A soldier, like a butler, does not produce exchange-value
despite being employed because their output is directly consumed, not a
commodity to be sold. So unlike the
clown who is selling his labor for a boss and who’s service is a commodity
purchased and then consumed, the directly employed butler (not a butler hired
out by a company) and the soldier produce nothing of the sort.
The difference is not in the materiality or immateriality
of the commodity. That is a crude matter-ism,
not a Marxian materialism. IT software
developers who write code produce a commodity, in fact they often produce
crucial means of production. Someone
working at McDonald’s produces a commodity with value because they act as a
wage-laborer for a boss who is not directly consuming their product but selling
it to someone else.
The question however is more complicated if we look to
military expenditures, arguably since they are paid with taxes. There is no difference nominally between
Boeing producing a commercial airliner for American Airlines than
Lockheed-Martin-Marietta producing fighter jets for the Pentagon, at the level
of the labor process and the chain of relations within the company. Both produce a commodity. That the Pentagon will consume it is not per
se a problem, any more than the fact that Toyota produces cars which will be
bought by someone who is not a business.
Two objections arise here:
1.
The source of the income is tax money, money not
part of renewing dept. 1 or 2.
2.
The buyer is not engaged in productive labor, is
neither a capital nor a wage-laborer.
According to the logic of #2, if a lawyer or a bank
teller buys a car from Toyota, that sale does not count as productive labor
because the consumer is not part of the total circuit of capital, they are just
a faux frais, a cost of doing business that is excreted out of the
system. Therefore, every commodity
consumed by someone not engaged in “productive” labor is not valorized.
The logic of #1 is not far off. Since the government gets its revenue stream
by skimming a part of wage-labor and capital’s wages and profits and interest,
it does not acquire its money by participating in the labor process. It is also a faux frais of total social reproduction. Money spent by the government which is not
engaged in production of commodities (where the government owns the means of
production and sets them to work, employs wage-labor, sells the product as a
commodity, etc. is different, by the way), such as military spending or
transfer payments, is therefore seen as “unproductive”.
However, if the income comes from skimming wages,
interest, and profits, and it is used to buy commodities produced by capital,
is it not merely a detour to make its way through the state?
Now, the argument appears that military goods, for
example, cannot be productively consumed, that is, their consumption does not
contribute to the reproduction of the total social capital, unlike items
produced for workers.
This is where we are again dealing with the Toyota bought
by the lawyer. Both the state and the
lawyer provide a service necessary to the overall maintenance of capital, but
neither engages in the direct production of new services or values. Frequently, the law firm is much like the
directly employed butler and the soldier.
Their labor is not value-producing as such. However, the money spent on their services
from wages, profits, or interest becomes the income by means of which they
purchase other commodities. The lawyer
and the state thus put this income stream back into the total cycle of
reproduction unless they hoard the income.
There is no more need for the tank to be productively
consumed in some immediate sense than for me to use my car to get to work or
buy groceries.
Otherwise, what we are saying is that if a worker buys a
boat or a weekend car purely for enjoyment, either that expenditure does not
valorize value because the worker is not engaged in “productive labor” or it
does, but only because the buyer is a wage-laborer engaged in “productive
labor”. We have entered the arena of
vicious circularity.
What I am suggesting is not that all labor produces
value. Not all labor does. Artists who produce a unique work of art do
not produce a value. And there are
income streams derived from faux frais activities necessary for capital’s
functioning, but outside the production process, such as banking or government
employees who do not produce a commodity (the soldier is a non-productive
person in this sense.) However, the leap
that is a problem is the one which suggests that as a result, the income stream
from taxes and the commodities purchased with that tax money is inherently
unproductive either because
1.
The income stream is not from wages, interest,
or profits of productive activities, or
2.
The commodity is not productively consumed, and
is therefore akin to capitalist luxury consumption since consumption which does
not reproduce capital or the laborer is unproductive.
Never mind that we now enter the arena of whether or not
household labor is “productive”. This
red herring was always a non-question since it is not wage-labor, but remains
critical to the reproduction of labor power as a whole. However, we now have companies engaged in the
cycle of reproduction which are supposedly not producing value because the end
consumer is neither a capitalist nor a worker, just like our lawyer, and their
income stream is a faux frais deduction, even though a part of that income
will return to capital and the total social reproduction by purchasing
commodities.
My suggestion is thus that in this case, we are talking
about a detour, but not about an entire line of production being unproductive,
any more than every car sold to an attorney or judge or insurance agent or bank
teller is value which is not valorized and therefore represents a large chunk
of Toyota’s capital being fictitious.
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