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Social Reproduction
Is work the only work we do?
The work we perform for our bosses is the source of profits, but the work we do for pay is not the only kind of work we do. Marxist feminists have argued that there is another type of labor called social reproduction, which is an indispensable type of work that forms the bedrock of societies. Social reproduction refers to the labor that we must perform to care for the needs of ourselves and our loved ones and to maintain households and broader communities. This work is often unpaid, and can include things like cooking, cleaning, raising children, or assisting the elderly. Without social reproduction, we would not be able to sustain connections with each other, we’d have no culture, and even no economy as we know it today.
If this kind of work is so valuable then why is it so poorly paid? Child care workers, for example, are some of the lowest paid workers in the US.
Sadly, reproductive work generally has had a stigma associated with it, especially in comparison to paid work on the market. One of the most important reasons why this happens is because this type of labor is often viewed as women’s “natural” responsibility, so it is taken for granted.
However little value our society may attach to reproductive work, it remains essential. The COVID-19 pandemic, which saw families scrambling to care for children who attended school remotely, or doctors and nurses working overtime to care for the sick and vulnerable, showed us just how valuable this labor really is.
One of the problems with capitalism is that often, bosses try to increase their profits by asking us to work longer or faster. This will leave less time and energy for us to take care of ourselves, our families and communities.
The work that we do to take care of ourselves, including earning a wage, is necessary labor. The surplus labor time we work to make profits for the boss is just that extra, unnecessary work. The less time we spend working for the boss the more time we can devote to taking care of ourselves and each other.
How do capitalism and patriarchy intersect?
The relationship between patriarchy and capitalism is complicated. Often capitalism and patriarchy go hand in hand. Of course, patriarchy also means that capitalists can discriminate against women and simply pay them less, especially if they are doing what is considered “feminine” work like nursing or teaching. But the problem is deeper than that. Patriarchy allows capitalists to pay all workers lower wages since much of the necessary work of reproduction, which usually requires time and money, is done in the household, and especially by women who are not paid for that work. If my boss had to pay me enough to hire someone full-time to take care of my two kids they would have to pay me a lot more. They can get away with paying me less because they assume that my partner will simply take care of them for free on top of all the work she has to do for her job.
But capitalism and patriarchy sometimes conflict. For example, capitalists may want to hire women workers because they can pay them less, but patriarchal norms insist that women not work outside the home.
Remember the point is the economy isn’t simply what’s reported in the business press but all of the work we need to do to take care of ourselves. Reproductive work needs to be centered in any discussion of economics.
“Throughout history this work has been done by women of color and other femmes, starting in the US with enslaved black women and even now many childcare workers are immigrant women of color.”
Is work the only work we do?
The work we perform for our bosses is the source of profits, but the work we do for pay is not the only kind of work we do. Marxist feminists have argued that there is another type of labor called social reproduction, which is an indispensable type of work that forms the bedrock of societies. Social reproduction refers to the labor that we must perform to care for the needs of ourselves and our loved ones and to maintain households and broader communities. This work is often unpaid, and can include things like cooking, cleaning, raising children, or assisting the elderly. Without social reproduction, we would not be able to sustain connections with each other, we’d have no culture, and even no economy as we know it today.
If this kind of work is so valuable then why is it so poorly paid? Child care workers, for example, are some of the lowest paid workers in the US.
Sadly, reproductive work generally has had a stigma associated with it, especially in comparison to paid work on the market. One of the most important reasons why this happens is because this type of labor is often viewed as women’s “natural” responsibility, so it is taken for granted.
However little value our society may attach to reproductive work, it remains essential. The COVID-19 pandemic, which saw families scrambling to care for children who attended school remotely, or doctors and nurses working overtime to care for the sick and vulnerable, showed us just how valuable this labor really is.
One of the problems with capitalism is that often, bosses try to increase their profits by asking us to work longer or faster. This will leave less time and energy for us to take care of ourselves, our families and communities.
The work that we do to take care of ourselves, including earning a wage, is necessary labor. The surplus labor time we work to make profits for the boss is just that extra, unnecessary work. The less time we spend working for the boss the more time we can devote to taking care of ourselves and each other.
How do capitalism and patriarchy intersect?
The relationship between patriarchy and capitalism is complicated. Often capitalism and patriarchy go hand in hand. Of course, patriarchy also means that capitalists can discriminate against women and simply pay them less, especially if they are doing what is considered “feminine” work like nursing or teaching. But the problem is deeper than that. Patriarchy allows capitalists to pay all workers lower wages since much of the necessary work of reproduction, which usually requires time and money, is done in the household, and especially by women who are not paid for that work. If my boss had to pay me enough to hire someone full-time to take care of my two kids they would have to pay me a lot more. They can get away with paying me less because they assume that my partner will simply take care of them for free on top of all the work she has to do for her job.
