Socially Useless Labour

[robbo203]

I am currently looking into the question of the extent of "socially useless labour" in contemporary capitalism,  This is not to be confused with "unproductive labour" which means something quite different .  Some kinds of unproductive labour – labour that does not generate surplus value but lives off the latter –  can be very useful indeed from the standpoint of meeting human needs

 

By socially useless labour I mean all those kinds of  occupations which would not be needed in a society were production was undertaken solely for the purpose of satisfying human needs and not for profit.  Such occupations,  though they are vitally necessary to the functioning of capitalism, would be disappear in a socialist society.  The point being that this would free up  massive quantities of labour power and materials for socially useful production in socialism itself.

 

What I want to establish is a more accurate idea of just what proportion of the workforce is currently engaged in this socially useless labour.  You can get a vague idea by trawling through the data supplied by bodies like the American Bureau of Labor Statistics but this is limited  not least because the data is confined to the US, whereas I am looking for a global estimate, and also because the data is not structured in a way that allows you to easily read off the numbers involved in socially useless labour

 

Has anyone come across any studies  that have made a serious stab at addressing this question?  Some of the very few I have come across seem  to suggest that about half of the current workforce is currently engaged in socially useless labour.  Others put the figure somewhat higher,  Buckminister Fuller, I recall, came out with a figure of about 95% but I think that is way over the top (I cant trace the source where he made this claim) and in case goes way back to the 1970s (I think).  Which begs another question – is socially useless labour getting more, or less, prevalent? What about the impact of robotisation and automation on the services sector for example?

 

I think this might be quite a productive and useful  – if you will excuse the pun – little project for socialists to get involved with.  The extent of capitalism's structural waste is certainly a very important aspect of our argument about the many advantages of socialist system of production will  have over a capitalist one.

[moderator1]

Reminder: 6. Do not make repeated postings of the same or similar messages to the same thread, or to multiple threads or forums (‘cross-posting’). Do not make multiple postings within a thread that could be consolidated into a single post (‘serial posting’). Do not post an excessive number of threads, posts, or private messages within a limited period of time (‘flooding’).

[Anonymous]

Quote:

In the division of labour of modern advanced societies, unproductive functions in this Marxian sense occupy a very large part of the labour force; the wealthier a society is, the more "unproductive" functions it can afford. In the USA for example, one can calculate from labour force data that facilitating exchange processes and processing financial claims alone is the main activity of more than 20 million workers. Legal staff, police, security personnel and military employees number almost 5 million workers.

no direct citation is given for this information, but several links to related studies and documents are listed at the bottom of the wikipedia entry.  Presumably the numbers came form a recent paper written in the USA, if that helps you find the original data and methodology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productive_and_unproductive_labourSeems like marx had some non-intuitive views on productive and non-productive labor which maybe you want to consider in framing your question? maybe you're question needs to be rephrased or expanded on or revised in order to get an answer that has value to you? here's some other key quotes that caught my attention in the wikiepdia entry. . . the definition of productive and unproductive labour is specific to each specific type of society (for example, feudal society, capitalist society, socialist society etc.) and depends on the given relations of production.there exists no neutral definition of productive and unproductive labour; what is productive from the point of view of one social class may not be productive from the point of view of another. p.s. There is a theoretical way around the problem Marx stated as "no neutral definition" argument to providing an answer, but it requires a great deal of effort and you wont like it.  I could probably create a survey system that polls various people, identifies their world views and uses estimates of world view popularity to generate a separate answer for each of the social classes of concern.  then I could combine those or divide those separate answers using some more math to find out maybe more relevant questions like "what is the percent productive labor in the opinon of the bourgiuse class (worldview) or the working class (worldview) or the true socialist class of people (worldview)." (sorry, for extending the word "class" to include socialist which are class less society. maybe you can supply a better word than "class" for me that fits you're needs better. I'm offered "worldview" as an appropriate substitute word, which was not a well understood or developed concept when Marx did his writing. Here's wikipedia on "worldview" if you're interested in undertstanding how it relates to class. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_view . In my opinion, the concept of class is subordinate to the concept of worldviews. that is to say that there are more worldviews than their are classes and every class has at least one worldview assoicated with it. A "class" is regidely defined by economic logic, but a worldview is defined and scoped by a concurance of beliefs. So if you take any regidely defined class, and sample it's worldviews statistically with a survey, you could use those beleifs and answers to questions in order to state for a particular class, their estimated percentage of agreeemnt or their average estimate of the percent of non-productive activity. 

[Anonymous]

moderator1 wrote:

Reminder: 6. Do not make repeated postings of the same or similar messages to the same thread, or to multiple threads or forums (‘cross-posting’). Do not make multiple postings within a thread that could be consolidated into a single post (‘serial posting’). Do not post an excessive number of threads, posts, or private messages within a limited period of time (‘flooding’).

is this directed towards my comment? I don't bleieve this is a repeated post and I composed it originally without copy and paste of any kind.  Nor have I posted this comment in other forums (cross posting).  I have not made mulitple postings in this thread that could be consolidated into a single post ('serial posting).  Perhaps you might be claiming I am posting too frequently (flooding).  If that's you're contention please specify the number of posts per day or whatever rule you're applying to judge flooding and apply it to all posters equally and state your concern clearly.  I generally only reply to other posts so it seems to me I'm not posting more than others, and I rarely, almost never, post repeated replies to the same post. 

