This article starts out by trying to demonstrate why the distinction between productive and unproductive labour (PUPL) is crucial, both for the analysis of the trajectory of capitalism in general and for an understanding of the peculiar features of late twentieth century capitalism. Subsequent sections provide the necessary clarification about the distinction between PUPL by focusing on the concepts ‘productive labour in general’ and ‘productive labour for capital’ and attempt to classify all major types of labour in capitalism accordingly. The essay also deals with thorny questions about the status of labour in the services sector and state provision of social services. The last section addresses some common criticisms found in the literature concerning Marx's distinction between productive and unproductive labour.
‘… the complete body is easier to study than its cells. Moreover, in the analysis of economic forms neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of assistance. The power of abstraction must replace both. But for bourgeois society, the commodity-form of the product of labour, or the value-form of the commodity, is the economic cell-form. To the superficial observer the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae. It does in fact deal with minutiae, but so similarly does microscopic anatomy.’ ( K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Preface to the first edition, pp. 89–90 of Penguin, 1976 edition. Emphasis added).
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