Unproductive work

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Unproductive work (or non-productive work ) is a controversial term and political catchphrase from classical economics , under which the low or no productivity of work is understood.

General

“Unproductive work” is made up of the components “unproductive” and “work”. Unproductive means that a certain job has no or too little labor productivity. “Unproductive work” is a term steeped in history, the former content of which has changed today. The controversy about productive and unproductive work has gone down in the history of economic theory as the “productivity controversy” . The issue was whether peasants were actually productive (so argued the Physiocrats ) or industrialists (so argued Adam Smith ), entrepreneurs or workers (according to Karl Marx ); the dispute was broken off around 1900 without result. Work had the properties of matter ( agricultural commodities , raw materials , raw materials change so) that their higher benefits TO ISSUE to be classified as productive work.

Common usage

The use of the term “unproductive work” in everyday language is particularly controversial. Often every type of service is viewed as unproductive here because it does not produce any material goods . This dispute as to whether service work is productive or unproductive work can be traced back to Karl Marx. But the expression “unproductive work” does not come from Marx, it is much older.

Based on these findings is now often in the production economy , the holding that are not directly on the production involved workers as employees of the administration ( servants , doorman , cleaners , clerk ) were classified as unproductive. This can only be considered applicable if “unproductive” means “not directly involved in production”. It is also often argued that the entire public service is unproductive. This can apply to areas with standby service such as fire brigade or other emergency services ; here, however, the focus is not on labor productivity, but on services of general interest and public safety . In other areas of the public service, “unproductive work” can at most be understood as the pace of work that is perceived as too slow, that is, the low work intensity .

Physiocracy

The physiocrat François Quesnay published his Tableau économique ( German  economic table ) in December 1758 , in which he viewed the farmers as a productive class ( French class productive ). The unproductive "sterile" class ( French classe stérile ) merely transforms the agricultural products of the productive ones ( trade , handicrafts and trades ), while the landowners ( French classe des propriétaires ) stand between the two classes . According to Quesnay, the sterile class purchases agricultural products for its own consumption from the achieved trading margin (the difference between the sales prices from the trade and the purchase prices of intermediate goods ) . For the physiocrats like Quesnay, productive work was considered to be work that produces wealth in the form of material goods. He is considered the first economist to mention "unproductive work".

The highly political context of this analysis explains why it is not said that it is only under these French feudal conditions that handicraft and manufacture are sterile classes - in England it was different - and that, when they begin, they are increasingly used for agricultural equipment and services To create, become increasingly productive because the distribution of income changed. With the fall of Turgot, the économistes' influence on French politics waned. Further borrowing and the continued promotion of luxury goods production ultimately led to the French Revolution .

Classical economics

Their main representatives Adam Smith differed in March 1776 in his book The Wealth of Nations also between "productive" and "unproductive labor" ( English unproductive labor ). Productive work is work "that adds something to the value of the object on which it is used". For him, productive work leads to added value , whereas unproductive work does not. Therefore, for him, workers in a factory were productive, while servants were not. Unproductive work leads to waste and not to an increase in wealth: "So if you employ a large number of workers you will become wealthy, while you will be poor if you keep many servants." He admits, however, that unproductive work can be useful (servant), pleasant (singer) or necessary (judge).

In The Theory of Ethical Sentiment (1759), Smith spoke of the fact that an invisible hand makes the gossip of the rich make a living for the poor, since a rich man's stomach is of limited size. After his trip to France (1764–1766) and the conversations with the Économistes, in the prosperity of the nations, for Smith, this consumption of the rich is unproductive work that reduces economic growth . To Smith, Quesnay was the father of economics, and he would have dedicated his wealth of nations to him if Quesnay had not died earlier.

Smith's growth program

Edwin Cannan states in the Foreword on the Wealth of Nations that Adam Smith retained the structure of his earlier lectures, but that new elements were added that Adam Smith took over from the Economistes on his trip to France. These new elements are the concepts of classical economic theory which Smith places at the beginning of the work. The prosperity of nations is thus an inhomogeneous book, and Ricardo tried in the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817) to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Adam Smith begins the Wealth of Nations with his growth program:

“The annual work of a people is the fundus ( English fund in the sense of input, misleadingly mostly translated as“ source ”), from which it is originally supplied with all the necessary and pleasant things in life that it consumes over the year. ... Two factors determine this per capita supply in every country: firstly, the productivity of labor as a result of skill, expertise and experience, and secondly, the ratio of the productively employed to those who are not employed in this way . It depends on both circumstances whether the range of goods in a country is plentiful or scarce. ”[Emphasis added].

