Letter: What is productivity?

Comrades,
What is the socialist definition of this hoodoo that Barbara Castle is using, namely, The Productivity Act? My opinion is that there is no such thing unless applied where material things are produced and distributed. It can never apply to bus drivers and conductors, train drivers and firemen, postmen and sorters, messengers, paper-keepers, those in government offices, police- men, or the army, navy, and air force. But it would apply to miners, bricklayers, coalcarters, and those who work in places where wealth is produced.
M. R. Thorpe, Brixton, London SW9

ReplyL
All Barbara Castle means by ‘productivity’ is efficiency at work. So, as far as she is concerned, this can be imposed on all workers whether or not they are engaged in the actual production of wealth. Sales clerks can be made to fill in more forms, reply to more letters, answer more phone calls in the same period of time. If they do, then their ‘productivity’ will have gone up.

‘Productivity’, in this sense, is just a fancy word for ‘speed-up’. It’s the old trick of “if you work harder, we’ll pay you more”. The Labour government are interested in promoting this because they are committed to running capitalism in the only way it can be—in the interests of the capitalist class. If workers can be got to work harder, then the capitalists have a chance of regaining some of the overseas markets they have lost in recent years (the prime cause of their economic difficulties).

Wealth is produced by the application of human energy to materials found in nature. All work involves both ‘mental’ and ‘physical’ activity (in fact of course the two can’t be separated) so that it is wrong to regard just what is called ‘manual’ work as productive. The work of design and planning is just as productive as the work of carrying out the plans. So the mining engineer and the architect, whose work is generally regarded as white-collar, are just as much productive workers as the miner and the bricklayer. So are many technical, administrative, and clerical workers. Others are not of course, especially those concerned with buying and selling and with discipline, including the police and armed forces.

Mr. Thorpe is wrong in implying that transport workers are not productive. The labour spent in bringing an article of wealth to market does add value to the product. It is just as much a part of the production process as the manufacturing stage.

Capitalist exploitation is a class matter. The whole of the working class is exploited by the whole of the capitalist class because production already has a social, co-operative character. It is wrong to say that the workers at Fords are exploited just by Ford’s shareholders, just as it is wrong to say that they alone produce the cars. The labour of the millions of workers involved in the production of a car (including the growing and mining and transporting of the original raw materials from start to finish is what produces a car, not just the labour of those in at the finish. Ford’s shareholders merely get a return in accordance with the economic law of average profit—a profit based on the amount of capital they have invested and not (necessarily) equal to the surplus value extracted in their factories. What in effect happens is that all the surplus value extracted under capitalism in a given period is, as it were, pooled and then divided out in accordance with the amount of capital each capitalist has invested. The capitalist system is thus a kind of joint-stock company for the capitalist class.

Those workers engaged in non-productive work are not just a burden on their employers. Far from it. They may not produce extra wealth for him but they do save him money. For their work—say, in balancing his books or selling his goods—is essential to his business. From the employer’s point of view money spent on it is a necessary expense of production. Non-productive workers are exploited in this way: if for example ten hours’ work is needed to calculate workers’ wages, the clerk doing this job will put in this work but will be paid the equivalent of less than ten hours’ labour. He thus saves his employer money and that is why he is employed.

The employer doesn’t see it this way. He knows from experience that his profit tends to be based on how much he has invested, not on how many workers of what kind he employs. As far as he is concerned the wages he pays to all his workers are a necessary expense which he’d like to cut down. He would like them all to work harder. Which brings us back to Barbara Castle and productivity. She too wants us all to work harder.

Editorial Committee