The Unproductive Classes as Revolutionary Subject

Justin Aukema

28 August 2024

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As all good Marxists know, only the “proletariat” is the truly revolutionary class that can guide capitalist society to a socialist one.

But what is the “proletariat”? Definitions have defied many scholars and laypersons partly because the category itself is fluid.

The broadest definition is any one who sells their labor power for a living or i.e. wage laborers. This is generally correct and undisputed.

Yet certainly it is too broad to include all wage laborers and salaried persons since this would also include most of the professional-managerial classes as well.

One further standard therefore is to determine the degree of imperative driving one to sell their labor power. In other words true wage laborers must sell their labor to live since if they don’t they will presumably starve.

The basic rule therefore is savings. If one has enough savings to allow them to comfortably live without working for even a short time, they cannot be considered a true proletariat in the strictest sense.

Still we have not yet even come to the trickiest issue, the problem of “productive” vs “unproductive” labor.

Many Marxists claim that only workers who produce value in the real economy, generally manufacturing, or produce use values can be considered members of the proletariat or at least the revolutionary proletariat.

This is because their labor is essential labor whereas much unproductive labor, such as the service industry and so forth, is unessential or even what Graeber called “bullshit jobs.”

But this is an unsatisfactory view.

The reason is that capital accumulation drives both processes.

As capital increases, more people are needed to manage it and move it around. This can be imagined simply as the relationship between manufactured goods and retail. The more goods that are made, the more need to be sold. Similarly one could imagine banking and finance. The more capital accumulates, the more banking and investing services arise to manage it. And so forth.

Unproductive labor is thus ancillary to capital. Yet productive labor is also ancillary to capital since it is not actual need which dictates what will be made under capitalism but simply the pursuit of more profit. Yes, productive labor creates more use values, but paradoxically there is always the risk that the products being made will be in fact quite useless.





Figure 1: Industry (manufacturing, construction, mining, utilities) as a percent of global GDP. Note this can be roughly read as “productive labor” while the remainder out of 100 would be “unproductive.” This is a screenshot from World Bank data and used under a Creative Commons license.


So the strict distinction between productive and unproductive labor under capitalism is untenable and must be abandoned.

Furthermore there is another key reason to re-evaluate the rise in unproductive labor: the falling rate of profit.



The organic composition of capital


I cannot fully explain the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in its entirety here.

Suffice to say that as capital accumulation progresses, there is a tendency to overinvest in constant or fixed capital and to underinvest in variable capital, or, that is to say, labor.

This is because mechanization of the means of production enables more to be made with fewer workers.

Yet the latest state of the art advanced technology also costs a lot more money meaning that constant capital costs rise relative to variable ones.

Another problem is that mechanization puts people out of work.

And so what do we do with this growing body of workers?

Well, manufacturing or so called productive labor is ironically actually the fastest and easiest to mechanize.

So, accordingly, workers tend to move from productive to unproductive sectors. From manufacturing to retail and so forth.

This basic process explains what Marx called the rising “organic composition of capital” (OCC), the ratio of constant to variable capital, as well as the dramatic global rise in unproductive labor.

But is this a bad thing or a good thing?

Most classical Marxists who see the revolutionary proletariat as synonymous with productive laborers will probably evaluate it negatively.

But they are wrong and they’re fighting a losing battle since Marx never predicted that the OCC would reverse in any major way or in the long term.

Instead he predicted the exact opposite, that it would continue to rise.

And furthermore he noted that this was a positive thing since it would ultimately set the stage for the transition from capitalism to socialism.

Why is this the case?

The reason has to do with the falling rate of profit.

Put simply, only labor power can create new value. And in particular only labor power from productive sectors like manufacturing. Unproductive labor cannot create new value, it can only move existing value around.

But as we have just seen the tendency is toward more unproductive labor and thus less new value created.

This is precisely the reason why modern capitalism has been plagued by continuing crises of value creation.

In the 1970s rising energy and labor costs threatened capitalists’ ability to get new surplus value. So, they abandoned the old Keynesian model and much of the middle class with it in favor of neoliberal austerity which allowed them to cut labor and overhead costs thus raising the rate of profit (s/c).

Yet this could of course not fully stem the rising tide since it is very difficult to simply stop technological development and also as labor costs also eventually tend to rise in developing countries too.

Capitalist firms also simultaneously turned to seek financial profit rather than new value added in manufacturing. This was part and parcel of the neoliberal restructuring to deregulate and liberalize finance and capital flows.