An abundant and cheap range of goods ( English riches ), d. H. the prosperity of nations, will be achieved when

  • The productivity of workers is increased through a deeper division of labor and
  • by reducing the proportion of “unproductive labor” workers will have a larger stock of capital available in the next period.

David Ricardo formulated the goal of classical economics in almost the same words:

“Wealth can be increased in two ways, namely by using a larger proportion of income for the maintenance of productive labor - which increases not only the quantity but also the value [measured in labor units] of the quantity of goods - or without an additional quantity Labor through the more productive use of the existing [productive] amount of labor - which increases the abundance, but not the [labor] value of goods [since the price ratio corresponds to the ratio of labor inputs in the long term]. "
“In the first case, a country would not only get rich [riches = physical amount], the value of its wealth would also increase ( English values , amount of direct and indirect labor units as the value of goods). It would get rich by thrift, by limiting its spending on luxuries and enjoyments, and by using these savings for reproduction. "
“In the second case, there will not necessarily be a reduced expenditure on luxuries and enjoyments, or an increased amount of productive labor, but more would be produced with the same [productive] labor; wealth would increase, but its [labor] value would not. Of these two ways of increasing prosperity, the latter must be preferred, since it produces the same effect without reducing the pleasures ... "

The two points in Smith's and Ricardo's growth programs are not independent. A deeper division of labor is possible especially in mass production . Luxury products - unproductive labor - which shape demand in a society with a polarized income distribution like in pre-revolutionary France, do not have these productivity advantages and will therefore seldom fall in price. They are often made-to-order. The deeper division of labor also played no role for the Économistes, although Smith took his example of pin production from the Encyclopédie (1755).

The dynamic of growth - a deeper division of labor lowers prices, which increases turnover, which in turn stimulates a deepening of the division of labor - requires that sufficient capital is available. This can be jeopardized by a significant consumption of unproductive labor .

Christian Jakob Kraus joined Smith and in 1808 called productive work that which produces value, while unproductive work does not. Friedrich List polemicized in 1841: “Whoever raises pigs is, according to it [according to classical economics, i. Ed.] A productive one who educates people, an unproductive member of society. [...] Those who raise horses produce exchange values , those who teach children produce productive forces ”.

Karl Marx

“Unproductive work” here is the opposite of “ productive work ”. According to Karl Marx , productive work is an activity that creates value in use , that is, a “purposeful, productive activity”. “Only the worker is productive, who produces surplus value for the capitalist or serves for the self-realization of capital”. Unproductive work is work “that is not exchanged for capital, but directly for rent, that is, for wages or profit ”. Marx illustrates these statements through his example of an actor. “An actor, himself a clown, is a productive worker if he works in the service of a capitalist (the enterpreneur ) to whom he gives back more work than he gets from him in the form of his salary, while a patchcutter who does the Capitalist comes into the house, creates a mere use value for him, is an unproductive worker. The labor of the first is exchanged for capital, that of the second for revenue . The first creates added value, the second consumes revenue ”. Unproductive work in the sense of Marx is productive in the sense of create value, but not productive in the sense of value-creating. For Marx, service work is productive when it creates added value as wage labor .

Unproductive work in Keynesian employment theory

Not in Samuelson's formalized Keynesianism - but in Keynes' General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) there is a distinction between productive and unproductive labor. If productive resources lie idle during the depression , there is little point in increasing their quantity through productive work. Then: "Digging holes in the ground, paid for by savings, will not only increase employment, but also the real national distribution of useful goods and services." For this purpose, it also makes sense that "millionaires find satisfaction in it, To build huge mansions that contain their bodies as long as they live and pyramids that protect it after death. "

Keynes quotes Thomas Robert Malthus approvingly as saying that luxury spending by the gentry is a crucial aid in overcoming depression in the event of depression. Normally, unproductive labor limits a society's capital formation and development, in the case of depression, when capital is idle, it helps to overcome the depression.

