DOMESTIC LABOR REVISITED

LISE VOGEL

INDEX

I. THEORIES AND THEORIZING...... 2 II. A DIFFERENT STARTING POINT ...... 4 III. CAPITALISM AND DOMESTIC LABOR...... 6 IV. AUDIENCES AND PARADIGMS ...... 9 V. DOMESTIC LABOR IN THE 21ST CENTURY ...... 11 VI. REFERENCES...... 12

DOMESTIC LABOR REVISITED. 1

1. From the late 1960s into the 1970s, socialist critique launched by North American women's feminists sought to analyze women's unpaid liberationists in the late 1960s and soon picked family work within a framework of Marxist up elsewhere, notably in Britain. Although political economy.i Such an analysis would central in women's experience, the unpaid work provide a foundation, they thought, for and responsibilities of family life were rarely understanding women's differential posit!ioning addressed in radical thought and socialist as mothers, family members, and workers, and practice. Women's liberationists, wanting to thereby for a materialist analysis of women's ground their own activism in more adequate subordination. At the time, interest in the theory, began to wonder about the theoretical bearing of Marxist theory on women's status of the housework and childcare liberation seemed perfectly normal— and not performed in family households, usually by just to socialist feminists. Radical feminists also women. Over the next years, an enormous set adopted and transformed what they understood of writings known collectively as the domestic to be Marxist concepts (e.g., Firestone, 1970; labor debate examined this puzzle.iii Millett, 1970). 5. The domestic labor literature identified 2. From these efforts came a voluminous family households as sites of production. literature. Women's liberationists studied Reconceptualized as domestic labor, housework Marxist texts, wrestled with Marxist concepts, and childcare could then be analyzed as labor and produced a range of original formulations processes. From this beginning came a series of combining, or at least intermingling, questions. If domestic labor is a labor process, and feminism. Their enthusiasm for this work is then what is its product? people? commodities? hard today to recapture.ii It turned out, labor power? Does the product have value? If moreover, to be relatively brief. By the end of so, how is that value determined? How and by the 1970s, interest in domestic labor theorizing what or whom is the product consumed? What had dramatically declined. The shift away from are the circumstances, conditions, and the so— called domestic labor debate was constraints of domestic labor? What is domestic especially pronounced in the United States. labor's relationship to the reproduction of labor 3. In this paper I look again at the challenge of power? to overall social reproduction? to theorizing the unwaged labor of housework, capitalist accumulation? Could a mode of childbearing, and childrearing. I argue that reproduction of people be posited, comparable much of the early domestic labor literature to but separate from the mode of production? followed an intellectual agenda that has not Could answers to these questions explain the been well understood, reviewing my own work origins of women's oppression? in this light. I then consider the reception of 6. The burgeoning domestic labor literature such endeavors by their audiences. Finally, I seemed initially to confirm, even legitimate, suggest that the early domestic labor theorists' socialist feminists' double commitment to unfinished project deserves further attention. women's liberation and socialism. Before long, however, a range of problems surfaced. I. THEORIES AND THEORIZING Concepts and categories that had initially seemed self— evident lost their stability. For 4. The notion that something called “ domestic example, the notion of reproduction of labor labor” should be theorized emerged as part of a power became surprisingly elastic, stretching

DOMESTIC LABOR REVISITED. 2 from biological procreation to any kind of work directly pertinent to day— to— day activities that contributed to people's daily and thought a given theory had determinate maintenance— whether it be paid or unpaid, in political and strategic implications. Conversely, private households, in the market, or in the they looked to empirical accounts of history workplace. Likewise, the meaning of the and current circumstances as a way to constitute category domestic labor fluctuated. Did it refer the appropriate basis for theory.iv Rejecting the simply to housework? Or did it include abstractions of the early domestic labor childbearing and child care as well? Circular literature, they sought a conceptual apparatus arguments were common. For example, that could be used to organize and interpret the domestic labor was frequently identified with data of women's lives. women's work and conversely, thereby 10. This approach reflected a particular assuming the sexual division of labor women's epistemological orientation, one that put theory liberationists wished to explain. In addition, the into a kind of one— to— one relationship with debate's almost exc!lusive concern with unpaid the empirical. Theory was assumed to be household labor discounted the importance of isomorphic with what was understood to be women's paid labor, whether as domestic reality. As such, it could produce empirical servants or wage workers. And its focus on the generalizations, statements of regularity, and economic seemed to overlook pressing models. Explanation and prediction would then political, ideological, psychological, and sexual depend on extrapolation from these presumably issues. accurate representations. In this view, familiar 7. Women's liberationists also found the from the social— scientific literature, theory is abstractness of the domestic labor literature a broad— ranging intellectual activity, frustrating. The debate developed in ways that grounded in the empirical and capable of were not only hard to follow but also far from supplying descriptions, explanations, and activist concerns. Concepts appeared to interact predictions— and thereby able as well to guide among themselves without connection to the policy or strategy. empirical world. Not only was the discussion 11. This is not the only way to think about abstract, it seemed ahistorical as well. Perhaps theory, however. Much of the early domestic most damaging, much of the domestic labor labor literature implicitly adopted a different literature adopted a functionalist explanatory perspective, rooted in certain readings of framework. A social system's need for domestic Marxist theory current in the 1960s and '70s. labor, for example, was taken to imply that Associated most famously with the French need was invariably satisfied. Where in the philosopher Louis Althusser, this alternative debate, many wondered, was human agency? perspective accords theory an epistemological 8. Meanwhile, feminist agendas were bursting specificity and a limited scope. Theory, in this with other matters, both theoretical and view, is a powerful but highly abstract practical. By the early 1980s, most socialist enterprise and sharply different from history feminists had decided to move “beyond the (see, among others, Althusser, 1971; Hindess domestic labor debate.”They left behind the and Hirst, 1975; Willer and Willer, 1973; as ambiguity, conceptual fuzziness, circularity, well as Marx, [1857]/1973). As Althusser put it, and loose ends of an unfinished project speaking of Marx's Capital: (Molyneux, 1979). 12. Despite appearances, Marx does not analyze 9. The shift away from the effort to theorize any “ concrete society,” not even England, domestic labor within a framework of Marxist which he mentions constantly in Volume One, political economy seemed to make sense. Many but the capitalist mode of production and women's liberationists assumed theory to be nothing else. This object is an abstract one:

DOMESTIC LABOR REVISITED. 3 which means that it is terribly real and that it concrete— neither the rich, idiosyncratic, and never exists in the pure state, since it only exists constructed character of experience nor the in capitalist societies. Simply speaking: in order specific nature and direction of popular to be able to analyse these concrete capitalist mobilization or social transformation. Even less societies (England, France, Russia, etc.), it is could they suggest political strategies. Such essential to know that they are dominated by questions would be matters for empirical that terribly concrete reality, the capitalist mode investigation and political analysis by the actors of production, which is “invisible” (to the involved. naked eye). “Invisible,” i.e., abstract. 16. The challenge, then, was to discover or (Althusser, 1971, 77.). create categories to theorize women's unpaid 13. From this perspective, theory is necessarily family work as a material process. Women's abstract as well as severely constrained in its liberationists, myself included, examined the implications. It can point to key elements and classic texts of Marx, Engels, Bebel, and others, tendencies but it cannot provide richly textured discovering only a precarious theoretical legacy accounts of social life. Even less does it directly at best. This finding led, in my case, to a explain events, suggest strategies, or evaluate lengthy critical reading of Marx. In this reading the prospects for political action. These are I followed what I understood to be Althusser's matters for a qualitatively distinct kind of advice: inquiry— — one that examines the specifics of 17. Do not look to Capital either for a book of particular historical conjunctures in existing “concrete” history or for a book of “empirical” social formations. political economy, in the sense in which 14. To put it another way, this alternative historians and economists understand these approach conceptualizes theory as a sort of terms. Instead, find in it a book of theory lens. By itself, the lens tells us little about the analysing the capitalist mode of production. specifics of a particular society at a particular History (concrete history) and economics moment. It is only by using the lens that (empirical economics) have other objects. observers can evaluate such specifics and (Althusser, 1971, 78.) strategize for the future. Compared to 18. Using this approach to theory, I hoped to be theorizing— producing the lens— these tasks able to contribute to the construction of a more of empirical investigation and political analysis satisfactory theoretical lens with which to constitute intellectual work of a different and, I analyze women's subordination. would argue, more challenging sort. 19. As my conceptual point of departure I considered two notions basic to Marx's work: II. A DIFFERENT STARTING POINT labor power and the reproduction of labor power. For Marx, labor power is a capacity 15. I turn now to my own work on domestic borne by a human being and distinguishable labor. My purpose in so doing is to offer an from the bodily and social existence of its example of women's liberationist theorizing bearer. Labor power's potential is realized when within the intentionally abstract framework just its bearer makes something useful— a use— described. From this perspective, the domestic value— which may or may not be exchanged. labor debate was a theoretical rather than The bearers of labor power are, however, historical or sociological project. Its outcome mortal and suffer wear and tear; every would be expected to take the form of sets of individual eventually dies. Some process that abstract concepts and identifications of possible meets the ongoing personal needs of the bearers mechanisms and tendencies. These could not, of labor power is therefore a condition of social by themselves, really “explain” anything reproduction, as is some process that replaces

