So 20.07.2008 20:44

Dave Zachariah

to Peter Fleissner

Dear Peter,

It was great fun speaking with you at the conference. Although I think you are mistaken on the issue of productive labour. Perhaps you are drawing too far conclusions from the peculiar data from the Austrian input-output tables.

I enclose an article written with Paul Cockshott on the issue, published in Science & Society (Vol 70, No. 4, October 2006). Definitions are always arbitrary in the sense that they depend on the questions that one asks. We try to stick with the Smithian and Marxian concerns that underlie the theory of un/productive labour: whether it contributes to the development of wealth of the economy and the living standard of the entire working population; whether the growth of its employment will leave more or less profits left for reinvestment in the capital stock and thus the productive capacity of the economy.

Moreover, we are giving a definition that is invariant to juridical changes. You said that property relations are fundamental, but I think this is too imprecise: rather it is the relations that underlie the material reproduction of society that is the fundamental starting point for a historical-materialist analysis. Juridical changes and property relations merely encode these material relations. Anyway I hope that our article is clear enough on the Smithian and Marxian concerns.

atb,

//Dave Z