682678

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CNC0010.1177/0309816816682678Capital & ClassMoraitis and Copley

Article

Capital & Class

Productive and 124

The Author(s) 2016

unproductive labour and

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social form: Putting class

DOI: 10.1177/0309816816682678
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struggle in its place

Alexis B Moraitis
The University of Warwick, UK

Jack Copley
The University of Warwick, UK

Abstract
The categories of productive and unproductive labour have been a source of
contention among Marxist scholars since Marx first committed them to paper. This
article will offer a critique of both the orthodox and autonomist approaches to
this issue, arguing that they constitute transhistorical and analytically inadequate
interpretations. In contrast, a social form approach to productive and unproductive
labour provides a substantive definition of these categories in relation to the
commodity form, and brings class struggle back to the forefront in a theoretically
consistent manner.

Keywords
class struggle, Open Marxism, productive and unproductive labour, social form,
value theory

Introduction
The post-1970s revival of interest in the obscure, and often dismissed, categories of pro-
ductive and unproductive labour (PUPL) correlates with the deindustrialisation, tertiari-
sation and financialisation of advanced capitalist economies. These processes have

Corresponding author:
Alexis B Moraitis, The University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK.
Email: a-s.boutefeu-moraitis@warwick.ac.uk
2 Capital & Class

destabilised Marxist scholarships traditional association of capitalist production with

manufacturing and of the proletariat with the industrial working class. As labour in
many of these countries has been increasingly drawn into activities ostensibly within the
sphere of circulation, coinciding with a relative slowdown in economic growth, there has
emerged a renewed commitment to understanding where and by whom value is pro-
duced: in other words, to clarify the categories of PUPL.
This is not simply a niche topic, peculiar to Marxist intellectualism, or, at least, it does
not have to be. Instead, the antagonistic co-existence of productive and unproductive
activities is at the heart of capitalist social practice and is implicit in everyday politics. The
unending drive to privatise activities in every aspect of life, the commodification of com-
monly held resources, and the outsourcing of previously in-house tasks these all repre-
sent capitals attempt to drag labour activities from the unproductive to the productive
sphere. Yet, as is abundantly clear from the simmering conflict in the Eurozone, these
changes in the character of PUPL are not inevitable tectonic shifts but the subject of
struggle. The tumultuous first half of 2015 in Greece reminds us that the absorption of
human activities into capitals productive sphere is not a smooth and peaceful process.
The electoral and grassroots struggle of Greeks against the Troikas directives to cut hospi-
tal funding, shed public services jobs, and privatise ports and airports is simultaneously a
struggle against capitals attempt to minimise its unproductive expenditures and render
Greek labour competitive on the global market. Clearly, it is essential that historical mate-
rialist analysis provides a substantive definition of PUPL, which does not attach class
struggle as an afterthought. Instead, these categories must be understood as existing pre-
cisely through the struggle over the imposition of, and resistance to, the commodity form.
This article begins by reviewing the orthodox interpretations of PUPL. These
approaches are characterised by three central themes: a conceptualisation of PUPL as
transhistorical categories; as concrete practices related to certain stages of the circuit of
capital in a fixed, static manner; and as sociological categories within which to assign
different strata of the real working class. The first tenet of the orthodox school consti-
tutes a rejection of Marxs historically specific method of analysis, while the second and
third prove insufficient to capture the diverse concrete realities of unproductive labour in
a coherent theoretical scheme. These approaches conceptualise PUPL as a pre-ordained
social reality divorced from the uninterrupted motion of the class struggle, and reduce
analysis of PUPL to a technical matter of social accounting ultimately gutting these
categories of their social content.
Next, Harvies autonomist perspective on PUPL is interrogated. This approach
attempts to bring class struggle into the heart of this debate a goal to which the authors
of this article are sympathetic by reformulating both value and capital as open catego-
ries. Value is understood as alienating labour and the measurement of work, while capital
is effectively conceived of as a quantitatively unchanging relation of separation between
the working class and the means of production. While this autonomist approach repre-
sents a welcome break from the rigid and depoliticised orthodox interpretation of PUPL,
it too ultimately falls short. Not only does Harvie replicate the orthodoxys transhistori-
cality, thus rendering value and capital generic categories of human practice, but class
struggle in relation to PUPL is erroneously located at the level of the imposition of
subjectively alienating work.
Moraitis and Copley 3

In contrast, this article puts forward a social form approach to PUPL, whereby the
commodity is understood as the mode of existence of productive labour. This implies,
first, that PUPL must be understood as relational categories of practice that may corre-
spond sociologically to certain real individual workers, but are not in themselves socio-
logical categories: and second, that no concrete labour, regardless of its sensuous qualities,
can be a priori judged productive or unproductive but rather, any labour can be pro-
ductive depending on whether its product is expressed as an exchange-value. This inde-
terminacy means that the final arbiter in the real configuration of PUPL in any given
society is the historical development of the class struggle, particularly the dynamics of
commodification and decommodification of labours product. Thus, PUPL are inher-
ently categories of struggle, reflecting as they do capitals attempt to impose the com-
modity form as the only expression of social worth, and labours counterposed struggle
to assert its needs at any cost.

Orthodox interpretations
In its attempt to locate the source of value production in capitalisms tertiarised stage,
the traditional Marxist literature on PUPL has offered a plethora of classifications cata-
loguing varieties of labourers in the productive and unproductive spheres. However, as
Houston (1997) noted, it is doubtful that one could find two capable Marxist applied
economists who, if they were to examine all the activities in the sphere of circulation,
would agree on a high percentage of the assignments to productive and unproductive
labour (p. 135). Indeed, in the literature, one can find at least seven different definitions
of PUPL (Laibman 1992). The attempt to classify labour into the spheres of productive
and unproductive has managed to create more confusion than clarity.
In the view of this article, the terminological uncertainty in the PUPL literature does
not discredit the practical and theoretical validity of the PUPL categories, as Houston
and Laibman would suggest. Yet, it does seriously challenge the classificatory approach,
which proposes a reified understanding of the PUPL spheres as fixed domains of capital-
ist society in which labourers are structurally assigned according to the objective charac-
teristics of their work. The following review of the traditional PUPL analysis does not
attempt to provide an extensive interrogation of the different PUPL interpretations, as
Laibman does, but rather attempts to expose the methodological and theoretical assump-
tions that prevent an open interpretation of PUPL as socially constituted categories. In
what follows, we will examine three particularly problematic aspects of the orthodox
literature: the transhistorical nature of PUPL, its definition according to the position of
labourers in the circuit of capital, and its sociological conceptualisation.

