CSE Pamphlet no.

2
.
On the Political
Economy of Women
stage 1
On the Political Economy of Women
CSE Pamphlet no.2
On the Political
Economy of Women
stage 1
q
The Conference of Socialist Economists was organised in 1970 to develop
collective work in Socialist Political Economy, to put forward theoretical and
practical critiques of bourgeois Political Economy and its implications, and
to provide means for people to educate themselves in the area of Political
Economy.
The work of the CSE is carried on through a thriceyearly Bulletin, an
annual conference, frequent day*schools organised by ongoing groups
working in such areas as the Marxist theory of money. the political economy
of women, economic analysis of the EEC, the labour process, or the
internationalisation of capital. and local and regional groups. We are now
developing a series of pamphlets to supplement the Bulletin in promoting the
aims of the CSE.
For funher information on CSE groups, publications and other activities,
contact: Ben Fine, Department of Economics. Birkbe<:k College, 7-15 Gresse
Street, London, WIP IPA.
ISBN 0 85035 026 3
Copyright The Conference of Socialist Economists
Published and distributed for the Conference of Socialist Economists by
,",ge I, 21 Theobalds Road, London, WCIX 8SL (01-405 7780)
oq
Contents
Introduction
Women's domestic labour
Women, the state cl reproduction since the i930s
Glossary
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17
34
4
Introduction
The papers in this pamphlet were written by members of the Political
Economy of Women group. This group was started in 1973 by some women
within the Conference of Socialist Economists, though it quickly grew to
include other women (and occasionally men) from outside the C.S.E. , and
from outside the field of 'economics'. Nevertheless the group's orientation
has been towards the study of women at the economic level - perhaps the
area of theory which had at that time been most neglected within the
women's movement.
It was this orientation that led us in the beginning to examine housework.
As Marxists, we were interested in the material basis of women's oppression
and located that material basis within woman's role in production. In
modem western capitalist society. women work in two ways. First, they are
wage workers for capital or for the state, and secondly they work within the
home. We decided to concentrate on the latter, on domestic labour or
housework because, while there is obviously much work that needs to be
done in explaining the intensity and particular aspectS of women' s
exploitation in wage work, analysis of exploitation in wage work in general
does exist. We also felt that any explanation of the particular nature of
women's exploitation within wage work must depend cruciaUy on her role
in domestic labour.
The fmt paper in this pamphlet was the result of this initial focus of the
group on housework. Though it comes out of group discussion and has by
now been fully discussed by the group, it was written by three members of
the group for the 1975 C.S.E. Annual Conference. Since then, it has
appeared in the 1975 Bulletin No. 11. The present version has been
somewhat revised. The paper examines how certain key Marxist categories
can be used in the analysis of a capitalist mode of production which
explicitly incorporates domestic labour, and indeed whether such categories
are applicable to this more complete specification of the capitalist mode of
production. It also examines the relations of production specific to
domestic labour and makes some tentative predictions as to how we may
expect the needs of capital to change domestic labour both qualitatively and
quantitatively.
At the same time as the work on domestic labour was crystaUizing into
written form, subgroups of the Political Economy of Women Group were
beginning to work on other areas; on women and the welfare state,
women's wage work, the family in industrialisation and social legislation as
it affects women and the family.
The second paper in this pamphlet comes from one of these subgroups.
a
2
The group working on the Welfare State centred their work around
women's reproductive role and its privatised nature in capitalist society.
They examined in what ways and (or what reasons women's role in
reproduction changed in the period since the 1930's in Britain. These
questions are fundamental to an analysis of the state in that period.
In this paper the theoretical points are developed witb a specific political
purpose, to understand how women should organise around reproduction
and what our demands should be. It also IOCS on to raise some points about
reproduction under socialism.
Both the papers in this pamphlet were presented to a one-day workshop
of the Women and Socialism conference on June 7th, 1975, together witb
other papers from the Political Economy of Women Group, The work of
the group continues and we are always interested in new members and new
projects. We can be contacted through the C.S.E.
A glossary of terms employed follows the two papers.
c
r
Women's domestic labour
The kind of theoretical analysis onc does is detennined by the kind of
questions one asks of it, and onc of the hardest problems which has raced
the "Political Economy of Women Group" over the past year has been to
rederlQe the theoretical questions we were asking in order that they should
address morc closely our own political concerns. We start out with a
common political perspective in that we arc all socialists and feminists, but
beyond that we are trying to develop an nnderstanding of our agreements
and disagreements in the process of discussion and research.
This paper presents our views on the problem of domestic labour (i,e.,
housework) and its relation to women's total economic role under
capitalism. What wc mean by ' economic' in this context is that wc are
focussing here on production and reproduction as the material aspects of
women's oppression. We examine the interrelations between the different
fonns of women's work under capitalism, the material basis of sexism, and
the gains to capital and to various groups of workers from the oppression
and exploitation of women. While recognising the ideological impOrtance
of the family, we shall be concentrating on the rotes of women in
production; such an analysis is the specific contribution of political
economy to the women's movement. Moreover, in focussing on domestic
labour we are reflecting the view, common to almost all writing on this
subject, that women' s role in the borne ill crucial to her subordination under
capitalism.
The paper is organised as follows. We begin by setting out a theoretical
problem, the relation of domestic labour to the process by which surplus
value is generated within capitalism. We &0 on to discuss, in the light of
this, the concept of a mode of production. and its use in analysing the
relation of domestic labour to the capitalist mode of production. We then
analyse the nature of the production relations of domestic labour, and
particularly the relations within the family. Finally we consider the
historical relation of domestic labour to women's wage work and past and
possible future changes in domestic labour in response to the contradictory
needs of capitalism.
1. Domestic labour and surplus value
This section identifies the theoretical problem of the relation of domestic
labour to the expansion of surplus value. In the process of developing an
understanding of this we began with the question of how housework
contributes to the production of surplus value, but found that different
4
4
answers to this question implied answers to certain historically specific
questions, such as:
- Why has domestic labour retained a major role in the maintenance and
reproduction of labour power in capitalist societies?
- Is domestic labour and the family as we know it likely to be significantly
eroded in the current phase of British capitalism?
These are questions which we bear in mind in discussing the relationship of
domestic labour to the expansion of surplus value.