Unproductive work in Sraffa's reproductive analysis

In commodity production by means of commodities (1960) Piero Sraffa shows that prices are determined by the technological production coefficients, as the classical economy claims, i.e. without the neoclassical recourse to utility curves (this was already shown by Wassily Leontief [1928] in his dissertation, which went unnoticed) ). Sraffa takes up the classic distinction between productive and unproductive work and describes as basic goods the goods that will be input for the next economic period and as non-basic goods those that are end consumption, i.e. classic unproductive work . Sraffa does not offer a theoretical system, but is part of the classic and only clarifies one point: that the neoclassical meaning of benefit for price determination is wrong.

Joseph Schumpeter

In 1965, Joseph Schumpeter named two criteria for distinguishing between productive and unproductive work.

  • Income may be issued either those directly for consumption, which have earned them or indirectly from those of the income purchasers bankrolled are (children, the sick). Productive work earns its livelihood, unproductive work receives it second-hand.
  • Products and work that are bought and consumed directly by private households have a different position in the economic process than those products and work that are used by companies as factors of production . The former are consumer goods , the latter capital goods . According to this, productive labor is paid for from capital , while unproductive labor is paid for from income .

Schumpeter based his division largely on Karl Marx.

The neoclassical formulated the maximization of utility as the goal of economic activity and is therefore formulated micro-economically. There can be no unproductive work for micro-economic economics . A homo oeconomicus acts rationally and every work pursues the goal of achieving benefit. Unproductive work is therefore neoclassically a non -concept and incapable of any rational discussion. For Schumpeter is unproductive labor a "dusty museum object" ( English dusty museum piece ).

Samuelson's unproductive work

The scientific discussion between representatives of different theoretical paradigms is often difficult. The terms are defined by their own theory, so that interpretive matches may be based on misunderstandings. The following statement by Nobel Prize winner Paul Samuelson about the Cambridge economist Piero Sraffa is an example:

“Sraffa ... was 50 when I first knew him; and the puzzlement this sophisticated intellectual engendered in me by orally defending such notions as Smith's concept of productive labor: (whereby goods are given a primacy over ephemeral services ) suddenly evaporated when I came to hypothesize that this sophisticated mind had a penchant for Marxian: notions . “The classic concepts of productive and unproductive labor differentiate between goods and services that are input for the next economic period and those - unproductive - that are end consumption. Nobody, except the these concepts wrong understanding Neoklassikern distinguishes between goods ( English goods ) and volatile Services ( English ephemeral services ). Sraffa adopts the classic separation and differentiates between basic and non-basic goods, which he defines as follows: "The criterion is whether a commodity enters (no matter whether directly or indirectly) into the production of" all "commodities. Those that do we shall call "basic", and those that do no, "non-basic" products. "

The classic economy knows no production factors - under competition, prices correspond to production costs , so that no margin remains for production factors. Marx introduces work as the only factor of production, and the neoclassics add more. For Marx, work is productive when it generates profit for the entrepreneur. The expenditures with which the entrepreneur uses up this income are unproductive. This concept has nothing in common with Sraffas and Adams Smith's unproductive labor .

economic aspects

The socialism was Branko Milanovic , according to the false Marxist understanding of productive and unproductive activities, which in the national accounts socialist countries reflected and net material product ( English net material product , NMP) was called. The approach of the socialist countries was that all services (including the health and education systems as well as public administration ) were unproductive because they did not produce any new physical goods. Speculators are therefore the epitome of unproductivity, "socially harmful" and do a "despicable" job. For Marx, any work that led to the production of surplus value was productive. In the example above, he showed that an actor (the prototype of someone whose occupation does not produce anything material) does productive work as long as he is employed by a company or an individual and makes a profit for his employer.

