Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 17:24:56 +0100
From: James Heartfield <James-AT-heartfield.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: Info Revolution


In message <3.0.3.32.19970723102200.006ab1cc-AT-pop3.afn.org>, "Matt D."
<afn02065-AT-afn.org> writes
>Are you saying that any good or service which generates profits is ipso
>facto the result of productive labor?  Can profits never represent the
>redistribution of valorized surplus?
>
>-- Matt D.
>
>
No. You're quite right to point out that profits can represent the
redistribution of surplus value. This is the score on which labour spent
in financial services is unproductive. The point is derivative of the
larger point that the interest on credit (and the fees for financial
services), is, like rent, a derivative forms of surplus value generated
in production. Like the rent-collector, the bond-trader is not a
productive labourer. None of this bears on the example, musicians
recording scores for reproduction on CDs. The CD market is a productive
industry, meaning that it is productive of surplus value, and hence
there labour, too, is productive - with the proviso that it must
represent a tiny proportion of the value embodied in the CD, since the
work of one recording must be spread over thousands of CDs.

-- 
James Heartfield


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