On PUPLs transhistoricality
Marxists have often attempted to delineate the boundaries of PUPL by reference to the
transhistorical tendency of societies to labour both productively and unproductively.
This implies that these categories have specific abstract characteristics which persist in
every historical social formation. More specifically, it has been argued that all social for-
mations are characterised by a common set of core activities: the production of
4 Capital & Class

use-values, their distribution and circulation, their consumption and, finally, activities
devoted to the reproduction of the given social order (Miller 1984: 144145; Savran and
Tonak 1999: 121; Shaikh and Tonak 1994: 2122). In this scheme, distribution and
consumption do not involve the expenditure of labour, in contrast to the other activities.
Within the spheres involving labour expenditure, productive labour can only be found
in production activities, given their privileged, metabolic relation with nature. Indeed,
only labour in production constitutes the essential basis on which the existence and
material subsistence of every social formation rests (Gough 1972; Savran and Tonak
1999: 122). In contrast, other labouring activities have a secondary, unproductive role
with regards to the use-values life cycle, given that they do not alter its properties but
rather concern the transfer of its ownership titles (circulation) or the guaranteeing of the
social conditions under which the use-value is produced (reproduction). The last two
kinds of activities are, furthermore, subject to the historically specific configuration of
class relations under different modes of production, rather than a necessary precondition
for the existence of production in general (Leadbeater 1985: 598; Savran and Tonak
1999: 122). This transhistorical presentation of social activities permits the orthodox
theorists to sketch the characteristics of PUPL in general: productive labour in general
constitutes useful labour which provides society with the use-values necessary for its
subsistence; while unproductive labour, in general, refers to the activities historically
necessitated by a given class-based mode of production. According to this logic, capitalist
society does not escape this transhistorical necessity and thus capitalistically productive
labour is viewed as a subcategory of productive labour in general (Gough 1972: 60;
Savran and Tonak 1999: 124).
The second attribute of productive labour for capital is, following Marxs definition,
the production of surplus value. This definition encompasses all activities undertaken by
wage-labour employed by capital in production (whether material or immaterial), trans-
portation and storage since they all create or alter the characteristics of commodities
(Gough 1972). On the other hand, all wage-labour or labour in production failing to
meet these criteria, such as independent commodity producers or domestic labourers
paid out of revenue, is deemed unproductive. Labourers performing circulatory labour,
such as commercial, advertising and financial activities, are unproductive because their
activities are not necessitated by the technical requirements of production in general, but
rather by the specifically capitalist necessity to realise value through the transformation
of the commodity form into its money form (Barba and De Vivo 2012: 1485; Gough
1972: 60; Mandel 1975: 401). Similarly, state labour engaged in reproductive activities,
such as those related to the legal, administrative, military or police structures of society,
are classified into the unproductive sphere given that it constitutes unproductive labour
in general: labour aimed at the repressive management of class conflict rather than the
satisfaction of social needs through the production of use-values (Savran and Tonak
1999: 138).
Within this transhistorical understanding, there is an attempt to create an a priori
scheme of the activities that correspond to PUPL in capitalism. The inherent qualities of
PUPL are abstracted and given a transhistorical substance which is valid within every
mode of production. However, this disregards the particularity of Marxs method of
abstraction outlined in the Grundrisses Introduction, which as Gunn (1992) argues is
Moraitis and Copley 5

based around the historically specific character the temporality of abstractions that
are thus capable of practical existence (pp. 1617). In other words, Marx (1981) explic-
itly denies the possibility of understanding capitalist categories by reference to general
transhistorical categories, which when stripped of their specific social qualities become
meaningless (p. 954).
Therefore, PUPL in capitalist society should not be understood as a species of PUPL
in general. Instead, they must be analysed as categories that obtain their full validity only
for and within these (capitalist) relations (Marx 1993: 105). As such, the sole criterion
that determines the productiveness of labour is not its general social usefulness, but
rather its socially determined capacity to offer a specific use-value to the capitalist,
namely an unpaid surplus product (Marx 1969: 400).

On the circuit of capital

The abstract existence of the substance of PUPL is seen as the general precondition, or
the necessary but insufficient condition, for the manifestation of these activities within
capitalist society (Gough 1972: 51; Savran and Tonak 1999: 124). For traditional PUPL
analyses, the sufficient condition is satisfied by the structurally assigned position of
labour within the circuit of capital. Marxs basic portrayal of the circuit of capital, M-C
P C-M, represents the three metamorphoses which capital undergoes in its
process of self-expansion. The first (M-C) and third (C-M) stages concern the change
of form of equivalent values, while only the middle stage (P) actually augments the mag-
nitude of value. Based on this, orthodox accounts of PUPL conclude that productive
labour is only to be found in activities that are positioned in the middle stage of the
circuit, given that only there is surplus value produced. Circulatory activities specialise
in the buying and selling of commodities. They simply manage the transformation of
values form, and are thus unproductive of value. Despite circulatory labour being essen-
tial for the reproduction of the totality of the circuit, its remuneration is interpreted as a
form of consumption of capitals revenue, that is, a deduction from the total pool of
surplus value created in the production process (Barba and De Vivo 2012: 1484; Miller
1984: 149; Savran and Tonak 1999: 129130; Shaikh and Tonak 1994: 25; Tregenna
2011: 291).
The distinction between production and circulation is used to empirically catalogue
all the activities in the unproductive sphere that engage in the sales effort (Baran and
Sweezy 1966), such as the retail, commerce, advertising, accounting and financial sec-
tors. For instance, Moseley (1991), in his empirical investigation of the increase of
unproductive labour in the post-war US economy, treats as unproductive the wholesale,
retail trade, business services, finance, insurance and real estate sectors (p. 126). In a
similar vein, Shaikh and Tonak (1994) argue that circulatory activities are found both in
the trade sector, where commodity exchange occurs, and in the secondary sectors, in
which value created in production recirculates by means of royalty payments. They
therefore deem as unproductive the wholesale/retail, building and equipment rentals,
distributive transportation, financial, insurance and ground rent sectors. However, as
Izquierdo (2006) notes, this methodological practice erroneously associates circulatory
activities with whole sectors, and ultimately ends up utilising a use-value criterion, based
6 Capital & Class

on the concrete activity performed by labour, to delineate unproductive labour (pp.

5758). In addition, Marx (1981) does not understand the different stages of the circuit
of capital as fixed structures of the economy but as mere instants or transition points in
capitals self-valorisation movement (p. 380).
In his presentation of commercial capital a subset of circulation capital Marx
examines its unproductive buying and selling functions in their pure form, or as an ideal
state abstracted from its diverse real functions, which include activities that correspond
to the production process (i.e. packaging, transportation, storage; Marx 1981: 379380;
Rubin 2010: 270). Whether some business functions may be identical with this ideal
form of circulation is only coincidental and contingent on the historical evolution of
capitalism and the social division of labour (Marx 1981: 380). Thus, the commercial
sector cannot be a priori designated as unproductive in its totality because in reality it
does not appear in its pure form (Marx 1981: 380). Unlike the circuits of capital
approachs rigid understanding of the circulation process, the latter is not an empirical
category directly identifiable with particular sectors or firms. Rather, the circulation
phases of the circuit of capital are points in time in values perennial journey from its
initial form M to its expanded form M, which can be found across sectors and firms.
Furthermore, this restricted conception of PUPL is faced with the inconvenient fact
that not all labour that is unproductive exists within the circuit of capital. Thus, the
circuit of capital approach needs to have recourse to additional criteria in order to char-
acterise other kinds of concrete labour as unproductive. Such is the case of labour
employed by the state in non-production activities, which is financed out revenue in the
form of taxation (Mohun 2014: 359). Similarly, supervisory labour, that is, labour
employed to implement labour discipline within the workplace, represents another cat-
egory of unproductive labourers whose function does not create surplus value. Another
case of unproductive labourers is that of labour exercised in storage activities. While
storage is considered as a natural part of the production process, it becomes unproduc-
tive when it is necessitated for the storage of commodities that failed to be sold on the
market due to stagnation in circulation (Gough 1972: 57).
The distinction between production and circulation is not a sufficient criterion with
which to categorise unproductive activities. As a result, different criteria are invoked in
order to incorporate various kinds of concrete labours into the unproductive sphere, such
as circulatory labour arising from the genuine costs of circulation and labour, arising
from the exploitative functions necessitated within the production process (Leadbeater
1985: 598). Laibman (1999), in his critique of Mohuns (1996) take on the PUPL dis-
tinction, rightly criticises him for arbitrarily including supervisory labour in the unpro-
ductive sphere, despite its presence across the circuit of capital: the circuit-of-capital
device does not help in their classification. Supervisory labor, then, is categorised by
means of the same sort of arbitrary verbal attribution that has appeared in the unproduc-
tive literature from time immemorial (p. 65). The circuits of capital approach fails to
provide a consistent definition of unproductive labour solely based on the distinction
between production and circulation and necessarily has an ad hoc recourse to a (theoreti-
cally infinite) number of additional criteria in order to treat the special cases of unpro-
ductive labour. As a result, Mohun (1996) conveniently concludes that unproductive
labor is not an homogeneous category. It is rather ranged along a spectrum from the
Moraitis and Copley 7

