Are Services Post-Capitalist? A Marxian Interrogation

Abstract

Recent post-capitalist theorizing, particularly Winant, revives the question of service sector growth. At stake is whether an economic system built on the extraction of surplus value can continue to function when ever-larger shares of workers do not produce this; also, whether their growing predominance prefigures post-capitalist relations of production. Most contributions offer imprecise concepts of service work and capitalist productivity, however. This article sharpens these with Marxian theoretical tools and assesses them using 2016–2020 US Census data, finding that less than one-fifth of service employees produce surplus value, while nearly half of non-service employees do. The majority of service and all formal US employees create important use values outside of direct capitalist exploitation. They thus pose a potentially post-capitalist constituency that is heavily—and non-randomly—female and Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). The implications of this for the transition away from capitalism, as well as for the transition debate itself, are then considered.