DOMESTIC LABOR REVISITED. 4 them over time. These processes of daily has usually involved child— rearing within maintenance and long— run replacement are kin— based settings called families, it can in conflated in the term reproduction of labor principle be organized in other ways, at least for power. a period of time. The present set of laborers 20. In class— divided societies, dominant could be housed in dormitories, maintained classes somehow harness labor power's ability collectively, worked to death, and then replaced to produce use— values for their own benefit. by new workers, brought from outside. This For clarity I therefore restricted the concept of harsh regime has actually been approximated reproduction of labor power to the processes many times through history. Gold mines in that maintain and replace labor power capable Roman Egypt, rubber plantations in French of producing a surplus for an appropriating Indochina, and Nazi Arbeitslager all come to class.v In the remainder of this section I look mind. More commonly, an existing labor force very briefly at several characteristics of the is replenished in two ways. First, by processes reproduction of such labor power: the processes of what I term “generational replacement,” involved, the role of biological procreation, and whereby workers bear children who grow up to certain inherent contradictions. This prepares become workers themselve!s. And second, by the way for the next section's discussion of the entry of new workers into the labor force. reproduction of labor power in capitalist For example, individuals who had not societies. previously participated at all may become 21. Marx considered the reproduction of labor involved in wage labor, as when wives entered power to be central to social reproduction, but the U.S. labor market in the 1950s. People may he never provided a thoroughgoing exposition enter the work force sporadically, at harvest, for of just what it entailed. At times he focused on instance, or during economic crises. Immigrants renewal of the individual laborer; elsewhere, he can cross national boundaries to enter a underscored the importance of maintaining and society's labor force. Persons may also be replacing non— working members of the forcibly kidnapped, transported far from home, working class. For clarity, again, I therefore and coerced into a new workforce, as was done distinguished three kinds of processes that for New World slave plantations. make up the reproduction of labor power in 23. From the theoretical point of view, in other class societies. First, a variety of daily activities words, the reproduction of labor power is not restore the energies of direct producers and invariably associated with private kin— based enable them to return to work. Second, similar households, as the domestic labor debate activities maintain non— laboring members of commonly assumed. In particular, it does not subordinate classes— those who are too young, necessarily entail any or all of the following: old, or sick, or who themselves are involved in heterosexuality, biological procreation, family maintenance activities or out of the workforce forms, or generational replacement. for other reasons. And third, replacement Nonetheless, most class societies have processes renew the labor force by replacing institutionalized daily maintenance and members of the subordinate classes who have generational replacement processes in a system died or no longer work. of heterosexual family forms. That such 22. With these three kinds of processes arrangements are empirically so common disentangled, the concept of reproduction of probably reflects their advantages— contested labor power can be freed from normative and constantly renegotiated— over the assumptions concerning biological procreation alternatives. in heterosexual family contexts. Although the 24. Class societies that rely on biological reproduction of labor power in actual societies procreation for the reproduction of labor power

DOMESTIC LABOR REVISITED. 5 encounter several contradictions. While at this very general level. This discussion pregnant and for a short time thereafter, simply shows that subordinate— class women's subordinate— class women experience at least childbearing capacity positions them differently a brief period of somewhat reduced ability to from men with respect to the processes of work and/or to engage in the activities of daily surplus appropriation and reproduction of labor maintenance. During such periods of lower power. While they may also be workers, it is activity, the women must themselves be subordinate— class women's differential role in maintained. In this way, childbearing can the maintenance and replacement of labor diminish the contribution subordinate— class power that marks their particular situation.vii women make as direct producers and as vi participants in maintenance activities. From III. CAPITALISM AND DOMESTIC the perspective of dominant classes, such LABOR childbearing is therefore potentially costly, for pregnant women's labor and that which 27. The previous section considered elements of provides for them might otherwise have formed the reproduction of labor power in the case of part of surplus labor. At the same time, societies divided by class. In this section I look subordinate— class childbearing replenishes at the reproduction of labor power in that the work force and thereby benefits dominant distinctive kind of class society known as classes. There is a latent contradiction, then, capitalism. On this topic Marx had a fair between dominant classes' need to appropriate amount to say but, as the domestic labor surplus labor and their requirements for labor literature showed, it was nonetheless not power to perform it. enough.viii 25. >From the perspective of subordinate 28. In capitalist societies, according to Marx, classes, other contradictions may emerge. labor power takes the specific form of a Arrangements for the reproduction of labor commodity, that is, a thing that has not only power usually take advantage of relationships use— value but also exchange— value. Borne between women and men based on sexuality by persons, this commodity has certain and kinship. Other individuals, frequently the peculiarities. Its use— value is its capacity, biological father and his kin group or the kin of when put to work in a capitalist production the childbearing woman herself, have the process, to be the source of more value than it responsibility for making sure women are itself is worth. Its exchange— value— what it provided for during periods of diminished costs to buy the labor power on the market— is activity associated with childbearing. Although “the value of the means of subsistence in principle women's and men's differential necessary for the maintenance of the laborer” roles need only last during those childbearing (Marx, [1867]/1971, 167), an amount that is months, most societies assign them to the established historically and socially in a given variety of social structures known as families, society at a particular moment. which become sites for the performance of 29. To explore the relationship between labor daily maintenance as well as generational power's value and capital's interest in surplus replacement activities. The arrangements are appropriation, Marx used an abstraction: the ordinarily legitimated by male domination working day of a single workingman, expressed backed up by institutionalized structures of in hours. (For Marx, the worker was always female oppression. male, of course.) He defined “ necessary labor” 26. How these various contradictions manifest as the portion of a day's labor that enables the and are confronted in actual class societies worker to purchase the means of subsistence. cannot be directly derived from their existence And he defined “surplus labor” as the

