Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The Housewife
and Her Labour under Capitalism
The historical transition of the domestic unit from its feudal location (co-terminous with production) to capitalism (divorced from production) was an uneven
development of considerable duration. It was still incomplete in England in the
1860s when Marx wrote Capital: The system prevalent in England is that the
capitalist concentrates a large number of machines on his premises, and then distributes the produce of those machines for further manipulation amongst domestic
workers. The variety of the transition form, however, does not conceal the tendency
to conversion into the factory system proper. Capital I, p. 445.
Capital, I, p. 167.
Marx considers the value of labour power to be determined in the context of
general historical conditions which exist above and beyond mere physical necessity. He
writes: If the owner of labour power works today, tomorrow he must again be able
to repeat the same process in the same conditions as regards health and strength. His
means of subsistence must therefore be sufficient to maintain him in his normal state
as a labouring individual. His natural wants, such as food, clothing, fuel and housing
vary according to the climatic and physical conditions of his country. On the other
hand, the number and extent of his so-called necessary wants, as also the modes of
satisfying them, are themselves to a great extent dependent on the degree of civilization of a country, more particularly on the conditions under which, and consequently on the habits and degree of comfort in which, the class of free labourers has
been formed. In contradistinction therefore, to the case of other commodities, there
enters into the determination of the value of labour-power a historical and moral
element. Capital, I, p. 168.
10
Marx divides the industrial working day into two parts. Within the
first (necessary labour time), the worker produces value expressed as
the wage, sufficient to sustain him and his family in living conditions
normal for the working class of the particular historical period in which
he lives. In the second portion of the working daysurplus labour time
he produces value which is realized as surplus value by the capitalist.
The entire accumulation of capital is founded upon the value produced
in surplus labour time over and above necessary labour time.
From the standpoint of the capitalist, the wage is a production cost, to
be lumped together with other costs. His interest is in profit measured
as a portion of total investment. The constituent parts of his investment
(variable and constant capital) are of interest only in so far as their
rearrangement alters his rate of profit.
From labours standpoint, on the other hand, the wage is value created
solely by the industrial labourer in a portion of the working day. As
value it derives from no other source but the workers own labour. What
flows back to the worker in the shape of wages is a portion of the product that is continually reproduced by him. The capitalist, it is true,
pays him in money, but this money is merely the transmitted form of the
product of his labour. It is his labour of last week, or of last year, that
pays for his labour power of this week.11
Labour Power (Relative Form)
While the wage is the sole monetary means of the proletarian familys
subsistence, this expresses only one side of labour powers duality.
Only when the past labour expended in the creation of labour power is
described can its relative form take shape. (Labour powers) value, like
that of every other commodity, is already fixed before it goes into
circulation, since a definite quantity of social labour has been spent
upon it.12
Certainly a portion of this definite quantity of social labour is embodied in the commodities purchased with the wage(housing, food,
clothing, etc). But these commodities do not walk into the household
and convert themselves into the familys subsistence of their own
11
12
Capital, I, p. 532.
Capital, I, p. 170.
13
Capital, I, p. 79.
9
10
Housework does not disappear when wage workers live alone, but
must either be purchased with the wage (restaurant, laundry, housecleaning services, etc) or else be completed by wage workers themselves
in extra-job time. Secondly, the reproduction of labour power is not
merely a daily necessity but also involves reproducing an entirely new
generation of workers. In this sense, labour power is reproduced in the
first place, before the worker ever takes a job.
But these general characteristics of domestic labour do not make the
case for it being a productive labour in the specific context of capitalist
production.16 As Marx clearly states: These definitions [of productive
and unproductive labour] are therefore not derived from the material
characteristics of labour (neither from the nature of its product, nor
from the particular character of the labour as concrete labour), but
from the definite social form, the social relations of production within
which labour is realized.17 The labourer alone is productive who produces surplus value for the capitalist. . . . Hence the notion of a productive labour implies not merely a relation between labourer and product of labour but also a specific social relation of product, a relation
that has sprung up historically and stamps the labourer as the direct
means of creating surplus value.18
A productive labour then has two characteristics; it is conducted in
direct relation with capital and it produces surplus value.19 Domestic
labour meets neither criteria. Its relation with capital is not direct (i.e.
it is not a wage labour) and secondly, it does not create more value than
it itself possesses. Domestic labour is unproductive (in the economic
sense) and conforms with Marxs description of an unproductive labour
exchanged not with capital but with revenue, that is wages or profits.20
Does categorizing domestic labour as unproductive negate the asser16
12
for a wage. The audience finds the action on stage so absorbing that
they accept the immediate appearance of the play as reality. In doing so,
they forget that the actors are not the sole agents of the onstage action.
