Date: Tue, 30 Apr 1996 18:11:48 -0400
Subject: Unproductive labor


I am inclined to agree with Justin on this question. I always found it
"unproductive labor" on my part to devote a great deal of effort to
deciphering what seem to be elaborate taxonomies of productive and
unproductive labor which have little conceptual utility other than the rescue
of a dubious concept. I can't see what practical conclusion of any value
follows from the fact that a janitor in a General Motors plant is a
productive worker, based on the nature of the work done in that setting, but
that that a janitor in say a public relations firm or the Stock Exchange is
unproductive. The arguments I have heard that they will have a different
consciousness, with the one being working class and the other something else,
seem at best convoluted tautologies based on the highly questionable premise
that a certain type of labor (productive, however it is defined) produces a
certain type of consciousness. Moreover, in my own thinking and organizing
with teachers, I have found the distinction completely without analytical
insight. I am a skeptic of the first order on this issue.

Leo


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