IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/str/wpaper/0805.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Adam Smiths concept of productive and unproductive labour: An Interpretation

Author

Listed:
  • Roy Grieve

    (Department of Economics, University of Strathclyde)

Abstract

This note explores Smith’s employment of the concept of ‘productive labour’, a concept which commentators have frequently found problematic. We suggest that Smith’s difficulty in formulating a satisfactory definition of ‘productive labour’ stems from the fact that he seems to have had in mind - and to have tried to combine - two different (but only independently valid), concepts of productive labour: one (anticipating Marx) in respect of labour whose employment yields surplus value to the capitalist, the other (presaging Sraffa) focusing on labour employed in certain necessary or ‘basic’ industries within the economy.

Suggested Citation

  • Roy Grieve, 2008. "Adam Smiths concept of productive and unproductive labour: An Interpretation," Working Papers 0805, University of Strathclyde Business School, Department of Economics, revised Feb 2009.
    • Handle: RePEc:str:wpaper:0805
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.strath.ac.uk/media/1newwebsite/departmentsubject/economics/research/researchdiscussionpapers/2008/08-05Amended.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Adam Smith: Productive and Unproductive Labour; Surplus Production;

    JEL classification:

    • B12 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought through 1925 - - - Classical (includes Adam Smith)

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:str:wpaper:0805. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirsty Hall (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/edstruk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.