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

Dr. Timothy Kerswellorder to define who makes up the global proletariat, that ofbeing involved in the globalized production process. As willbe discussed later in this article, defining who is actuallyinvolved in production is a contestable matter. Further thanthis, there is the issue of who is involved in globalproduction. Given the polarizing argument of Robinson andHarris, what is implicit in their analysis is that everyone whoisn’t being drawn into the global bourgeoisie is being drawninto the global proletariat, which in the end leads to thesuggestion that all waged workers have an objective identityof interest.This position is echoed by Negri (1973:126-9) whosuggests that "…we can now say that the concept of wagelabourer and the concept of productive labourer tendtowards homogeneity”, leading to "the new social figure of aunified proletariat." Summarizing this position, Wright(2002) comments that: “In short, all moments of thecirculation process, and even reproduction, were seen to beproductive of value; the distinction between productive andnon-productive labour was obliterated.”In discussing how Marxist theoreticians have generallydefined class, Wright (2005:12) suggests, “It is commonwhen people think about variations in the rights and powersover various factors of production to treat these rights andpowers as having a simple, binary structure: you either ownsomething or you do not.” The origin of such a positioncomes from Marx and Engels (2011), who himself envisagedthe capitalist age as dividing the world into two opposingclasses, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.In attempting to define how the proletariat comes intobeing, Marx (2011) suggests “the labourer instead of being inthe position to sell commodities in which his labour isincorporated, must be obliged to offer for sale as acommodity that very labour-power, which exists only in hisliving self.” The reason that the labourer is obliged to selltheir labour power is, according to Marx, that they do notown means of production. By contrast, the bourgeoisie musthave means of production as well as the ability to sustain21