But capitalism and patriarchy sometimes conflict. For example, capitalists may want to hire women workers because they can pay them less, but patriarchal norms insist that women not work outside the home.
Remember the point is the economy isn’t simply what’s reported in the business press but all of the work we need to do to take care of ourselves. Reproductive work needs to be centered in any discussion of economics.
Surplus Value: Absolute and Relative
Where do profits come from? Conventional economists say profit is the reward for risk-taking or for being patient with your capital. However, for classical political economists like Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Karl Marx, the source of profit was the exploitation of labor.
To understand what we mean by the term “the exploitation of labor,” we can give a couple of concrete examples. Now, we can intuitively see that if Starbucks sells a cup of coffee for $6 then logically, it must have cost less than $6 to make. Why is that? Because if they sold them for exactly what it cost to produce them, then Starbucks wouldn’t make any money! To make profit, Starbucks must sell at a price above its costs of production per cup. Where does this extra money come from? Marx argued that the only input that could produce more value than what it costs is human labor.
Say you work for 8 hours a day at Starbucks as a barista. Your job is to take orders, make coffee, serve customers, clean the store and stock the shelves. You produce $20/hour of coffee so $160 of coffee a day. You earn $10 an hour or $80 a day. This means you spent half the day, four hours, earning your own paycheck. The other four hours, you are working for free for your boss, helping make him rich! Those extra four hours are essentially unpaid labor time, because the money that you created during those four hours went to your boss, not you. Starbucks is able to earn a lot of profits because your productivity, what you produce per hour, is higher than your wage, what you get paid per hour. As a worker you are exploited!
Now say your boss is unsatisfied with the current level of profits and wants to make even more money. They have two options. The first is for the workers to simply work harder or faster or for extra hours.
For example, your boss can demand that you work a longer shift for the same pay. In this case your wage remains $80 a day but you now work for 10 hours and produce $200 per day. You now create $120 a day in surplus value for the bosses. Your supervisor can also demand that you work faster or harder, creating even more products than is normal or average for an eight hour shift by pressuring you to work at a less humane pace. The effect on surplus value creation is the same.
The second option for the boss to make even more money is to introduce technology that will make you more productive per hour. For example, Starbucks can install new coffee machines in their stores that brew coffee faster and increase your productivity to $40 per hour. Your wages remain at $80 per day. So you now earn your full wage after two hours or work and perform six hours of unpaid or surplus labor time for your boss. The new machines allow you to produce $320 worth of surplus value for Starbucks each day, making the boss more money
If other coffee stores do not start using similar machines they will fall behind Starbucks in terms of profitability. Starbucks will enjoy extraordinarily high profits until its competitors catch up in terms of technology. This competition-induced drive towards technological development is what gives capitalism its dynamism and is for many its main selling point.
Communal, Command, Commodity
Now, how do we determine how economies are organized and how we distribute goods and services? Also, what *should* we be asking of our economies?
In order to answer this, let’s think about our own lives for a minute. Think about a recent moment in which you did the following: (1) prepared food for friends; (2) felt forced or obliged to prepare meals for others; (3) bought food for yourself or someone else.
When you prepared a meal for friends or family, did you charge them for it? The vast majority of you will probably say, “of course not!” But why does that seem ridiculous? Often when we prepare food for loved ones, we do it out of love. These economic forms of distribution can be referred to as communalism, mutual aid, or reciprocity. These principles reflect the fact that we share, we take care of each other’s needs, and we often do things out of a sense of concern for others.
In other cases, we might do something because we have felt forced, obliged, or pressured to do so, especially in the context of socially constructed hierarchies. Take, for example, the fact that women shoulder a disproportionate burden for care work, including cooking, in the household. They often do this because women may be seen as inferior to men, and therefore it is their “natural” role to work for them or serve them. We call this “command” because in this case people of lower social status are supposed to obey the orders of those with higher social status.
What about the third option– buying food? This represents a commodity-based production and distribution schema. A commodity is simply something that is produced to be sold for a profit. So communal, command, and commodity– these are the three big ways that all economic activity– our material lives– are organized.
We could come up with many more examples, like medicine. First, traditional healing practices, the so-called “medicine woman” or “witch doctor,” were produced in communal ways. These individuals were respected members of the community, who either did medicine on the side or, if they practiced medicine full-time, were fed and housed by the community. Conversely, healthcare is produced as a commodity in the United States– hospitals and insurance plans are run in a for-profit way, with those who cannot afford care being denied it. One example of a command-type provisioning of health care is Medicare and Medicaid in the United States, and the National Health Service in the UK. In these programs, the government owns the hospitals, remunerates doctors and nurses from public taxes, and provides medical care for free at the point of service.
Everything in our society can be produced and distributed in one of these three ways, either communally where we take care of each other, or as a commodity where it is produced for potential profit and goes to the highest bidder, or under command, where people work for those above them in the social hierarchy.
