In two recent posts (recall here and here), I explored the significance of Eric Williams’ respectful engagement with Adam Smith in his very early writings).
I'm happy to join in the ridicule of the productive vs unproductive labor distinction, which still persists in the form of nostalgia for the industrial economy of the 19th and 20th centuries. It produces the absurd idea that construction workers building a hospital are productive, but the doctors and nurses who work in it are not.
It's unfortunate for Marxism that this idea was still dominant when he wrote and that the ancestor-worship characteristic of orthodox Marxism meant that it stayed alive long after mainstream economists had shrugged it off.
I'm happy to join in the ridicule of the productive vs unproductive labor distinction, which still persists in the form of nostalgia for the industrial economy of the 19th and 20th centuries. It produces the absurd idea that construction workers building a hospital are productive, but the doctors and nurses who work in it are not.
It's unfortunate for Marxism that this idea was still dominant when he wrote and that the ancestor-worship characteristic of orthodox Marxism meant that it stayed alive long after mainstream economists had shrugged it off.