Essentially, Marx defined productive labor under capitalism as labor which produces commodity value, and hence surplus value, for capital. This excludes all labor which is not exchanged against capital. Self-employed proprietors—farmers, artisans, handicraftsman, tradesmen, professionals, all other self-employed—are according to this definition not productive workers because their labor is not exchanged for capital and does not directly contribute to the increase of capital.* Nor is the servant a productive worker, even though employed by the capitalist, because the labor of the servant is exchanged not against capital but against revenue. The capitalist who hires servants is not making profits, but spending them. It is clear that this definition has nothing to do with the utility of the labor employed, or even its concrete form. The very same labor may be either productive or unproductive, depending upon its social form. To hire the neighbor’s boy to cut the lawn is to set in motion unproductive labor; to call a gardening firm which sends out a boy to do the job (perhaps even the same boy) is another thing entirely. Or, to put the matter from the point of view of the capitalist, to hire gardening labor to maintain his family’s lawn is unproductive consumption, while to hire the very same gardening labor in order to realize a profit from its work is to set in motion productive labor for the purpose of accumulating capital.