systemically necessary to the purely historically contingent (p. 52). Unproductive labour
appears as an all-encompassing sphere absorbing different labour categories which do
not correspond to the profile of the productive labourer. Unproductive labour is thus
defined negatively, and therefore fails to acquire a substantial definition which would
elucidate its social raison dtre and its meaning in capitalist social practice.

On sociological classification
One of the main concerns of the traditional delineation of the PUPL spheres has been
the translation of the latter into empirically verifiable categories in order to permit the
identification and measurement of the volume of unproductive workers in the actual
economy. On the one hand, the classification of unproductive labour categories becomes
a means of calculating the value-content of national economic activity: a tool for social
bookkeeping, as Mandel (1981) puts it (p. 46). In that vein, the measurement of
unproductive labour in the economy becomes essential for the understanding of the
trends of capitalist accumulation and the variables that express its performance, such as
rates of surplus value and profit. Indeed, Paitaridis and Tsoulfidis (2012), Moseley
(1997) and Shaikh and Tonak (1994) present empirics that suggest that the US econ-
omy has seen a radical increase in unproductive workers since the 1970s, adversely
affecting profitability and contributing to the contemporary slowdown in growth. More
recently, Tregenna (2014) has utilised the PUPL typology in order to discern the form
of deindustrialisation that characterises most advanced economies, whereby the decline
of manufacturing is accompanied by a rise in non-surplus value-producing activities
and a consequent limit on domestic surplus value production (pp. 13841385). On the
other hand, other Marxists have conceptualised PUPL classification as a device for rede-
fining the contours of the working class. This is illustrated by Poulantzas (1975) com-
mitment to rescue the Marxist analysis of social classes in the face of the increase in
unproductive wage-earners, namely white-collar and service sector workers (p. 193).
The distinctive class affiliation of this emerging subject, which can neither be associated
with the bourgeoisie nor the working class, is, for Poulantzas (1975), to a great extent
linked to its structural economic position as a non-value-producing category of wage
earners (pp. 209222). In the class-oriented understanding of PUPL, while productive
labourers form the pure working class, unproductive ones constitute the economic
basis for the formation of a distinct class termed by Poulantzas the petty bourgeoisie,
and also referred to as semi-proletarians (Terray 1973: 50) or the new middle class
(Nicolaus 1967; Sweezy 1942). While the reductionist identification of the working
class with productive workers has been abandoned to a great extent (Braverman 1974;
Gough 1972; Meiksins 1981), PUPL are still interpreted as discrete and externally
related categories of the labour force. For instance, Braverman (1974), who argues that
the increasing proletarianisation of clerical and commercial work has eliminated any
class distinctions that might have characterised productive and unproductive labourers
in the earlier periods of capitalism, still treats the latter as technically distinct (p. 292)
and sociologically opposed categories of the labour force. Whether the classification of
workers into the productive and unproductive spheres is undertaken for the purpose of
gauging their impact on economic performance, on capitalist class structures or the
8 Capital & Class

occupational composition of the workforce, PUPL are, ultimately, interpreted as reified

and arithmetically measurable categories.
However, the classificatory approach faces innumerable difficulties in its endeavour to
empirically separate productive and unproductive workers. Indeed, in which sphere are
we to catalogue OConnors (1975: 301303) example of the commercial worker, who
in addition to selling commodities undertakes the productive tasks of moving and pack-
aging them? Furthermore, Marx argues that supervisory labour (or the labour of super-
intendence) has a dual form; on the one hand, it is a necessary function of the production
process aiming at the coordination of work and, on the other hand, it becomes unpro-
ductive when it results from class antagonism and the necessity to manage and discipline
labour within the workplace (Marx 1981: 507508, 1972: 505). How can we make a
precise empirical distinction between labourers performing these two different func-
tions? The supervisors coordination of work and management of class conflict, while
distinct in the abstract, are impossibly inter-woven in practice. On other occasions, Marx
(1976) refers to capitalists as the productive class par excellence, due to their role in
managing the labour process (p. 1048). It is clear that this insight rules out an under-
standing of PUPL as different categories of workers.
The technical difficulties of the classificatory endeavour are acknowledged by some
Marxists. Mohun (1996) agrees that empirical research is not well equipped to deal with
a clear-cut practical distinction between productive and unproductive supervisory labour
(p. 37). Similarly, Savran and Tonak (1999) argue that the existence of both productive
and unproductive commercial workers might pose some difficulties in the measurement
of PUPL (p. 129). At the same time, these authors also argue that these practical difficul-
ties are solely to be found at the level of empirical investigation and do not inhibit their
theoretical understanding of PUPL (Mohun 1996: 37; Savran and Tonak 1999: 142).
However, we would retort that these empirical difficulties are, in fact, a clear manifesta-
tion of a more fundamental theoretical shortcoming. Bonefeld (2014: 103104), in his
critique of traditional understandings of class, aptly notes the inherent circularity that
permeates the use of Marxist concepts for the construction of classificatory schemes that
pigeonhole individuals. As he argues, such methodologies consist in the delineation of an
empirically verifiable pattern of social stratification, such as wage levels (or in our case,
concrete labour activities), and the subsequent grouping of individuals into these differ-
ent theoretical categories based on the same empirical characteristics that have been used
to build the classificatory scheme in the first place. With the case of PUPL, this same
tautology is reproduced. The circular appeal to raw data is the source of the orthodoxys
confusion. Their categories represent an omission of Marxs critique of the fetishisation
of economic categories and his conceptualisation of the latter as mediations of the antag-
onistic capitalist social relations. For Marx socio-economic categories have a twofold
existence as simultaneously sensuous and supersensuous things; they are inseparably
both objective/concrete categories and subjective/abstract realities (Backhaus 1992). For
instance, value is both an immaterial and unquantifiable social category as well as a cat-
egory that becomes concrete and measurable through its manifestation as money. This
twofold character of Marxian categories makes them untranslatable in positivist-oriented
academic language and bourgeois social science (Backhaus 1992). Thus, the concepts of
PUPL cannot be understood as positivist categories founded on the objectiveness of
Moraitis and Copley 9

economic reality (Caill 1975: 72), but rather need to be examined in their socially con-
stituted dimension. This is exactly what Marx intends when he posits productive labour
as a social relation (Marx 1969: 396, 1976: 1043).
To conclude, we agree with Laibmans (1999) view that the PUPL distinction is a
residue of bourgeois classical economics (p. 71), but only insofar as PUPL theorisation
has confined itself to a quantitative determination of these categories. This constitutes a
disregard for Marxs (1976) novel method, namely, the critical interrogation of the social
substance of capitalist categories, instead of the mere analysis of their magnitude and
quantitative form (p. 174). By abiding to a classificatory methodology, the critical element
of Marxs categories is eliminated because they are treated as positive and descriptive cat-
egories of capitalist society (Bonefeld 2014: 105106). Within this rigid understanding,
class struggle can play no more than a supporting role in the real development of PUPL.
Yet, in reality, the antagonistic unfolding of the capital relation forces a constant redistri-
bution of PUPL activities that explodes the intransigence of the orthodoxys categories.

