Responding to criticisms of Mohun (1996) by Houston (1997) and Laibman (1999) in the RRPE, this paper explores the empirical consequences of the competing definitions proposed for productive labor, and concludes that abandoning the productive-unproductive labor distinction renders the Marxian theory of capitalist accumulation an unconvincing account of U.S. accumulation from 1948 to 1989.
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