...Steven G. Medema Unproductive Labor in Political Economy: The History of an Idea . By Perrotta Cosimo . London : Routledge , 2018 . xiv ; 269 pp. $160.00 . Copyright 2020 by Duke University Press 2020 References Perrotta Cosimo . 2004 . Consumption...

... University Press CCC 00 18-2702/85/$1.50 The consistency of Marx’s categories of productive and unproductive labour David Leadbeater In many current popular debates and reports on the direction of economic policy, particularly as it bears...

... from its categorization as unproductive labor throughout the history of economic thought. While, within separate studies, Mill and Jevons have been accused of devaluing household activities assigned to women, no direct comparison of their discussions has ever been made. Yet, such a comparison...

... to be remarkably unproductive. This is explained by an essentially negative approach and by a tradition of self-righteous intolerance that goes back to Keynes himself. The Cambridge Post-Keynesians: An Outsider’s Insider View Christopher Bliss I entered King’s College, Cambridge, to study economics...

... they tended to redistribute income in favor of landlords at the expense of workers rather than capitalists. Indeed, it is shown that above all Tooke opposed the Corn Laws because they tended to lower the living standards of working people and, at times of unproductive harvests, contributed to acute shortages...

... and unproductive activity, with productive activity alone having social value. Camic finds examples of these ideas throughout Veblen s life experience and educa- tion: in his common school curriculum, in his education at Carleton College, notably in the teachings of J. B. Clark then still in his premarginalist...

... to support. The conceptual structure of this normative theory pivots around the distinction between productive and unproductive labor. This dis- tinction is rooted solidly in Smith’s labor theory of value and in the associated concept of ”division of labor,” the basic technical organiz...

... and con- sume should not be classified as wealth. These redistributional implica- tions were not developed by Grenville, but became an essential aspect of Ruskin’s view of wealth. Productive and Unproductive Labour The second section of the first chapter of Malthus...

... and in correspondence with Malthus on the inefficient and unproductive nature of government spending. In the context of Ricardo’s economic analysis, the effect of public expenditure is unambiguous: the revenue expended by government is assumed to be unproductive. The transfer of purchasing power...

.... 15. The footnotes covered such matters as the distinction between productive and unproductive labour (p. 47), the measure of value (p. 125), the reasons for the rise in the price of corn between 1793 and 1813 (p. 164), the determinants of the rate of profits (p. 291), the meaning...

... to see the difference between their models is to focus on Smith’s famous concepts of “productive” and “unproductive” labor. A productive laborer in Smith’s schema is one who produces things that could end up in the “stock” available to support workers next year. An unproductive worker is one who...

... and Unproductive Labor Mark Blaug, Economic Theory in Retro- spect, 2d ed. (Homewood, Ill., 1%8), pp. 56-57, 182-183. For a discussion of the prob- lem of underemployment in the service sector see P: T. Bauer and B. S. Yamey, “Economic Progress and Occupational Distribution,” Economic Journal, Dec...

... of fighting and ~raying.~In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was work which became noble and sacred for Western social theorists. In this context, the pre-marginalists found the secret of increasing wealth in the distinction between productive and unproductive consumption, thus judg- ing...

... explains in the first paragraph of chapter 3 of Book 11: There is one sort of labour which adds to the value of the subject upon which it is bestowed: There is another which has no such effect. The former, as it produces a value, may be called productive; the latter, unproductive...

... unproductive capital: Money kept in a coffer or bur- ied underground, the commodities accumulated beyond what is needed, the treasure stored on altars for superstitious reasons, and in general all the products that could be kept without being used for consumption and without being used to create other...

.... He next demon- strates that unless the farmers and capitalists possess an unrealisti- cally high propensity to consume, a general glut of commodities will ensue. The necessity of “unproductive consumption” (i.e. consump- tion not related to the production of material goods) then drops out...

... was an advantage in this regard (134). Smith’s view that general education was economically unproductive and that investment in human capital had become largely irrelevant to the workings of a modern economy was implicit in his analysis of capital accumulation and the growth process. Though he included...

... of the Principles (1820) In the Principles, Malthus more precisely treated the issue of taxation and national debt from the viewpoint of the distribution of wealth. He thought that a high rate of profit would act as a stimulus to the growth of production, and that unproductive consumption (or employment...

... to “an effectual and unchecked demand for all that is produced” (2:263). Smith ([1776] 1976, 332) had argued that the employment of unpro- ductive laborers was a brake on production, for “as a smaller or a greater proportion of [a nation’s produce] is in any one year employed in main- taining unproductive...

... of new wealth] must always be in proportion to the strength of the agents that occasion it.”S3Moreover, Smith maintained something of the eighteenth-century physicalist con- ception of production. He continued to apply the distinction between “productive” and “unproductive’’ labor, insisting...