Harvies autonomist position

Authors in the autonomist tradition have actively sought to transform the theory of value
into a dynamic, indeterminate system that ultimately addresses the struggles of the work-
ing class and capitals response. Many of the orthodox interpretations of Marxs catego-
ries have been successfully reformulated in such a way, yet PUPL has rarely been dealt
with at length. In his early work, Negri (1991) rallied against the political implications
of the PUPL distinction, labelling it an anachronism from 18th century materialism (p.
64), while later, he abandoned it altogether through his rejection of the category of value
(Hardt and Negri 2000). In a similarly political vein, Dalla Costa and James (1972)
claimed that painting housework as unproductive labour reactionarily posits housewives
as external to the working class. More recently, Caffentzis (2013) argues that Marxs work
on PUPL was characterised by great failures of categorisation, especially in relation to
the theory of war (p. 213). These more or less fleeting interrogations of PUPL fall far
short of autonomist critiques of other fundamental Marxist categories, such as primitive
accumulation (Federici 2004).
In contrast, Harvie (2005) puts forward the only extensive and systematic engage-
ment with this issue from an autonomist perspective, while also drawing from scholars
in the open Marxist tradition, particularly Werner Bonefeld and John Holloway. His
interpretation does not accept the traditional autonomist abandonment of these catego-
ries altogether and explicitly rejects Negris dismissal of the labour theory of value. Yet,
he still diverts radically from the orthodox Marxist approach instead proposing that all
labour can be productive or unproductive, depending on labours acquiescence or resist-
ance to capital. A number of authors have since used Harvies formulation as a spring-
board from which to reintroduce struggle or historical-specificity to discussions of PUPL
and the changing nature of work (Beverungen et al. 2015; Burrows 2012; Fuchs and
Sevignani 2013; Pitts 2015). Yet, they do so without interrogating the route by which
Harvie arrives at these conclusions, namely his fundamental revision of Marxs catego-
ries. As such, this article will show how Harvies theory of PUPL is based on an idiosyn-
cratic (mis)understanding of value and capital. With regards to value, there are three core
10 Capital & Class

elements of Harvies position abstract labour, socially necessary labour time (SNLT),
and the commodity,: while his interpretation of capital is more straightforward.

On value
First, if productive labour is that which produces value, then this calls for an interroga-
tion of the substance of value: abstract labour. In an attempt to reformulate this category
from a workers standpoint, De Angelis (1995: 108) offers a unique argument. Rather
than abstract labour constituting a genuine abstraction from the concrete characteristics
of any particular work, De Angelis (1995) understands it as the brutalising homogenisa-
tion of work on a subjective level: the sensuous experience of working is restricted to the
experience of exhaustion and emptiness of meaning. The worker turns into Marcuses
One Dimensional Man (p. 110). Furthermore, this abstraction necessitates the alloca-
tion and imposition of work on a societal scale without regard to the individual workers
experience of concrete work. Finally, as abstract labour produces no use-value, but value
itself, it is unlimited in its magnitude by societal need or elite greed. Abstract labour is
thus alienated, imposed, and boundless in character (De Angelis 1995: 116).
Wholly adopting De Angelis reading of abstract labour, Harvie argues that produc-
tive labour is labour expended under these conditions. Yet, Harvie takes this argument
even further, explicitly referring to abstract labour as a tangible reality and as a lived
experience (Harvie 2005: 149, 2006: 12). Conceived of as such, the divide between
labour expended in the sphere of production on one side, and the spheres of circulation
and reproduction on the other side, melts away. The inhumanity of the workers toil,
which mortifies his flesh and ruins his mind, cannot be restricted to any particular
sphere (Marx 1992: 326).
This stands in stark contrast to the novel elements of Marxs theory of value, namely
its historical and social character. Unlike Ricardo, Marx sought to analyse labour in its
historically specific expressions, rather than as a transhistorical fact. In all systems of
divided labour, societys total labour must be allocated and distributed into different
branches of production, corresponding to human needs (Marx 1868). For this to occur,
various types of labour must be commensurable, in order for production to function
coherently. Yet, in a system of private commodity producers, where individual concrete
labours do not directly relate to each other as part of a social whole, labour must be made
commensurable by means other than democratic or despotic planning (Rubin 2010).
Marx argues that when the products of concrete labour are brought together as com-
modities with exchange-values, their sensuous characteristics fall away and they stand
before each other as magnitudes of crystallised generic labour with no qualitative fea-
tures. Through this equalisation of the products of labour, real human labour itself
becomes abstract labour: one homogenous fragment of societys total labour (Marx 1976:
129130). Abstract labour is thus a specifically capitalist and fundamentally social sub-
stance, emergent from the totality of exchange relations.
Harvies position on abstract labour conceptualises it neither as a category of historical-
specificity nor one related to social totality. First, there is nothing specifically capitalist
about work characterised by pain, suffering, human brutalisation, boredom, stupidity,
although we agree that capitalist labour is uniquely boundless (De Angelis 1995: 110).
Moraitis and Copley 11

Rather, abstract labour is an emergent phenomenon that is completely incoherent in