(a) Surplus Value in Marx
The core of Marx's theory ofsurpius value is expounded in Capital Vol. 1 in
the roUawing way. Marx restricts his analysis to the productive relations of
a pure capitalist mode of production in which there are two classes: the
bourgeoisie who own the means of production and the proletariat who own
nothing but their labour power. All labour performed in this economy is
engaged in capitalist commodity production. Surplus value is then deriDed
as the abstract labour-time embodied in that part of capitalist commodity
production which represents a surplus over and above the commodities
purchased with their wage by workers for their own consumption. Since all
production is capitalist commodity production, workers' consumption is
also exclusively consumption of commodities.
The production relations between capital and labour are inherently
antagonistic: capital will strive to shorten the portion of the workina day the
worker is working for his own subsistence and lengthen correspondingly
that portion of the day when the worker is producing surplus value for his
employer. The production of surplus value is therefore a process in which
class conflict is inherent, around both the wage bargain and the production
process.
As far as the wage bargain is concerned, Marx saw the wage (or each
group of workers as fIXed in real terms (or a given historical period,
identifying this as a historically given level of subsistence. The value of
labour power is then tbe abstract labour-time embodied in commodities
making up that level of subsistence at any moment. He could argue that the
real wage must be fIXed for a given level of subsistence only because he
assumed that workers' consumption consisted only of commodities
purchased with the wage. In this approach, Marx's analysis abstracts from
the determination of the historical level of subsistence. and also from the
interaction between this and the wage rage. Once one recoJDises that
workers also consume use-values produced by domestic labour (as well as
by the state in areas like health. education and social benefits) then the level
of wages and the level of subsistence are no longer synonymous.
However, since Marx regarded tbe level of real waaes as historically
prc-determined. most of his analysis of the production of surplus value is
concentrated on the capitalist production process. For once Wiles are fIXed
in real terms there are only two ways of raisina the rate of surplus value.
Either the working day can be lenathened or the pace of work increased,
4
Women's domestic labour S
both of which meet with physical limits and organised opposition from the
work force. Or the labour-time required to produce the necessary
commodities for workers' consumption can be reduced.
We feel that in order to develop an analysis of the relation of domestic
labour to the expansion of surplus value, the question of wages and the
value of labour power has to be explored in much greater depth.
(b) The Valw of Labour Power
The dominance of capitalism requires that the mass of producers. men and
women alike. be separated from alternative independent means of
subsistence, but beyond this, Marx took little further interest in the question
of how the subsistence and reproduction of the labour force was
transformed by the advent of capitalism. For example, he does not appear
to have seen any contradiction between, on the one hand, viewing
capitalism as a mode of production in which workers are dependent for
their subsistence on wage labour and, on the other, relegating the question
of the maintenance and reproduction of labour power to an ahistorical and
peripberal terrain:
'The maintenance and reproduction of the working class is, and must
ever be, a condition of the reproduction of capital. But the capitalists
may safely leave its fulfllment to the labourers' instincts of self
preservation and propagation.' Capital, Vol. I, p. 572.
However, when the current feminist movement began to focus attention
on women's domestic labour and its role in the maintenance and
reproduction of labour power, it became clear that the value of labour
power - in the sense of the abstract labourtime embodied in the
commodities entering into the level of subsistence - was not independent
of the other forms of work which went into the total level of subsistence of
the working class. Several issues have to be examined as part of a theory of
the value of labour power. The nest point is that in any period the provision
made by capital for the reproduction and maintenance of labour power
through the wage paid to workers is premised on the existence of domestic
labour and the state historically given in a particular form. The payment of
wages to workers does not provide in itself adequate material conditions for
their labour power to be maintained and reproduced either on a day to day
basis or from generation to Icneration. Secondly there is the question of
dependence of the value of labour power on the economic structure of the
family. Marx explicitly assumed in his analysis of the value of labour power
a family unit in which neither children nor wife worked, although he also
pointed to the historical tendency of capital to spread the value of labour
power over the whole fanilly through the employment of women and
children.
To both of these issues we will return in subsequent sections. There is a
third set of questions which need to be examined in developing a theory of
the value of labour power. That is bow do subsistence needs get determined
and change over time; how do needs influence wage levels and wage levels
4
6
influence how needs are perceived; how do wage differentials get
established. maintained or changed over time? We raise these questions but
do not explore them further in this paper since they are not directly related
to the role of domestic labour.
Before looking in detail at the role of labour in the detennination 'of the
value of labour power and hence in the production of surplus value, we nrst
consider the relation of domestic labour to the capitalist mode of
production, and the implications of this for our analysis.
2. Domestic labour and the capitalist mode of production
There has been a certain amount of discussion recently of whether domestic
labour should be analysed as a form of work within the capitalist mode of
production, or as a separate 'client' mode articulating with, but outside, the
capitalist mode of production. [2] To some extent this has been a question of
semantics, but there are some real theoretical issues involved, and we first
discuss these in general.
In deciding how the concepts of 'mode of production' should be used, we
need to distinguish between transitional and nontransitional societies.
Transitional societies are those in a process of change from domination by
one ruling class, on the basis of one set of relations of exploitation, to
domination by another. Nontransitional societies, whatever the fragmenta
tions, fractionating and confusions within them, are not undergoing such a
process. So long as this distinction is kept clear one can to some extent
choose one's own vocabulary, but we feel that there are good arguments for
the concepts we have chosen to use.
Marx does not use the phrase 'mode of production' consistently. But he
identifies capitalist mode of production and the historical epochs which he
contrasts with capitalism: the 'Asiatic fonn', the 'feudal dominium' for
example, by means of a particular set of social relations defming in each a
single contradiction: the relation between the direct producers and the
controllers of their labour. The concept of mode of production is thus
fundamental to Marx's theory of history; changes in tbe set of production
relations and the development of the productive forces being 'in the last
instance' the determinant of the historical process. The most explicit
passage is the well known one from the discussion of feudal land rent,
where Marx contrasts this with the capitalist form of surplus extraction:
'The specific economic form in which unpaid surplus labour is pumped
out of the direct producers, determines the relationship of rulers and
ruled, as it grows directly out of production itself and in turn reacts upon
it as a detennining element .... It is always the direct relationship of the
owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers - a
relation always naturally corresponding to a dermite stage in the develop-
ment of the methods of labour and thereby its social productivity -
which reveals the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social
structure, and with it the political fonn of the relation of sovereignty and
dependence, in sbort, the corresponding specific form of the state. This
4

7
does not prevent the same economic base - the same from the standpoint
of its main conditions - due to innumerable different empirical circum-
slances, natural environment, racial relations, external historical
influences etc. from showing infmite gradations and variations in appear-
ance' (Qzpilal. Vol. 3, p. 791)
This it seems to us is the most useful way of using the concept of a mode of
production, an inspired abstraction if you like, laying bare the form of the
principal contradiction between producers and non-producers .
