# 20220721 > “But I didn’t and still don’t like making a cult of women’s knowledge, preening ourselves on knowing things men don’t know, women’s deep irrational wisdom, women’s instinctive knowledge of Nature, and so on. All that all too often merely reinforces the masculinist idea of women as primitive and inferior – women’s knowledge as elementary, primitive, always down below at the dark roots, while men get to cultivate and own the flowers and crops that come up into the light. But why should women keep talking baby talk while men get to grow up? Why should women feel blindly while men get to think?” > > — [[Ursula K. Le Guin]], _What Women Know_ Le Guin is making a [[feminist]] statement, that “women’s knowledge” is primitive while a man’s knowledge is serious. This should be seen as a criticism of things like “feminism in [[astrology]].” > “The productive labourer he that directly increases his master’s wealth” (Malthus, Principles of Political Economy, 2nd ed., London, 1836).[93] > > The [[difference between productive and unproductive labour]] is important as regards accumulation, since one of the conditions for the reconversion of surplus value into capital is that the exchange should be with productive labour alone. > > The capitalist, as representative of capital engaged in its valorisation process — productive capital — performs a productive function, which consists precisely in directing and exploiting productive labour. The capitalist class, in contrast to the other consumers of surplus value, who do not stand in a direct and active relation to its production, is the productive class par excellence. [See Ricardo] (As director of the labour process the capitalist can perform productive labour in the sense that his labour is included in the overall labour process which is embodied in the product.) As yet, we are only acquainted with capital within the direct production process. The situation with the other functions of capital — and with the agents used by capital to perform these functions — can only be examined later. > > The productive (and therefore also its opposite, the unproductive) character of labour therefore depends on this, that the production of capital is the production of surplus value, and the labour employed by capital is labour that produces surplus value. > > — [[Karl Marx]] ([source](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/economic/ch02b.htm)) ![[/home/ryan/org/.attach/c0/c7fa23-f0c4-4a87-bf28-1195f3772140/tumblr_f7a3b11d779c02262cef7ec365717312_11832880_2048.jpg "Alternative source, from MECW"]] Marx is saying that the [[productive and unproductive character of labor]] depends on labor that is employed by capital, and that labor employed by capital is labor that produces [[surplus-value]]. > the [[marxologists]] have hitherto only interpreted [[marx]] in various ways; the point is to instrumentalize him > > — [[edwad]] ([source](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/edwad/690417592257691648?source=share))