As a result of the capital theory debate (1954 - 1966), in which the logic of the neoclassical concept of capital was doubted from a classical point of view - the classical concepts and with them the concept of unproductive work regained importance.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans RG Rück, Services in the Economic Theory , 2000, p. 23
  2. ↑ Henning Eichberg, Minority and Majority , Volume 2, 2011, p. 128
  3. ↑ Hans RG Rück, Services in the Economic Theory , 2000, p. 26
  4. ↑ Mi-Kyong Kim, Women's work in the field of tension between work and family , 2000, p. 62
  5. ^ Ian Gough, Marx's Theory of Productive and Unproductive labor , in: New Left Review No. 76, November / December 1972, p. 48 ff.
  6. ↑ Friedrich Henzel, Sources of Loss in Industry , 1951, p. 97
  7. ↑ Karl Knackfuß, The Working Time Question in the Rhenish-Westphalian Iron and Steel Industry , 1927, p. 55
  8. ↑ "Productive", however, is the adverb of " Productivity ".
  9. ^ François Quesnay, Tableau économique, et maximes générales du governement économiques , Versailles, 1758, pp. 1 ff.
  10. ^ Adam Smith, An Inquiry to the Wealth of Nations , Book 2, 1776/1973, p. 80
  11. ↑ Adam Smith, The Prosperity of Nations , 1776/1990, p. 272
  12. ^ Adam Smith, An Inquiry to the Wealth of Nations , Volume 2, 1776, p. 331
  13. ^ "The rich only select from the heap what is most precious and agreeable. They consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity ... they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species. "; AI. Macfie / DD Raphael (eds.): The Glasgow edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith. vol. 1: The Theory of Moral Sentiments. 2007, pp. 184-185.
  14. ^ Dugald Stewart: Foreword. In: Essays on Philosophical Subjects by The late Adam Smith. LL. D., Fellow of the Royal Societies of London and Edinburgh, Basil, Printed for the Editor of the Collection of English Classics, Sold by James Decker, 1799, pp. Lxvii-lxviii; from the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Read by M. Steward, January 21, and March 18, 1793; reprint The Glasgow edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, vol. 3, p. 304.
  15. ↑ Edwin Cannan (Ed.): Editor's Introduction. In :: Adam Smith: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Methuen, London 1904, pp. Xxix-xxxiii.
  16. ^ David Ricardo: Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. vol. 1: The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo. 10 volumes. Edited by Piero Sraffa. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1951-1955, p. 150.
  17. ↑ Épingle. In: Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des metiers. vol. v, Paris 1755.
  18. ^ Christian Jacob Kraus, Staatswirtschaft , Volume 1, 1808, p. 13
  19. ^ Friedrich List, Das Nationale System der Politischen Ökonomie , 1841, p. 151
  20. ^ Karl Marx, On the Critique of Political Economy , 1859, p. 23
  21. ^ Karl Marx, Das Kapital , Volume I, 1867, p. 532
  22. Jump up ↑ Karl Marx, Theorien über den Vorteil , 1863, p. 126 ff.
  23. Jump up ↑ Karl Marx, Theorien über den Vorteil , 1863, p. 126 ff.
  24. ↑ Christian Fuchs, Crisis and Criticism in the Information Society , 2002, p. 352
  25. ^ A b John Maynard Keynes , The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Macmillan, London 1973, p. 220.
  26. ↑ Wassily Leontief: The economy as a cycle. Laupp, Tübingen 1928.
  27. ^ Piero Sraffa: Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK 1960, p. 8: "The criterion is whether a commodity enters (no matter whether directly or indirectly) into the production of" all " commodities . Those that do we shall call "basic", and those that do no, "non-basic" products. "
  28. ^ Joseph Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis , Volume 1, 1965, pp. 768 f.
  29. ↑ Hans RG Rück, Services in the Economic Theory , 2000, p. 30
  30. ↑ Hans RG Rück, Services in the Economic Theory , 2000, p. 30
  31. ^ Joseph Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis , Routledge, London 1954, p. 597
  32. ^ Paul Samuelson: A Revisionist Findings on Sraffa. In: Heinz Kurz: Critical Essays on Piero Sraffa's Legacy in Economics ,. Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 25-44, pp. 27.
  33. ^ Piero Sraffa: Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK 1960, p. 8.
  34. ↑ Makronom of May 31, 2016, Branko Milanovic, What is (un) productive work? , accessed on September 16, 2019
  35. ^ Joan Robinson : The Production Function and the Theory of Capital. In: Review of Economic Studies. 21, 2, 1953-54, pp. 81-106.
  36. ↑ Paul Samuelson : A Summing Up. In: Quarterly Journal of Economics. vol. 80, 1966, pp. 568-583.