ABSTRACT
The urgent desire to increase production led the mercantilists to investigate which type of labour was more suitable for this purpose. They therefore tried to understand what types of work were more productive, in order to encourage them to spread; and which were less productive, to discourage them.1
The concept of productive or unproductive labour was therefore created with mercantilism, and not, as many still believe, with Adam Smith. It emerged as a distinction between types of work that were productive to different degrees, and not as a contrast between types of work that are inherently productive and those that are always unproductive. The mercantilists and the Enlightenment thinkers faithfully followed this flexible approach. This flexibility enabled them to have a dynamic conception of accumulation. In fact, through the concept of different types of labour being more productive or less productive, in the end Enlightenment thinkers came to understand the need to increase consumption in order to make labour more productive. They therefore came to see consumption as an investment.
