As Marx sets out in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 17, Section 12, under commodity production and exchange, including capitalist production, it is not only that the labour expended must be purposive in the sense that it produces a use-value (including a labour-service) but that, it produces a use-value for which there is adequate demand at its market-value.
“Just as it is a condition for the sale of commodities at their value, that they contain only the socially necessary labour-time, so it is for an entire sphere of production of capital, that only the necessary part of the total labour-time of society is used in the particular sphere, only the labour-time which is required for the satisfaction of social need (demand). If more is used, then, even if each individual commodity only contains the necessary labour-time, the total contains more than the socially necessary labour-time; in the same way, although the individual commodity has use-value, the total sum of commodities loses some of its use-value under the conditions assumed.”
In that case, the labour expended on the production of those commodities in excess of demand at the market-value, would not be value-creating.
This is one basis upon which Marx says that labour may not be value-creating. Another reason is that, the labour, although socially necessary, in order that the value of commodities is realised, it does not, itself, take part in the creation of that value. Commercial labour is an example, as Marx sets out in Capital III, Chapter 17.
“The very function, by virtue of which the merchant's money becomes capital, is largely done through his employees. The unpaid labour of these clerks, while it does not create surplus-value, enables him to appropriate surplus-value, which, in effect, amounts to the same thing with respect to his capital. It is, therefore, a source of profit for him. Otherwise commerce could never be conducted on a large scale, capitalistically.”
This commercial labour does not produce surplus value, and nor does it produce additional value, but, without it, the actually produced value could not be realised, and nor could the produced surplus value. The commercial labourers, like any other labourer are paid the value of their labour-power, say, the equivalent of 4 hours labour, but they work for, say, 8 hours, creating the equivalent of 8 hours value for the commercial capitalist, meaning for them, a surplus value of 4 hours. The commercial capital does not produce, additional surplus-value, or new value, but it increases the amount of realised value and profit, which is the basis of its specific function in the circuit of industrial capital, and of its sharing in the formation of, and distribution of the average rate of profit.
But, Roberts completely falsifies Marx's position, by conflating this analysis of labour as productive of new value, with the analysis of “productive labour”, by which Marx means something completely different, i.e. not the production of value, but the production of surplus-value that is appropriated by capital, i.e. the self-expansion/production of capital. Roberts claims that Marx says that "Productive labour for capital consists of those sections of labour that create new value for the owners of the means of production.” Not true.
A peasant owns their means of production, and creates new value by their labour, as does an independent commodity producer. It is that value, which forms the basis of the exchange-value of the commodities they produce and sell in the market. But, that labour is not productive labour, as defined by Marx, and by Smith in his first definition. It is not labour that exchanges with capital, and is, not, therefore, productive of capital either. A landlord, owns the means of production, but the serf who works on their land, even as they create a surplus product, which may be sold by the landlord as a commodity, is also, not a productive labourer, on Marx's definition, for the same reason. The same applies to slave labour that produces a surplus product.
In fact, what Roberts does is to adopt the position of some of the critics of Adam Smith, which, as Marx sets out, was facilitated by Smith's own lapses into these different definitions of productive labour.
In Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 4, Marx sets out his definition of “productive labour”, and this definition is the same as that set out in Adam Smith's first definition. It is labour that exchanges with capital, rather than revenue. In other words, capital buys labour-power, at its value, in exchange for wages. Having bought that labour-power, at its value, of say, the equivalent of 4 hours labour, for a day, the capitalist sets it to work, for, say, 8 hours, producing a surplus value of 4 hours, which is appropriated by capital, a self-expansion of the capital.
But, is this definition of “productive labour”, as labour that exchanges with capital, and produces surplus-value/self-expansion of capital, the same as claiming that it is only this “productive labour” that creates new value? Clearly not. Take, a peasant producer of cotton, for example. Does their labour exchange with capital? No. Does their labour, in producing the cotton, create new value? Absolutely, which is why, when a capitalist, or some other producer of cotton yarn, buys the cotton from the peasant producer, they have to give an equal amount of value in exchange for it! Indeed, for around 10,000 years, as Engels describes, in his Supplement to Capital III, on The Law of Value, long before the existence of industrial capital, commodity production and exchange took place on precisely that basis.
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