The dynamic of cbange in a society can then be explored as the processes
of resolution and reinforcement of that contradiction. Thus in any
historical epoch, onc contradiction is basic to the determination of the laws
of development of that society. In capitalism that contradiction is between
capital and labour. and therefore our analysis of domestic labour must be
situated in relation to the contradictions and dynamic of the capitalist mode
of production. It should be noted that we are not collapsing the concept of
'mode of production' into that of relations of production. Many different
relations of production can exist under one mode, and each of these
relations is stamped by the character of that mode of production. (3J
We therefore have rejected the characterisation of domestic labour as a
separate mode ofproduction.(41 We include it within the capitalist mode of
production, while rccognisina that the relations of domestic labour under
capitalism are fundamentally different from firstly, the relations of
capitalist wage labour and secondly, the relations of anything that we might
call comestic labour under any other mode.
So we now can make the distinction between transitional and non
transitional societies. While societies in transition are characterised by the
contradictory existence of more than one mode of production, this is not so
for nontransitional societies which contain only one mode. Modem
capitalism is not a society in transition between domestic production and
capitalist production (or vice versa). Domestic labour is therefore part of
the capitalist mode of production.
One of the implications that has been drawn from the analysis of
domestic labour as a separate mode of production is that housewives form a
distinct class.('l This is not an inevitable deduction. Political conclusions
do not follow so straightforwardly from theoretical analysis. But there is a
tendency to argue by analogy with capital and labour. In all societies, the
material situation of women differs from that of men (for example,
women's relation to the means of productin differs from that of men in
even peasant societies) and indeed the categories of material analysis, class
or caste for example, are specified in terms of the material situation of men.
It is therefore incorrect simply to apply these male-referrent categories to
the relations between men and women and thus to see housewives (or worse,
women) as a class.
This is not to say that women do not have specific class interests, ways in
which their material position differs from that of men. There are precedents
in Marx for a detailed analysis of the class position of various groups in
capitalist society, according to their specific interest, while not losing sipt
4
8
of their position in the division between capita] and labour.(6) In carrying
out such an analysis, it is essential to recognise that women. like men, of the
working class have no control of the means of production. They are
potential workers for capital for much of their lives. and most do wage
work at some point, including a high proportion of married women. It is
only through a recognition of their (actual or potential) double role in
production, that we can analyse their class position and the tensions within
it which lead to change.
3. Production relations and domestic labour
(a) The Relations of Production Within the Home
Domestic labour is therefore the production of use-values under non-wage
relations of production, within the capitalist mode of production. We now
go on to examine the nature of those nonwage relations and their
implications for the economic relations between men and women within the
home. We shall try to avoid the assumption, so common in the literature,
that women are typically full time housewives. Women are most likely to be
full time housewives when they have children under five, since preschool
childcare is still almost entirely done by domestic labour. We shall examine
this case first, and describe how the relations of production differ for the
wage worker and the wife working in the home.
The wage worker sells his labourpower as a commodity for a defmite
period of time, in exchange for a money wage. The rest of his time is his
own and there is a rigid separation of his life into work and leisure. His
wages are spent on commodities consumed away from the work place. Thus
production and consumption are two separate activities, emotionally and
physically. The fonner is seen as a rigidly timed unpleasant necessity and
goes on at the work place; the latter as leisure, supposedly enjoyable, going
on in or around the home.
So for the wage earner the home is the place where he consumes but does
not work and where his time is his own. For the housewife it is her place of
work but she does not go elsewhere for her leisure. So in her life there is no
rigid worklleisure distinction either in physical location or in time. She is
not paid for her work. and the amount of time she spends is not the direct
concern of anyone else, as long as the work is done. This is unlike the
situation under capitalist commodity production, where the reduction of
time spent on producing any given use-value is the specific concern of the
capitalist, since it is he who benefits from increases in productivity, rather
than the worker. For the housewife, such pressure as there is to reduce the
time spent on particular tasks is of an ideological, nonspecific nature rather
than direct coercion. This, combined with the imprecise defmition of her
work and the fact that she is not producing for a market means that her
work is not under the same kind of pressures for increasing productivity, as
is work under capitalist realtions. There is not necessarily even a clear
separation between production and consumption in her life.
OQ

Women'sdomesticlabour 9
In contrast with her husband, she is to a large extent in control of her
method and pace of working. She organises her own time. given the
constraints of fitting in with her surroundings. There is neither division nor
practically any socialisation of her labour. All bousewives do roughly the
same work and they do it in isolation. A few activities, such as shoppiol. do
bring housewives into contact with each other but this socialisation is only
that of a group engaging in a given activity together but in parallel. They are
not co-operating. The relation between a housewife and her husband is
completely different from that between a worker and a capitalist. It is not a
relation of commodity exchange. There is mutual responsibility based, at
least in theory, on what Eoaels calls ' individual sexlove'. Each partner has
his or her own realm of responsibility within the relationship usually based
on a sex-typing of roles. Thus the relation is not reducible like any monetary
exchange to a one-dimensional scale. Also, unlike commoidty exchange, the
relation is a binding one. The partners are not so free to e ~ n t r c t exactly
as they wish. This means that there is no tendency towards the equalisation
of working conditions (compensated by pay differences) that occurs in
capitalist commodity production. Since the difficulties of, and prejudices
against, dissolving the relationship are so strong, substantial variation in
standards of domestic work and time spent on it is possible. Nevertheless,
the nature of the relation is such that the adequate performance of the
respective sex-roles is seen as signs of love by the rest of the family or indeed
society. A lood and loving husband is also a good factory worker, one who
lets a larle wase-packet; a load and loving wife is one who spends much
time on domestic work of one sort or another.
Domestic labour is the production of use-values, the physical inputs for
this production being commodities bought with part of the husband's wqe.
The housewife produces diroctly consumable use-values with them. Some of
these use-values are consumed by individual members of the family, some
by the family collectively. Most of this work is repeated over a very short
period of time since its consumption is practically continuous, e.g. , cieaninl
and the preparation of food. Much of it is of a service nature, rather than
the production of physical objects, and so may be unnoticed by other
members of the family. She may get some help from other members of the
family.
Child care is the most time-consuming part of the work of full -time
housewives. Because child care is in a sense a twenty-four hour job, young
children requirina constant adult presence, this is part of domestic labour
which is the most difficult to combine with wage work. Also because of the
almost total absence of socialised substitutes, it is the most essential task
performed by the housewife for the continuance of capitalism.