[robbo203]

Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:

Quote:

In the division of labour of modern advanced societies, unproductive functions in this Marxian sense occupy a very large part of the labour force; the wealthier a society is, the more "unproductive" functions it can afford. In the USA for example, one can calculate from labour force data that facilitating exchange processes and processing financial claims alone is the main activity of more than 20 million workers. Legal staff, police, security personnel and military employees number almost 5 million workers.

no direct citation is given for this information, but several links to related studies and documents are listed at the bottom of the wikipedia entry.  Presumably the numbers came form a recent paper written in the USA, if that helps you find the original data and methodology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productive_and_unproductive_labourSeems like marx had some non-intuitive views on productive and non-productive labor which maybe you want to consider in framing your question? maybe you're question needs to be rephrased or expanded on or revised in order to get an answer that has value to you? here's some other key quotes that caught my attention in the wikiepdia entry. . . the definition of productive and unproductive labour is specific to each specific type of society (for example, feudal society, capitalist society, socialist society etc.) and depends on the given relations of production.there exists no neutral definition of productive and unproductive labour; what is productive from the point of view of one social class may not be productive from the point of view of another. 

 As mentionined in the OP , socially useless labour is not the same thing as unproductive labour though there is some overlap between them

[moderator1]

Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:

moderator1 wrote:

Reminder: 6. Do not make repeated postings of the same or similar messages to the same thread, or to multiple threads or forums (‘cross-posting’). Do not make multiple postings within a thread that could be consolidated into a single post (‘serial posting’). Do not post an excessive number of threads, posts, or private messages within a limited period of time (‘flooding’).

is this directed towards my comment? I don't bleieve this is a repeated post and I composed it originally without copy and paste of any kind.  Nor have I posted this comment in other forums (cross posting).  I have not made mulitple postings in this thread that could be consolidated into a single post ('serial posting).  Perhaps you might be claiming I am posting too frequently (flooding).  If that's you're contention please specify the number of posts per day or whatever rule you're applying to judge flooding and apply it to all posters equally and state your concern clearly.  I generally only reply to other posts so it seems to me I'm not posting more than others, and I rarely, almost never, post repeated replies to the same post. 

By my count you have posted today 28/11/2016 13 extremely long posts which by any stretch of the imagination is a case of flooding.  Please abide by the rules.

[Dave B]

“Using these 2014 figures and calculations, the financial services sector comprises about 16.9% of the global economy, as measured in GDP. Further data from the IMFshows that the total service economy makes up about 60-65% of total global revenue. If the OECD's suggestion that financial services are between 20% and 30% of the total service market, then financial services would comprise between 12% and 19.5% of the total global economy.” 17% then?A summary of the key findings include: (1) an estimated $360 billion was spent worldwide on criminal justice in 1997; and (2) of the total, 62 percent was spent on public policing, 3 percent on prosecutions, 18 percent on courts, and 17 percent on prisons. Criminal justice expenditure levels were found to be significantly tied to levels of available public monies About 1% ???????????? Military about 3%? http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spending.htm Retail “…..making it responsible for roughly 28.4% of total GDP. Some figures dispute that amount, claiming direct retail companies are only responsible for 9 to 10% of total GDP, while the rest is indirectly generated because of retail activity….” http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/071415/what-portion-global-economy-represented-retail-sector.asp  We could maybe say half of direct retail economy is taking money etc and make it 5%. So 26% so far?  It looks like the non financial service sector is quite large at say 60-17 = 43% But a lot of that looks ‘useful’; Examples of tertiary industries may include the following: • Entertainment • Government • Telecommunication • Hospitality industry/tourism • Mass media • Healthcare/hospitals • Public health • Information technology • Waste disposal But anyway we are down to about 75% nominally useful. I suppose individuals involved in ‘useful labour’ could come up with figures on the percentage of that which is useless. I work in manufacturing and think I would set that quite high at over 20%. I think that is conservative for where I work; we are very top heavy which is probably related to a high degree of automation etc. Not so much on site factory workers but cross multi producing site head office. workers. Actually a lot of what I do is wouldn’t be done in socialism as I check raw materials to make sure they are not deliberately shafting us rather than just goofing up.  So another 20% of 75% = 15% Raising it to 40% I also think socially useless labour has to be connected to technologically related socially unnecessary labour power. Ie making stuff in a labour intensive way where other technologies are available but not employed because of the low cost of labour power in the third world in particular. Difficult to calculate? There is inverse reserve army of the unemployed whatever that is etc. I think we could give that a 5% 45% All the fanny for the consumption fund of the ruling class but that is probably not all that great 2%? 47% And there is ancillary stuff buried no doubt in the primary data. I think working class bling and consummerist Prozac is important as well. Making crap stuff that falls apart after they get the hang of it. I have a friend who bought one of the first microwave ovens in the early 1980’s; it is still working and she uses it a lot. I think some of that 47% might be ‘done’ in socialism; I think we will still have bean counters or ‘book-keeping’ in socialism. But it maybe it is a start?

