason all critical perspective is completely lost.

The modern bourgeoisie―as well as the petty bourgeoisie and JCP who flatter them―don’t even understand why Adam Smith made a distinction between productive and unproductive labor and considered this distinction to be important.

If “services” were also productive labor, there would have been no reason for Smith to be so particular about this distinction. That is, if both the labor that produces material wealth (capital) and the labor that only accompanies “consumption” are productive labor, then there would be no need at all to essentially distinguish between the two―i.e. formation of “national wealth” on one side, and the consumption of this wealth on the other. However, Smith attempted to demonstrate that productive labor was the real basis of “national wealth” and that through its increase―either relatively or absolutely―the nation prospers, whereas through its decrease the nation perishes.

Smith clearly considered the expense provided for public workers and the military to be unproductive. The “labor” of public workers is neither exchanged with capital nor does it increase capital, but rather is deducted from capital’s profit and paid for from “income.” Smith’s clear conclusion was that labor exchanged with income, not capital, is unproductive. The wealth of a nation becomes greater as the proportion of labor exchanged with capital increases, and becomes smaller as the proportion of this labor decreases. Thus Smith’s ideal was to decrease the proportion of unproductive labor and the expenses that impede the accumulation of capital; in other words the creation of an “economical” state. Smith knew that the expansion of state expenditures and the maintenance of huge armed forces would definitely not enrich the state. Rather, he concluded that such a state would be a parasitic, decadent state in decline, which would increasingly become a heavy burden for the workers. For Smith, then, the distinction between productive and unproductive labor was certainly not a matter of indifference. Rather, for the theory of “national wealth” in a sense this was a decisive thing.

Marx, on the other hand, did not place particular emphasis on the concept of productive labor in Capital. He rather treated the concept of productive labor as a self-evident premise. Marx did offer something of a summary of productive labor in chapters five and fourteen of the first volume of Capital where he defines the “original” and “formal” concepts, but this is not developed in much detail. A detailed treatment of productive labor can be found in “The Distinction Between Productive and Unproductive Labor” in Theories of Surplus Value (MECW Vol. 31 and 34), as well as in “The Results of the Immediate Process of Production” appended to the first volume of Capital.

Of course, in other books and articles, productive labor is discussed in passing, and through these fragments one can basically understand Marx’s view.

Most of the references to productive labor can be found Marx’s Theories of Surplus Value where he critically examines Smith’s category in the form of notes, and his own concept is developed through the critical commentary of Smith. Therefore, naturally, these comments cannot help being varied. this reason the explanation cannot help being varied. For example, depending on the object of his criticism,

It was natural for Marx to take up the views of Smith when examining the concept of productive labor. This is because of all the classical school of economics, he was the one who emphasized and developed this concept as one of the theoretical pillars of his theory of the Wealth of Nations. Later we will briefly look at Smith’s concept, but readers will see how much more bold and vibrant the classical school of economics is different from the vulgar economics today. They were theoreticians who represented the “healthy” bourgeoisie in its period of development, and thus made a firm distinction between productive and unproductive labor, and defended productive labor for the sake of capital, its accumulation and prosperity, and clearly recognized the importance of defending its significance. In the modern era, unlike Smith, even “Marxists” argue that unproductive labor is also productive labor. They are clearly at a level below Smith, and have fallen into the standpoint of the decadent bourgeoisie, even while calling this the “development of Marxism.” What a bad joke!

Marx, while recognizing the historical meaning and justification of Smith’s theory, correctly understood and exposed its bourgeois limitations and contradictions and confusion―of course, not in a moralistic, but in a historical and class necessity.

2. The “Original” Definition of Productive Labor

Marx argued that there were two concepts of productive labor―that is, its meaning as a metabolic relationship between man and nature to produce material wealth, and productive labor in terms of exchange with capital and the self-augmentation of capital. He called the former the “original definition” [die ursprungliche Bestimmung] and the latter the formal or historical definition. Let’s begin by looking at the “original definition.” In the first volume of Capital in the discussion of the “labor process,” Marx wrote the following:

If the labor process, therefore, man’s activity, via the instruments of labor, effects an alteration in the object of labor which was intended from the outset. The process is extinguished in the product. The product of the process is a use-value, a piece of natural material adapted to human needs by means of a change in its form. Labor has become bound up in its object: labor has been objectified, the object has been worked on. What on the side of the worker appeared in the form of unrest [Unruhe] now appears, on the side of the product, in the form of being [Sein], as a fixed, immobile characteristic. The worker has spun, and the product is spinning.

If we look at the whole process from the point of view of its result, the product, it is plain that both the instruments and the object of labor are means of production and that the labor itself is productive labor. (8)―footnote 8: This method of determining what is productive labor from the standpoint of the simple labor process, is by no means sufficient to cover the capitalist process of production. (Capital Vol. 1, Penguin Classics p. 287)

The labor process, as we have just presented it in its simple and abstract elements, is purposeful activity aimed at the production of use-values. It is an appropriation of what exists in nature for the requirements of man. It is the universal condition for the metabolic nature-imposed condition of human existence, and it is therefore independent of every form of that existence, or rather it is common to all forms of society in which human beings live. We did not, therefore, have to present the worker in his relationship with other workers; it was enough to present man and his labor on one side, nature and its materials on the other. The taste of porridge does not tell us who grew the oats, and the process we have presented does not reveal the conditions under which it takes place, whether it is happening under the slave-owner’s brutal lash or the anxious eye of the capitalist, whether Cincinnatus undertakes it in tilling his couple of acres, or a savage, when he lays low a wild beast with a stone. (Ibid., pp. 290-1)

Just as Marx referred to this as the simple labor process, this concept can be easily understood by anyone. Here there is no difficulty. In order to satisfy their needs, people work upon nature, and through social labor they adapt and process nature. Productive labor is this labor as the “basic condition of the material metabolism” between man and nature. Therefore, this is essentially labor which produces material wealth.

It is easy to see the inseparable relationship between this original concept of productive labor and the materialist conception of history. Already in The German Ideology Marx pointed out that the basis of human society and history, its determination, is the production and reproduction for “eating and drinking, a habitation, [and] clothing.” And in a letter to Kugelmann (July 11, 1868), Marx said that “any nation that stopped working, not for a year, but let us say, just for a few weeks, would perish,” thereby emphasizing that productive labor was the necessary material condition, or element, of human history and culture and its development, and the fundamental process of all history and human society. This is also the case in capitalist society. At the beginning of Capital, Marx showed that the substance of commodity value is abstract human social labor, but since he felt that it was perfectly clear that this labor was “productive labor” (productive labor in the original sense) he did not see any need for a special explanation or comment.

3 The “Formal” Definition of Productive Labor

Marx, however, was not satisfied with only the original concept of productive labor seen from the “standpoint of the simple process of labor.” The issue is labor under capitalism, and how to evaluate wage labor in this society. Marx thus emphasized that the original concept of productive labor was “certainly not sufficient,” and he advanced to examine the formal definition. From the simple or abstract definition of productive labor, Marx advanced to the concept of productive labor under capitalism. This “formal definition” of productive labor is qualitatively different from the concept seen from the labor process, and its content is more complex. This concept, while following the original definition, is more complex and realistic definition, and is dependent on the formal essence of capitalistic production. In Theories of Surplus Value, Marx emphasizes the following:

Productive labor, in the meaning of capitalist production, is wage labor which, exchanged against the variable part of capital (the part which capital spends on wages), reproduces not only this part of capital (or the value of its own labor capacity), 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 labor 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 labor than it receives in the form of wages. Consequently, only that labor capacity is productive which produces a value greater than its own.” (MECW Volume 31, p. 8)

Only labor that produces capital is productive labor. Commodities or money become capital, however, through being exchanged directly for labor capacity, and exchanged only in order to be replaced by more labor than they themselves contain. For the use value of labor capacity to the capitalist as capitalist does not consist in its actual use value, in the usefulness of this particular concrete labor―that is spinning labor, weaving labor, and so on. He is as little concerned with this as with the use value of the product of this labor as such, since for the capitalist the product is a commodity (even before its first metamorphosis), not an article of consumption. What interests him in the commodity is that it has more exchange value than he paid for it; and therefore the use value of the labor is, for him, that he gets back a greater quantity of labor time than he has paid out in the form of wages. Included among these productive workers, of course, are all those who contribute in one way or another to the production of the commodity, from the actual operative to the manager or engineer (as distinct from the capitalist). And so even the latest English official report on the factories ‘explicitly’ includes in the category of employed wage workers all persons employed in the factories and in the offices attached to them, with the exception of the manufacturers themselves (see the wording of the report before the concluding part of this rubbish). Productive labor is here defined from the standpoint of capitalist production, and Adam Smith here got to the very heart of the matter, hit the nail on the head. This is one of his greatest scientific merits (as Malthus rightly observed, this critical differentiation between productive and unproductive labor remains the basis of all bourgeois political economy) that he defines productive labor as labor which is directly exchanged with capital; that is, he defines it by the exchange through which the conditions of production of labor, and value in general, whether money or commodity, are first transformed into capital (and labor into wage labor in its scientific meaning). This also establishes absolutely what unproductive labor is. It is labor which is not exchanged with capital, but directly with revenue, that is, with wages or profit (including of course the various categories of those who share as co-partners in the capitalist’s profit, such as interest and rent). Where all labor in part still pays itself (like e.g. the agricultural labor of the peasants on corvee) and in part is directly exchanged for revenue (like the manufacturing labor in the cities of Asia), no capital and no wage labor exists in the sense of bourgeois political economy. These definitions are therefore not derived from the material characteristics of labor (neither from the nature of its product nor from the particular character of the labor as concrete labor), but from the definite social form, the social relations of production, within which the labor is realized. An actor, for example, or even a clown, according to this definition, is a productive laborer if he works in the service of a capitalist (an entrepreneur) to whom he returns more labor than he receives from him in the form of wages; while a jobbing tailor who comes to the capitalist’s house and patches his trousers for him, producing a mere use value for him, is an unproductive laborer. The former’s labor is exchanged with capital, the latter’s with revenue. The former’s labor produces a surplus value; in the latter’s revenue is consumed.

