摘要：When I started to read Ken J. Tarbuck's article, "Productive and Unproductive Labour" (in SPE 12, Fall 1983), I assumed he was going to deal with the question of how the Marxian distinction between these categories of labour could serve as the basis for a challenge to the vulgar notions (based on the single criterion of whether or not the labour gives rise to profits) being used by ruling classes to accentuate the division between private and public sector workers and justify reductions in (non-defence) state expenditures. As it turned out, the article focused on definitional issues, or, in other words, on what Marx really meant by these categories of labour.