reference to any single concrete labour, regardless of its unpleasant features. As Bonefeld
(2010) writes, boring assembly line work is boring concrete labour, not abstract labour
(p. 260). Second, the external imposition of work is as old as class society itself. It is
impossible to see abstract labour as a unique social form if it simply signifies the develop-
ment of production in general at the expense of the workers individuality (Kicillof and
Starosta 2007: 19). Attempts by De Angelis and Harvie to simply merge a subjective read-
ing of alienation with abstract labour in effect collapse concrete and abstract labour into a
single confused category. Consequently, they fail to convincingly argue that all labour is
abstract and therefore productive of value. As Holloway (2009) writes in his critique of
positive autonomism, this attempt to define Marxist categories according to the concrete
features and identities of the working class can become easily confused with a sociological
analysis not dissimilar to that which characterises orthodox Marxism (p. 96).
Next, SNLT is reworked from the autonomist perspective. Abstract labour is the
qualitative aspect of value, namely the relation of equivalence between diverse labours.
But value also has a purely quantitative aspect: SNLT, or the average time necessary to
produce a use-value under the normal conditions of a particular society (Marx 1976:
129). The establishment of abstract labour through the exchange of commodities exposes
all producers to one anothers time-efficiency, leading to the establishment of different
SNLTs for different products. Reductions in SNLTs through technological innovation
act as a whip for less advanced producers, forcing them to discipline and hyper-exploit
their own workforce in order to avoid going out of business. Yet, for De Angelis and
Harvie (2009), the establishment of these disciplining magnitudes happens not just
through commodity exchange but also through other forms of commensuration.
Focussing on universities, Harvie (2006) points to the use of external examiners, quality
managers and the standardisation of contact hours and assessment methods, in creating
tendencies towards the establishment of average times for various academic labours that
in turn discipline academics (pp. 1415). The implication for PUPL is that all labour
which can be measured, whether its product is exchanged as a commodity or not, is
subject to SNLT and thus productive of value.
However, this once again describes a mechanism that is not specific to capitalism.
Different modes of social organisation other than commodity exchange certainly coexist
under capitalism, yet it is important not to confuse them as one and the same. As Rubin
(2010) writes, it is false to argue that someone equalised different forms of labour in
advance, comparing them by means of given measuring units, after which the products
of labour were exchanged proportionally (p. 126). SNLTs, as the uniquely capitalist
mechanism for the redistribution of labour, emerge unconsciously from the anarchic,
spontaneous character of the commodity capitalist economy (Rubin 2010: 126). The
conscious attempt to measure work is not a uniquely capitalist trait, but this phenome-
non is intensified exponentially under capitalism due to the establishment of SNLTs
through commodity exchange. As such, Harvie states the causality backwards. In fact,
the conscious measurement of work does not create SNLTs, but rather, the competitive
pressures unleashed by the creation of SNLTs push the capitalist to more rigorously
measure work. This is the process by which this historically nonspecific social form
(deliberate measurement of work) becomes disciplined by and subordinated to a
12 Capital & Class

specifically capitalist social form (generalised commodity exchange). Furthermore, it is

unclear exactly why, in Harvies account, individual universities are interested in creating
labour commensuration across higher education as a whole. While they may form lob-
bies to influence government policy (such as the Redbricks in the United Kingdom),
they do not do so in order to forge cross-institutional averages of labour productivity.
Instead, SNLTs in private education (to the extent that they are primarily teaching,
rather than research, institutions) are established through the exchange of qualifications
or degrees as commodities. In turn, under the external pressure of this moving social
average, individual capitals seek to discipline their own academic labour through careful
measurement of their working practices. In other words, the conscious measurement of
labour, that Harvie details, does not create SNLT but is a result of it.
Third and finally, the autonomist conception of value rests on an understanding of all
capitalist labour as productive of commodities. After attempting to demonstrate that all
labour under the thumb of capital produces value both in terms of abstract labour and
SNLT Harvie argues that all labour also produces use-values for capital. The two crite-
ria of what constitutes a commodity (value and use-value) are thus fulfilled. Harvie
details the various useful services that those labours traditionally conceived of as unpro-
ductive actually produce for capitalism. For example, cashiers not only ensure that the
surplus value embodied in the retail capitalists commodity is realised as money profits
but they also safeguard the retailers property; the teacher produces not just education
but also labour-power (Harvie 2005: 153). In sum, for labour to be judged as productive
of commodities and thus constitute productive labour it is sufficient that this activ-
ity is the result of abstract human labour and produces a use-value for someone (Harvie
2005: 153).
Yet, these criteria are, in fact, insufficient to define a commodity. Marxs analysis in
the first chapter of Capital: Volume I does not begin and end with the discovery of use-
value and value in the commodity. Instead, he develops the concept of value through the
analysis of two obvious aspects of all commodities: use-value and exchange-value.
Turning the commodity over in his hands, Marx (1976) exposes exchange-value as the
necessary mode of expression, or form of appearance, of value (p. 128). To propose, as
Harvie does, that abstract labour and SNLT value can be embodied in a use-value
that lacks an exchange-value is once again to deny the historical-specificity of these cat-
egories. This does not just clash with Marxs theoretical system; it is also a practical
problem. How may a capitalist realise the surplus labour embodied in a use-value if it
has no exchange-value? One must conclude that the capitalist exploits their workers
labour-power in order to hoard the use-values produced, or simply to impose work for
the sake of it. The question of the relationship between surplus value and profit is
completely abandoned. As Carter and Stevenson (2012: 484) point out, this mistake is
at its clearest when Harvie argues that teachers produce the commodity labour-power.
How does a teachers employer, whether a public or private school, realise a profit through
the consequent sale of the students labour-power? No profit flows back to the school
once their former student begins to produce surplus value for some other company.
Instead, the (private) school realises profit through the sale of education itself, and it is
this qualification that constitutes the commodity produced by the teacher. The teacher
produces the students labour-power in functional terms but not in value terms. Contrary
Moraitis and Copley 13

to the autonomist interpretation, productive labour must be that which directly pro-
duces a use-value stamped with an exchange-value, and thus produces surplus value
directly for its employer. Pitts (2015) is therefore correct, in an otherwise flawed account,
when he defines productive labour as social and never private, abstract and never solely
concrete, and measured, validated and brought into existence by exchange (p. 211).1
To summarise, the three elements of the autonomist conceptualisation of value
abstract labour as subjective alienation, SNLT as conscious measurement, and the com-
modity as a use-value produced under alienating conditions must be rejected as
historically nonspecific categories that are unable to deal with concrete questions of
profit accumulation. In his attempt to push beyond the orthodoxys transhistoricality,
Harvie reduces value itself to a transhistorical substance.

On capital
An examination of the nature of capital is essential for understanding PUPL because
productive labour is exclusively that labour which produces capital itself (Marx 1992).
Following the broad autonomist tradition, Harvie argues that capital should be con-
ceived of as a social relation, constituted by the continual separation of the working class
from the means of production and the consequent imposition of work. As this social
relation is never completely established and always contested, capital is a relation of
struggle (Caffentzis 2013: 19). Addressing the question of PUPL, Harvie argues that
productive labour is that which reproduces capitalist social relations and re-establishes
the separation of workers from the means of production, subsistence and existence. This
functional reproduction of capitalism cannot be relegated to one sphere of work or the
other. Rather, such [productive] activities clearly include the legal and judicial system,
which enforces laws protecting private property, but also much culture, which encour-
ages acceptance of capitalist social relations (Harvie 2005: 159). It goes without saying
that those activities traditionally deemed unproductive, such as policing, superintend-
ence and credit-provision, are all productive under this definition: as is un-waged work,
such as parenting that encourages a childs respect for private property.
Yet, this does not imply that Harvie intends to scrap the PUPL distinction altogether.
Instead, in the same vein as OConnor (1975), the category of unproductive labour
becomes a category of resistance and struggle. Unproductive labour is activity that resists
the alienating subjectivity of capitalist work (abstract labour), the calculated measure-
ment of work (SNLT) and refuses to reproduce the capital relation. The PUPL distinc-
tion, then, is understood as a question of the workers acquiescence to, or attempted
transcendence of, value and capital (Harvie 2005: 161).
While Harvie (2005) acknowledges that the capital relation must be reproduced on
an expanded scale, there is no real space for an understanding of productive labour as
augmenting the magnitude of capital within his scheme (p. 158). Let us take the example
of an industrialist who hires thugs to break an automobile factory occupation. These
thugs are waged workers, performing alienating and imposed labour in order to produce
a use-value for the capitalist, namely to put the factory operatives back to work on the
capitalists terms. These thugs are reproducing the capital relation, by ripping the means
of production from the workers hands, and reimposing the external impetus to work for
14 Capital & Class