Productive and unproductive labor is here throughout conceived from the from the standpoint of the possessor of money, of the capitalist, not from that of the workman.” (Ibid pp. 12-3)

Marx provides the following overview of this concept in Capital:

Yet the concept of productive labor also becomes narrower. Capitalist production is not merely the production of commodities, it is, by its very essence, the production of surplus-value. The worker produces not for himself, but for capital. It is no longer sufficient, therefore, for him simply to produce. He must produce surplus-value. The only worker who is productive is one who produces surplus-value for the capitalist, or in other words contributes towards the self-valorization of capital. If we may take an example from outside the sphere of material production, a schoolmaster is a productive worker when, in addition to belaboring the head of his pupils, he works himself into the ground to enrich the owner of the school That the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of a sausage factory, makes no difference to the relation. The concept of a productive worker therefore implies not merely a relation between the activity fo work and its useful effect, between the worker and the product of his work, but also a specifically social relation of production, a relation with a historical origin which stamps the worker as capital’s direct means of valorization. To be a productive worker is therefore not a piece of luck, but a misfortune. In Volume 4 of this work (history of the theory of surplus value―translator), which deals with the history of the theory, we shall show that the classical political economists have always made the production of surplus-value the distinguishing characteristic of the productive worker. Hence their definition of a productive worker varies with their conception of the nature of surplus-value. For the Physiocrats, indeed, surplus-value exists exclusively in the form of ground rent. (Capital Volume I. p. 644)

The essence of the formal definition is that productive labor is labor that is exchanged with capital, not income, and labor that increases capital, and capital formed by labor. But does this mean that productive labor also includes “service labor”?

Certainly when Marx says that an actor working under capital would be a productive worker (see the quotation above) it appears that service labor would also be considered productive labor in the sense of being incorporated within capital and contributing to the self-augmentation of capital.

However, we need to draw a distinction between the fundamental concept, and derivative concepts. The essential point in the formal definition is that labor is exchanged with capital and leads to the self-augmentation of capital. In this definition, the qualitative content of labor is abolished or dissolved. In other words, for the moment it is a matter of no concern whether the labor was originally productive or unproductive labor.

Considered on a more profound level, in the capitalistic formal definition, as long as it is subsumed within capital, formally speaking, any labor can appear as productive labor. This indeed is one of the essential characteristics or limitations of this bourgeois society―i.e. it exposes its vacuous and unprincipled nature. In the formal definition, labor is separated from its concrete content, and is defined in a purely abstract, i.e. content-less, definition. Labor is only judged in terms of serving the augmentation of value, or self-augmentation of capital. This is the true figure of wage labor under capitalism. Therefore, under capitalism, any un-social labor or service labor can appear as productive labor as long as is subsumed within capital and augments it. Of course, the fact that labor “can appear” to be productive, does not mean that such labor is productive labor in the original sense.

For Marx, it is obvious that originally service labor is unproductive labor. This is unproductive not only because it doesn’t produce material wealth, but because in terms of form it has a clear characteristic―that is service labor is fundamentally exchanged with income rather than capital.

Of course, since in the formal definition as well productive labor is exchanged with capital and unproductive labor is exchanged with income, it has the same content as the original definition, and the two are fundamentally identical. Labor that exchanges with capital is fundamentally labor in the service of material production. On the other hand, labor that exchanges with income, if fundamentally service labor. Of course there are some exceptions, but such exceptions certainly do not invalidate the conceptual definition. Thus the following can be said:

It is, however, in any case clear: the greater the part of the revenue (wages and profit) that is spent on commodities produced by capital, the less the part that can be spend on the services of the unproductive laborers, and vice versa.

The material determination of labor, and therefore of its product, in itself has nothing to do with this distinction between productive and unproductive labor. For example, the cooks and waiters in a public hotel are productive laborers, in so far as their labor is transformed into capital for the proprietor of the hotel. These same persons are unproductive laborers as menial servants, inasmuch as I do not make capital out of their services, but spend revenue on them. In fact, however, these same persons are also for me, the consumer, unproductive laborers in the hotel. (MECW Vol. 31 p. 15)

The labor capacity of the productive laborer is a commodity for the laborer himself. So is that of the unproductive laborer. But the productive laborer produces commodities for the buyer of his labor capacity. The unproductive laborer produces for him a mere use value, not a commodity; an imaginary or a real use value. It is characteristic of the unproductive laborer that he produces no commodities for his buyer, but indeed receives commodities from him. (Ibid p. 16)

The essential significance or characteristic of the formal definition is that under capitalist relations of production, service labor is also subsumed within capital, and therefore appears as productive labor. However, the JCP philistines make a lot of noise on the basis of this misunderstanding. The following crucial passage can be found in “The Immediate Results”:

Productive labor is merely an abbreviation for the entire complex of activities of labor and labor-power within the capitalist process of production. Thus when we speak of productive labor we mean socially determined labor, labor which implies a quite specific relationship between the buyer and seller of labor. Productive labor is exchanged directly for money as capital, i.e. for money which is intrinsically capital, which is destined to function as capital and which confronts labor-power as capital. Thus productive labor is labor which for the worker only reproduces the value of his labor-power as determined beforehand, while as a value-creating activity it valorizes capital and confronts the worker with the values so created and transformed into capital. The specific relationship between objectified and living labor that converts the former into capital also turns the latter into productive labor.

The specific product of the capitalist process of production, surplus-value, is created only through an exchange with productive labor.

What gives it a specific use-value for capital is not its particular utility, any more than the particular useful qualities of the product in which it is objectified. Its use to capital is its ability to generate exchange-value (surplus value).

The capitalist process of production does not just involve the production of commodities. It is a process which absorbs unpaid labor, which makes the means of production into the means for extorting unpaid labor.

From the foregoing it is evident that for labor to be designated productive, qualities are required which are utterly unconnected with the specific content of the labor, with its particular utility or th e use-value in which it is objectified.” (“Results of the Immediate Process of Production, From Capital Volume I. pp.1043-44)

Thus, productive labor is not only labor related to the production of “things,” but essentially must be defined within a certain set of social relations, within capitalistic relations of production. This is indeed an historical concept. In Theories of Surplus Value almost the same passage can be found:

It is only this particular relation to labor [the exploitative relation between capital and labor] which converts money or commodity into capital, and that labor is productive labor which―by means of this relation it has to be the conditions of production, to which there corresponds a particular position in the real production process― converts money or commodity into capital, i.e. preserves and increases the value of the objective labor which has attained an independent position vis-a-vis the labor capacity. Productive labor is only an abbreviation for the whole relation in which, and the manner in which, labor capacity figures in the capitalist production process. It is however of the highest importance to distinguish between this and other kinds of labor, since this distinction brings out precisely the determinate form of labor on which there depends the whole capitalist mode of production, and capital itself.

Productive labor, therefore, is labor which―in the system of capitalist production―produces surplus value for its employer or which converts the objective conditions of labor into capital, and their owners into capitalists, hence labor which produces its own product as capital.

Hence in speaking of productive labor we are speaking of socially determined labor, labor which implies a highly definite relation between the buyer and the seller of labor. (Vol. 34 p. 131)

As is understood from this passage, what is being defined here is that productive labor in the formal sense, is also naturally, labor that produces material wealth. But for the formal definition this is a matter of indifference, and this is suspended as something unessential, and this original definition is thrown out.

We have already that abstract human labor as the substance of value has more positive moments than the concept of simple labor. In the concept of value, labor as the substance of value is not simple labor, but abstract labor, and as money human labor that takes a thoroughly social form. That is, human labor taking the form of value clearly appears as something decisively social, and in this sense the concept of labor has a more determining, important positive aspect than the concept of simple labor. Of course, on the other hand, the concept of value is also a historical formal definition of human labor, and is fundamentally determined by the concept of general human labor.