(b) Surplus Labour in the HOlM?
There is a knotty theoretical problem which recurs in discussions of
domestic labour, and that is the economic characterisation of flows of
commodities and use values between man, woman and children within the
4
ID
home. One approach to this has been that found in Harrison. and in Jean
Gardiner's first paper,[7] which used a model of unequal exchange in the
sale of labour power, to provide the conclusion that women (often. at least)
perform surplus labour which is transferred elsewhere: to the capitalist, or
to the husband. It was assumed that in general the labour embodied in
housework would generally exceed the value of the wife's consumption out
of her husband's wage packet. She could therefore be seen to be performing
surplus labour like any other worker. This surplus labour would then form
part of the husband's consumption and if it was seen as part of the value of
his labour-power then the capitalist who employed the husband would in
fact be paying him less than the value of his labour power. Thus the
capitalist would receive surplus value in two ways. First, from his male
worker, because the value created by the male worker was less than his
subsistence (the value of labour-power, in this way of looking at things) and
secondly, from the worker's wife, through her providing part of her
husband's subsistence by her surplus labour. This view therefore involves a
redefinition of the 'value of labour power' to become what we have referred
to as the total level of subsistence of the man, measured in labour time.
Labour power then appears to be sold at less than its value, and the surplus
labour of the housewife is also transferred to capitalist profits.
While this approach represented a real attempt to point out the
quantitative economic significance of housework and to connect the
benefits derived from it by men to the use made of it by capital. we have
rejected it as disguising more than it reveals, and as inadequate on a number
of counts.
In particular we do not accept the redefinition of the value of labour
power because, to compare domestic labour with wage labour in a
quantitative way, is not comparing like with like. However unevenly it
operates, the process of value creation within commodity production
enables one to talk about quantities of abstract labour in the case of wage
labour in a way that is not valid for domestic labour. It is therefore not
possible to add together domestic labour-time and wage labour-time in
order to calculate the wife's surplus labour because the two are not
commensurate.
In addition an approach which equates domestic labour-time with wage
labour-time tends to blur the differences from a capitalist viewpoint
between the contributions of women's labour in these different forms and
therefore fails to expose the forces for change in the relationship between
the two. As a result and because, in addition, no account is taken of the
wife's potential for wage work, we fmd this approach static and ahistorical.
The approach we have come to adopt uses a more orthodox
interpretation of value theory in that it defmes value as socially necessary
labour-time embodied in commodities. The value of labour power is
therefore defined as the value of commodities necessary for the
reproduction and maintenance of the worker and his family. This implies
that the value of labour power is not synonymous with the labour-time
embodied in the reproduction and maintenance of labour power once one
c
;
,
!
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Women's domestic labour 11
takes account of domestic labour (and the state).
Once we take account of the fact that over half married women are
currently in paid work outside the home, we are forced to explore the
relation of women's wages to the wages of men and to the value of labour
power. We can approach this problem either by an analysis of the value of
women's labour power or by examining the role of women's wages within
the formation of the value of labour power for the family unit as a whole.
Neither approach has been much discussed as yet. We therefore see this as an
important area for future work.
The value of labour power is therefore premissed. both on the role of
women in the wage economy. and on a particular level and organisation of
domestic labour (and state-provided services). The concept of a historical
subsistence level of the working class has become somewhat detaclied from
the value of labour power, and has changed somewhat in theoretical status.
What this discussion has rejected is an ahalysis which calculates a transfer
of labour from domestic labour into profits. What it has not rejected is the
idea that husbands may benefit from the work of their wives. To illustrate
this, let us look at a family where husband and wife are both working, and,
for the sake of the argument, are gaining identical wages, but where the wife
is still perfonning all the housework and child care.
A state of affairs which is by no means uncommon amongst professional
married couples and the obvious sense of injustice it generates has pushed a
good many women towards feminism. Here the husband clearly benefits
from the wife's work, assuming, of course, that they both contribute
equally to the family expenses. What this leads us to examine however is
also the nature of that benefit. The usevalues produced by domestic labour
have embodied in them an element of personal service which is dispensed
with to a large eJlltent when those use values are socialised and become
commodities. Having your clothes washed for you by someone else is
different from washing them yourself, not only in that you do not do the
work yourself, but also in that it puts someone into a servant role towards
you within the family.
This type of benefit from women's work remains even when the division
of labour at home and work is not so obviously in the man's favour.
However, where the woman does perfonn wage--Iabour, or where the
woman is working part time and earning less than the man, the further issue
arises of the division of wages between man and woman. There is a lack of
empirical evidence on work and consumption within the home, but it
appears[9] that in general, women work longer total hours than men, and
that in poor families women's subsistence is the rust to suffer.
The analytical point here is that there are no forces inherent in family
structure working to equalise the division of family resources between men
and women. The very fact that much family consumption entails sharing
and cooperation means that the real division of resources can be difficult to
discern. and also that it is not entirely a 'zera.sum game' where more for
one is less for another. Nevertheless. the housewife role under capitalism
can frequently become monetised in a sort of parody of the wage relation:
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12
secrecy by the husband about the size of his wage packet and a weekly tussle
over the size of the housekeeping money. The expansion of a woman's
personal consumption and leisure are often necessarily at the expense of
those of men and children, a circumstance which will often prevent ber
from attending to her own needs.
Some further points can be made about this. Because wages are paid on
an individual basis they will tend to be seen initially as the property of
whichever member of the family has earned them. Where the housewife is
only doing housework she will not be seen to be working because the unpaid
nature of housework leads to an undervaluation of its importance even
though it is economically essential. In addition because women are
responsible for the family budget, even where they are earning wages
themselves, they will tend to merge their own individual needs within those
of the family rather than seeing the two as separate areas of expenditure in
the way that men are more likely to do.
In the families therefore where the wife is either doing no paid work or
pan-time and low-paid work there are ideological and economic reasons
why the division of wages in the family might work against women and in
favour of men. Even where in the case of part-time work the women's
wages may be contributing an important portion of ber own subsistence she
will still be economically dependent on some of the man's hisber wases in
budgeting for the family's needs. From an ideological point of view, as well,
the family's wages will not be seen to be equally earned by husband and wife
because of the undervaluation of housework. This last factor will not
operate in families where equal wages are earned by husband and wife.
However because of the problem of women merging their individual
interests with those of the family to a greater extent than men, we might
expect women to use or set less for themselves even in this case.