DOMESTIC LABOR REVISITED. 6 remainder of the day's labor, which the individual consumption,” Marx recognized that capitalist appropriates.ix To put it another way, capitalism gives life off the job a radically the worker works part of the time for himself distinct character from wage labor. Individual and the rest of the time for the boss. The first, consumption happens when “the laborer turns the worker's necessary labor, corresponds to his the money paid to him for his labor— power wages; the second, his surplus labor, constitutes into means of subsistence” (Marx, [1867]/1971, surplus value at the disposal of the boss. 536). Marx's main interest here is to contrast 30. For Marx, capitalist accumulation creates a the worker's individual consumption of means constantly changing profit— driven system. If of subsistence with his “productive capitalists must seek more and more profits, it consumption” of means of production while on is in their interest to seek reductions of the job. But he said little about the actual work necessary labor. Marx discussed methods (other involved in individual consump!tion. Here was than cheating) they can use to achieve such a realm of economic activity essential to reduction. On the one hand, they can lengthen capitalist production yet missing from Marx's working hours or intensify the pace of work exposition. without changing the value of labor power. 32. The domestic labor literature sought, in More hours or more intense work means the various ways, to make visible the workings of worker expends more labor power for the same the reproduction of labor power in capitalist wage. That is, his labor power is cheapened. societies. From my perspective, this meant Marx called this kind of reduction of necessary reconceptualizing necessary labor to labor “absolute surplus value.” On the other incorporate the processes of reproduction of hand, capitalists can reduce necessary labor by labor power. Necessary labor has, I argued, two making the production process more components. The first, discussed by Marx, is productive. Greater productivity means the the necessary labor that produces value worker needs fewer working hours to complete equivalent to wages. This component, which I necessary labor and more surplus value goes to called the social component of necessary labor, the boss. Within limits, a wage increase could is indissolubly bound with surplus labor in the even be granted. Marx called this kind of capitalist production process. The second reduction of necessary labor “relative surp!lus component of necessary labor, deeply veiled in value.” Marx's account, is the unwaged work that 31. Marx's discussion of the relationship contributes to the daily and long— term between necessary and surplus labor within the renewal of bearers of the commodity labor working day is wonderfully clear. At the same power and of the working class as a whole.xi I time, its focus on a single individual laborer called this the domestic component of perforce excludes consideration of all the necessary labor, or domestic labor. additional labor that secures not only the 33. Defined this way, domestic labor became a workingman's maintenance and replacement but concept specific to capitalism and without fixed also that of his kin and community and of the gender assignment. This freed it from several workforce overall.x That these various common— sense assumptions that haunted the processes can be omitted from Marx's account, domestic labor debate, most especially the at least at this point, is an effect of capitalism's notion that domestic labor is universal and that particular social organization. As in no other it is necessarily women's work. mode of production, daily maintenance and 34. The social and domestic components of generational replacement tasks are spatially, necessary labor are not directly comparable, for temporally, and institutionally isolated from the the latter does not have value.xii This means that sphere of production. In his concept of “ the highly visible and very valuable social

DOMESTIC LABOR REVISITED. 7 component of necessary labor is accompanied schools had taken over most of the task of by a shadowy, unquantifiable, and (technically) teaching skills. More recently, frozen food, valueless domestic labor component. Although microwaves, laundromats, and the increased only one component appears on the market and availability of day care, nursery, kindergarten, can be seen clearly, the reproduction of labor and after— school programs have decreased power entails both. Wages may enable workers domestic labor even further.chftn Reduction of to purchase commodities, but additional domestic labor through technological and labor— domestic labor— must generally be non— technological means does not inevitably performed as well. Food commodities are make households send more of their members' prepared and clothes maintained and cleaned. labor power onto the market. It does, however, Children are not only cared for but also taught create a greater possibility that they might do the skills they need to become competent so. working— class adults. Working— class 37. In short, capitalists as a class are caught individuals who are sick, disabled, or enfeebled between a number of conflicting pressures, are attended to. These various tasks are at least including: their long— term need for a labor partly unde!rtaken by domestic labor. force, their short— term demands for different 35. In other words, I argued that necessary categories of workers and consumers, their labor is a more complicated conceptual profit requirements, and their desire to maintain category than previously thought. It has two hegemony over a divided working class. In the components, one with value and the other abstract of my theoretical construction, these without. Domestic labor, the previously missing contradictory pressures generate tendencies, of second component, is sharply different from the course, not preordained inevitabilities. Such social component yet similarly indispensable to tendencies do not necessarily produce outcomes capitalist social reproduction. It lacks value but favorable to dominant classes, as functionalist nonetheless plays a key role in the process of interpretations would have it. Rather, the surplus value appropriation. Locked together in processes of reproduction of labor power the performance of necessary labor, social labor constitute an embattled terrain. In actual and its newfound mate, domestic labor, form an societies, capitalists adopt a variety of odd couple never before encountered in Marxist strategies, some of which involve manipulating xiii theory. domestic labor in ways that can be analyzed as 36. Capitalists' interest in reducing necessary creating absolute or relative surplus value. At labor may extend to its domestic as well as its the same time, working people strive to win the social component. If some people devote much best conditions for their own renewal, which of their energies to domestic labor— hauling may include a particular le!vel and type of water from the well, cooking on a hearth, domestic labor. Because both capital and labor washing clothes by boiling them, teaching are ordinarily fragmented into distinct sectors, children the basics of reading, writing, and the results are not uniform across layers. arithmetic, and so forth— then they are less 38. A contradictory tendential dynamic thus available for work in production. By contrast, threads through historical struggles over the when domestic labor is reduced, additional conditions for the reproduction of the labor power is potentially released into the commodity labor power. Particular outcomes labor market. Reduction of domestic labor has have included the family wage for certain been an ongoing process in the nineteenth and groups, protective legislation covering female twentieth centuries. By the early 1900s, food and child industrial workers, sex— and race— preparation was less time— consuming, segregation in the labor market, migrant labor laundry was in some ways less onerous, and housed in barracks, and so forth.xiv