their survival. Yet, does the thugs labour also reproduce the industrialists capital on an
expanded scale? Clearly, no matter how long and with what intensity the thugs toil to
break the factory occupation, this cannot be translated into profits in the pocket of the
industrialist because the industrialist profits through the sale of cars. The union-
breaking labour does not augment the use-value of the cars in the slightest: it produces a
completely separate use-value that is immediately consumed by the industrialist, rather
than commodified. The thugs labour is unproductive because it can only reanimate the
value-producing labour of the factory operatives, who can themselves expand the indus-
trialists capital. It is thus functional but unproductive. Productive labour must not sim-
ply produce the divide between workers and the means of production a generic feature
of all class societies; it must also produce this relation of separation as capital, which
brings forth living offspring, or at least lays golden eggs (Marx 1976: 255).
Harvies understanding of unproductive labour as a category of struggle is also inad-
equate. He argues that both overt collective resistance to work and the disobedience of a
lone surly waiter/waitress can constitute unproductive labour (or becoming unproduc-
tive) due to their rejection of capitals demands (Harvie 2005: 160). In one respect,
Harvie is correct. With the advent of SNLTs, labour does not produce value if it cannot
at least match the social average of productivity for the particular use-value in question.
As Bonefeld (2010) writes, Work that is not completed within time is wasted, valueless,
regardless of the usefulness of the material wealth that it has created (p. 269). However,
this is very different from unproductive labour that, no matter the intensity, productiv-
ity, nor length of its expenditure, cannot produce any value. The PUPL distinction does
not discriminate between the subsumption (formal or real) of the labour process, nor the
degree of subordination and exploitation of the labourer: unproductive labour is that
which can be performed at or above the average pace while remaining completely unpro-
ductive of value. Harvies scheme cannot explain this because he locates class struggle
over PUPL at the level of the conflict over the imposition and measurement of subjec-
tively alienating work, rather than the imposition of exchange-value as the dominant
form of wealth. Furthermore, with respect to the case of labour that actively transcends
the capital relation such as the collective production of commonly held resources this
is not unproductive labour, it is simply not productive labour or, rather, it is free activity.
As Harrison (1973) correctly ascertained, the PUPL distinction does not apply to any
work which is not performed under the capitalist mode of production (p. 72).
Ultimately, Harvies conceptualisation of capital cannot grasp it as expanded repro-
duction. If capital is misconceived as a social relation of a static magnitude, then the
PUPL divide indeed splits labour into that which (individually or collectively) acquiesces
to, or struggles against, its bondage. Productive labour therefore becomes divorced from
the question of surplus value and profit. In contrast, a theory of PUPL that is equipped
to deal with the concrete realities of capitalism must explain why some labour, no matter
how subservient and exploited, does not reproduce capital as self-expanding value. The
answer rests on whether the product of such labour assumes the commodity form.

A social form approach

Harvies autonomist interpretation of PUPL attempts to break with traditional Marxist
analyses by resurrecting this concept as a category of struggle. Despite avoiding the
Moraitis and Copley 15

circuit of capital and sociological errors of these approaches, Harvie inadvertently

replicates their transhistoricality as well as committing a novel mistake by effectively
reducing capital to a static magnitude. Yet, this should not lead us to discard the pos-
sibility of an open understanding of PUPL. Instead, we can move beyond the rigid and
transhistorical character of traditional interpretations without gutting value and capital
of their meaning, by adopting a social form approach. Through a conceptualisation of
the commodity as the historically specific expression of labour in capitalism and PUPL
as categories defined by their relations to this commodity form, we can understand the
relationship between class struggle and PUPL in a theoretically consistent manner.

The social form of PUPL

According to social form analysis, Marxs categories only make sense with regards to the
capitalist historical epoch. General human practices assume specific forms in certain
societies, with radically different implications for the development of that society. For
example, it makes little sense to speak of wages in reference to the subsistence of the peas-
ant or slave because wages are the form that necessary labour takes within capitalism
(Marx 1976: 339). In capitalist society, social relations exist through the form of things
(commodities) and seemingly immutable economic structures, which social form analy-
sis attempts to unravel so as to reveal their human origins (Clarke 1991: 325). The
conflictual labourcapital relation, rooted in the separation of the immediate producers
from the product of their labour, is the fundamental building block upon which the
capitalist mode of production rests (Clarke 1991: 118). Placing this class relation at the
centre of analysis allows for an understanding of capitalist social institutions such as
wages, money or the market as the particular guises that class struggle wears at this
moment in history. This is superior to approaches that view capitalist forms as manifesta-
tions of a transhistorical substance that develops according to its own internal logic
(Bonefeld et al. 1992a: xvxvi, 1992b: xixii). It follows that the social form approach
does not treat PUPL as simply economic or sociological categories, but as categories of
struggle, that is, as contradictory forms obtained by bourgeois social practice, highlight-
ing the frailty of capitalist society (Burnham 2002: 114). As such, in so far as PUPL is
understood as productive or unproductive of value a historical substance we must
assess it as a uniquely capitalist category.
Labour takes the form of abstract labour, or value, in a society in which the products
of labour are exchanged as commodities.2 Turning this expression another way, we reiter-
ate that exchange-value is the concrete manifestation of value and thus of productive
labour. It is insufficient that a certain labour produces useful goods or helps to reproduce
the capital relation. The final condition for the categorisation of productive labour is that
it becomes crystallised in an exchangeable commodity. This is the link between work
performed under capitalism and the world of money, whereby surplus labour is realised
as an accumulation of money the peculiar form that wealth assumes in capitalist soci-
ety. Otherwise, the product of labour and money face each other as opposing social
artefacts with no common language. Unproductive labour, on the other hand, is labour
performed under the dominion of capital but whose product does not take the form of
a commodity. The link between labour and the accumulation of money is severed as soon
as this labour ceases to be expressed as a universal substance: exchange-value. Its only
16 Capital & Class

value, then, lies in its useful properties. Again, the fact that this labour may arise purely
due to the class relations of capitalism, provide no transhistorically useful good, and rebel
against alienating working conditions, is irrelevant. In a critique that could apply to both
the orthodox approaches and Harvie, Marx (1976) wrote,

It is one of the chief failings of classical political economy that it has never succeeded in
discovering the form of value which in fact turns value into exchange-value. Even its best
representatives, Adam Smith and Ricardo, treat the form of value [exchange-value] as something
of indifference, something external to the nature of the commodity itself. (p. 174)