The historical or formal concept of productive labor also has positive significance. This states that only labor exchanged with capital is productive labor, and labor exchanged with income (revenue?) is unproductive labor. In this way, even in the capitalistic form, there is a distinction between social labor and unsocial labor. The fact that this bourgeois definition also has a positive aspect is seen characteristically in the example that even if a menial servant produces a “thing” this is not viewed as productive labor. This is seen in the form that labor not exchanged with capital, not only does not contribute to the accumulation of capital, but conversely is seen as a barrier to such accumulation (or what Smith calls the increase of “national wealth”). This is unsocial labor which does not augment capital, but conversely has a parasitical relation to it (i.e. capitalistic prosperity), and is human activity that cannot be called “labor” (productive labor) in the original meaning.

4. Discussion of the Two Definitions

We have looked at the two definitions of productive labor, but we need to consider what reciprocal relationship the two have―whether they can be considered two separate, distinct definitions that can be simply lined up next to each other.

Even with the camp of Marxism, there is not necessarily a consistent understanding of the concept of productive labor (and therefore unproductive labor), and the relationship between the two definitions. Rather, this is often confused (and recently increasingly so to the point that it is moving further and further away from Marxism towards bourgeois theory), but this is also a reflection of the political confusion of the Communist party. Of course, at the same time, this is the outcome or theoretical reflection of the parasitism and decay of modern capitalism―that is the “service-ization of economics” and the need for a corresponding theory. In this sense, there is nothing particularly strange or unexpected about the phenomena of JCP theorists who politically combine with bourgeois society, and easily tail after the economic reality of modern capitalism.

One of the “Marxist” views concerning the two concepts of productive labor―and one that was even considered the “official” one for a good part of the postwar period―was the view that the definition of labor that produces material wealth (Marx’s so-called “original” definition) was a definition from the “social standpoint,” and the definition according to labor that is exchanged with capital rather than income (revenue?) and creates a profit (Marx’s so-called “formal” definition) was from the “perspective of individual capital.” The limitation of such a view should be clear at a glance. This formalistic understanding which mechanically opposes the social to the individual certainly cannot provide a correct concept of productive labor.

Another view held that the two definitions need to be “integrated.” For example, Kaneko Haruo argued in the following way:

Marx was able to establish the original definition of productive labor because he understood capitalist production in its particular, historical form, and established the historical definition of productive labor, this was the outcome made possible by the “logical abstraction” of “production in general”―this was in particular clear with the distinction from Smith―and therefore these two definitions must not be grasped separately, but rather in their unity. (Productive Labor and National Income, p. 2)

Even if these two definitions “were not grasped separately,” this is a question unrelated to the concept itself. On this point, Kaneko’s theory resembles Uno Kozo’s idea that through the establishment of historical materialism, dialectical materialism was also ultimately grasped, thereby insisting on the priority of historical materialism―saying that dialectical materialism was sublated (or dissolved!) within historical materialism.

In fact, even though he speaks of an “integrated” understanding, it is not at all clear what this means concretely. There certainly is a need to have an “integral” understanding of the two concepts, but on the other hand they must also be clearly distinguished, and it is for this very reason that they are two concepts. Reading Theories of Surplus Value, makes it abundantly clear that these two definitions are clearly distinguished. A standpoint which concentrates on “integrating” the two, at the expense of their distinctions, opens the path to nonsensical dogma. At best, this ends up in the standpoint which is satisfied with a juxtaposition of the tow definitions, but this is also clearly un-conceptual. Kaneko says the following:

In the capitalist production process, the labor process and the process of value augmentation are integrated. Therefore, in the capitalist production process, productive labor, corresponding to the duality of the capitalist production process, must be understood as a dual definition that encompasses the original definition of the labor process and the capitalistic, formal definition of the process of value augmentation. However, since value augmentation is the main aspect within capitalist production, the capitalistic, formal definition of producing surplus value defines its essence. By contrast, since the labor process is the secondary aspect within the capitalist production process, its essence cannot be defined from this original definition of producing a use-value. In other words, the original definition, as the bearer of the capitalistic, formal definition, forms its general foundation. (Ibid. p. 91)

Of course, this view is nonsense. If Kaneko were correct, it could be said that weapons industries could also appear as productive labor define the essence, but any worker would know that this is stupid. It is not a question of which definition is the “essential” one. If it were a question of which is essential, it would have to be said that labor mediated by the conversion of raw materials between nature and man, is the fundamental thing, and since this does not match the capitalistic meaning of productive labor, there is a need for a formal concept in distinction from the original concept.

Marx also emphasized both of the definitions, and did not understand one as being superior. However, by calling that labor which produces material wealth the “original” definition of productive labor, his intention can be seen.

Marx certainly examined Smith’s concept of productive labor, evaluating its historical and formal definition. However, this was in order to say that the concept of productive labor was social labor, not labor expended individually or exchanged with income―even if it produces material wealth. On this point, Marx recognized the positive significance of Smith’s definition (formal definition). If productive labor were merely defined as labor that produces “material wealth”―if the labor of a bourgeois who uses his own income to individually make some “thing” was considered an example of productive labor. But Smith said that even if labor produces material goods, as long as this individual service labor exchanges with revenue, rather than capital, it cannot be called productive labor. This comes directly from Smith’s first definition of productive labor, but Marx also recognizes this definition and finds it justified.

Here the fact that the labor is exchanged with capital and leads to profit and the fact that it is socially expended labor, therefore “objectified” as the value of the commodity, are both included. For the very reason that it is “objectified” as the commodity value is also the source of profit. In other words, Smith’s definition of productive labor presupposes that this labor was expended as socially abstract human labor, not simply the idea that any human activity which makes a “thing” would be sufficient.

Of course, Marx also knew that the formal definition had essential limitations, and that from this bourgeois formal definition all sorts of nonsense could follow. For example, from this formal bourgeois definition (according to exchange with capital and creation of profit) any labor whatsoever―even prostitution or labor that produces deadly weapons―could be defined or viewed as “productive labor.” However, even the unprincipled JCP theorists would have to recognize that this is not “productive labor” at all. The examples of prostitution and weapons manufacture are a thorn in the side of such theorists, and they are totally incapable of removing it. According to their theories, such “labor” would be productive labor since it is clearly carried out by wage labor (i.e. exchanged with capital and creating profit) or provides a “service.”

Marx, on the one hand, emphasized that the formal definition was essential, while on the other hand emphasizing that in the simple definition productive labor is that labor which produces commodities, or material wealth. In discussing the formal definition Marx often modifies it with such expressions as “under the capitalist mode of production,” or “from the capitalistic perspective.” On the other hand, he criticizes bourgeois narrow-mindedness for considering labor that produces material things to be directly productive labor. For example, there is the following passage:

Only bourgeois narrowness, which considers the capitalist forms of production to be the latter’s absolute forms―and therefore the eternal natural forms of production―is able to confuse the question of what productive labor is from the standpoint of capital with the question of what labor is productive in general, or what productive labor is in general, and therefore esteem itself very wise in giving the reply that all labor which produces anything at all, results in anything whatsoever, is eo ipso (by that very fact) productive labor. (Vol. 34, p. 128)

However, we should make sure that we do not misunderstand Marx here. He thought that it was self-evident that a commodity has a certain use-value or utility and was therefore a “thing.” “Bourgeois narrowness” stems from overlooking the essence of the labor objectified in the commodity as abstract human labor, and seeing it instead as concrete useful labor, thereby ignoring or wiping out the formal historical characteristics of this productive labor. For Marx, it was a clear premise that the labor, which produces the commodity and profit, produces a use-value in which this labor is objectified. In capitalist society, however, the question is the form that this takes historically, not simply the production of “things”―this is what Marx is trying to say.

Therefore, according to Marx’s argument, it is not possible to draw the conclusion that productive labor is not that labor which originally produces material things. Productive labor is essentially that labor which produces things, but this cannot be understood in a mechanical fashion. This is because, first of all, under capitalist production, there is the “production of things” by means of the exchange of revenue, i.e. labor which is unproductive even though it produces things. On the other hand, there is productive labor that does not directly produce things, such as the labor involved in transportation (the extended production process) and the circulation of commodities, as well as labor originally involved in the production process such as storage, processing, and packaging (we will discuss this in more detail later). On this point, as Marx says, “the materialization, etc., of labor is however not to be taken in such a Scottish sense as Adam Smith conceives it.” (Vol. 31, p. 26)

5. The Reciprocal Relation or Unity Between the 2 Definitions

It may seem that Marx merely compared or juxtaposed two independent, completely different and distinct concepts of productive labor. On the one hand, the concept of productive labor determined from the labor process in general (this corresponds to Adam Smith’s second definition of labor that produces commodities being productive labor), and on the other hand the concept of productive labor that appears on the basis of capitalist production. However, is this really the case? Are these two concepts essentially separate, or mutually separated and independent concepts! This is the question. In fact, it could be said that these two concepts are in a sense the same thing. Even if they are not directly the same, they cannot simply be lined up next to each other and defined as separate concepts. Here we will examine the relation between these two concepts.