Incidentally finance and banking functions are classic examples of unproductive capital. So while they result from capital accumulation they also signal the decline and growing crisis of capitalism and profitability in general.

Now, having come this far, I ask once again: is the growth of unproductive labor a good or a bad thing?

Well, let’s briefly recap. It results from the rising OCC and falling rate of profit. And it doesn’t create new value or surplus value.

Both of these things signal not the retrenchment but rather the end of the capitalist system. And therefore they should be seen as overall positive developments.



The revolutionary unproductive class

There is an ongoing debate among internet Marxists over whether coffeehouse baristas create value or not.

The outcomes of the debate are in fact quite meaningless. The answer that they do not create value should be obvious, but many Marxists and Leftists confuse this by failing to distinguish between value and profit.

But what is a more important question is whether the coffeehouse barista or the average cubicle or remote office worker is a part of the revolutionary subject.

Some Marxists say no while many Western Leftists don’t even care about class in the first place but only who holds the “correct” values or ideas.

So I will give an entirely different answer. I say that not only is the coffeehouse barista and all other unproductive laborers a part of the revolutionary subject but that they are the vanguard of the working class itself.

How can I propose such blasphemy?

The answer is simple. It is because they epitomize the key contradiction of capitalism: the obfuscation of time with value.

The reason that there are more unproductive laborers and so-called “bullshit” jobs is because in fact capitalism and the development of the productive forces of society have made it possible for an abundance of free time.

However the contradiction and problem for capitalism is that it cannot allow workers to enjoy this time as free time. Instead the law of value dictates that it must turn it into relative surplus labor time or, that is to say, time designated solely for the production of new value.

The irony is that most unproductive labor doesn’t create new value in the first place. Relative surplus labor time or for unproductive laborers almost all of their working time is experienced by the worker himself as exploitation but it is only ever realized as profit and not actual new value.

This is why giant corporations can get rich exploiting workers and undercutting their competitors without actually making anything.

The radical meaning of the growth of unproductive labor however in any case is that it signals the tremendous growth in potential yet unrealized free time.

The productive forces are developed far enough to allow an abundance of free time. But they are purposely restrained while workers expelled from the mechanization process are funneled into growing unproductive sectors in an endless competition of firms for market control and larger pieces of the pie.



Seizing the means of production

Another traditional view of Marxism is that the revolutionary subject must seize the means of production to end capitalism domination and usher in a rational and planned socialist society.

But in an increasingly mechanized and roboticized world, who runs the means of production?

In many cases it’s no longer actual workers.

Instead as always change first comes from the most developed or advanced capitalist societies or countries. And in this case these are the countries with the highest proportion of unproductive labor, since this signals also the highest degree of mechanization.

So should unproductive laborers in capitalist countries seize the means of production by taking over Starbucks? Hardly. Instead there is another route. Or I should say there are multiple possible routes of which I can imagine namely two.

The first is to transform their surplus labor time into free time. Or, I should say to demand more free time in addition to higher wages from their employers. Most of the time spent at truly bullshit jobs is all wasted unproductive time anyway and many employees sitting behind the counter or desk simply spend their “work” time playing smartphone games anyway. This is not a net negative since it is further proof of exactly how little time their actual work takes to complete in the first place. Yet it is wasted time in the sense of their own spiritual and personal growth and could be better used by learning new skills or spent in other more fulfilling ways. Again the reason it cannot be used in this way is because it is bound by wage labor and the profit motive.

The second is to work for the further development and liberation of workers in the remaining manufacturing sectors.

My vision of an ideal communist society is definitely not one where all workers are simply thrown back into manufacturing sectors.

Instead any and all jobs which can be mechanized generally should be mechanized. The major difference is that in a planned socialist economy there would be no wage labor and so production would take place based on need rather than for profit. This requires a total restructuring of class relations and indeed the abolition or sublimation of the working class itself.

But the only way to do this is to make their jobs, their wage labor jobs, irrelevant. It’s possible simply to turn them into unproductive labor. This is what the natural course of capitalism and mechanization will do anyway. But this is unsatisfactory of course.

It is necessary thirdly therefore for the already unproductive laborers, as the real vanguard, to lead their remaining brothers in manufacturing and developing nations, toward the abolition of wage labor itself.

Only in this way can surplus labor time truly be transformed into free time and the false distinctions between “unproductive” and “productive” labor or “use” and “exchange” values be sublimated into the unity of simply socially necessary labor time. Which in this case will be very close to nothing at all.

The liberation of time from value will thus be complete with the revolutionary unproductive class as its vanguard.