ABSTRACT
This chapter examines capitalist accumulation through the productive/unproductive labour distinction and also through the consequent productive/unproductive consumption distinction. Such distinctions are relevant to economic thought from the 16th–19th century, but linger on, as a marginal issue. Labour is a planned activity. It produces something useful for us, which we call wealth. The economists who speak of unproductive labour are usually referring to the labourer who produces less wealth than–or just the same wealth as–he consumes. In the modern age economists began seeking to identify which labour contributes most to the national wealth. The proportion in which social labour is distributed between more and less productive activities is decisive for the final production. Pre-modern economies are static: wealth grows neither endogenously nor constantly, and occupations are normally inherited, together with the social status acquired by birth. In its original form, the concept of unproductive labour implied, first of all, that the productiveness of labour was relative.
