Though we disagree with their agenda ignoring the national question, Anwar Shaikh and E. Ahmet Tonak have provided the best summary of the difference between productive and unproductive labor that we know of at the moment.(7) In particular, they argue that in the sectors of distribution (excluding some transportation), social maintenance and reproduction and personal consumption, any labor that occurs is not productive sector labor.(8)

On the INTERNET and on the streets, MIM encounters the common vulgar Marxist question, "if the labor aristocracy is not producing surplus-value, then why do the capitalists hire it?" According to these apologists for the bourgeoisified workers, the workers must be exploited (producing surplus-value) or they would not be hired. The reasoning is similar to saying, one capitalist won't work with other capitalists or the petty-bourgeoisie if they are not producing surplus-value, which is obviously false in itself. Obviously individual capitalists can't get everything they want or there'd only be one capitalist-him or her. The individual capitalists cannot manipulate the realities of the class structure at will either. For example, as Poulantzas has pointed out, not all capital is monopoly capital even in imperialist societies and there continues to be a petty-bourgeoisie.

Shaikh and Tonak, as Marx before them, show that capitalists have to hire salespeople and guards. The government also hires workers. These occupations produce nothing, and cannot produce surplus-value. Within the capitalist system, they help the capitalists make or appropriate profit, but they do not produce surplus-value.

The military--a typical unproductive sector occupation

Number of people per 1,000 in the population in the armed forces, 1993(9 )

Australia	1.9
Belgium	7.0
Canada	2.7
Finland	6.1
France	8.8
Germany	4.9
Israel	36.8
Italy	7.8
Japan	1.9
Netherlands	5.6
Norway	9.8
Russia	15.1
Spain	5.2
Sweden	5.0
Switzerland	4.4
"United Kingdom"	4.7
U$A	7.0

Shaikh and Tonak argue against Baran and Sweezy that unproductive sector workers were not meant by Marx to mean "unnecessary" workers, but while we agree for a limited set of questions that they answer in connection to surplus-value, accumulation and profit, they are definitely wrong about Marx's attitude toward these workers. Obviously, if everyone were a guard, soldier or lawyer, everyone would die of starvation and exposure. Life without any guards, soldiers or lawyers, however, is certainly possible. The key to understanding unproductive sector workers via surplus-value is that they can only preserve or appropriate it; they cannot expand it. Without salespeople,(10) capitalists can certainly blow their chance at obtaining surplus-value, but no matter how good or how many salespeople one employs, there is a limit to the price of a good. Without the commodities produced by the productive sector, the sales staff have nothing, even in the most elementary conditions.

Following Shaikh and Tonak, we will make them one concession in logic and allow for the possibility of exploited non-productive sector workers, especially in the oppressed nations. We believe that Marx held that exploited non-productive sector workers were sometimes counted as proletarian and sometimes not. Marx intended to handle involved questions of economic growth and the transfer of value from the productive sector to the unproductive sector in Vol. 4 of Capital, but he did not live to do so. In the context of Western Europe, the COMINTERN including Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin all believed that unproductive workers should not be counted as proletarian. Hence, MIM uses the following categories and looks into greater detail how workers should be classified.

1. Proletarian vs. Semi-proletarian, the clean and easy approach of Lenin and the COMINTERN

We believe this approach has the advantage of handling several questions simultaneously and quickly. It delivers a quick blow to social-patriotism and should make clear why MIM's line is correct regarding the majority of oppressor nation workers.

2. Proletarian vs. Labor aristocracy,(11 ) involves MIM's more in-depth second and third lines of defense of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism possible only through the development of a MIM Thought in connection to concrete conditions.

a. The case of exploited production sector workers-what Paul Cockshott believes exist in England, but only a minority of workers. MIM disagrees with Cockshott, because we believe the transfer of value from oppressed nations makes these workers have no net surplus labor-time in the working day.

b. The case of exploited non-productive sector workers. We acknowledge the possibility of this case, but they do not exist in imperialist countries while they do exist in oppressed nations extensively.

c. The case of unexploited production sector workers-people in manufacturing, agriculture, mining, and much transport just happen not to be exploited in the imperialist countries because of the transfer of value from oppressed nations to oppressor nation workers.

d. The case of unexploited non-productive sector workers-the majority of workers in the imperialist countries by themselves.

We believe the labor aristocracy roughly corresponds with "semi-proletarian," which has hardened into a peacetime petty-bourgeoisie. It also corresponds with categories c and d above. MIM would contend that case b of workers could be either labor aristocracy or proletarian, depending in particular on the balance of other workers in the country who are exerting a pull on this group. In the case of early English capitalism, there could be a few unproductive sector workers vastly outnumbered by exploited productive sector workers. Unless the unproductive sector workers have much higher standards of living, it is likely they will identify with the productive sector in that case. With the development of capitalism into imperialism, we started seeing fewer and fewer a and b case workers in the imperialist countries and more and more d type workers with the remaining a type of workers transformed into c type workers.

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