Backstage are a group of stage hands (housewives) who have been
preparing the workers for the opening curtain for hours beforehand.
Although these workers are out of sight and therefore out of mind,
they are nonetheless indispensable to the entire production.
It is clear that the wages mystification is not limited to its effect upon
the immediate agents of its enactment but reaches a wider audience.22
One of the general results of this is the total obfuscation of the origins
of surplus value. Another way of looking at the conceptual substitution of labour for labour power is that it is a liquidation of the distinction between past and present labour. In the following passage Marx
reconstructs this distinction and in the process, reveals the basis of
capitals larcenous exchange with labour. The past labour that is embodied in labour power and the living labour it can call into action, the
daily cost of maintaining it, and its daily expenditure in work, are two
entirely different things. The former determines the exchange value of
labour power, the latter is its use value. The value of labour power and
the value that labour power creates are two entirely different magnitudes. . . This difference is what the capitalist had in view when he was
purchasing labour power . . . the seller of labour power realizes its
exchange value and parts with its use value. He cannot take one without giving the other.23
When the value of past labour is subtracted from the value of present
labour, the result is surplus value. The wage form, in provoking a
conceptual substitution of present for past labour, completely obscures
the labour origins of surplus value which then appears as if it were a
natural outgrowth of capital itself. In this way, the mystery of capitals
accumulation is built into the very structure of the capitalist mode of
production. The split between industrial and domestic labour, and the
separation of the latter from a direct relation with capitalthese are
structural pre-requisites for the deceptive presentation of capitals
exchange with labour in direct contradiction to its essential nature.
13
Physical maintenance26
Psychological maintenance
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14
Skills
This function, like others in the general repertoire of domestic tasks, has been
slowly eroded in the history of capitalism. With the increasing complexity of technology and the advancing specialization of labour, many of the training functions
performed by the family are now assumed by the state. This has involved an exponential growth in educational facilities of all types.
15
question itself (is the family in the base or superstructure?) is incorrectly posed and the bind it produces flows from its misconception
of Marxist categories.28
The terms base and superstructure signify different functional levels or
aspects of the social world having a certain defined relationship to one
another. Economic activity (the base) substructures the social order, for
it is this social activity which ensures the production and reproduction
of the material world. Ideological activity sustains the coherence of the
social world at the level of consciousness. An institutional realm (such
as the family) need not be exclusively comprised of one aspect of social
activity or another. Ideological activity may be a part of the social life
of a realm that has an economic function. This is, in fact, what occurs
in the family. The social activity of the family reproduces specific
aspects of labour power and the relations of production, and it is in
this sense that the nuclear family is a dual-faceted institution having
functional aspects of both base and superstructure.
Marx uses categories in a way that is radically dissimilar from bourgeois science.
For Marx, categories do not slice up the real world into mutually exclusive and
logically independent factors (A is no part of B and does not imply B). Such a conception violates social reality and therefore sets up a mental model of the world which
cannot grasp its dynamic, relational, interpenetrated, reciprocally causal, multifaceted
nature. For instance, Marx repeatedly warns that capital is not a thing but a definite
social relation, and he gives it different names, to specify various aspects of the
overall process of capital in motion: variable capital, surplus value, money, interest,
etc. Thus, the Marxist process of categorizing must correspond to social reality and
not violate its nature. Categories describe distinguishable functional aspects of an
organic process, and since the whole is constantly in internal motion different categories are turning into one another constantly as different moments in a process are
transformed. cf. B. Ollman, Alienation: Marxs Conception of Man in Capitalist Society.
Cambridge, 1971, Chapters 1, 2, 3.
16
diminished the familys function within the social order, but it has
trivialized the nature of domestic labour still further.
2. While broad layers of the proletariat have gained higher levels of
technical expertise and general knowledge through the reorganization
of the labour process, the housewife has been largely by-passed. The
level of skill and knowledge generated from her work has made little
advance in the last century. Because other labour processes have been
developed over this time span, the position of the domestic labourer
relative to all but the lowest sectors of the proletariat has deteriorated.
