Productive Forces and Productivity
Marx's concept of productive forces also has some relevance for discussions in economics about the meaning and measurement of productivity.
Modern economics theorises productivity in terms of the marginal product of the factors of production. Marx theorises productivity within the capitalist mode of production in terms of the social and technical relations of production, with the concept of the organic composition of capital and the value product. He suggests there is no completely neutral view of productivity possible; how productivity is defined depends on the values and interests people have. Thus, different social classes have different notions of productivity reflecting their own station in life, and giving rise to different notions of productive and unproductive labour.
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Famous quotes containing the words productive, forces and/or productivity:
“[Tobacco] is a culture productive of infinite wretchedness.... The cultivation of wheat is the reverse in every circumstance.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“The popularity of disaster movies ... expresses a collective perception of a world threatened by irresistible and unforeseen forces which nevertheless are thwarted at the last moment. Their thinly veiled symbolic meaning might be translated thus: We are innocent of wrongdoing. We are attacked by unforeseeable forces come to harm us. We are, thus, innocent even of negligence. Though those forces are insuperable, chance will come to our aid and we shall emerge victorious.”
—David Mamet (b. 1947)
“It is ultimately in employers’ best interests to have their employees’ families functioning smoothly. In the long run, children who misbehave because they are inadequately supervised or marital partners who disapprove of their spouse’s work situation are productivity problems. Just as work affects parents and children, parents and children affect the workplace by influencing the employed parents’ morale, absenteeism, and productivity.”
—Ann C. Crouter (20th century)