DOMESTIC LABOR REVISITED. 8 39. To this point I have discussed the 42. To sum up the theoretical scenario I offered, reproduction of the commodity labor power as in all its abstractness: In the capitalist mode of an economic phenomenon.xv There is, however, production, the logic of accumulation and the a key political phenomenon that also pertains, a articulation between the spheres of production tendency towards equality. Marx argued that and circulation doubly mark women's position. this fundamental political feature of capitalist On the one hand, subordinate— class women societies has a basis in the articulation of and men are differentially located with respect production and circulation.xvi In production, a to important economic aspects of social great range of concrete useful labor is rendered reproduction. On the other, all women are equivalent as human labor in the abstract, or denied equal rights. In actual societies, the value. In circulation, commodities can be dynamics of women's subordination respond to exchanged on the market when they embody this dual positioning, among other factors. comparable amounts of that value. Labor power is of course also a commodity, bought and sold IV. AUDIENCES AND PARADIGMS on the market. Workers and capitalists thus meet in the marketplace as owners seeking to 43. Efforts to theorize domestic labor addressed exchange their commodities. For transactions to two distinct audiences in the 1970s— feminists, take place, capitalists must offer wages that are especially socialist feminists, and the Left. equivalent to the value of workers' labor power. Most feminists eventually rejected the domestic Contrary to notions of capitalism as a cheating labor literature as a misguided effort to apply system, this is an equal exchange. Equality in inappropriate Marxist categories. Most the market goes hand and hand with Marxists simply disregarded the debate, neither exploitation in production. following nor participating in it. Neither 40. Equality of persons is not, then, an abstract potential audience fully grasped the ways that principle or false ideology but a complex socialist feminists were suggesting, implicitly tendency with roots in the articulation of the or explicitly, that Marxist theory had to be spheres of production and circulation. Lack of revised. equality, I argue, represents a specific feature of 44. One factor that ultimately limited the women's (and other groups') oppression in feminist audience was the domestic labor capitalist societies. Only subordinate— class debate's approach to theory. As discussed women perform domestic labor, as discussed earlier, many feminists had difficulty with the above, but all women suffer from lack of epistemological perspective that underlay much equality in capitalist societies. of the domestic labor literature. Not only was it 41. Efforts to expand equality's scope make extremely abstract, it also considered the scope radical challenges on at least two fronts. First, of theory to be severely limited. In particular, they tend to reduce divisions within and among questions of subjectivity and agency fell outside subordinate layers and sectors, by moving all theory of this sort. They belonged, rather, to the persons towards a more equal footing. Second, difficult and messy realm of concrete historical they can reveal the fundamentally exploitative investigation and analysis. Most feminists came character of capitalism, for the further rights are to reject this view of theory and sought instead extended, the more capitalism's economic and to found theory on detailed empirical social character is exposed. Far from exercises description. A powerful but generally in fruitless reformism or supposedly divisive unacknowledged difference of theoretical identity politics, struggles for equality can paradigm thus separated the two perspectives. contribute to building strategic alliances and As is far more apparent to me now than it was even point beyond capitalism. years ago, the holders of one could not

