Kelley wrote:
> At 08:47 AM 1/27/02 -0800, Michael Perelman wrote:
>
> >Whatever produces direct profit (surplus value) for capital is productive
> >-- say producing a medicine that kills patients. caring, nurturing work
> >is not. It is more a critique of capitalism than of housework.
>
> ah, i see, i needed to flesh it out more:
>
> for some early feminist marxists, housework is unpaid labor performed by
> women for men, and should really be regarded as unpaid labor performed for
> capital--where individuals males and the institution of masculinity can be
> understood as we understand (!!!) the role of management and the ideologies
> of managerial control to capital.
>
> housework--or more broadly understood, reproductive labor-- needed to be
> brought into the sphere of wage labor as a way of advancing capitalism, and
> thus its demise. for some, this meant paying "women" to do housework,
> reproductive labor.
>
> others countered with the argument that this would keep reproductive labor
> isolated to the realm of the family. what was needed was something more
> akin to Charlotte Perkins Gilman's proposal that reproductive
> labor--cooking, clearning,e tc--should be _socialized_. it should become
> part of the realm of wage labor. women and men shouldn't cook and clean,
> etc., but we should encourage that work to become paid labor: daycare,
> caferterias, restaurants, etc. this approach was based on the feminist
> critique of the public/private split that intensified under capitalist
> class relations.
>
> kelley
--
Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901