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Engineers have generally been viewed either as members of a "middle class" attracted to a distinctive technocratic politics that rejects the leadership of both labor & capital or as passive servants of capital. Using published & archival data, this article shows that an American mechanical engineers during the 1930s were not attracted to technocratic ideas. Instead some supported pro-business ideas, whole many others showed an interest in organizing themselves as employees with interests different from business. This example suggests that engineers do not constitute a distinctive, homogeneous middle class, but are, in fact, internally divided by class. Adapted from the source document.

This paper attempts to clarify some of the confusion surrounding Marx's discussion of productive and un productive labor. It begins with a brief exposition of Marx's definitions of these concepts and then moves to a consideration of their more controversial aspects. Par ticular attention is paid to the problem of service workers and commercial wage-labor, and Mandel's and Poulant zas's writings on these subjects are reviewed and criticiz ed. Finally, an attempt is made to situate these concepts in Marx's overall theoretical framework. It is argued that Marx never intended them to be used as the basis for class analysis, and it is suggested that the crucial Marxist con cept for such an analysis is exploitation.