Who Does No Work, Shall Not Eat

Michael Perelman michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Sun Jan 27 18:03:31 PST 2002


Sorry, to attribute it to you, but some feminists did use that line to attack marxism -- demanding that people choose between marxism and feminism (crudely put).

Kelley wrote:


> At 05:22 PM 1/27/02 -0800, Michael Perelman wrote:
> >I am familiar with the feminist take on the subject, but I don't think that
> >they gave Marx a fair reading. He was describing how capitalism determines
> >what is/is not productive.
>
> could you elaborate?
>
> i think you're sensitive to a critique that i never made perhaps. as far as
> i can tell, there wasn't anything in what i'd written that would suggest
> that it was a critique of marx/engel's claims about productive labor.
> rather, it was a description of policy proposals two strands of marxist
> feminist offered to deal with the way in which class relations obscured the
> role of reproductive labor within capitalism.
>
> for marxist feminists, the goal was to move productive labor out of the
> home and make it "public". that is, they wanted to "socialize" it.i brought
> it up because it related to what i was saying to chuck0: some marxists
> (feminists in particular) have actually supported the rationalization
> (division of labor) of things like housework for they saw it as part of the
> process of socializing work.
>
> kelley

--

Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901



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