Fabian van Onzen is Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at Lone Star College in Houston, Texas. His work has appeared in the Marx and Philosophy Review of Books, Monthly Review Online, and Capital and Class.

Preface

List of Figures and Tables

1 Introduction

1Centrality of Service Work in Contemporary Capitalism

2Overview of Book

2 Historical Materialism

1Method of Historical Materialism

2Mode of Production and Social Formation

3Historical Materialist Research

3 Marxism, Class and the Service Industry

1Marxist Class Analysis

2Marxist Definition of Class

3Two Approaches to Class Analysis

4Main Classes of Capitalist Mode of Production

4.1 The Working Class

4.2 The Bourgeoisie

4.3 The Petty-Bourgeoisie

4.4 The Dissolution of the Petty-Bourgeoisie

5Summary

4 Service Labour and Value Theory

1Marxism, Services, Commodities

2The Commodity-Form

3Surplus-Value and Service Workers

4Surplus Value in the Service Industry

5Productive and Unproductive Labour

6Increased Surplus-value

7Conclusion

5 Retail and the Circulation of Commodities

1Circulation of Commodities

2Circulation Time and Costs of Circulation

3Production in Circulation

4Consumption Time and Consumption Period

6 Monopoly Capital and the Sales Effort

1Marx on Commercial Capital

2The Emergence of Monopoly Capital

3Imperialism and Monopoly Capitalism

4Imperialism and the Split in the Bourgeoisie

5Dependency Theory: Centre and Periphery

6Unequal Exchange

7 Two Stages of Production and Realisation

1Stage One: Production of Goods

2Stage Two: Realisation of Surplus-value

3Possibilities for Resistance to Monopoly Capitalism

8 A Marxist Analysis of Outsourcing

1Bidvest-Noonan: A Case Study in Outsourcing

2Conclusion

9 Cleaning Workers and Surplus Value

1Molly Maid: A Case Study

2Conclusion

10 Organising Retail and Service Workers

1Retail: H&M Workers in Germany

2Cleaners in Struggle

3Exposure Campaigns and Workers Power

4Conclusion

11 Service, Retail and Transport under Socialism

1What is Socialism?

1.1 Workers Power

1.2 Socialist Mode of Production

1.3 Socialist Planning

2Food Consumption under Socialism

3Socialist Integration and Retail Labour under Socialism

4Residential Cleaning under Socialism

4.1 Cleaning Outside the Home

5Transportation under Socialism

6Conclusion

12 Afterword

Bibliography

Index