Peter Cooper — Productive and Unproductive Labor in a Macro Context

As is well known, Marx and the classical political economists before him made a distinction between productive and unproductive labor. Marx’s distinction is somewhat differed from Smith’s. For Marx, labor is productive when it is: (i) directly productive of surplus value; and (ii) exchanged directly against capital. I remain unsure how applicable the distinction is to a state money system. Some of my misgivings are explained in an earlier post. The uncertainty has held back an attempt to explore connections between Marx and Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). To get around this, here I proceed on an as if basis, by assuming for the sake of argument that the distinction is meaningful....

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Productive and Unproductive Labor in a Macro Context
Peter Cooper