The personnel manager in a modern capitalist corporation does not labor with machines to transform raw materials into commodities for sale. Such a manager controls and maneuvers productive laborers but is not one of them. The salary and equipment such a manager uses represent costs to the capitalist defrayed by distributions of the surplus. In capitalism, as Marx makes so clear, the capitalist has to distribute much of the surplus to others in order to keep on getting surplus. Without personnel managers, the surplus-producing workers might produce less surplus or none at all.