But the division of resources and benefits is not decided merely within the
bounds of the family: the undervaluation of women's work and women's
needs within the home both influences and is influenced by the
undervaluation of women's work in the wage spbere. and by the process by
which domestic labour is socialised and women are drawn into the sphere of
wage labour. Women, because of the relations of production within the
home, find themsleves isolated and relatively powerless in that sphere of
production. This role and their socialisation into it reinforces their imposed
subordination within wage work. The final part of this paper returns to the
issue raised in the first section, and examines the benefits to capital of both
of these forms of women's oppression in the context of a discussion of the
process of socialisation of domestic labour.
4. The soc;a/uation 0/ domestic labour
In this section, we examine the process of socialisation of domestic labour.
the transference of certain use-values from private production. under
domestic relations. to socialised production under capitalist relations. We
look at why socialisation of some aspects of domestic labour has occurred
q
r
I
,
Women's domestic labour 13
but not of all. and consider whether we can expect future socialisation of
the remaining aspects.
Domestic labour. largely perfonned by women, is still essential for the
reproduction of the capitalist system. At the present time it provides major
services essential for the reproduction of the labour force for which there
are no substitutes provided in any quantity by either capitaJ or the State, the
most obvious being pre-school child care. It also provides a large number of
other essential goods, such as prepared meals, for which there exist,
qualitatively. substitutes such as restaurants on the market, but the price of
which has remained sufficiently high relative to the wage to prohibit all but
an occasional substitution of the marketed good for the domestically
produced one, save for the very rich. So the relation of domestic labour to
the production of surplus value, is simply that the former makes the latter
possible.
Why in tbat case has domestic labour nevertbeless been progressively
socialised over the past century and a balf? By the socialisation of domestic
labour we do not necessarily mean a reduction in the time actually spent on
bousework by full time housewives: the tendency of housework to expand
to fill the day is one of its best documented characteristics. What we mean is
the replacement (and at the same time the transformation) of the work done
in the home by goods and services produced for tbe market or provided by
the State: laundries and prepared foods. education and health care.
Within the socialisation of domestic labour there are two complementary
processes at work. The first is the replacement of some aspects of domestic
labour by socialised production (commodities or state services), and the
second. the increasing participation of women in wage work.[IO) And there
are two effects: first an increase in production under capitalist relations of
production and hence an extension in the labour force which produces
surplus value; 'Second, but a necessary precondition for the first, a reduction
in the time whicb has to be spent in the bouse for the production of an
acceptable standard of living for the family. The concept of socially
necessary labour in the home is not analogous precisely to the concept when
applied to capitalist commodity production. But in order to grasp the fact
that the socialisation of domestic labour is necessary in order to permit
women to work in wage labour. we need some concept of the minimum time
necessary for tasks in the home. and of the forces permitting its reduction.
Thus. though domestic work. as outlined in Section 3. is not subject to
the same pressures for speeding up and rationalisation which affect wage
labour, the minimum time necessary to achieve a given level of domestic
consumption has clearly been reduced by the introduction of certain
labour-saving commodities e.g. prepared foods, disposable nappies and
washing machines. This process of freeing women for wage labour has gone
on to some extent. But it remains true that in a considerable number of
working class families at anyone time, the women are full time housewives.
Up to now, capital has been unable to overcome the obstacles to complete
socialisation of domestic labour.
A lack of adequate accumulation or of a sufficiently labour-saving
a
14
technology may be a bar to the further socialisation of domestic labour by
capital at any historical moment. The example of this which may be the
most relevant at the present time is the socialisation of preschool cbildcare.
which is extremely costly in labour and initial outlay if socialised provision
is to provide an adequate substitute for family care. In State nurseries the
required ratio of nursery staff to children is one to five, without taking
account of the ancillary and administrative staff required. If one compares
this to the average family of one and a half children to one mother with
children under five one sees that at least one-third of housewives released
from the home would have to be reempioyed in nurseries, on the realistic
assumption that ehiIdcare would remain women's work. Note too that
women in families provide a 24 hour childcare service, not just a daytime
one. If a complete service were provided the number of wage workers
required would be even higher.
It is very unlikely that individual capital would enter into the provision of
childcare as a commodity. Its high cost in labour-time would ensure that
profit-making nurseries or creches would have to charge fees which could
not be met out of present or likely future female wages. On the other hand,
individual industrial capitals might provide nursery facilities, not as a
commodity but as a direct use-value, for the children of their female
workers. One would expect the capitals that initiated such schemes to be in
areas with an existing labour shortage and to be making high profits. In
providing childcare directly, no variable capita1 is 'wasted' on women
without children, as it would be if fema1e wages as a whole were to rise
sufficiently to cover the cost of commodity childcare. For if women with
children were paid wages high enough to enable them to purchase childcare
services the wages of all other women would tend to rise to the same level.
If one looks at the possible political processes that could bring about the
socialisation of childcare, the onJy large scale possibility would be for the
state to expand its provision. For the same reasons as above, childcare
would not be sold by the state as a commodity at its value. State nurseries
would be free or, what is probably ideologically more acceptable. heavily
subsidised. Since this would add to the costs of reproduction of the labour
force borne by capital, this would only be likely to occur in a boom
situation, in which there was rapid accumulation of capital and consequent
productivity increases. These conditions are not true of the present phase of
capitalism in Britain. This is onJy one example of the way that conditions of
crisis are likely to prevent improvements in women's position.
There may also be positive reasons for the maintenance of fuUtime
housework. One example of these is that sections of the wor1cing class, both
men and women, may benefit from its maintenance. Perhaps, a key
component of the conservative ideology of, initially, the male labour
aristocracy in the nineteenth century, and subsequently the male working
class as a whole was the striving, however partially achieved. for a wage
large enough to keep a wife at home to service their needs. Moreover the
trade unions' spasmodic and differential success in winning men a family
wage was undoubtedly an achievement of organised labour and one that

p
Women 's domesticlabour IS
many women, as well as men experienced as a benefit, given the arduous
nature of domestic labour in this period. Currently however the rising
proportion of married women working (now over SO'!o for those aged 16 to
59) makes the demand for a family wage for men less meaningful, and less
likely to be achieved, (especially in a period of crisis), and the ideology of
dependent wives whose place is in the home more and more anachronistic.
Full time housework for married women is probably producing increasing
strains for families (there is a high incidence of mental illness among full
time housewives) and an increasing burden (or husbands in the form of the
loss of the wife's earning power. The increasing1y common model of the
double shift in which women contribute wages to the family and do most of
the housework as well is likely to become the most desirable for men in the
future, and if it is not to generate resentment among women, and with it
strains on the family structure, will require a reorientation of the man's
role.
