This question <90|87> overall <95|99> Hans: <65|103>.

Question 112: Can you think of determinants of the labor process which do not belong to it as useful labor?

[96] Hans: Aspect of the labor process.   Dabears is of course right in [87] that capitalism generates a lot of wasted and un-useful labor. But in Marx's definition even wasted labor has the two aspects called “useful” labor and abstract labor. I wrote in the Annotations:

Even if the end product is useless or even destructive, the labor producing it is called “useful labor” as long as it manages to produce this end product.

Leftyjace [90] noticed that Dabears misunderstood the question. Leftyjace tried to find determinants of the labor process which don't belong to it as useful labor and didn't find any. Why not? Because he looked at exactly those determinants of the labor process which, according to Marx, determine the useful labor. There are many other aspects of the labor process which have to do with it being the expenditure of human labor-power, and which are not concerned with the concrete end product of the labor. For instance, the question whether a labor process is boring, or whether it contains health hazards, or what kinds of skills it requires, whether these skills are transferable to other labor processes, etc.

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