In the “Results of the Immediate Process of Production,” the concept of productive labor is provided, and this is in fact a discussion of the relation between the two concepts:

Looked at from the simple standpoint of the labor process, labor seemed productive if it realized itself in a product, or rather a commodity. From the standpoint of capitalist production we may add the qualification that labor is productive if it directly valorizes capital, or creates surplus-value. That is to say, it is productive if it is realized in a surplus-value without any equivalent for the worker, its creator; it must appear in surplus produce, i.e. an additional increment of a commodity on behalf of the monopolizer of the means of labor, the capitalist. Only the labor which posits the variable capital and hence the total capital as C+△C=C+△v is productive. It is therefore labor which directly serves capital as the agency of its self-valorization, as means for the production of surplus-value.

The capitalist labor process does not cancel the general definitions of the labor process. It produces both product and commodity. Labor remains productive as long as it objectifies itself in commodities, as the unity of exchange-value and use-value. But the labor process is merely a means for the self-valorization of capital. Labor is productive, therefore, if it is converted into commodities, but when we consider the individual commodity we find that a certain proportion of it represents unpaid labor, and when we take the mass of commodities as a whole we find similarly that a certain proportion of that also represents unpaid labor. In short, it turns out to be a product that costs the capitalist nothing.

The worker who performs productive work is productive and the work he performs is productive if it directly creates surplus-value, i.e. if it valorizes capital.

It is only bourgeois obtuseness that encourages the view that capitalist production is production in its absolute form, the unique form of production as prescribed by nature. And only the bourgeoisie can confuse the questions: what is productive labor? and what is a productive worker from the standpoint of capitalism? with the question: what is productive labor as such?” (Capital, pp. 1038-9)

As we can see, here Marx emphasizes that the formal definition of productive labor is a formal definition in the very sense of being a historical form of the original definition of productive labor. He criticizes “bourgeois obtuseness” since they distinguish the formal and original definitions but are unable to correctly position them, thereby “confusing” them, and being unable to overcome the capitalistic boundaries due to their absolutizing of the capitalist formal definition (just like JCP scholars today).

Marx stressed the formal definition and recognized its importance, but on the other hand he exposed that this was the concept of “productive labor seen from the view of capital.” Clearly for Marx the concept of productive labor in general was essential, and the concept seen from the standpoint of capital had to be seen within its historical limitations. Just as “the capitalist labor process does not cancel the general definitions of the labor process,” the capitalistic concept of productive labor does not supercede the general definition of productive labor. Concretely speaking, this appears as the historical formal definition in which labor that produces surplus value―labor that has the essential element of being labor that extends beyond necessary labor―is productive labor. With this at the same time a distinction appears in which labor is productive which produces a surplus value rather than just a commodity value. This is the concept of productive labor as a historical formal definition.

For Marx, labor that produces commodities, i.e. value, (and more specifically surplus value) is fundamentally labor that produces material wealth―this was a clear premise for him. The question for Marx is just the historical form that productive labor takes, and therefore whether products take the form of the commodity and productive labor takes the form of wage labor. Here the question is the historical form of social labor, and social production thus exists as the great premise.

This is the case seen not only in the concept of productive labor, but also in the first place in the value determination of the commodity. We have learned that in the value determination of the commodity this has more determinativeness than the use-value of a commodity―that is it is a use-value and at the same time determined by value. And in the determination of the historical-social form of the product (determination as a commodity) this includes things that go beyond the determination as product (use-value). For example, things that were originally not commodities, can formally be defined as commodities (e.g. purely formal commodities such as land or “capital” can also appear as commodities), and this…and the historical formal definition of productive labor is the same, and in this formal definition productive labor that was not originally productive labor is included, but for the conceptual definition of productive labor (and even for the formal definition) this is certainly not an essential point. To treat this as something essential, would be to detach productive labor from its original definition completely, making it independent, and in this way opening the path to all sorts of theoretical confusion and opportunistic opinions―such as the idea that service labor is also essentially productive labor, etc.

In fact, in his examination of the views of Adam Smith, Marx says that the labor that produces commodities is fundamental:

Apart from such cases, productive labor is such as produces commodities, and unproductive labor is such as produces personal services. The former labor is represented in a vendible thing; the latter must be consumed while it is being performed. The former includes (except for that labor which creates labor capacity itself) all material and intellectual wealth―meat as well as books―that exists in the form of things; the latter covers all labors which satisfy any imaginary or real need of the individual―or even those which are forced upon the individual against his will.

The commodity is the most elementary form of bourgeois wealth. The explanation of ‘productive labor’ as labor which produces ‘commodities’ also corresponds, therefore, to a much more elementary point of view than that which defines productive labor which produces capital. (MECW Volume 31, p. 28)

However, the standpoint of defining productive labor as that labor which produces value, is insufficient for capitalistic production. This is because the characteristic of such production is the production of surplus value, not simple value. The idea that labor which produces commodities is productive labor, must be replaced by the idea that it is labor which produces surplus value that is productive labor. Still, this doesn’t change the fact that the former has more “fundamental” significance.

This also shows the manner in which Marx united the two definitions of productive labor. We have already adequately discussed the distinction between the two definitions, and have recognized that it is not enough to simple juxtapose them and that they must be united and essentially defined. Marx said that in capitalist society these two definitions match, that is, labor that produces things (material wealth), in its totality is basically that labor which produces a profit, and in this way the two are realistically united:

To the extent that capital conquers the whole of production, and therefore the home and petty form of industry―in short, industry intended for self-consumption, not producing commodities― disappears, it is clear that the unproductive laborers, those whose services are directly exchanged against revenue, will for the most part be performing only personal services, and only an inconsiderable part of them (like cooks, seamstresses, jobbing tailors and so on) will produce material use values. That they produce no commodities follows from the nature of the case. For the commodity as such is never an immediate object of consumption, but a bearer of exchange value. Consequently only a quite insignificant part of these unproductive laborers can play a direct part in material production once the capitalist mode of production has developed. They participate in it only through the exchange of their services against revenue…

The labor capacity of the productive laborer is a commodity for the laborer himself. So is that of the unproductive laborer. But the productive laborer produces commodities for the buyer of his labor capacity. The unproductive laborer produces for him a mere use value. It is characteristic of the unproductive laborer that he produces no commodities for his buyer, but indeed receives commodities from him. (Ibid pp 15-6)

As soon as capital has mastered the whole of production, revenue, in so far as it is at all exchanged against labor, will not be exchanged directly against labor which produces commodities, but against mere services. It is exchanged partly against commodities which are to serve as use values, and partly against services, which as such are consumed as use values.

A commodity―as distinguished from labor capacity itself―is a material thing confronting man, a thing of a certain utility for him, in which a definite quantity of labor is fixed or materialized.

So we come to the definition already in essence contained in point I: a productive laborer is one whose labor produces commodities; and indeed such a laborer does not consume more commodities than he produces, than his labor costs…By producing commodities the productive worker constantly reproduces the variable capital which he constantly consumes in the form of wages. He constantly produces the fund which pays him, ‘which maintains and employs him. (Ibid p. 19)

In considering the essential relations of capitalist production, therefore, it can be assumed //since this tends to occur more and more, is the principal purpose, and the productive powers of labor are developed to the highest point in this case alone// that the whole world of commodities, all the spheres of material production―the production of material wealth―have been subjected (either formally or really) to the capitalist mode of production. In this presupposition, which expresses the limit, and therefore approximates ever more closely to exact accuracy, all the workers engaged in the production of commodities are wage laborers and the means of production confront them as capital in all spheres of production. It can then be described as the characteristic feature of productive workers, i.e. of workers producing capital, that their labor is realized in commodities, material wealth. And thus productive labor would have obtained a second, subsidiary determination distinct from its decisive characteristic, for which the content of labor is a matter of complete indifference and which is independent of that content. (Vol. 34, p. 143)

Here the relation between the two definitions is shown. That is, under capitalism, the concept of productive labor is defined as labor exchanged with capital that is able to self-augment capital―therefore labor that exchanges with revenue, not only service labor but even if it produces things, is seen as unproductive labor. However, fundamentally speaking capital encompasses “the whole world of commodities, all the spheres of material production,” and therefore labor that exchanges with capital is at the same time labor that produces things.

Of course, in reality (under the decaying and parasitical state-monopoly capitalism) capital encompasses a great deal of unproductive labor (and capital can also in phenomena be augmented by unproductive labor), but this still does not change the essence of the problem at all.

What does Marx mean when he emphasizes that in the definition of “productive labor as labor that is exchanged with commodities,” the first definition is already included, and therefore it is a “second, secondary definition.”