What happens to the value of labour power as the sociaUsation of
domestic labour proceeds is a complex question. On the one hand, the real
wage per famly is likely to rise, (though not necessarily: in a time of crisis
women may go out to work to defend the family standard of living);
however the effect this has on the value of labour power will depend on the
growth in productivity in the economy and on the extent to which the value
of labour power becomes 'spread over' men and women, as discussed
above.
We can draw out of this analysis a number of statements with political
implications. The first is that the burden of the reproduction of the labour
force has shifted proportionally from the family to capital and the State.
lbis is very unlikely to be reversed to any great extent though we are seeing
today how in an economic crisis, an attempt is made to exhort women to
work harder, to intensify their domestic labour, by for example, selective
shopping or the home preparation of foods for which partly prepared
substitutes are available on the market, and hence to try to disguise a fall in
the real wage. The last major function of reproduction in the family is
preschool child care, and if this were to be socialised, the forces keeping the
family together would inevitably be weakened.
Secondly, and because of their 'primary' role in domestic labour, women
have always provided a rea1tively cheap labour force for capital (often
working for low pay, in precisely the areas of domestic production which
have been socialised). The value of labour power is spread, not evenly, but
unevenly across men and women. But in eroding (not removing) the
material basis for the family as an institution and drawing women into wage
work, capital has been eroding the material basis for that form of
oppression, and it now fmds itself faced with demands for setting up the
preconditions for equality, such as nurseries, to which it cannot hope to
accede, and with demands which, if seriously pursued, could threaten
women's role as a cheap labour force. Thus again. the labour process of
capital is producing its own opponents.
16
Notes
1. Katl Marx. Qzpilal Vol. I, Moscow 1961 edition, p. '72.
2. John Hamson, 'Political Economy of Housework', Bui/ell" 0/ lire Coll/erence 0/
&>cUl/ist Economists, SprinJ 1974.
Wally Secombe, 'The Housewife and her Labour under Capitalism', Ntw 141 ~ j t w
Il.
3. There arc in capitalist society many people whose work is done under production
relations other tban those of strict capitalist waat labour: for cu.mplc. artisans, bureau-
crats and 'professionals'.
4. It should be noted that this is not acritique of the use ofthe roncepl of the articulation of
modes of production in the analysis of capitalist dominance in Africa and Latin
America.
5. See, for example, Harrisan 0)). cit.
6. Katl Marx, 18th Bnmwirr 0/ Louis BOflO/HIrtc, Lawrence &: Wishan, 1968.
7. Jean Gardiner, 'Political Economy of Domestic Labour in Ci.pitali5t Society' to be
published in Explorations in SocIology, Vol. VI B eel. D. Barker and S. Allcn.
8. See for example R. and R.N. Rapoport, Dwll Carev Families, PenJUin 1971.
9. See for example, Audrey Hunt, Surwy 0/ Womens Employmtnt HMSO (1968). LuC)'
Syson and Michael YOUIlJ in 1974 Povmy Report eel. M. Youoa.
10. Department of Employment, Women and Work - a Statistical Sllrvey, Manpower
Paper 9.
Women, the state and reproduction
since the 1930s
Introduction
This paper is about how and why women's role in reproduction has changed
in the period since the 1930s in Britain. We look specifically at the
implications for women of intervention by the state in order to assist w as
feminists to work out ways of organising around reproduction.
Within the current feminist movement the importance of struggling
around reproduction has always been stressed. In discussing reproduction
in this paper we shall be referring to women's role in child-bearing and in
domestic labour which services both the current and future generations of
workers. However. it is the domestic labour aspect of women's role in
reproduction that we focus on in this paper.
There are a number of reasons why feminists think reproduction is a
crucial area for political work. It has been generally accepted in the WLM
that women's privatised reproductive role is the key material component of
women's specific oppression. This follows from an awareness that the entry
of women into socialised production, whether capitalist or socialist, does
not necessarily lead to reproduction becoming socialised or to any
breakdown in the sexual division of labour.
The privatisation of reproduction oppresses children and men as well as
women but it has the specific effect on women of supporting an ideology
wruch makes women feel guilty if they are not putting all their energies into
caring for their family. Moreover women are thus isol4ted and divided from
each other because of the atomistic nature of the family to which so much
of their energy gets devoted.
In addition the majority of women, because of their reproductive role,
are prevented from developing a strong base outside the family, e.g. the
community or trade union. This keeps women politically and economically
weak and prevents them from engaging in collective struggle on an equal
footing with men.
Not only is it essential to organise around reproduction in order to
mobilise the mass of women, both those at home with children and those
dong the double shift of paid work and housework, but it also is essential
for the women who are already feminists and socialists who are prevented
from being as politically involved as they want to be by domestic
commitments.
Finally it is essential to establish the transformation of the relations of
reproduction as a crucial component of the struggle for socialism to ensure
that socialism does eradicate patriarchy at home and at work.
2
18
The next section looks at different aspects of the changes in women's
reproductive role since the 19305 and the implications of those changes for
women. We then attempt to analyse why some of those changes occ:urred in
order to undentand better the nature of reforms and the role of the state.
We then look at the political implications of our analysis and at the
demands of the WLM. FinaUy. we raise some points about reproduction
under socialism.
Reproduction since the 1930$
a) Family structure
One important factor affecting the structure of families is the pattern of
fertility, In looking at the changes that have occurred since the 19308 two
tendencies stand out. The first is the growth in the proportion of women in
the population who become mothers at some stage of their lives. The second
is the compression of fertility for women within their lives as a whole. Let us
look at each tendency in turn.
The increased incidence of maternity amongst women is a change which
has been commented upon much less than the compression of maternity
within the life cycle of women. Yet it might help explain the persistence of
the ideology of women's primary role being motherhood. The rise in the
proportion of women having children has three components. Firstly there
has been a growth in the proportion of women marrying especially amongst
the younger age groups. Secondly tbere has been a decline in childless
marriages. Thirdly there has been a rise in the number of births to
unmarried women.
The proportion of women muried in the age group 30 to 44, after which
childbirth is unlikely to occur, rose from 74.,. in 1931 to 890ft in 1971. The
rise for the youngest age groups was much steeper: from 2'" to 10'" for
those aged 16 to 19 and from 250ft to 5807, for those aged 20 to 24.[1)
Table 1 The proportion of females married in Great Britain between 1931 and
1971 by age group.
