Michael Roberts' Fundamental Errors, II - Labour That Is Productive of Value, And Productive Labour - Part 3 of 3

To give another example, used by Marx, the labour of a prostitute creates new value, which is why they expect to be paid for their time. Marx notes,

“Is not the [total] value of the commodities at any time in the market greater as a result of the “unproductive labour” than it would be without this labour? Are there not at every moment of time in the market, alongside wheat and meat, etc., also prostitutes, lawyers, sermons, concerts, theatres, soldiers, politicians, etc.? These lads or wenches do not get the corn and other necessaries or pleasures for nothing...

“Since here, as in every exchange of commodity for commodity, equal value is given for equal value, the same value is therefore present twice over, once on the buyer’s side and once on the seller’s.”

(Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 4, p 168-169)

Marx gives, many more such examples of labour that is productive of new value, but is not “productive labour”, i.e. does not exchange with capital.

“For example, the workman employed by a piano maker is a productive labourer. His labour not only replaces the wages that he consumes, but in the product, the piano, the commodity which the piano maker sells, there is a surplus-value over and above the value of the wages. But assume on the contrary that I buy all the materials required for a piano (or for all it matters the labourer himself may possess them), and that instead of buying the piano in a shop I have it made for me in my house. The workman who makes the piano is now an unproductive labourer, because his labour is exchanged directly against my revenue.”

(ibid)

But, does the piano have value, over and above the value of the materials used in its production, i.e. has the labourer created new value, by their labour? Of course!  And, that value is equal not to their wages, i.e. the value of their labour-power, but to the amount of labour they expend.

In Britain, today, there are around 5 million small businesses, many of them self-employed individuals, like the piano maker above. Today, they take the form of a myriad of self-employed house cleaners, gardeners, window cleaners, and so on. Their labour does not exchange with capital, they are not wage-labourers – much as the vulgarians would like to describe them as working-class, rather than petty-bourgeois – they are not paid a wage. They exchange their labour directly with revenue, i.e. householders pay them for having their windows cleaned and so on. That payment includes a cost of the materials consumed in the provision of the service, plus an amount equal to the value added by the labour of the window cleaner and so on. It is not “productive labour”, i.e. does not exchange with capital or produce a self-expansion of capital, but it most certainly is productive of new value, as Marx describes above. Indeed, if it did not, the self-employed labourer, would not be able to buy the necessaries required for their own subsistence!

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