DOMESTIC LABOR REVISITED. 9 communicate effectively with those partial to address questions descended from those posed the other. Even the task of reading each other's in the early domestic labor literature.xviii work, not to mention that! of usefully critiquing 48. In these years in the United States, it, encountered the obstacle of paradigm however, relatively fewer researchers have been incompatibility.xvii involved with the issues posed in the domestic 45. Through the 1970s, the Left was mostly labor debate. Feminists who continue to use the hostile to the notion of developing a feminist terminology often do so in a manner more socialism, much less that of revising Marxist metaphorical than analytical. Domestic labor, theory. In many camps, feminism was for example, is still taken to mean something considered inherently bourgeois as well as a whose site and workers are obvious (the private threat to class unity. U.S. Marxist theorists, household, women) and whose content is self— mostly male, generally ignored the domestic evident (usually, housework, or housework and labor literature. In part, the problem here was childcare). Reproduction, a term with meanings again a paradigm incompatibility, this time of a within several distinct intellectual traditions different sort. From a traditional Marxist that were at first the subject of much perspective, the dynamics of capitalism had discussion, has also acquired a generic ultimately to do with class exploitation. Other meaning.xix Along with a new phrase, “ issues—for example, gender, race, or national reproductive labor,” it now often covers a oppression— might be important concerns for wide range of activities contributing to the socialists, but they lay outside what was renewal of people, including emotional and understood to be the realm of Marxist theory. intellectual as well as manual labor, and waged 46. The audiences for domestic labor theorizing as well as unwaged work. Reviewing the dramatically contracted in the 1980s. Playing a literature, Evelyn Nakano Glenn (1992, 4) role in the downturn, certainly, were the observes that: increasingly conservative political climate and 49. The term social reproduction has come to the decline or destruction of many radical social be more broadly conceived...to refer to the movements. Feminist intellectual work creation and recreation of people as cultural and managed to flourish, but with far fewer links social, as well as physical, beings. Thus it than earlier to women's movement activism. involves mental, emotional, and manual labor. Surviving on college and university campuses, This labor can be organized in myriad ways— it encountered a range of disciplinary in and out of the household, as paid or unpaid constraints and professional pressures. Younger work, creating exchange value or only use generations of feminist scholars had missed, value....[For example, food production] can be moreover, the chance to participate in a radical done by a family member as unwaged work in women's liberation movement rooted in the the household, by a servant as waged work in upheavals of the 1960s. Not surprisingly, the household, or by a short— order cook in a confidence in the relevance of socialist thought fast— food restaurant as waged work that to diminished. generates profit. 47. The 1980s and '90s did not, to the surprise 50. U.S. Marxist theorists in the 1980s and '90s of some, witness the demise of domestic labor have continued to be mostly male and generally theorizing. Rather, a certain level of interest has inattentive to several decades of socialist— persisted. Where there are relatively strong feminist scholarship and commentary. Many traditions of Marxist theory for one reason or take feminism to be an instance of a so— called another, as in England and Canada, small identity politics that can only balkanize the communities of economists, sociologists, and Left. They worry as well about the unity of historians, male as well as female, continue to Marxist theory. At the same time, they seem not

DOMESTIC LABOR REVISITED. 10 to be aware of the range of current debates and intensifying marginality, and an impoverished discussions that address these very problems. A level and kind of do!mestic labor. Here, it could handful have begun, however, to enter the be argued, the reproduction of a sector of labor dialogue. Some cover ground already well power is in question.xx The processes of labor travelled in the domestic labor debate, even power renewal also disperse geographically, reinventing analyses first proposed by feminists frequently moving across national boundaries. in the 1970s. Others interpret the issues Migration becomes more widespread, dividing surrounding female oppression as matters of families and producing new kinds of non— kin language, psychology, or sexuality. In so doing, as well as kin— based sites of domestic labor. they construct women's subordination as wholly Meanwhile, the expanded scope and availability external to the processes of surplus of rights— based equality to traditionally appropriation and capitalist social reproduction marginalized groups, beneficial in many ways, and therefore not the subject of Marxist creates unanticipated hazards (see, e.g., Vogel, political ec!onomy. 1995). 51. Early domestic labor theorists sought to put 53. At the turn of the 21st century, heavy women's lives at the heart of the workings of burdens fall on women, alongside undeniably capitalism. They were among the first to intuit empowering changes. These burdens include, the coming crisis of Marxism and to begin among others, the double day, absent husbands, exploring the limitations of Marxist theory. isolation from kin, and single motherhood Their challenge to feminist theory and to the without adequate social support. In short, tradition of Marxist political economy remains, women's experience still points to the question in my view, an unfinished project. of theorizing domestic labor and its role in capitalist social reproduction. V. DOMESTIC LABOR IN THE 21ST CENTURY

52. The domestic labor literature insisted that women's oppression is central to overall social reproduction. Despite all its problems, this insight remains valid. Capital still demands reliable sources of exploitable labor power and appropriately configured consumers of commodities—demands that are perennially the object of struggle and not always met. With global restructuring, the processes through which labor power is maintained and replaced are undergoing radical transformation and domestic labor remains key to these changes. The forms of domestic labor proliferate, moving ever further from the male— breadwinner/female— dependent nuclear family norm. Most households contribute increasing amounts of time to wage labor, generally reducing the amount and quality of domestic labor their members perform. Other households are caught in persistent joblessness,