Age Percentage married
1931 1951 1961 1971
16-19 2.3 5.1 8.4 10.0
2IJ.U 25.4 46.5 57.3 58.0
25-29 57.8 76.1 83.6 84.2
31J.44 73.9 81.9 86.8 88.8
45-59 69.6 72.6 76.6 80.3
6IJ.74 47.5 48.0 49.8 53.3
75 and over 17.2 19.8 18.1 1&.2
All ages . 40.7 48.1 49.3 49.3
Souroe: SocitJl Tnndl 1972.

Women, staleandrep,oduction 19
As weD as a rise in the marriage fate there has been a slight rise in the
number of children born alive to married women since the 1930s. This is
partly due to a decline in childless marriages. Whilst IS'Ia of women
married between 1935 and 1939 bad no children, only 90/, of women
married between 1955 and 1959 were childless. [2]
Table 2 Distribution of family size (live births occuring to first marriages)
in Great Britain.
No. of children
live-born in
TflQrriage
o
1
2
3
4
5 or more
Average no. of children
Part Estimated
Percentage of Women Married in the Period
193539 195559
15 9
26 18
29 34
15 20
7 11'
8 8'
2.07 2.38
Source; Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, Report 0/ the Population Panel.
Cmnd 5258, 1973.
Thirdly there has been a growth in childbirth outside nwriage. In
England this rose from S.S births for every 1000 unmaried women aged IS
to 44 in the mid 19305 to 19.1 for every 1000 in the years 19611965.[3)
The second tendency since the 19305 has been a compression of fertility
within the life cycle of women. Although the average number of children
born to each married women has risen slightJy the childbearing period has
tended to shorten. Thus whilst women.married in 1930 had an average of
1.69 children after 10 years marriage and 2.15 only after 25 years marriage,
women married in 1960 had an average of 2.16 children after only 10 years.
This means that more than half of all babies are now born within the first
five years of marriage and more than three quarters within eiaht years.[4]
The typical mother spends about four years only now in a state of
pregnancy and in nursing a child for the first. year of life. [5] It is arguable
that the shortening of women's childbearing and infanHearing period
which has occurred has added to the physical and emotional strains on
mothers of young children to an extent that is not necessarily offset by the
medical and material improvements which have undoubtedly occurred
during the period.
We will discuss some of the implications of these changes for the
development of the current women's movement in the section (e) of this
paper. Here we will merely note their effects, along with that of changes in
the dependence of yong and old people on the family, on household
structure. (Household is here taken to mean a group of people who live

20
Table 3 Mean family size (number of children) of women married once
only at ages under 45. Great Britain 1930-}960.
Year o[ maJ'tiage
1930
1935
1940
1945
1950
1955
1960
Marriage duTtltion (exact yean )
5 10 15 20 25
1.17
1.09
0.97
1.26
1.27
131
1.47
1.69
1.63
1.63
1.81
1.87
2.02
2.16
1.98 2.12
1.97 2.07
1.90 2.00
2.09 2.19
2.15 2.25
2.26
2.15
2.09
2.02
2.21
Source: Annual AbstrQct of StDt/stics 1973.
together and benefit from a common housekeeping, or a person living
alone.}
Between 1951 and 1971 there was a striking increase in the proportion of
households containing only one or two people, from 38'1, to 49'11 of the
total.{6] This is due to the compression of fertility. to young people leaving
home at an earlier age than before and to old people living apart from their
children. By 1971 only 50'" Of households were families with children (430ft
married couples plus children, 7tJ. single parents with children). [7] These
changes have implications for the women who are primarily responsible as
housewives, full- or part-time, for the care of the household. The fmt is a
decline in necessary housework with tbe decline in household size. The
second is a detachment of housework. from childcare for a growing
proportion of women. Whilst this has no doubt lightened housework tasks
it may have contributed to a sense of unfairness and point1essness in the
work. By 1971 over half of married couples bad no dependent children.(81
Anotber related cbange witb implications for women bas been tbe
growing geographical dispersion of kin, resulting from bousing and
employment policies as well as increased dependence of old people on the
state. This concerns the relationship between bousebolds rather than their
composition. As extended families have become dispersed women bave lost
the traditional support and companionsrup that they derived from female
relations. This has increased the isolation and individual responsibility of
housewives.
b) The Welfare State
Four important points might be made concerning the development of the
Welfare State and the way it affects women. First1y it has undoubtedly led
to a rise in living standards. Improved health, education and social security,
for instance, have been a direct benefit. Secondly, these material
improvements however have not altered tbe basic dependence of women,
whether 00 their husbands or on means tested benefits. Thirdly, they have
Dot included the socialisatioD of chiJdcare or housework. except in the war.
~ 4 ~ - - - - - - - - - - - -
Women. stote and reproduction 21
Fourthly, State intervention has increasingly taken ideological forms. A
major function of social work, for instance, is to maintain the family. to
encourage women to cope with their oppressive role in the home.
Improvements brought about by legislation in the 19405 perhaps
benefited women particularly. if only because their material situation
before the war was so very bad. The welfare provision introduced by Uoyd
George around 1908 was primarily directed at insured workers and infants.
Unemployment and sickness pay and free health threatment on the 'panel'
were intended to keep the workforce fit and state supervision of midwives
and district nursing for mothers at the time of childbirth were aimed at
maintaining tbe population in a period of imperialist expansion. Few
women were insured workers however. especially since agricultural and
domestic workers were excluded. In the 19205 payments to the wives and
children of sick or unemployed insured workers were introduced, although
there was still no free health treatment -for them. Wives of unemployed
workers who did not contribute to a voluntary insurance scheme simply
could not afford to go to a doctor. Moreover in the 19305 married women
who were insured workers had their benefit stopped and the household
assessments were introduced. This meant that parents could be made
dependent on their working children and vice versa, with the result that the
household budget was even more diff1CUlt to manage. In this period the
birthrate declined, infant mortality rose, 36Ofo of children were considered
unfit and 8OOJo anaemic. Women's health was probably appalling although
statistics on women's health are unreliable if not unavailable, since so few
women in poverty could afford treatment.(9)
During the Second World War all sorts of provisions were made for
children to enable women to work. School meals and milk were intended. to
save cooking in the home, together with local authority restaurants, and
nurseries freed some women from the care of pre-school children. Cod liver
oil, vitamins, free orange juice and ens were introduced to improve and
maintain the health of children in lean years, and maternity benefit was
intended to make sure the mother could care for her infant for the fust few
weeks of its life without impoverishment.
