Subject: Re: M-TH: Letting people off the hook
Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 08:29:40 -0500 (EST)
From: "hoov" <hoov-AT-freenet.tlh.fl.us>


> Marx's references 
> Theories of Surplus Value 
> He specifically refers to teachers in
> private schools producing surplus value for the capitalist owners of the
> schools.  
> Hugh

"a school master is a productive laborer, when, in addition, to 
belabouring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to
enrich the school proprietors.  That the latter has laid his
capital in a teaching factor, instead of a sausage factory does
not alter the relations."  (KM, Capital I, Progress Pub., 1974: 477)

above passage follows M's comment that:

"The product ceases to be the direct product of the individual, 
and becomes a social product, produced in common by a collective
labourer. i.e., by a certain combination of workmen, each of whom
takes only a part, greater or less, in the manipulation of the
subject of their labour.  As the cooperative character of the
labour-process becomes more and more marked, so, as a necessary
consequence, does our notion of productive labour, and of its
agent the productive labourer, become extended.  In order to
labour productively, it is no longer necessary for you to do
manual work yourself; enough if you are an organ of the productive
labourer, and perform one of its subordinate function." (476)

so for M, teachers were productive laborers producing surplus
value for capital...today, however, the vast majority of teachers 
work in the public sector...if one takes the position that only
"productive" laborers are working class, teachers will be
excluded because they are among the "unproductive" laborers
employed by the state and paid out of revenue to maintain the 
overall conditions of capitalist production... 

I use scare quotes around "productive" and "unproductive" because I
don't think the distinction is very useful for determining who is/
is not working class...as Ian Gough has pointed out both positions - 
a) only productive laborers are working class; b) no basis exists for 
position a - are contradictory...and there is supporting evidence for
both positions in M's writings...

my view - which leans strongly towards position b - is that the costs
of public education are socialized with taxes functioning as a method 
of appropriating surplus value (influenced by James O'Connor's _Fiscal 
Crisis of the State_ and Habermas' _Legitimation Crisis_)...

above certainly holds for higher education...college and university
instructors/professors have been subjected increasingly to capitalist
relations of production...in the process, their autonomy has eroded
and their professional status has declined...academic labor has
been proletarianized...granted, the process of proletarianization
has proceeded unevenly and unequally...community college instructors
most resemble secondary school teachers, lower tier faculty in four
year institutions have larger class sizes and had their employment
security jeopardized...within academia, growing marginal employment 
is the most proletarianized...and faculty is losing/has lost control 
over subjects taught, curriculum, and appointments...Michael Hoover


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