PUPL as relational categories

The social form approachs focus on the commodity in relation to PUPL has two impor-
tant implications. First, PUPL is fundamentally not a sociological category within which
to group real individuals, and second, no concrete labour can be deemed a priori produc-
tive or unproductive.
PUPL is an abstract relation which conditions the ways in which labouring activities
are mediated through the working practices of different individual workers. It is not a
description of individual workers statuses, as the sociological understanding of PUPL
conveys, but rather an observation of the different activities with which labourers can be
engaged, to different degrees. The example of the commercial worker who straddles the
line between productive storage work and unproductive cashier work shows that PUPL
does not discriminate among different occupational categories of the workforce. Rather,
it constitutes an antithetical relation, whereby one pole represents the production of
surplus value and the other its deduction, with individual workers lying at different
points in between. A parallel could be drawn with Gunns (1987) interpretation of class.
Gunn (1987) shows that the working class and the capitalist class are mere abstracted
poles of a single social relation, structuring the lives of different individuals in different
ways (p. 2). In other words, the capitalist and the proletarian are not to be understood
sociologically, as real groups of people, since only rarely do they correspond to the socio-
logical status of specific individuals. Instead, they stand as abstractions in a diverse social
spectrum, which unevenly experiences the labourcapital relation. Similarly, PUPL are
to be seen as relational categories of practice, which, although they can sometimes be
sociologically applied to individual workers, such as the unproductive administrative
state worker who is exclusively financed out of taxation, ultimately fail to adequately
capture the tangled combination of PUPL practices performed by most workers. The
correspondence between the sociological status of the productive worker and their
engagement with productive activities is only coincidental and of secondary importance
for the analysis of PUPL as social forms obtained by human practices in capitalism. As
such, we should speak of productive and unproductive labour, not labourers.
This relational, social form approach also complicates PUPL on an even more funda-
mental level. Concrete labours cannot be judged productive or unproductive in them-
selves regardless of their position within the circuit of capital, the nature of the
use-value produced, or whether or not they arise solely out of capitalist class relations.
The exact same concrete labour can be either productive or unproductive, depending on
Moraitis and Copley 17

its relation to the commodity form. Take the example of the supermarket cashier who
performs only circulatory tasks. Their unproductiveness has nothing to do with the con-
crete qualities of the labour they are unproductive because their labour assumes the
form of a use-value consumed by the capitalist. While necessary to transform the super-
markets commodities into money, the cashiers labour does not augment the commodi-
ties at all. Yet, if this same worker sitting at the same checkout is outsourced from a job
agency, their labour is productive. This is because, despite performing the same concrete
labour, the product of the cashiers labour is now sold as a commodity by the job agency
to the supermarket. In the first instance, the cashier simply circulated commodities (the
supermarkets goods), while in the second, the cashier produces a new commodity (the
act of exchanging ownership rights). The concrete function remains the same, but the
value relations are transformed.3 This shows that the sphere of production is not a sensu-
ous, fixed location but one entirely dependent on the commodity in question. Our cash-
ier was immediately transferred from performing labour in the sphere of circulation to
the sphere of production by the commodification of the product of their labour. The
same would be true if the automobile magnates thugs were employed by a private secu-
rity firm: their labour instantly transforms from that of unproductive, simple reproduc-
tion, to production proper. Whereas they previously reanimated the production of car
commodities, they now produce the saleable union-breaking commodity. As such, there
is no single circuit of capital, at different points within which we can assign specific con-
crete labours. Instead, there are as many circuits as there are types of commodities.
Whether any particular labour falls within the sphere of production or not is a change-
able and indeterminate question that depends on whether the use-value created is com-
modified. The biggest factor deciding the outcome of this is the historical development
of the class struggle.

The role of class struggle

Once we recognise the relational and form-dependent nature of PUPL, class struggle
becomes the central determining factor in the real development of PUPL as a dynamic
category. In addition, this approach highlights the limits posed by unproductive labour
to capital accumulation by emphasising the negative presence of unproductive labour
within capitalism, rather than its positive attributes. For instance, it is regularly argued
in the orthodox literature that circulatory activities, though unproductive of value, per-
form an indirectly productive role by facilitating capitalist production and raising profit
rates through a diminution of capitals turnover time (Leadbeater 1985: 598; Tregenna
2011: 291). Dumnil and Lvy (2011) go as far as defining unproductive labour as
labour employed to maximise profitability. Instead, our argument purports that the
struggle-led infusion of unproductive activities in capitalist society threatens the normal
profitable functioning of capitalist accumulation, thus, revealing its socially constituted
barriers.
The orthodox approach adopts a generally eclectic attitude towards class struggle. It
is admitted that certain types of unproductive labour state labour related to economic
regulation, police repression and welfare services can expand or shrink depending on
political decisions (Mohun 1996: 47). In addition, workplace supervisory labour can
18 Capital & Class

vary in scale as a result of changing union membership or attempts at stricter managerial

control. Yet, the general societal distribution of PUPL is largely dependent on capital-
isms specific production relations, forged unchangingly at capitalisms inception. Thus,
circulatory or reproductive labour is deemed unproductive due to capitalism as a unique
historical juncture, but it is not seen as changing within the capitalist epoch.
On the other hand, Harvies autonomist approach foregrounds the struggle of the
worker in the determination of the PUPL distinction. Any concrete labour can be pro-
ductive or unproductive depending on whether the particular labourer in question resists
the alienation and measurement of capitalist work. While this overcomes certain ortho-
dox shortcomings by making struggle relevant throughout capitalisms trajectory, it
ignores the necessity that productive labour manifest itself as exchange-value.
According to our approach, struggle can transform PUPL in a number of ways. First,
in the positive sense in which people assert their needs, regardless of whether they can
be met profitably. Demands for access to water, housing, healthcare and so on can force
the state to drag certain labour practices out of the realm of commodity production. Or,
rather than the state assuming control of these activities through nationalisation, the
working class can assume control of the production of these services through their own
self-organisation. To the extent that both routes are funded through the state and pro-
duce no commodity, they represent a tax on surplus value. Furthermore, workers strug-
gle against the attack on their pay and conditions often takes the form of resistance
against outsourcing. Some of the most important struggles in this sphere have been by
workers performing unproductive functions. These workers assert their needs to be met
within the company employing them as unproductive labour, rather than having the
product of their labour commodified and rationalised by an external employer. As we
have seen, this dynamic is not isolated to the state sector as the orthodox approaches
suggest but also manifests itself in the private sector as resistance to outsourcing.
Second, class struggle can affect PUPL in a negative sense, through the states and
capitals recourse to disciplinary mechanisms in order to contain rebellion against the
imposition of work and property. These disciplinary mechanisms include the expansion
of police forces and penitentiary systems as well as the legal and administrative struc-
tures. Expenditure on military forces to repress peoples or states obstructing the impe-
rialist strategies of accumulation could also be included. Besides the obvious
unproductive activities with which the state is engaged, unproductive disciplinary
mechanisms appear in the capitalist firm as well. To the aforementioned example of
supervisory labour surveilling and commanding workers, we can add the enormous
superstructure of human resource management aimed at the maximisation of labours
surplus value producing capacity.
The positive and negative influences of class struggle on the distribution of PUPL
roughly corresponds to what orthodox Marxists see as the historically contingent con-
figuration of certain productive and unproductive activities primary located at the state
level. For example, Savran and Tonak (1999), Fine and Harris (1976) and Mohun (1996)
all stress the impact of social and political conflict on the public or private status of social
services. In contrast, unproductive activities in the sphere of circulation are said to be
structurally determined by the nature of capitalism itself, and thus not subject to trans-
formation through struggle. Yet, the social form approach shows that struggle over the
Moraitis and Copley 19