DOMESTIC LABOR REVISITED. 11 Glazer, Nona Y. 1987. “ Servants to Capital: VI. REFERENCES Unpaid Domestic Labor and Paid Work.” Pp. 236— 255 in Families and Work, ed. Naomi Althusser, Louis. 1971. “ Preface to Capital Gerstel and Harriet Engel Gross. Philadelphia: Volume One (March 1969).” Pp. 71— 101 in Temple University Press. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. New Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. 1992. “ From York: Monthly Review Press. Servitude to Service Work: Historical _____. 1993. The Future Lasts Forever. New Continuities in the Racial Division of Paid York: The New Press. Reproductive Labor.” Signs, 19 (Autumn), Beechey, Veronica. 1979. “ On Patriarchy.” 1— 43. Feminist Review, 3, 66— 82. Glucksmann, Miriam. 1990. Women Assemble: Bottomore, Tom, ed. 1983. A Dictionary of Women Workers and the New Industries in Marxist Thought. Cambridge: Harvard Inter— War Britain. London: Routledge University Press. Hamilton, Roberta, and Michele Barrett, eds. Brenner, Johanna, and Nancy Holmstrom. 1986. The Politics of Diversity. London: Verso. 1983. “ Women's Self— Organization: Theory Hansen, Karen V., and Philipson, Ilene J., eds. and Strategy,” Monthly Review, 34, (April), 1990. Women, Class, and the Feminist 34— 46. Imagination: A Socialist— Feminist Reader. Duplessis, Rachel Blau and Ann Snitow, eds. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 1990. The Feminist Memoir Project: Voices Himmelweit, Sue. 1983a. “ Domestic from Women's Liberation. (New York: Three Labour.” In Bottomore. Rivers Press. _____. 1983b. “ Reproduction.” In Echols, Alice. 1989. Daring to Be Bad: Radical Bottomore. Feminism in America, 1967— 1975. _____. 1983c. “ Value of .” In Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bottomore. Edholm, Felicity, Harris, Olivia, and Young, Hindess, Barry and Paul Hirst. 1975. Pre— Kate. 1977. “ Conceptualising Women.” Capitalist Modes of Production. London: Critique of Anthropology, 9— 10, 101— 130. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Firestone, Shulamith. 1970. The Dialectic of Kuhn, Thomas. 1962. The Structure of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. New Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of York: Morrow. Chicago Press. Fraser, Nancy. 1998? “ Heterosexism, Marx, Karl. (1857)/1973. “ Introduction.” Misrecognition and Capitalism: A Response to Pp. 81— 111 in Grundrisse, trans. Martin Judith Butler.” New Left Review, 22? Nicolaus. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. (month?), 140— 149. _____. (1867)/1971. Capital, vol. 1. Moscow: Gardiner, Jean. 1997. Gender, Care and Progress Publishers. Economics. London: Macmillan Press. Millett, Kate. 1970. Sexual Politics. New York: Gimenez, Martha. 1990. “ The Dialectics of Doubleday. Waged and Unwaged Work: Waged Work, Molyneux, Maxine. 1979. “ Beyond the Domestic Labor and Household Survival in the Domestic Labour Debate.” New Left Review, United States.” Pp. 25— 45 in Work without 116 (July— August), 3— 27. Wages: Domestic Labor and Self— Nicholson, Linda. Gender and History: The Employment within Capitalism, ed. Jane L. Limits of Social Theory in the Age of the Collins and Martha E. Gimenez. Albany: Family. New York: Columbia University Press. SUNY Press.