Here, as we will see subsequently, we must think “dialectically.” Marx emphasized that the foundation of capital is the commodity, but in capitalism in a sense the determination of the capital is “arbitrary.” That is, the essential moment that distinguishes capitalism from other historical production relations of society is not that this society produces as commodities, but that commodities are produced under the capital = wage-labor relationship, that is production carried out for profit through the exploitation of labor. Of course, the fact that the goal of capitalistic production relations is the obtaining of surplus value (exploitation of labor), includes the fact that labor products are produced as commodities since without being produced as commodities the surplus value could not be realized. Thus, in the determination of capital, the determination of the commodity is presupposed―i.e. is already “included in fact.” This is what Marx means when he says, “the production of a surplus value, which in itself implies the production of an equivalent for the value consumed.” (Vol 31, p. 17)

Here Marx is basically integrating or summarizing the two definitions. For Marx, these two definitions are not separate things, but two aspects of the same thing. Marx certainly did place importance on the formal definition of Adam Smith, but he wasn’t saying that the other definition was incorrect or needed to be rejected. He is only recognizing the realistic, historical, as well as class significance of each definition and saying that they need to be positioned correctly.

There is the following crucial passage:

It is however clear that in the same measure as capital subjugates to itself the whole of production―that is to say, that all commodities are produced for the market and not for immediate consumption, and the productivity of labor rises in the same measure―there will also develop more and more a material difference between productive and unproductive laborers, inasmuch as the former, apart from minor exceptions, will exclusively produce commodities, while the latter, with minor exceptions will perform only personal services. Hence the former class will produce the immediate, material wealth consisting of commodities, all commodities except those which consist of labor capacity itself. This is one of the aspects which lead Adam Smith to put forward other points in difference, in addition to the first and in principle determining differentia specifica. (Ibid pp. 16-7)

Along with the development of capitalism, in general productive labor is labor exchanged with capital that produces commodities, i.e. material wealth, while unproductive labor is labor exchanged with revenue that provides a service. This is how Marx basically integrates and summarizes the two definitions. Of course everyone knows that labor that exchange with capital and labor that produces material wealth are not directly the same thing. Moreover, it is common knowledge that some material production is carried out by labor that exchanges with revenue. Nevertheless, fundamentally speaking labor exchanged with capital is labor that produces commodities, and is productive labor in the original sense (as the “material metabolism” between man and nature).

If the formal definition necessarily includes this, how should we evaluate labor that exchanges with capital but does not produce material wealth? Why can this be considered productive labor according to the formal definition?

This fact shows that the formal definition is a developed definition, on the one hand, and on the other hand exposes that, as a formal definition, has abstract content, and thus has certain limitations. Therefore, one cannot absolutize the formal definition and end up carelessly saying that since it is employed by capital and creates a profit for capital, singers, artists, and soldiers (mercenaries, for example) are also “productive.” Rather, we must clearly be aware of the limitations, and one-sidedness of the formal definition. In this sense the JCP scholars who find positive significance in the formal definition rather than seeing its limitations, have understood nothing. The fact that service labor could also be included within the formal definition exposes the essential limitations that this definition has, as a formal definition, and in this aspect how it is distinguished from and in contradiction to the original definition.

The original definition and the formal definition are basically united and in agreement, but at the same time the distinction between the two is important. Of course, this is not a question of which definition is the principal or superior one. For example, Unoists (Uno Kozo’s followers) say that the historical formal definition is fundamental and the superior, since the present-day society is capitalism, and the contradictions and development of contradictions of this are the primary problem. However, this is nonsense (the same point is made concerning the question of productive labor, but this is also mistaken).

In Capital, in discussing the historical, formal concept of productive labor, Marx says, “a schoolmaster is a productive worker when, in addition to belaboring the heads of his pupils, he works himself into the ground to enrich the owner of the school.” (p. 644) He gave the example of a teacher, but this does not mean that the labor of a teacher was originally productive labor, but that from the capitalistic standpoint the labor of the teacher appears as productive labor. In the capitalistic formal definition, labor that was originally not productive labor can appear as productive labor and be evaluated as such. The reason Marx brought up the example of the “labor of the teacher” is that this clearly reveals the characteristic of the formal definition and makes its limitations clear. Here Marx is stressing the distinction and outcome of such distinctions.

In the capitalistic formal definition, “productive and unproductive labor is here throughout conceived from the standpoint of the possessor of money, of the capitalist, not from that of the workman.” (Ibid., p. 13) Marx views this as the “standpoint of the capitalist,” and recognizes its limitations, and says that there is nothing so stupid as absolutizing this formal definition and treating it as an “super-historical” concept. He draws a distinction between the original concept of productive labor and the historical, formal (i.e. bourgeois) concept, and in this since is different from Adam Smith, and here is the Marxist concept of productive labor. For the un-conceptual bourgeoisie, any labor that produces a commodity, including service labor, can appear as productive labor, but for the workers this is certainly not the case, and to forget this would be equivalent to throwing out Marxism. Still, the corrupted JCP intellectuals feel that the bourgeois view is preferable, and happily adopt it as their own. Of course, now they are even including within the category of productive labor that labor which does not produce a profit (e.g. “public workers” in general employed by the state), saying that while this service… These reactionaries―who continue to parade as believers in communism!―say that the “service” labor of soldiers can also be called productive labor―since they provide an “important” service and in a sense receive wages―…… They treat the upside-down bourgeois world, a society in which unproductive labor can also appear as productive labor, as the truth… and this alone shows that their standpoint is not what Marx called the “worker’s standpoint.”

6. The “Extension” and “Contraction” of the Concept of Productive Labor

Marx said that the concept of productive labor on the one hand is expanded (with products becoming social products, products of the collective overall labor), while on the other hand it contracts (under capitalistic production), and we also need to consider this point. This is especially important since opportunists have introduced silly ideas here, confusing the concepts of productive and unproductive labor, in order to insist that unproductive labor is productive labor.

For example, the bring up the point that Marx included transportation labor within the category of productive labor, and say that supervision and technical labor (and the labor of capitalists) is also productive labor―not only in the historical, formal sense, but in the original sense. They say that Marx never said that only labor involved in material production is productive labor, and thereby they distort Marxism.

This is related to the statement that Marx “extended” the concept of productive labor. On this point the view of Marx is clear, and it has nothing to justify the opportunists (in fact it becomes immediately clear how this undermines their arguments). In Capital, Marx emphasizes the following point:

In so far as the labor process is purely individual, the same worker unites in himself all the functions that later on become separated. When an individual appropriates natural objects for his own livelihood, he alone supervises his own activity. Later on he is supervised by others. The solitary man cannot operate upon nature without calling his own muscles into play under the control of his 　own brain. Just as head and hand belong together in the system of nature, so in the labor process mental and physical labor are united. Later on they become separate; and this separation develops into a hostile antagonism. The product is transformed from the direct product of the individual producer into a social product, the joint product of a collective laborer, i.e. a combination of workers, each of whom stands at a different distance from the actual manipulation of the object of labor. With the progressive accentuation of the co-operative character of the labor process, there necessarily occurs a progressive extension of the concept of productive labor, and of the concept of the bearer of that labor, the productive worker. In order to work productively, it is no longer necessary for the individual himself to put his hand to the object; it is sufficient for him to be an organ of the collective laborer, and to perform any one of its subordinate functions. The definition of productive labor given above, the original definition, is derived from the nature of material production itself, and it remains correct of the collective laborer, considered as a whole. But it no longer holds good for each member taken individually. (Capital Volume I. pp. 643-4)

Marx argues that the product of labor becomes the common outcome of collective labor, and for the individual worker “it is no longer necessary to put his hand to the object; it is sufficient for him to be an organ of the collective laborer.” This means that he is no longer has direct involvement in the treatment of the raw material. For example, in “The Immediate Results,” Marx says that in the labor process, productive labor is that labor equals “the productive consumption of labor-power,” and that “two things follow from this.” He begins by treating this question:

With the development of the real subsumption of labor under capital, or the specifically capitalist mode of production, the real lever of the overall labor process is increasingly not the individual worker. Instead, labor-power socially combined and the various competing labor-powers which together form the entire production machine participate in very different ways in the immediate process of making commodities, or, more accurately in this context, creating the product. Some work better with their hands, others with their heads, one as a manager, engineer, technologist, etc., the other as overseer, the third as manual laborer or even drudge. An ever increasing number of types of labor are included in the immediate concept of productive labor, and those who perform it are classed as productive workers, workers directly exploited by capital and subordinated to its process of production and expansion. If we consider the aggregate worker, i.e. if we take all the members comprising the workshop together, then we see that their combined activity results materially in an aggregate product which is at the same time a quantity of goods. And here it is quite immaterial whether the job of a particular worker, who is merely a limb of this aggregate worker, is at a greater or smaller distance from the actual manual labor. But then: the activity of this aggregate labor-power is its immediate productive consumption by capital, i.e. it is the self-valorization process of capital, and hence, as we shall demonstrate, the immediate production of surplus-value, the immediate conversion of this latter into capital. (Ibid. pp. 1039-40)