General advances in education and culture have mitigated this effect
somewhat but the housewifes atomized location removed from the
public milieu, has minimized even this generalized transmission.
3. The material insufficiency of the family as a social unit creates the
conditions of its own structural subordination within the capitalist
social formation. The family is forced outside of itself to obtain the
means of its own subsistence both in the form of the wage and commodity goods from the market place. It is these external relations which
determine the familys class position and circumscribe the life conditions and opportunities of its dependent members.
These three specific aspects of the familys structural subordination
must be situated within the larger dynamics of the capitalist system.
Under the rule of capital, the forms and relations of production dominate their counterparts in reproduction. This hierarchy of determination
operates particularly strongly upon the family whose functions are
entirely reproductive. By virtue of its indirect and mediated relation
with capital, the familys structure is shaped and its labour determined
by external forces operating beyond its immediate social field.
The following passage from Capital describes the structural subordination of other kinds of capital to industrial capital. It could be applied
just as readily to the family. To the extent that (industrial capital)
seizes control of social production, the technique and social organization of the labour process are revolutionized, . . . The other kinds of
capital, . . . are not only subordinated to it and the mechanism of their
functions altered in conformity with it, but move solely with it as their
basis, hence live and die, stand and fall with this basis.30 The general
malaise of the family unit, whose vitality and autonomy are being
steadily eroded in the stampeding progress of capital, has not escaped
the notice of social commentators of all ideological stripes. Almost
unanimously they have pronounced the family to be in crisis, though
their commentary generally bemoans the symptoms without situating
the causes.
More significant are the broad numbers of housewives who are registering the objective stagnation and backwardness of the domestic unit
with a pervasive dissatisfaction that is now becoming consciously
articulated throughout the West. The accumulation of this atomized
dissent has yet to achieve viable organizational forms where its direct
and progressive impact on the class struggle could be realized. It is
30
18
31
Historically, this drive towards upward mobility has tended to be much stronger
in North American families than in its European counterparts. Proletarian traditions
and more limited opportunities for petty bourgeois entrepreneurship have historically negated this effect in Europe.
19
Wage workers, at least, have a direct relation with capital. Their purpose in working is to get paid, and they do not generally describe their
work as meaningful. As a result, they can experience alienation from
their work and hostility toward the boss without apology. A housewife
cannot do this. In the absence of a paycheck to justify her toil, the
housewife must account for her work in non-economic terms. Hers is
a labour of love performed out of a devotion to her family. A housewife who admits that she hates her work is not a good mother. Often,
therefore, her alienation from her work must be repressed from consciousness, lest she implode with guilt and feelings of personal inadequacy. The end result of this is that housework takes on the appearance of an arrangement of destiny, a natural female vocation and duty.
The Privatization of Domestic Life
32
Capital, I, p. 778.
20
People are literally driven into private to attempt to satisfy those needs.
Their daily foray into public must be counterbalanced with a time of
retreat. The privatized family home functions as this vital realm, where
public tension can be displaced and absorbed. The housewifes role is
central in all this. With the heightened dichotomy between public and
private space, her primary responsibility is to sustain and orchestrate
the private implosion of public tension. She co-ordinates family
activity in order to manage tension. Above all family conflict must be
muted, and at the very least, contained behind closed doors. The
spillover of discord into the public realm is avoided for it reflects
badly upon the womens competence in tension managing. The strong
differentiation between public and private space heightens the impact of
home as an atomized ghetto that stifles the housewifes social development.
22
But granted that such mobilizations continue to rise, and even granted
that they are not sidetracked into reformism, housewives still will not
provide the decisive motive force of the womens struggle. To the
contrary, it was the huge flood of women out of their homes into
higher education and industrial production in the 1960s that created
the material preconditions for a womens radicalization at the end of the
decade. Women now constitute between 30 and 40 per cent of wage
labourers under advanced capitalism, and their absolute numbers and
relative proportion are steadily increasing. It is mainly from within this
population rather than from the diminishing numbers of women who
are still exclusively housewives, that womens leadership will come in the
years ahead. Women wage workers and students struggling for full
equality with men within unions and in the schools will be in the vanguard of struggles that will diminish the sex divisions of the class.
Furthermore it will be primarily these women who will inject radical
womens consciousness back into the population of women who remain exclusively housewives. This arises from their objective location
in the social formation which must after all be the starting point for any
revolutionary strategy.
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