Unproductive Jobs

Let's just deal with one of the above categories of "unproductive jobs": education. An illiterate child enters the education system; some years later, she leaves education with the ability to read and write. A literate child has been "produced''.

Schmoopie

Let's just deal with one of the above categories of "unproductive jobs": education. An illiterate child enters the education system; some years later, she leaves education with the ability to read and write. A literate child has been "produced''.

True, but the purpose of the education is the thorny issue. Education would be important in communism but it would be applied very differently.

BTW, the OP echoes my own opinions pretty closely. The tone though seems a bit patronising to the workers involved though.

I think this article basically puts it better than the OP: https://libcom.org/library/phenomenon-bullshit-jobs-david-graeber

so of course those others on libcom would agree that much useless work could be abolished. However singling out the service sector I think is unhelpful. Much of the service sector is vital work: the health service, care for the elderly, the disabled, etc, and conversely much of the manufacturing sector is equally useless (making products to satisfy needs generated by marketing, making loads of different variants of the same thing, making fake products which don't do anything, making products designed to break down and need to be replaced etc), and much of the primary sector is unnecessary as many materials could be recycled instead etc

Those jobs exist because they are productive. People aren't paid for doing those jobs for nothing they're paid because they create value for someone. You might think education is meaningless (I disagree) but you can easily see why governments like it, workers need to be educated and having kids in schools occupies them and frees their parents.

Advertising, adverts sell products, that creates value. It's a non-productive job in the sense that it doesn't physically make anything but that's not the sense in a communist analysis.

To be honest I'm not sure what you're trying to get at.

All these sad people, doing their pointless jobs,

Have you ever worked?
People don't choose their jobs in the way that you seem to think that they do, they certainly don't think to themselves "I don't care what cool guys like Maclane think, I'm going to be a mindless paper-pushing drone. I love capitalism and although I can see loads of ways to fight against the system that surrounds me I'd rather be one of its cogs. I really hope they cut my wages next year."

If you have contempt for the working class because they are working class then you are not a communist.

Marx distinguishes productive from unproductive labor by a single measure-- does the labor produce a surplus value, so--

and educator employed by a family to individually tutor a family member is not producing a surplus value, but.....

a teacher employed at a school to teach children, is performing a social labor, is producing a "social product" as is yielding, at least theoretically, a surplus value.

Similarly, a nurse employed to attend to a wealthy individual is not producing a social product, is not performing a social labor, and is not yielding a surplus value. A nurse employed by Cancer Research Centers of America ( don't even know if such an entity exists) is engaged in a social labor and is yielding a surplus value. Theoretically.

Not all jobs in the "service sector" are in the FIRE-- finance, insurance, real estate-- categories, which categories definitely amount to non-productive labor.

There is no doubt with the abolition of capitalism, the "working day" can be greatly reduced without any loss of anything other than surplus value, as opposed to necessary product, or surplus product. There will be no need to extend a working day. No need to produce weapons of mass destruction; no need to overproduce means of production, circulation, transportation, in the attempt to garner profit.

Well if the workforce were divided up into workers producing wealth and workers distributing wealth then perhaps it would make more sense?

And yeah we dont need workers producing advertising. If the product being produced is good it will be enough advertising in itself

As Steven #4 writes much useless work could be abolished. The future society will decide what is useless and what is not. Most projected models to me appear a bit utilitarian or ‘wooden’. As Gulai Polye #7 writes advertising as a ‘job’ would be obsolete, however I can imagine the need to produce attractive announcements for certain goods or events.

The revolution in economics will likely be accompanied by a similar enhancement of aesthetics in everyday life. The distinction between work and play will become blurred and ‘education’ simply an extension of oneself.

Auld-bod

The distinction between work and play will become blurred and ‘education’ simply an extension of oneself.

What a beautiful idea. Totally made my day.

Anwar Shaikh's book helps sort some of out the productive non-productive distinctions, specifically Chapter 2.