As the representative of productive capital engaged in the process of self-expansion, the capitalist performs a productive function. It consists in the direction and exploitation of productive labor. In contrast to his fellow-consumers of surplus-value who stand in no such immediate and active relationship to their production, his class is the productive class par excellence. (As the director of the labor process the capitalist performs productive labor in the sense that his labor is involved in the total process that is realized in the product.) We are concerned here only with capital within the immediate process of production. The other function of capital and the agents which it employs within them form a subject to be left for later. (Results of the Immediate Process of Production pp. 1048-9)

Within productive labor, labor involving transportation, or the circulation of commodities, as well as storage, processing and packaging are also included. In “Theories of Surplus Value,” Marx says, “in addition to extractive industry, agriculture, and manufacturing, there exists yet a fourth sphere of material production,” which is the “transport industry” in which “the object of labor [also] undergoes a material alteration―a spatial alteration, or change of place.” (Vol. 34, p. 145) And in the second value of Capital, Marx refers to the transport industry as an additional production process. Of course, this increases the value of the commodity. Moreover, in distinction from labor involved in the realization of commodities, storage, processing and packaging as labor for circulation is included in productive labor as one part of the labor process. Thus, in a sense, the concept of productive labor is “extended.”

In “Theories of Surplus Value,” Marx offers the following overview:

With the development of the specifically capitalist mode of production, in which many workers cooperate in the production of the same commodity, the direct relations between their labor and the object under production must of course be very diverse. E.g. the assistants in the factory, mentioned earlier, have no direct involvement in the treatment of the raw material. The workers who constitute the overseers of those who are directly concerned with this treatment stand a step further away; the engineer in turn has a different relation and works mainly with his brain alone, etc. But the whole group of these workers, who possess labor capacities of different values, although the total number employed reaches roughly the same level, produce a result which is expressed, from the point of view of the result of the pure labor process, in commodities or in material product, and all of them together, as a workshop, are the living production machine for these products; while, from the point of view of the production process as a whole, they exchange their labor for capital, and reproduce the money of the capitalist as capital, i.e. as self-valorizing value, self- multiplying value. (Vol. 34, pp. 144-5)

Here various kinds of labor are viewed as productive labor. First labor that plays the role of assistance, i.e. that is not directly involved in production, such as the workers involved solely in transporting raw materials, as well as supervisory or educational labor is viewed as productive labor. Seen individually, there are workers that are not at all involved in the “treatment of raw materials.” Still, it cannot be said that they are not productive labor. As a united, communal labor, the labor within the factory, if its outcome appears as a commodity or group of commodities, then the assistance, supervisory or technical labor is productive labor―says Marx. That is, as integrated labor power this is also one link or part and plays a productive role.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that any labor is all right. If the concept is extended to such an unprincipled point, any “labor” could appear as productive labor. Marx is talking about in the restricted sense of “labor involved in the production of the same commodity,” and labor in relation to the “treatment of raw materials” and workers involved in the same work place producing the same commodity. If this limitation is crossed and the category expanded in an unrestricted way, the path is open to include any labor as productive labor. We cannot forget that Marx is ultimately talking about “all of them together, as a workshop.”

On the other hand, in capitalistic production, the concept of productive labor is “reduced.” This is easy to grasp. That is, since productive labor is seen from the standpoint of capitalist production, labor that exchanges with capital and creates a profit, e.g. the labor of small-scale peasants does not appear as productive labor. But it is clear that agricultural labor is productive labor in the original sense. But for the capitalist concept, this is not directly productive labor, since this certainly is not exchanged with capital to create a profit and augment capital. Here again we can see the narrowness and limitations of the bourgeois meaning of productive labor.

7. Is Education Labor Productive?

The question of the labor of teachers also raises our interest, that is the question of whether this is productive or unproductive, and if productive to what extent, and in what sense.

From the capitalist perspective, the question is simple. If this is exchanged with revenue it is unproductive, and if it is exchanged with education capital, and augments this, it is productive. Marx spoke of the “educational factory,” and for those teachers employed there, working as wage laborers, would be seen as productive workers. But what about the case of educational workers employed as public workers. Marx has the following to say about this case:

The product is not separable from the act of producing, as with all executant artists, orators, actors, teachers, doctors, clerics, etc. Here too the capitalist mode of production only occurs to a slight extent, and can in the nature of things only take place in certain spheres. E.g. teachers in educational institutions may be mere wage laborers for the entrepreneur who owns the institution; there are many such education factories in England. Although they are not productive workers vis-a-vis the pupils, they are such vis-a-vis their employer. He exchanges his capital for their labor capacity, and enriches himself by this process. Similarly with enterprises such as theatres, places of entertainment, etc. Here the actor’s relation to the public is that of artist, but vis-a-vis his employer he is a productive worker. All the phenomena of capitalist production in this are so insignificant in comparison with production as a whole that they can be disregarded entirely. (Vol. 34, p. 144)

Here is the same thing that we have mentioned before―that is, in terms of carrying out service labor, teachers are unproductive, but if they are employed by capitalists and work in an “education factory,” producing profit for capital and forming a moment of the self-augmentation of capital, then they are productive workers. In capitalist production, it is not a question of the quality of the labor, and all labor that creates a profit for capital is treated equally as productive labor―no matter whether it was originally productive labor or not.

One of the characteristic opinions here is the idea that the artistic and educational fields occur only to such a “slight extent,” and therefore the people who carry out such work should generally “be disregarded.”

However, in the case of present-day capitalism is this truly the case? Compared to “production as a whole,” the investment of capital in these sectors is still relatively small― However, compared to Marx’s time, these sectors have expanded relatively and this is true. With the development of the productive power of social labor, increase of profit, the amount of labor exchanged with revenue decreases, and with the creation of a parasitical class, capital rapidly participates in the service sector, and for this very reason the conditions are in place for the strong tendency to defend service labor as productive labor.

The question of whether education labor was originally productive labor is related to whether this produces commodities, whether its labor is abstract human labor, and whether it is included in the value of the commodity. Of course, educational labor does not directly produce commodities, and in this sense it is clear that it is certainly not productive labor. However, the following point is also important, i.e. commodities have two important types (general commodities and the labor-power “commodity”). And in terms of the latter commodity (labor-power commodity) it is included in its value, and thus indirectly is included in the value of commodities in general.

In Capital, Marx already discussed the “costs of education” within the value determination of the labor-power commodity:

In order to modify the general nature of the human organism in such a way that it acquires skill and dexterity in a given branch of industry, and becomes labor-power of a developed and specific kind, a special education or training is needed, and this in turn costs an equivalent in commodities of a greater or lesser amount. The costs of education vary according to the degree of complexity of the labor-power required. These expenses (exceedingly small in the case of ordinary labor-power) form a part of the total value spent in producing it. (Capital Vol. 1, pp. 125-6)

Here Marx’s idea is expressed concisely and correctly. The cost of education or training forms one part of the value of labor power, since this is necessary for “labor-power of a developed and specific kind.” The use-value of the higher labor power, that is as labor that is “intensified” or “multiplied,” has greater value objectified within it. Therefore, the labor providing “education or training” can to this extent appear as productive labor. But Marx also says that for most “normal” labor power these costs are not that great. This certainly reflects the situation at the time when workers had received very little formal education, but it can still be said today that for workers (in terms of the value of their labor power) the “cost of education” should not be overestimated. In “Theories of Surplus Value,” Marx basically advances the same view:

The whole world of “commodities” can be divided into 2 great parts. First, labor capacity; second, commodities as distinct from labor capacity itself. As to the purchase of such services as those which train labor capacity, maintain or modify it, etc., in a word, give it a specialized form or even only maintain it―thus for example the schoolmaster’s service, in so far as it is ‘industrially necessary’ or useful; the doctor’s service, in so far as it maintains health and so conserves the source of all values, labor capacity itself, etc.―these are services which yield in return a ‘vendible commodity, etc.’ namely labor capacity itself, into whose costs of production or reproduction these services enter. Adam Smith knew however how little ‘education’ enters into the production costs of the mass of working men. And in any case the doctor’s services belong to the overhead costs of production. They can be counted as the cost of repairs for labor capacity. Let us assume that wages and profit fell simultaneously in total value, from whatever cause (for example, because the nation had grown lazier), and at the same time in use value (because labor had become less productive owing to bad harvests, etc.), in a word, that the part of the product whose value is equal to the revenue declines, because less new labor has been added in the past year and because the labor added has been less productive. If in such conditions capitalist and workman wanted to consume the same amount of value in material things as they did before, they would have to buy less of the services of the doctor, schoolmaster, etc. And if they were compelled to continue the same outlay for both these services, then they would have to restrict their consumption of other things. It is therefore clear that the labor of the doctor and the schoolmaster does not directly create the fund out of which they are paid, although their labors enter into the production costs of the fund which creates all value whatsoever―namely, the production cost of labor capacity. (MECW pp. 22-3)

