tripleC 18 (2): 575-594, 2020 http://www.triple-c.at Anti/Postwork Feminist Politics and a Case for Basic Income Kathi Weeks Duke University, Durham, NC, USA,
[email protected] Abstract: This article presents a defence of the demand for a guaranteed basic income against recent Left critiques. Drawing on a series of lessons from the 1970s-era demand for Wages for Housework, I argue in favour of a demand for a liveable and universal basic income as a coalitional, antiproductivist, antifamilial reform that can help to alleviate some of the ways that the current wage-and-family system miscounts our economic contributions and fails as a sys- tem of income distribution. Keywords: basic income, domestic labour, Wages for Housework, Marxist feminism, antiwork, postwork, antiproductivism, antifamilialism, autonomy. Acknowledgements: I am grateful to participants at the following venues for lively, challeng- ing, and comradely debate about many of these ideas: Cornell Society for the Humanities Fellows Seminar in 2020, the 2019 conference sponsored by CHASE and Autonomy on Chal- lenging the Work Society: An Interdisciplinary Summit, and the Future of Work panel at the 2018 NWSA meeting. Thanks also to Katie Cruz and Cameron Thibos for help in formulating some of these arguments. 1. Introduction Once treated as either a dangerously delusional fantasy or, occasionally, a naïvely distracting caprice, the demand for a guaranteed basic income in the US is now being debated across multiple forums, from mainstream and alternative media sites to more academic