'Life in the Higher Sausage Factory' - the Paper

Dr. Glenn Rikowski, School of Education, University of Northampton

Guest Lecture to the Teacher Education Research Group

22nd March 2012, The Cass School of Education and Communities, University of East London


Finally, 'Life in the Higher Sausage Factory' by Glenn Rikowski is on our 'The Flow of Ideas' website - see

http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Life%20in%20the%20Higher%20Sausage%20Factory


Glenn has added a short Preface to explain the provenance and development of the paper.


Here is the full reference:

Rikowski, G. (2012) Life in the Higher Sausage Factory, Guest Lecture to the Teacher Education Research Group, The Cass School of Education and Communities, University of East London, 22nd March, online at:

http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Life%20in%20the%20Higher%20Sausage%20Factory

If you would like a Word version of this paper then send an email to Rikowskigr@aol.com and we will send it by email attachment.


“Capitalist production is not merely the production of commodities, it is essentially the production of surplus-value. The labourer produces, not for himself, but for capital. It no longer suffices, therefore, that he should simply produce. He must produce surplus-value. That labourer alone is productive, who produces surplus-value for the capitalist, and thus works for the self-expansion of capital. If we may take an example from outside the sphere of production of material objects, a schoolmaster is a productive labourer, when, in addition to belabouring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of a sausage factory, does not alter the relation. Hence the notion of a productive labourer implies not merely a relation between work and useful effect, between labourer and product of labour, but also a specific, social relation of production, a relation that has sprung up historically and stamps the labourer as the direct means of creating surplus-value. To be a productive labourer is, therefore, not a piece of luck, but a misfortune” (Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I).