Class, Productive and Unproductive Labour - Journal of Alternative ...

Dr. Timothy Kerswellexchanging commodities produced by the labourer intomoney. The above process can be expressed as M – C(LP+MP)…P…C’ – M’ (Harvey, 2006:69).M (Money) is used to purchase C (commodities) in theform of MP (means of production) and LP (labour power).The productive process then occurs (P) which creates a newcommodity (C’), which is then sold for a greater sum ofmoney than the initial outlay (M’). The difference between M’and M constitutes surplus value. The most importantfeature of this process is that the source of this surplusvalue is labour. In Marx’s (2011) words, “the value of labourpower and the value which that labour power creates in thelabour process, are two entirely different magnitudes’. It isbased on this productive process that Marx (Ibid) arrives athis definition of who is a productive labourer:“That labourer alone is productive, who producessurplus-value for the capitalist, and thus works for the selfexpansionof capital…Hence the notion of a productivelabourer implies not merely a relation between work anduseful effect, between labourer and product of labour, butalso a specific, social relation of production, a relation thathas sprung up historically and stamps the labourer as thedirect means of creating surplus-value.”The underlying reason that Marx’s definition of productivelabour is more expansive than that of Smith and theclassical economists is due to his definition of thecommodity. Marx’s view of commodities includes someservices as well as physical goods (Ibid). In going beyond thepurely physical, Marx’s concept of production is able toincorporate more possibilities than Smith’s.To compare Marx’s idea of a commodity as a thing whichsatisfies a human want, to Smith’s idea of a commodity as adurable, tangible and vendible object is to illustrate thedifference between the two approaches. Smith’s definition ofa commodity is narrower, excluding anything that is notphysical in nature. In considering something such asintellectual property for instance, if Smith’s approach wasfollowed to its logical conclusion he would necessarilyconclude that intellectual property is not a commodity as it29