Measuring the Wealth of Nations

It is important to note that all capitalistically employed labor is exploited
by capital, whether it is productive labor or unproductive labor.
The rate of exploitation of each is their respective ratio of surplus labor
time to necessary labor time. Necessary labor time is simply the value of
the labor power involved, that is, the labor value of the average annual
consumption per worker in the activities in question. Surplus labor time
is excess of working time over necessary labor time. In the case of productive
workers, their rate of exploitation is also the rate of surplus value,
since their surplus labor time results in surplus value. This concept is so
practical that we can use it to calculate the separate rates of exploitation
of productive and unproductive workers (see Sections 4.2 and 5.6).

I think the question is not whether work is productive or not but whether that work is useful to humanity (ie the working class).

On education, my opinion is that as it exists now education is merely brainwashing but as a by-product it creates potential revolutionists (through literacy, numeracy and the individual/collective struggle against education as a form of work).

My understanding is that ‘education’ has not a standard model. It is a battleground. If the ‘authorities’ wished to ‘brainwash’ people through education, they are making a terrible hash of it. For a start, I think most students dislike the system as it stands, and eventually conform, though they know only a minority will be allowed to be ‘successful’. I feel at worse, it is a production line of job fodder; at best, if they are lucky, student's education will help them to gain an understanding of life’s possibilities. I have had good and terrible teachers, one a racist, confirmed my thoughts on racism. In that sense he may be considered ‘politically instructive’.

I feel most harm is done in the early years, when children are so eager to learn and they are slowly manipulated into the needs of the school. If you have ever had the privilege of watching reception children’s enthusiasm on their arrival into school, you may also have wondered why all that lust for learning has drained away as year on year they are assessed, grouped, streamed, tested, graded - in other words schooled. Though it is a mistake to label this ‘brainwashing’, rather it is a waste of human potential by a society who think schooling is education.

Good post AB. How Children Learn, How Children Fail, Escape from Childhood and Instead of Education are well worth a look, along with Ferrer and Ivan Illich.

I thank you greatly factvalue for triggering my memory. I had the misfortune of training to be a nurse (the pinnacle of brainwashing) and as a part of this training I was placed in the "community" with a District Nurse. In the Nurses office, there was a book which helped me through the long tedium. That book (Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis - The Expropriation of Health) was by Ivan Illich and until today I had been unable to recall his name. Incidentally, when I came into work the next day the book in question had disappeared from the shelf. For anyone who might be interested here is an excerpt from a review of the book that I just read on Amazon.com:

For Illich it is also the alienated nature of society, and how loneliness, isolation and an inability to communicate and be heard creates varying degrees of illness within the Western world. It is a world based upon accumulating things rather than connecting to people. Stress is therefore endemic linked to chronic unresolved anger affecting latent high blood pressure. It is this which affects the rest of the organs.

Numerous cancers, bronchial problems and heart problems related to lifestyle. The environment affects the individual as people live in social worlds. Medicine however wants to pretend we are individuals. Diet is linked to stress and economics for example. But the connections are erased within the medical model but they tentatively emerge within health promotion. Life style is connected to social class and how much control, power, status, prestige and ability to shape the social world and this produces longevity.

I'm often very productive on the toilet and do quite a lot of jobs.

I'm often very productive on the toilet and do quite a lot of jobs.

Marx often described Capital as his "shit".

Schmoopie

I'm often very productive on the toilet and do quite a lot of jobs.

Marx often described Capital as his "shit".[/quote]

As did Freud.

Schmoopie

Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis - The Expropriation of Health[/i]

I've not come across that one before, cheers Schmoop.

Schmoopie

I'm often very productive on the toilet and do quite a lot of jobs.

Marx often described Capital as his "shit".

As did Freud.

Schmoopie

Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis - The Expropriation of Health[/i]

I've not come across that one before, cheers Schmoop.[/quote]

S. Artesian

a teacher employed at a school to teach children, is performing a social labor, is producing a "social product" as is yielding, at least theoretically, a surplus value.

Hmm. Only insofar as the school is run as a private business. Labor in state-run/public sector schools doesn't produce any surplus value. Same goes for nurses. Those "employed" individually do not produce surplus value. Those employed by the state or municipalities, and paid out of taxes or compulsory health insurance, do not produce surplus value. (Not even "theoretically".) Those in privately run hospitals which are run for profit do.(Not that the public sector employees aren't exploited – see Pennoid's post above with the excellent Shaikh quotation).