 So you can't deduce the kind of commodity present in society from just looking at the exchange process itself. You have to connect that exchange process to the class process. Why? Because the class process is Marx's point of entry. I'm going to underscore this with a third example. In the third example, I want to eliminate this exchange process. I want to eliminate this. I want to only consider these two processes, but I want to change this one. No more value being produced here. Consider a feudal class process. Here, a serf does six hours of protection on his little plot of land that he gets, that he acquires from his or her lord, but is required to spend two hours of surplus. This is the necessary labor. This is surplus labor. Two hours of surplus guarding the lord's land. That's part of the obligation of the serf to his or her lord. What do we have here? There's no commodity production. There's no exchange value being produced because we erased it from the blackboard. But we still have class exploitation. So it's a different kind of class exploitation. It's a different form than the capitalist or ancient. But there's no value being produced here and there's no surplus value because nothing is being produced for exchange, but we still have class exploitation. Once again, if you just examine the labor process alone and if you erase everything else, you can't do anything about the kind of commodity. You have to connect it to these different processes and different examples. Finally, the final example, which is that of unproductive labor. So let me go back. Let me get rid of this. Let me leave that labor process on because it's common to all these examples. Let me go back here. The worker sells his or her labor power for $75. So we have this exchange process on the input side like we have in capitalism and we certainly have a labor process occurring. However, in this example, nothing is produced for sale by assumption. There's no commodity that is being produced and sold by this employer. In other words, protection, police protection is not being produced for sale. Hence there's no exchange value present here. And I'm also going to assume no fundamental class process is occurring as well, whether it be capitalism or otherwise, but there's none. In other words, no wealth, no quantum of wealth is being produced for sale. So there's no exchange value. There's no surplus value that's present in this. There's no value. So the value added by workers is not taking a value form. Nothing is being produced for sale. Then you can ask the question, where the heck does this $75 come from? The employer is paying the worker $75, but there's no value, like in the first example I gave you, out of which that $75 is coming. So where is it coming from? A, and why on earth would an employer do this? The answer is that the employer, in this case, is taking this $75 from the surplus value that the employer gets from other kinds of workers. Suppose this were an automobile company. In the automobile company, they're producing cars for sale and so forth, and the labor there is productive labor. That goes back to the first example that I gave you. But suppose the employer also needs guards, protection for the cars that are being produced and sold, machinery and so forth, etc. Hence, the capitalist has a condition of existence that has to be secured, which is protection. So the capitalist takes a portion of the surplus produced by those automobile workers and pays different kinds of laborers, these guards, the $75 to get the guarding. So let's put that down, because it's consistent with what we did before. So the surplus value emanates from automobile production a portion of it a portion of it has to be given let me pause for a moment and let me get a different crayon here a portion of it has to be given to these guards then of course we have all the other payments, as we discussed our private and all the others that we discussed in the first lectures. So the surplus value in automobile the productive laborers that produce that surplus the capitalist then acquire it they take a portion and they distribute it to the guards $75 in order to get that condition of existence. So in this kind of nuanced analysis Marx is saying that these guards are unproductive labor they're necessary for production just like everybody on the right hand side is necessary they're necessary for production to provide protection from the factory but they don't produce any surplus they're unproductive of surplus and hence the surplus from the productive laborers a portion of it has to be used to secure the guarding just like all the other conditions of existence of the capitalist employer okay and that kind of logic the notion of working class becomes problematic because it's mixing together two different kinds of labor it's mixing together productive and unproductive so for example for a union would be very sensitive or should be very sensitive to the two different kinds of labor these different adjectives why because the unproductive laborers live off the surplus being produced by the productive laborers so for example if the unproductive laborer is one of the higher wage it could come at the expense let me do that again if the unproductive laborer is one of the higher wage it could come at the expense of the productive laborers and you would have attention always attention within the union because the union represents two different kinds of laborers let me pause there