Marx also says the following:

If I buy the services of a teacher, not in order to develop my own capacities, but to acquire skills with which I can earn money―or if other people buy this teacher for me―and if I really learn something―which is entirely independent of me paying for his services―these costs of learning form as much a part of the costs of production of my labor capacity as do my subsistence costs. But the particular utility of this service changes nothing in the economic relation; and this is not a relation in which I convert money into capital, or by which the performer of the service, the teacher converts me into his capitalist, his master. Whether the doctor cures me, the teacher is successful in instructing me, or the lawyer wins my case, is therefore a matter of complete indifference for the economic determination of this relation. What is paid for is the performance of a service as such, and its result cannot by its nature be guaranteed by the person performing it. A large part of services belong to the costs of consumption of commodities, as with cooks, maids, etc. (Vol. 34, p. 140)

What is being said here is that educational labor was not originally productive labor, but is productive in the sense of entering into the value of labor power. The fact that this is not productive labor is clear from the fact that when the value of other goods for life become more dear, people general cut back on educational and medical expenses and use this for other things. Marx says that the educational labor hardly enters into the formal cost and production cost of labor power. Of course, this was said more than 150 years ago. Marx also says the following:

It remains true, however, that the commodity appears as past, objectified labor, and that therefore, if it does not appear in the form of a thing, it can only appear in the form of labor capacity itself; but never directly as living labor itself (except only in a roundabout way which in practice seems the same, but this is not so in the determination of different wages). Productive labor would therefore be such labor as produces commodities or directly produces, trains, develops, maintains or reproduces labor capacity itself. Adam Smith excludes the latter from his category of productive labor; arbitrarily, but with a certain correct instinct―that if he included it, this would open the flood-gates for false pretensions to the title of productive labor.

In so far therefore as we leave labor capacity itself out of account, productive labor is labor which produces commodities, material products, whose production has cost a definite quantity of labor or labor time. These material products include all products of art and science, books, paintings, statues, etc., in so far as they take the form of things. In addition, however, the product of labor must be a commodity in the sense of being ‘a vendible commodity’, that is to say, a commodity in its first form, which has still to pass through its metamorphosis. (Vol. 31, pp. 27)

Marx thought that Adam Smith’s exclusion of educational labor from productive labor was mistaken from a strictly theoretical perspective, but was in a sense a correct decision. In other words, Smith had the “instinctive” concern that if educational labor is also included within productive labor, this could lead to any sort of service labor to be included. In this way the distinction between productive and unproductive labor would become blurred, and this would ultimately defend and justify every sort of unproductive labor. This “instinct” of Smith was in fact correct, since today’s “communists” (i.e. JCP epigones) from the starting point of defending the productive quality of educational labor, go on to say that service labor in general is productive.

Here Marx is clearly saying that if we exclude the labor-power commodity, productive labor is labor that produces the “original” commodities―that is, “labor which produces commodities, material products, whose production has cost a definite quantity of labor or labor time.” No one can ignore such a clear concept. However, the JCP-led intellectuals treat this idea as irrelevant and ignore anything that doesn’t conform to their ideas. Of course, it is one standpoint to say that it is irrelevant what Marx said. However it is not irrelevant when someone claiming to be a true Marxist adhering faithfully to “scientific socialism” places Marx’s name on a concept that is the exact opposite of his own concept. Such a person would be called in common language a fraud and a fool.

8 The Concept of Household Labor and Productive Labor

The next question to consider is the great debate over whether the domestic labor carried out by housewives is productive or unproductive labor.

If productive labor is that labor exchanged with capital that makes possible the self-augmentation of capital, and unproductive labor is that labor exchanged with revenue that has no relation to this self-augmentation of capital, then it is clear that domestic labor is unproductive labor. This is not even exchanged with revenue, and is rather labor that is dependent on revenue (since the labor of the housewife is not usually compensated by the husband).

It is pointless to say that since domestic labor is labor that is necessary for the consumption of goods, that this is productive labor. This is because, as is clear from the positive significance of the formal definition, productive labor is not only labor to make “things,” but commodities, i.e. “things” that combine use-value with exchange value. Therefore, this is labor that produces surplus value. In this sense, labor that just produces things is not necessarily productive labor (just labor that is exchanged with income is unproductive labor regardless of whether a “thing” is produced), but rather labor exchanged with capital that creates surplus is in this way productive labor that creates a “thing” (commodity) that has a social use-value. Indeed, here we have a question of “social relations”!

It is clear that even labor which “is fixed in one thing” can be unproductive labor. For instance, if a bourgeois can hire a tutor, care for a tree in his garden and trim it, this is labor that is “fixed in a thing,” but it exchanged with revenue and is thus unproductive labor. The same is true if he has a servant make a chair or a maid serve dinner. Marx says:

Even though capital has conquered material production, and so by and large home industry has disappeared, or the industry of the small craftsman who makes use values directly for the consumer at his home―even then, Adam Smith knows quite well, a seamstress whom I get to come to my house to sew shirts, or workmen who repair furniture, or the servant who scrubs and cleans the house, etc., or the cook who gives meat and other things their palatable form, fix their labor in a thing and in fact increase the value of these things in exactly the same way as the seamstress who sews in a factory, the engineer who repairs the machine, the workers who clean the machine, or the cook who cooks in a hotel as the wage laborer of the capitalist. These use values are also, potentially, commodities; the shirts may be sent to the pawnshop, the house resold, the furniture put up to auction, and so on. Thus these persons have potentially also produced commodities and added value to the objects of their labor. But this is a very small category among unproductive workers, and does not apply either to the mass of menial servants or to parsons, government officials, soldiers, musicians and so on.” (MECW, Vol. 31, p.20)

However, there are some superficially minded feminists who think that if the housewife is carrying out domestic labor as the last stage of consumption, and involved in processing “things,” then there is no reason not to call this productive labor.

They are unaware, however, that the question here is not simply whether a “thing” is produced or not, but rather “involves” a social relationship―i.e. what is the labor of housewives exchanged with. The domestic labor, although not in fact paid, is exchanged with the income of the spouse, and in this since is a classic example of unproductive labor. For example, in a bourgeois household such labor would be done by a maid and as an economic category there would be no difference. In terms of the economic category, in terms of being exchanged with revenue, there would be absolutely no difference whether it was a maid or a housewife who did the work (even though the work of the housewife appears as purely volunteer activity, since it is not paid, while the work of the maid appears as unproductive labor).

We have said that the labor of the housewife is not paid, but some feminists are arguing that the cost of a housewife’s labor should be calculated and this should be paid. In other words, they are saying that this is not unproductive labor or simply a private service, without realizing by using this reasoning they are digging their own grave. If the labor of the housewife should be paid, that should come from the income of the husband, and therefore that would be unproductive labor, that is service labor exchanged with the income or revenue of the husband, and would have to be considered as labor of this same quality. Here the “pecuniary” relationship is not the relationship between husband and wife, but rather a so-called “master and servant” relationship. Stuck within this framework of personal dependence upon the husband (master) [The Japanese word for husband, shujin, can also be rendered as “master” and here Hayashi is referring somewhat ironically to the relation of dependence this reflects.], and being paid from his labor can hardly be called a fortunate situation.

Here one positive element of the formal definition of defining unproductive labor as labor exchanged with revenue becomes clear. Marx emphasized this element because it included a social relation, since he recognized that there was a problem in simply distinguishing between productive and unproductive labor on the basis of whether a material product is produced or not.

Of course, as Marx said, the fruit of the labor of the housewife is potentially a commodity, and this domestic labor is every day being replaced by social labor. If the meals that the housewife had cooked at home can be bought at the supermarket, or the clothes that had been made at home can be purchased at a clothing store, those that can be are being turned into commodities. The labor objectified in these commodities is productive labor, i.e. labor exchanged with capital, and in terms of being labor objectified in the commodity value, this is labor that has a social value.

Marx concluded that labor exchanged with revenue, that also makes “things” is only a small sector, while most of the labor exchanged with revenue is service labor, and didn’t go much further into the matter. However, if those feminists who are unable to think conceptually, argue that domestic labor is also productive labor, and is an enormous sector of productive labor, we would have to respond that the concept of productive labor is not a “simple concept” (which Marx also said) but in bourgeois society a concept that includes a social relation, and this fact can certainly not be ignored.

