Distinzione tra lavoro produttivo e improduttivo in campo letterario

“How this may apply to literature Marx explains in a passage which transfers the ‘silk-worm’ image from Goethe’s ‘Torquato Tasso’ (see above, p. 160) to an episode from the life of John Milton: ‘The same sort of work can be ‘productive’ or ‘unproductive. Milton, for instance, ‘who did the ‘Paradise Lost’ for £ 5′, was un ‘unproductive’ worker. The writer, however, who turns out factory hack-work for his book-seller, is a ‘productive worker’. Milton produced ‘Paradise Lost’ for the same reason as that which makes the silk-worm produce silk. It was an activity wholly natural to him. He later sold the product for £ 5. But the cultural proletarian in Leipzig who churns out books (such as compendia of economics, for instance) under the direction of his book-dealer, is a ‘productive worker’; for his product is from the first subordinated to capital and intended only to utilize capital. A singer who sells her singing on her own initiative, is an ‘unproductive worker’. But if the same singer is engaged by an entrepreneur who lets her sing to make money for him, then she is a ‘productive worker’: for then she produces capital.” (TM I-MEW XXVI (i), 377). This is the logic of Adam Smith’s definition of ‘productive’ and ‘unproductive’, which Marx links with Hegel’s ‘cunning of reason’ (how ubiquitous Hegel in in Marx’s work right up to the end!) and wittily extends even to ‘crime’: ‘A philosopher produces ideas, a poet poems, a parson sermons, a professor compendia, etc. A criminal produces crime… The criminal produces…art too, ‘belles-lettres’, novels, and even tragedies: witness not only Müllner’s ‘Guilt’ [Die Schuld] and Schiller’s ‘The Robbers’, but also ‘Oedipus’ and ‘Richard III’…” (TM I – MEW XXVI (i), 363-4).” [S.S. Prawer, Karl Marx and World Literature, 1978]