[robbo203]

Thanks Dave ,  Thats a very useful start indeed.  If you have any other links you can post here that would be great, I guess the really tricky bit is to estimate the amount of  labour that is indirectly socially useless.  Banks for example are housed in buildings but we normally think of the construction industry as being socially useful,  In this instance part of the industry is devoted to provisioning a socially useless activity – banking.  The same argument applies to utilities and infrastructure Talking of the construction industry we should not overlook the truly monumental waste involved in empty homes.  In Europe there are 11 million empty homes (and 4 million homeless people). In America the figure is 18 million, In China it is a staggering 60 million.  And even this is only the tip of the iceberg.  It does not taking into account the numerous half completed projects (which are quite a common sight here in Spain) , not to mention all those empty offices shops, warehouses and factories  I think the figure of just over half the workforce being involved in socially useless labour is about right

[Anonymous]

robbo203 wrote:

As mentionined in the OP , socially useless labour is not the same thing as unproductive labour though there is some overlap between them

Dohgh,I feel as dumb as homer simpson right now.  Sorry, for not recognizing the difference.  My bad. Appologies for taking your time reading and thanks for your time to reply. One minor additional thought came to me after reading other better replies to your question. . . I think you should consider all marketing, and PR and competitive advantage seeking industries.  So all of advertising is socially useless in my opinion because it's purpose is clearly intended to get a bigger piece of the market share pie and not to grow the market pie.  I think if the labor were socially usefull it would maybe grow teh market share pie? I'm not sure if that's the logical test that's correct, and would deffer to your judgement on the decision.   Obviously my suggestion that advertising as an industry sector is included in the definition of "socially useless labor"  is a suggestion biased by my economic worldview so maybe my proposed inclusion is just my idea of "socially useless labor" and not relevant to YOUR definition of socially useless labor.

Quote:

Advertising jobs reportedly made up 14 percent, or 20 million, of the 142 million jobs in the country for 2014.Each industry job was said to support an additional 34 jobs across different industries.The ad industry supported $1.9 trillion in salaries and wages, roughly 17 percent of all labor income in the U.S. Advertising will support over 23 million jobs in the U.S. by 2019.In the next few years, advertising spending rates are projected to grow 3.3 percent annually and will reach $349 billion by 2019.

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/study-ad-industry-contributed-nearly-20-percent-toward-us-gdp-2014-168164

[Bijou Drains]

robbo203 wrote:

Thanks Dave ,  Thats a very useful start indeed.  If you have any other links you can post here that would be great, I guess the really tricky bit is to estimate the amount of  labour that is indirectly socially useless.  Banks for example are housed in buildings but we normally think of the construction industry as being socially useful,  In this instance part of the industry is devoted to provisioning a socially useless activity – banking.  The same argument applies to utilities and infrastructure Talking of the construction industry we should not overlook the truly monumental waste involved in empty homes.  In Europe there are 11 million empty homes (and 4 million homeless people). In America the figure is 18 million, In China it is a staggering 60 million.  And even this is only the tip of the iceberg.  It does not taking into account the numerous half completed projects (which are quite a common sight here in Spain) , not to mention all those empty offices shops, warehouses and factories  I think the figure of just over half the workforce being involved in socially useless labour is about right

Also: Sales and marketing staff, auditors, advertising industry, those manufacturing goods for use in the banking industry (cheque books, paper for bank statements, money, tbose irritating little fucking pens, etc.), management consultants, people involved in the education and training of all of the people mentioned above, people involved in the production of tickets, ticket machines, ticket barriers, bloody ticket inspectors, miners who dig gold out of a hole in South Africa, transport workers who transport it to another hole in the ground (Fort Worth and other bullion holding centre), armed guards watch the gold in its  new hole in the ground to make sure it stays there, the people who do exactly the same for diamonds, rubies, emeralds, etc. estate agents, all of the staff at the national lottery, charity fund raisers, job centre workers, people administering pensions and state benefits, tax officials, tax consultants, actors hawking their wares on TV ads cajoling us into buying the tawdry tat the supermarkets label as "special",  Noel friggin Edmonds, the royal family, the large number of people employed by the royal household ensuring the useless gits don't die from being unable to do the simplest tasks like making a meal for themselves, bookmakers, the gambling "industry", Alan  Bastard Sugar, everyone involved in the X factor, burglar alarm manufacturers and installers, PPI sales people, about 80% of the poor sods who work in call centres, bar staff (in socialism we'll put the pumps the other way round so you can help yourself), financial fraudsters, thieves… the list goes on and on.

[robbo203]

Here's an article I came across  that is of interest. It illustrates a growing trend among the commentariat. Finance is no longer serving the interests of industry and has got way to big for its boots. As if finance even when it supported manufacturing – shades of Hilferdings Finance Capital – was ever productive or socially useful http://evonomics.com/financialization-hidden-illness-rana-foorohar/

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