determination of PUPL is not only found at the state level, but instead, as Bell and
Cleaver (2002) argue, at every stage of capitals circuit. The circulation stages are not
fixed spatiotemporal entities but antagonistic relations among real people (Marx 1978:
207, 1993: 196197). Just as labour unrest within the workplace necessitates unproduc-
tive labour time expenditure by the supervisor, so too can social antagonisms in the M-C
and C-M stages of the circuit involve an increase in unproductive circulation time. The
social limits encountered by capital in its circulation stages range from the impossibility
to find profitable outlets for commodities, to the impasses encountered in the bargaining
process between buyers and sellers. Such limits can retard turnover time and freeze values
movement in the circulation sphere. Furthermore, as Marx emphasises, circulation time
is itself an inconvenience for capital and an obstruction to the further increase in the
productive power of labour: it is in fact a deduction from productive surplus labour
time (Marx 1993: 539). The barriers met by capital in the sphere of circulation the
concrete difficulties posed to the validation of labours exploitation in the act of exchange
necessitate the value-consuming expenditure of circulatory labour.
While failing to recognise the centrality of class struggle throughout capitals circuit,
the orthodox approach does acknowledge that the total number of unproductive workers
can fluctuate in accordance with the concrete evolutions in the capitalist economy. For
example, stagnation and difficulties in realising value are said to have brought about a
spectacular increase in unproductive business services, which would help capital to sell
its products (Baran and Sweezy 1966). This implies that specific historical junctures can
result in a numerical increase in the labourers absorbed into circulation. However, as
mentioned earlier, our focus is labour, not individual labourers. Crises can also increase
the absolute labour time dedicated to unproductive activities by transforming previously
productive activities into unproductive ones, without any change in their concrete char-
acteristics or occupational status: the storage workers labour switches to the unproduc-
tive sphere in situations of overaccumulation. Contra Harvie, this transformation occurs
despite zero change in the degree of subjugation or subsumption (formal or real).
Therefore, concrete social struggles, often manifested as crises, can change the nature of
labour itself, not simply its aggregate volume.
In summary, the relationship between class struggle and PUPL permits us to draw
certain conclusions with regards to the substantial definition of these two spheres. On the
one hand, productive labour constitutes capitals assertion of the commodity form as the
sole medium for the satisfaction of socially determined needs. It is, furthermore, the man-
ifestation of capitals capacity to subjugate all conditions of social production to itself
and to capitalise all areas of social reproductive wealth (Marx 1993: 532). On the other
hand, unproductive labour does not assume the commodity form. It constitutes the costly
expenditure and effort through which capital undergoes in order to overcome the disrup-
tive presence of labour and manage the antagonisms springing from the class relation
itself. As Marx (1972) reminds us, the exploitation of labour costs labour (p. 355). Since
capital contains within its core its own negation, labour (Marx 1972: 274), it necessarily
has recourse to practices, which not only escape the pure logic of surplus value production
but also stand opposite to it, in order to reproduce and contain its own social antagonist.
Therefore, if, following Marxs (1976) dictum, to be a productive labourer is a mis-
fortune (p. 644), then to be an unproductive labourer is a misfortune for capital.
20 Capital & Class

The analysis of the social form of PUPL reveals capitals constant struggle between the
minimisation of unproductive labour time and the costly management of labour: a strug-
gle whose outcome depends upon the concrete evolutions in social practice.

Conclusion
This article has contributed to the PUPL debate by offering a social form approach that
regards the commodity form as the mode of existence of productive labour. This approach
defies the reification of orthodox accounts by re-establishing the centrality of class strug-
gle in the determination of PUPL, in a manner that avoids the mistakes of Harvies
autonomist position.
The critique of orthodox accounts presented here found that the invocation of PUPLs
transhistorical validity and the classification of labourers into different PUPL spheres,
according to their structural position within the circuit of capital, reifies these categories
and treats them as sociological pigeonholes. The great bulk of traditional research on
PUPL has been restricted either to an attempt to identify the implications of the upsurge
of ostensibly unproductive labourers on capitalist class structures or an attempt to cor-
relate this with the stagnation of the post-1970s economy. In both instances, labour is
considered a passive, adaptable variable in the process of PUPL distribution, with class
struggle relegated to a secondary role.
However, Harvies attempt to overcome the rigidities of orthodox accounts from an
autonomist perspective, by reintroducing workers resistance, is also deeply unsatisfac-
tory. The categories of value and capital are reformulated along subjectivist lines, such
that he reproduces the orthodoxys transhistorical definition of PUPL. In this scheme,
the criterion of whether labours product assumes the form of an exchange-value is of no
particular importance.
In contrast to these approaches, this article sought to reinstate the openness of the
PUPL categories by shifting focus to the social form of productive labour, namely, the
commodity. This implies that PUPL can only be understood as abstract and relational
rather than fixed, sociological categories. PUPL are not two rooms that we can divide the
population between. Instead, the walls of these rooms cut across many individuals, leav-
ing their arms and head in one room and their legs and torso in another, so to speak.
Furthermore, no labour can be a priori determined to be productive or unproductive.
Instead, the productiveness of any particular labour is dependent on whether its product
assumes the commodity form. Even archetypically circulatory tasks can be drawn into
the sphere of production simply by outsourcing the worker and thus commodifying the
use-value. This insight immediately bursts the rigid confines of traditional PUPL inter-
pretations because the ultimate determinant of the commodification of labours product
is the concrete unfolding of the class struggle. PUPL represents the opposition between
the creation of surplus value and the deduction of surplus value: capitals subsumption of
human activity and the working class escape.
This article does not attempt to offer a definitive solution to the PUPL question, but
instead to forge new ways to think about the political significance of these categories. By
reaffirming the centrality of the commodity form in capitals valuation of social worth,
we hope to further dispel the notion that equitable human relations are possible within
Moraitis and Copley 21

a system of commodity exchange. Rather, we would encourage alternative ways of meas-

uring and organising the usefulness of human work, outside of capitals arbitrary desig-
nation. Productiveness should, and can, become defined by the meeting of peoples
needs through solidaristic, non-commodified production relations. PUPL is as imper-
manent as the commodity form: as historically transient as capitalism itself (Rubin
2010: 114).

Acknowledgements
We would like to extend a big thank you to David Bailey for his editorial guidance. Furthermore,
we appreciate the helpful comments made by David Harvie, who helped to ensure that a number
of unintended meanings were omitted from the final version, as well as Elio di Muccio, Darcy
Luke, Iain Pirie and the journal reviewers. We would also like to thank Chris Rogers for his advice.

Notes
1. Pitts (2015) goes on to argue that it is unnecessary that any labour takes place for value to be
produced As long as something sells, value appears (p. 206) foregoing an understanding
of the law of value as the historically specific expression of humanitys metabolic relationship
with nature and the commodity as the mediation of this relationship.
2. In addition, labour-power itself must take the form of a commodity, arising from the labour-
ers double freedom to market his or her capacity to work and to face destitution if he/she
should refuse (Marx 1976: 272273).
3. While the cashiers circulation labour can be transferred from the unproductive to productive
sphere through outsourcing, the job agency must now sell its commodity to the supermar-
ket, which itself requires unproductive cashier and accountant labour. Of course, this labour
could be outsourced too, but this would simply displace the required unproductive labour
to yet another level, and so on. The implication being that, contra Harvie, the inability of
capital to make all labour productive is not simply a result of successful working class strug-
gles, but is instead the necessary result of a system in which use-values are alienated from their
immediate producers and traded as exchange-values.

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Author biographies
Alexis B Moraitis is a PhD candidate and teacher at the University of Warwick. His research
examines the causes of deindustrialisation in France from 1974 to 1984 and focuses in particular
on the role of the French state in this process.
Jack Copley is a doctoral researcher and teacher at the University of Warwick. His research exam-
ines the relationship between economic stagnation and financial expansion in Britain, through
archival analysis of the states involvement in financial deregulation.