Productive and Unproductive Labor in the Labor Theory of Value

Mohun, Simon

doi:10.1177/048661349602800402

Cited by 52 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Far from being an 'unreal', empty space, the Internet is animated by cultural and technical labour through and through, a continuous production of value which is completely immanent in the flows of the network society at large. (Terranova, 2004: 74) Insofar as free labour is 'voluntarily given' and 'unwaged', it directly challenges the definitions of productive labour and its conditions as summarized, for example, by Mohun (1996), who restricts the category of productive labour to work that is both waged and controlled by capital in the production process. It also challenges Marx's own conception of the capitalist labour process, wherein the 'free worker ' (1976, p. 274) sells his or her labour power in order to work 'under the control of the capitalist to whom his labour belongs' and where 'the product is the property of the capitalist and not that of the worker ' (1976, p. 291-292).…”

Section: Marxist Organization Studies Socialization and Free Labourmentioning

confidence: 99%

Free Labour, Social Media, Management: Challenging Marxist Organization Studies

Beverungen

Böhm

Land

2015

Organization Studies

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In this paper we explore how so-called 'social media' such as Facebook challenge Marxist organization studies. We argue that understanding the role of user activity in web 2.0 business models requires a focus on 'work', understood as value productive activity, that takes place beyond waged labour in the firm. A reading of Marx on the socialization of labour highlights the emerging figure of 'free labour', which is both unpaid and uncoerced. Marxist work on the production of the 'audience commodity' provides one avenue for understanding the production of content and data by users as free labour, but this raises questions concerning the distinction between productive and unproductive labour which is central to Marx's labour theory of value. The Marxist literature on 'the becoming rent of profit' allows for a partial understanding of how the value produced by free labour is captured, thereby developing the understanding of the economic dimension of 'free labour' as unpaid. It overstates, however, the 'uncontrolled' side of 'free labour', and neglects the ways in which this work is managed so as to ensure that it is productive. We therefore call for a return to Marxist labour process analysis, albeit with an expanded focus on labour and a revised understanding of control associated with digital protocols. On this basis, a Marxist organization studies can contribute to an understanding of the political economy of digital capitalism.

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Section: Marxist Organization Studies Socialization and Free Labourmentioning

confidence: 99%

Free Labour, Social Media, Management: Challenging Marxist Organization Studies

Beverungen

Böhm

Land

2015

Organization Studies

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“…See also Bovenkerk's [11] thorough and illuminating critique of Marx and Engel's use of the term "lumpenproletariat" as a rhetorical device. 2 Scholars have debated the relative merits of Marx's inconsistent notions of productive and unproductive labour for some time ( [55]; [64]; [65]; [68]; [80]; [82]; [95]; [109]) but what is largely agreed upon is that Marx's treatment of productive labour while initially expansive in critique and contradistinction to Smith becomes increasingly narrow with further clarification and focuses more and more on the relative position of workers to direct production [16]. 3 Marx also calls the industrial reserve army the "surplus population".…”

Section: The Industrial Reserve Armymentioning

confidence: 99%

Policing the industrial reserve army: An international study

Rigakos

Ergul

2011

Crime Law Soc Change

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Over the past three decades, the industrialized world has witnessed four resilient social trends: (1) the consistent erosion of union-membership; (2) an increase in income polarization and inequality; (3) a dramatic resurgence in popular protest; and (4) a steady rise in public and private policing employment. In this paper, we examine the relationship between these trends by theorizing and operationalizing the notion of the "industrial reserve army" and a series of related tenets in order to conduct an international (N=45), empirical test of a nascent Marxian model of policing. By treating total policing employment as an empirical barometer of bourgeois insecurity we find that this insecurity is conditioned by two elements of Marxian political economy: (1) relative deprivation (income inequality) and (2) the rise of an industrial reserve army (manufacturing employment and unemployment). Second, while surplus value and labour militancy (strikes and lockouts per 100,000 population) rise along with union membership, the presence of higher rates of unionization appears to ameliorate the need for more policing in all but post-USSR countries. While unions assist in checking the immiseration of workers through labour actions, union membership is nonetheless inversely correlated to policing employment, giving credence to the Marxian idea that while unions help mitigate against the exploitation workers, they also act as "lieutenants of capital," performing an essential policing function under capitalism.Trade-unions have always been the most effective representatives of the organized labour movement to protect workers from the erosion of their wages and to control changes made in working conditions and hours worked. For Marxist political economists, the function of trade-unions was never limited to the immediate Crime Law Soc Change (2011) 56:329-371

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“…40. See Moseley 1991, Shaikh and Tonak 1994, Shaikh 1999, and Mohun 1996. It should be noted that some Marxists view unproductive wage-labour as a phenomenon largely confined to the capitalist state.…”

Section: The Specification Of Marx's Value Categories and The Orimentioning

confidence: 99%

Profitability and the Roots of the Global Crisis: Marx’s ‘Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall’ and the US Economy, 1950–2007

Smith

Butovsky

2012

Hist Mater

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The relevance of Marx's theory of value and his 'law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall' to the analysis of the financial crisis of 2007-8 and the ensuing global slump is affirmed. The hypertrophie growth of unproductive constant capital, including the wages of'socially necessary' unproductive labour and tax revenues, is identified as an important manifestation of an historicalstructural crisis of capitalism, alongside the increasing weight of fictitious capital and the proliferation of fictitious profits in the lead-up to the financial crisis. These phenomena have obscured the deepest roots of the global slump in tbe long-term profitability problems of productive capital -that is, in a crisis of surplus-value production. With these considerations taken into account, a better empirical assessment of trends in the composition of capital becomes possible, and with it a more accurate understanding of the impact of the ongoing displacement of living labour from production on the average rate of profit and the future of US and global capitalism.

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Productive and Unproductive Labor in the Labor Theory of Value

Cited by 52 publications

References 6 publications

Free Labour, Social Media, Management: Challenging Marxist Organization Studies

Free Labour, Social Media, Management: Challenging Marxist Organization Studies

Policing the industrial reserve army: An international study

Profitability and the Roots of the Global Crisis: Marx’s ‘Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall’ and the US Economy, 1950–2007

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