9 The Significance of Adam Smith

For Marx the concept of productive labor was a matter of course, and appeared as a perfectly natural concept, but Adam Smith felt that the distinction between productive and unproductive labor was extremely important, and in a sense was a concept that held decisive significance. In the preface to The Wealth of Nations, Smith clearly says that all of the “necessaries and conveniences” supplied to a nation depends first on “the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which its labour is generally applied,” and secondly “by the proportion between the number of those who are employed in useful labour, and that of those who are not so employed.” Smith argues that, as the proportion of productive labor grows, so does the wealth of the nation, but if the proportion of unproductive labor and parasites grows, the nation will become poorer. It is no accident that Smith raises this argument at the very beginning of his book, since it corresponds to the task or purpose of this book.. His task is clearly to elucidate which countries attain wealth, and how this occurs. His response is that wealthy nations are those who accumulate capital, and nations that accumulate capital must necessarily have a high proportion of productive labor, and a low proportion of unproductive labor. He calls unproductive workers “idle people,” and doesn’t hesitate to even call them loafers. In the Book 2, Chapter 3, he discusses in detail the question of productive and unproductive labor. The first thing he emphasizes is that in labor there are two types, productive and unproductive. However, there is the question why labor must be clearly divided into these two kinds, since as labor it would seem to be the same, why is it not possible to just call it labor. Smith responds to this in the following way:

There is one sort of labour which adds to the value of the subject upon which it is bestowed; there is another which has no such effect. The former, as it produces a value, may be called productive; the latter, unproductive labour. Thus the labor of a manufacturer adds, generally, to the value of the materials which he works upon, that of his own maintenance, and of his master’s profit. The labor of a menial servant, on the contrary, adds to the value of nothing. Thought the manufacturer has his wages advanced to him by his master, he, in reality, costs him so expense, the value of those wages being generally restored together with a profit, in the improved value of the subject upon which his labour is bestowed. But 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. (Book 2, Chapter 3)

The labor of some of the most respectable orders in the society is, like that of menial servants, unproductive of any value, and does not fix or realize itself in any permanent subject, or vendible commodity, which endures after that labor is past, and for which an equal quantity of labor could afterwards be procured. The sovereign, for example, with all the officers both of justice and war who serve under him, the whole army and navy, are unproductive laborers. They are the servants of the public, and are maintained by a part of the annual produce of the industry of other people. Their service, however honourable, how useful, or how necessary soever, produce nothing for which an equal quantity of service can afterwards be procured. The protection, security, and defence of the commonwealth, the effect of their labor this year, will not purchase its protection, security, and defence for the year to come. In the same class must be ranked, some of the gravest and most important, and some of the most frivolous professions; churchmen, lawyers, physicians, men of letters of all kinds; players, buffoons, musicians, opera-singers, opera-dancers, etc. (Ibid.)

Here Smith says that productive labor is not just labor that “produces value,” but that which augments value, and creates a profit for capital. This is productive labor because workers produce an excess of their own “value,” creating a profit, or additional part for capital. Capital is augmented, and the wealth of society is thus increased, and does not disappear into the air like the labor of servants which does not increase the social (i.e. capital) wealth. By paying unproductive labor, every year this production is not increased but rather reduced. The labor of the military is exchanged with revenue―on a state scale―every year, and therefore, “produces nothing for which an equal quantity of service can afterwards be procured.” “thus this is exposed as unproductive labor. …Without productive labor, each year a part of the staff of the military would be impossible, since this staff itself. Here Smith is absolutely justified.

Of course, for Smith the important thing is the accumulation of capital, and it is clear what are the elements that determine the accumulation of capital. The fundamental condition for the accumulation of capital―and increase in wealth―according to Smith is for more and more of the profits to be exchanged with productive labor as capital, rather than expended as revenue on unproductive labor.

If the society were annually to employ all the labour which it can annually purchase, as the quantity of labour would increase greatly every year, so the produce of every succeeding year would be of vastly greater value than that of the foregoing. But there is no country in which the whole annual produce is employed in maintaining the industrious. The idle everywhere consume a great part of it; and according to the different proportions in which it is annually divided between those two different orders of people, its ordinary or average value must either annually increase, or diminish, or continue the same from one year to another. (Book 1 Chapter 6)

Regardless of whether unproductive workers are useful or not, they are sustained through the productive workers, and in this sense for Smith this should be restricted to a minimum. For this reason he was a strong defender of the “cheap” state. He felt that it would be economically advantageous to keep state and its expenses―such as military expenses―to a minimum. No doubt for Smith the modern state with its huge military expenditure would have been a horrifying sight. He felt that the state would be prosperous through the expansion of productive labor and would decline with the swelling of unproductive labor. In other words, it is decisive whether labor is exchanged with capital or revenue. On this point, Smith says the following:

The proportion between capital and revenue, therefore, seems everywhere to regulate the proportion between industry and idleness. Wherever capital predominates, industry prevails: wherever revenue, idleness. Every increase or diminution of capital, therefore, naturally tends to increase or diminish the real quantity of industry, the number of productive hands, and consequently the exchangeable value of the annual produce of the land and labour of the country, the real wealth and revenue of all its inhabitants. (Book 2, Chapter 3)

That portion of his revenue which a rich man annually spends is in most cases consumed by idle guests and menial servants, who leave nothing behind them in return for their consumption. That portion which he annually saves, as for the sake of the profit it is immediately employed as a capital, is consumed in the same manner, and nearly in the same time too, but by a different set of people, by labourers, manufacturers, and artificers, who reproduce with a profit the value of their annual consumption. (Ibid.)

Of course, Smith’s ideas are subordinated to his great goal of capital accumulation, and in this sense is thoroughly bourgeois, and is separate from socialist thought. He emphasizes that “wealthy men,” i.e. bourgeois, should not expend their profit as revenue, but turn it into capital, rather than paying unproductive labor―which will not increase the social wealth but rather consume it―spend it on productive labor thereby making the nation wealthier.

Still, this doesn’t mean that this though has nothing in common with the working class. This was the though of the bourgeoisie in its period of health, and this has important content for workers. Marxism learned a great deal from the thought of Adam Smith, and this is even more important in the modern period with the decay of the bourgeoisie (and petty bourgeoisie) and those who seek to justify and defend “idle people.” Socialism is only socialism through the rational reorganization of “productive labor” as its foundation. For this reason, those workers aiming for socialism have a great interest in the concept of productive labor.

In the interests of the bourgeoisie and the sake of their “correct” actions and to increase the prosperity of capitalism, Smith clarified the distinction between productive and unproductive labor, and told the bourgeoisie to “be sound!”

On the other hand, class-conscious workers, for the sake of the organization of socialism, and to clarify its theoretical foundation, need to clearly define the distinction between productive and unproductive labor, and call on the workers to fight for socialism.

In the period when capitalism was still sound, the bourgeoisie defended productive labor and lashed out at unproductive labor for the sake of the accumulation of capital, since the exploitation of productive labor was the essential moment of capitalism. On the other hand, socialists also recognize the significance of productive labor, but this is from the starting point of productive labor being the “material” foundation of society, and unlike the bourgeoisie for the sake of overcoming the system of exploitation (capitalism).

The reason that the theories of Marx and Smith on the distinction between productive and unproductive labor sparked big debates among classical school of economics―although second-rate ones―can be said in the following way. The passage below can be considered Marx’s conclusion:

The great mass of so-called “higher grade” workers―such as state officials, military people, artists, doctors, priests, judges, lawyers, etc.―some of whom are not only not productive but in essence destructive, but who know how to appropriate to themselves a very great part of the ‘material’ wealth partly through the sale of their ‘immaterial’ commodities and partly by forcibly imposing the latter on other people―found it not at all pleasant to be re legated economically to the same class as buffoons and menial servants and to appear merely as people partaking in the consumption, parasites on the actual producers (or rather agents of production). This was a peculiar profanation precisely of those functions which had hitherto been surrounded with a halo and had enjoyed superstitious veneration. Political economy in its classical period, like the bourgeoisie itself in its parvenu period, adopted a severely critical attitude to the machinery of the State, etc. At a later stage it realized and―as was shown too in practice―learnt from experience that the necessity for the inherited social combination of all these classes, which in part were totally unproductive, arose from its own organization. In so far as those ‘unproductive laborers’ do not provide pleasure, and therefore whether they are purchased or not depends entirely on the way in which the agent of production chooses to expend his wages or profit―in so far on the contrary as they are necessary or make themselves necessary partly because of physical infirmities (like doctors), or spiritual weakness (like parsons), or because of the conflict between private interests and national interests (like statesmen, all lawyers, police and soldiers)―they are regarded by Adam Smith, as by the industrial capitalists themselves and the working class, as faux frais de production, which are therefore to be cut down to the most indispensable minimum and provided as cheaply as possible. Bourgeois society reproduces in its own form everything against which it had fought in feudal or absolutist form. In the first place therefore it becomes a principle task for the sycophants of this society, and especially the upper classes, to restore in theoretical terms even the purely parasitic section of these ‘unproductive laborers’, or to justify the exaggerated claims of the section which is indispensable. The dependence of the ideological, etc., classes on the capitalists was in fact proclaimed. (MECW, Vol. 31, p. 30)

In this matter even such people as Malthus are to be preferred (to the group of despicable JCP theorists and others), who directly defend the necessity and usefulness of ‘unproductive laborers’ and pure parasites. (Ibid., p. 31)