To help us evaluate these three different schemas, we’re going to introduce four terms that we use to make sense of any economic system. Those are ownership, allocation, governance, and division of labor.
What do you mean by ownership?
Ownership is simple– it refers to who owns what is produced? Under communal economic systems, everyone in society is considered an equal owner of the wealth that exists in society. When European settlers first arrived in the Americans and asked the natives who owned the land, for example, the natives were confused because they didn’t think individuals could own and sell land. That’s why the entirety of Manhattan was sold for the measly sum of 60 Dutch guilders, or the equivalent of roughly $1,000 today. Conversely, under a commodity regime, individuals or corporations that hire workers to produce commodities are the owners of what is produced. And under a command form, either those at the top of the hierarchy or the government owns the output of production.
What the hell is allocation?
The second term, allocation, is a fancy way of saying, “who gets what?” Communal allocation is based on need, reciprocity, and mutual aid. Commodity allocation happens through the market– whoever is willing to pay for a commodity will get it. And command allocation is based on orders, or commands. Those in power simply decide who will get what good or service.
What do you mean by governance?
Governance is a term that refers to who has power to decide fundamental questions about how the economy operates. In communal forms of governance, we all decide– there is some form of assembly or political process that seeks consensus amongst group members. Under a commodity-based system, the rich govern, with an entire repressive apparatus of courts and police to enforce their “property rights.” Command systems, by contrast, are top down. They’re often based on patriarchy at the household, or micro level, and on centralized government control at macro level.
What is the division of labor?
Finally, the division of labor asks, “who does the work, especially the grunt work?” Under communal economic forms, all those who are capable of work share in the work. Under command systems, those at the bottom of the hierarchy are ordered to work. Typically, the most interesting and fun work is done by a small group of highly paid people.
*done
What is Economy?
We all know it is very important, but often feel intimidated by the technical terms and math that people use when discussing the economy.
We all know it is very important, but often feel intimidated by the technical terms and math that people use when discussing the economy. When the news talks about the economy, they usually report on things like the stock market and the latest adventures of billionaires. They talk about unemployment and inflation, and mention lots of numbers. They tend to focus on what can be quantified and be given a dollar value, but our economy is so much more than that.
The Oxford dictionary defines the word “economy” as “the wealth and resources of a country or region, especially in terms of the production and consumption of goods and services.”
We prefer a different definition. For us, the “economy” means “the processes that provide for human life.” The economy, then, is about what we humans and non-humans need and the processes we use to meet those needs.
We can divide economic activity into four categories to help us understand the economy better.: production, distribution, consumption, and reproduction.
Can you explain more about what production, distribution, consumption, and reproduction entail?
So think about food, for example. Farmers produce food, they plant seeds, pull out weeds, water their crops and then harvest them. That food is then transported to supermarkets for sale. Consumption is when you cook food and eat it. Reproductive work is the work that is needed to take care of ourselves and others and to keep our society going. It is the work of cooking, cleaning, and caring for children, elderly and the sick.The work that is needed to nurture and care for ourselves can be purchased from others in the market, for example I have two small children and we hire babysitters all the time. But most of it takes place outside of the market without any pay, such as within the family. Most of the time my partner and I take care of our children. Throughout history, reproductive labor has disproportionately been performed by non-men and by racialized and marginalized groups in society. Women of color, and especially Black women and immigrant women, have been dispropoprtionately pushed into this kind of work over the entire course of US history, starting with chattel slavery.
So really the economy is about us! How we take care of our needs, the earth, each other and how we meet our needs through the processes of production, reproduction, distribution and consumption.
Use-Value vs. Exchange Value
So how do we decide what to produce/distribute/consume? In other words, what makes something valuable?
Why are some goods and services like sports cars so expensive while others like nailclippers are much cheaper? Socialists argue that there are only two sources of all value: nature and human labor. Obviously without raw materials and other gifts from nature we would not have the metal to produce cars or nail clippers. The more labor that goes into the production of something, the more valuable it will be. Making one car also takes much more time than making one nail clipper.
What is the value of a car , or a nail clipper?
Well there’s what a car or nailclipper can do for you. Your car is valuable because it can help you get from home to work. It is a means of transportation. A nailclipper helps you cut your nails. But each of these also has a price. The value of a car then is what it costs to buy it, say $35,000, and the value of a nail clipper is $2. Socialists call this the difference between a good’s use-value, what it does for you, and its exchange-value, its price.
Why does this distinction matter?
It matters because it helps us understand many of the social problems that capitalism creates. Think about housing. Housing provides an essential use-value as shelter. We all need a place to live. But our society treats housing like a financial asset. Developers don’t build housing to help house the houseless, they build housing in order to sell it for profit. The difference between the use-value of housing and its exchange-value is necessary to understand why we live in a society with large, wealthy cities full of empty houses while thousands sleep on the streets.
