reparations & exploitation

kelley kwalker2 at gte.net
Fri Mar 9 12:17:22 PST 2001


At 07:48 PM 3/9/01 +0000, Justin Schwartz wrote:
>No, I think the thought experiment would be: keep wage labor, etc.,
>everything else the same, just eliminate the white workers from the
>picture; what if there were none.
>
>Btw, with respect to Kelly's idea that exploitation is never of women by
>men, etc. the figures on domestic labor, e.g., suggest otherwise. I am
>thinking, for eaxmple, of the Arlie Hochschild stuff on The Second Shift. --jks
>
>--jks

oh lord, i didn't say it's *never* about gender or race, i said that these things are analytically distinct. the extraction of surplus from workers does work more smoothly because of racism and sexism. but i think racism and sexism in terms of an oppressive division of labor and oppressive *social relations* of production and "reproduction* can operate quite separately -- come to have a life of their own.

one of the things i detest about marxist economic theorizing is that it seems to claim that the work of reproducing labor--traditionally women's unpaid household labor--isn't to be understood in the same way as the relationship between capitalists and workers. and, as society evolves and more and more men start doing their share of labor in the home while the rest becomes "socialized" ...

kelley



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