DOMESTIC LABOR REVISITED. 12 Quick, Paddy. 1977. “ The Class Nature of Women's Oppression.” Review of Radical Christine Di Stefano and a number of Political Economics, 9 (Fall), 42— 53. anonymous reviewers on both sides of the Sacks, Karen Brodkin. 1989. “ Toward a Atlantic. I owe a special debt of gratitude to my Unified Theory of Class, Race, and Gender,” colleague James Dickinson, whose detailed American Ethnologist 16, 534— 550. observations and probing questions were, as Sargent, Lydia, ed. 1981. Women and always, invaluable. Revolution: A Discussion of the Unhappy i It is not possible to separate a socialist from a as they were practiced in the 1970s; I therefore use Marriage of Marxism and Feminism. Boston: the term inclusively. In this paper I generally South End Press. follow contemporary U.S. usages of terms. From the late 1960s Sassen, Saskia. 1998. Globalization and Its to the mid— 1970s, the term women's liberation was current, intended to demarcate the younger and presumably more radical Discontents. New York: The New Press. branches of the women's movement from the so— called Smith, Paul. 1978. “ Domestic Labour and bourgeois feminism of the National Organization for Women. Marx's Theory of Value.” Pp. 198— 219 in Within the women's liberation movement socialist feminists formed a distinctive tendency. By the late 1970s, the term Feminism and Materialism: Women and Modes women's liberation was being replaced by the term feminism. of Production, ed. Annette Kuhn and That feminism was now a broader term than it had been earlier Annemarie Wolpe. Boston: Routledge and perhaps reflected the declining importance of distinguishing branches within the women's movement. Kegan Paul. ii For descriptions of the excitement with which feminists Vogel, Lise. 1983. Marxism and the confronted Marxist theory in the 1960s and '70s, see Echols, Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary 1989; Vogel, 1998; and the personal accounts in Duplessis and Snitow, 1998. Theory. New Brunswick: Rutgers University iii For fine (and very short) overviews of the domestic labor Press. debate, see Himmelweit, 1983a and 1983c. For a survey of the _____. “ Socialist Feminism.” 1998. Pp. literature, see Vogel, 1986. See also the essays in Sargent, 1981, and in Hansen and Philipson, 1990. 757— 760 in Encyclopedia of the American iv See, for example, Brenner and Holmstrom, 1983; Molyneux, Left, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University 1979; or, in its own way, Nicholson, 1986. Press. v The concept of reproduction of labor power thus becomes pertinent, strictly speaking, only to subordinate classes. This is _____. 1986. “ Feminist Scholarship: The not to say that dominant— class women do not experience Impact of Marxism.” Pp. 1— 34 in The Left gender subordination. Rather, their situation is associated with Academy, ed. Bertell Ollman and Edward their roles in the maintenance and replacement of property— owning classes and requires its own analysis. Vernoff, vol. 3. New York: Praeger. vi Paddy Quick (1977) argues that the core material basis for _____. 1995. “ Beyond Equality: Some women's subordination in class societies is not the sexual Feminist Questions.” In Woman Questions: division of labor or gender difference per se but the need to maintain subordinate— class women during childbearing. Essays for a , New York: vii Likewise, dominant— class women have a special but quite Routledge. different role in the maintenance and replacement of their class. Willer, David and Willer, Judith. 1973. viii The following three paragraphs radically compress Marx's lengthy discussions of aspects of the reproduction of labor Systematic Empiricism: Critique of a power. Marx discussed the material at great length and with Pseudoscience. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice— ample empirical illustration. Hall. ix Strictly speaking, a portion of the value created by the worker's labor goes to constant capital. x Elsewhere, Marx recognized that such labor was a condition * This paper originated as a presentation at the for overall social reproduction. July 1994 meetings of the Conference of xi At this level of abstraction, I use the term working— class to indicate all those who are propertyless in the sense of not Socialist Economists in Leeds, England. My owning the means of production. The majority of the population thanks to Filio Diamante for inviting me and to in the United States today, as elsewhere, is in this sense my co— panelists and audience for lively working class, making it necessary in less abstract contexts to consider the stratification of households by occupation, discussion. In preparing this text for publication education, income, and so forth. I benefited from the very helpful comments of

DOMESTIC LABOR REVISITED. 13 xii The question of whether or not domestic labor has value in the Marxist sense triggered its own mini— debate within the women's liberationist literature. In my view, it does not. For an exposition of why, see Smith, 1978. xiii This analysis, which clarifies but does not alter my earlier argument (Vogel, 1983), now seems to me less persuasive. What is clear, however, is that whether domestic labor is conceptualized as a component of necessary labor or not, the bottom line is that some way to theorize it within Marxist political economy must be found. xiv This analysis of domestic labor as a key component of the reproduction of labor power has an empirical counterpart in the way studies of the working class have changed over the past three decades. Rather than focus just on workers and their unions, numerous researchers look more broadly at working— class households and communities as bearers, maintainers, and replacers of labor power. See also Sacks, 1989, and Glucksmann, 1990. xv I agree with Nancy Fraser (1998) that most of what can loosely be termed gender relations is not in the economic sphere. My claim here is that there is nonetheless some piece that is economic, that it plays a role in the dynamics of capitalist accumulation, and that its theorization belongs to political economy. This distinctive economic aspect of women's oppression in capitalism is surely one of the factors that marks its specificity as opposed to, for example, racial or class subordination xvi Here again, I radically compress a lengthier account in Marx. xvii Thomas Kuhn (1962) describes the many ways theoretical paradigms remain invisible while powerfully framing their users' thinking. With respect to the theoretical framework under discussion, Althusser (1993, 185— 186) also comments on the phenomenon: “ From the outset we had insisted on drawing a structural distinction between a combinatory (abstract) and a combination (concrete), which created the major problem. But did anyone acknowledge it? No one took any notice of the distinction....No one was interested in [my approach to] theory. Only a few individuals understood my reasons and objectives.” xviii For England, see the bibliography in Jean Gardiner, 1997, and the journal Capital & Class. For Canada, see Hamilton and Barrett, 1990, and the journal Studies in Political Economy. xix For 1970s considerations of the meanings of the concept of reproduction, see Edholm, Harris, and Young, 1977; and Beechey, 1979. See also Himmelweit, 1983b. xx Gimenez (1990, 37) suggests that such households “ simply reproduce people; and [the labor power of] people...without marketable skills, [has] no value under capitalist conditions.” For a different interpretation, see Sassen, 1998.

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