In 1941 an interdepartmental committee on Social Insurance and Allied
Services was set up, headed by Beveridge. He was determined, given the
political upheavals in the 19305 around reproduction, unemployment and
pensions, the shocking facts of working class poverty revealed by the
evacuation of city children during the war, that 'This is a time for
revolution, not for patchina'(10). Beveridge calculated that the greatest
cause of want was the interruption of earning power through sickness or
unemployment, and that the next greatest cause was the fact that income
was not related to family size. He therefore urged children's allowances,
State provided health and rehabilitation services and the maintenance of
full employment. Growth in the birthrate was to be encouraged by
maternity benefits. He proposed that 'there should be an allowance
sufficient to provide for all the necessaries of life' for children, but his
,uuested 8/ was reduced to 5/ on the grounds that several benefits were
22
being given in kind, for instance school meals and clothing grants. and that
responsibility for children must be shared by the family and the State, and
not taken over by the State.
Most afthe welfare services introduced after the war were established on
the principle of universality. The National Health Service provided free
health treatment and heavily subsidised dental and optical services for every
member of the population. Child allowances were universal. School milk
and Setondary schooling were universally free, dinners, clothing grants and
higher education means tested. National insurance also provided for a
universal pension scheme and pensions were intended to gradually climb up
to well above subsistence level, to provide a dignified standard of living.
Even council housing was spoken of as a right for all.
Some of these intentions were barely attempted. but severe cutbacks
began in the 19605. Then charges were introduced and subsequently
increased for prescriptions, dental treatment, school milk was made
discretionary and the price of school meals much increased. Local
authorities currently administer 47 means tests. Pensions have to be
supplemented by social security and heating allowances, concessionary
fares, reduced tarrifs on home helps, and vouchers for butter and beef.
Benefits for women are still structured around the institution of marriage
so that the dependency of women has Dot altered. Social security is cut off
from women who are found to be living with a man, on tbe assumption that
any man must be responsible for the woman he lives with. Married men get
tax allowance for their wives whether they are working or not. Until this
year. married women received less unemployment and sickness benefit and
paid lower contributions. Women who marry receive pensions on the
strength of their husbands contributions. This also applies to women who
marry Jate and who have paid contributions independently for many years.
It is curious that the fact that improved services would not alter tbe
subordinate and dependant position of women was not taken up by women
in the 19305 and 19405, even though a few radical women had made this
point in the 19205. lite SteUa Brown. Eleanor Rathbone in her campaigns
for family allowances was constantly attacking the dependence of women
and emphasising how this had increased rather than decreased over time.
Yet her actual proposals, measures which were adopted in the Beveridge
legislation, only served to provide mothers with more resources to carry out
their domestic tasks better. Family allowances were paid to women
although this had to be fought for, and it is only this year that child tax
allowances ceased to be paid to husbands. Nor have any of the services
relieved mothers from their 24 hour responsibilities for children. It seems
that only when women are needed in production is there any awareness of
women's role in reproduction. Thus the war produced nurseries and
canteens which were closed immediately afterwards. Since the late 1960s
there has been renewed interest in nursery provision, some employers
providing their own creches and some local authorities somewhat increasing
nursery provision. But this provision is still for priority cases dermed as
deprived or at risk, such as one parent families, and in no way as a universal

Women, state and reproduction 23
right. The greatest increase in provision has been in the submerged
childminding section which is scapegoated by the State for its inadequacies
in the way that private landlords are.
Already in the 19305 Eleanor Rathbone noted the increased state
supervision of mothers in the home[ll]. She pointed out that at any time
health visitors, school inspectors or rent collectors could 'drop in
unannounced. putting pressure on the mothers to improve the quality of
labour power she produced and holding legal sanctions against her if she
failed to meet the prevailing norms. Since the war the ideological pressure
on women in the home has increased enormously and a veritable army of
social workers has been trained in family case work. In 1968 local authority
children's welfare and mental health departments were combined to provide
an integrated family service. Until recently the basic premise that
educational development and personal stability depend on satisfactory
mother-child relationships and that all manner of social ills from mental
illness to criminality to workshyness to politica1 non-conformity can be
explained by childhood experiences in the family has been uncritically
taught to teachers, social workers, personnel officers, medica1 personnel,
the police etc. The media, especially women's magazines, also continually
develop and reinforce the view of the normal mother who stays at home and
creates a loving and stimulating environment for her children. Since the
19605 there has been increased assistance in this task through 2 hour
playgroups and nursery classes, but in general the responsibility of women
for their children has probably increased. Labour mobility and rehousing
policies have led to the breakup of the extended family and the supportive
community. This has resulted in many mothers caring for their children in
isolation with little support in the way of babysitting etc.
c) Housework
Housework has undoubtedly become much less arduous since the 19305
with the increase in massproduced foods and clothes, the spread of
launderettes, vacuum cleaners and kitchen gadgets, the development of
cleaning agents such as detergents and more washable fibres, the increase in
central heating etc. Standards and expectations have also risen however so
that the pressures on women to perfonn hours of domestic labour are still
very great. Women without children can probably complete their
housework in many fewer hours than they used to. But the 24 hour
responsibility for women with pre--school children, and the all nonschool
hour responsibility of women with school age children remains unchanged.
There is no evidence to suggest any significant shift in the sexual division of
labour in the home. Sociologists like Young and Willmott who have tried to
show this have based their conclusion on the fmding that 85'10 of husbands
'help' their wives with one task at least once a week.[121 Ideological and
emotional factors affecting women as well as men, are important here.
Since housework and care of the family are inextricably linked with
emotional relationships, women sometimes resist men taking a greater share
of domestic responsibility even when that would greatly ease their work
load. .
q
d) Wage work
The changes that have occurred in women's role in reproduction in the
period since the 1930s have been accompanied by a massive increase in the
proportion of women in regular paid employment. The growth has mostly
occurred amoDgSt married women in the age groups 3.5 and over and
amonast women whose children are old enough to be at scbool.[13]
However from the mid 60s there has also been a rapid rise in employment of
women with prc-school children. [14] The female labour (orce before the
Second World Wax was predominantly young and single. Now two thirds
are married women who nonnally have major domestic responsibilities. [IS]
From 1960 onwards nearly all the growth in women' s employment has been
in part-time work which has continued to expand since the economic crisis
of the late 60s and 705.(16) A high proportion of part-time workers are
women with children at school.111] The divergence between school hours
and working hours makes it especially difficult for these women to reconcile
full-time jobs witb domestic responsibilities. Part-time work is of course
aenera11y even more low paid and difficult to oraanise than women's work
in aeneral.
Despite the arowtb in importance of women's employment, women's
earninp as a whole did not rise at all relative to men's up to the early 70s.
AmOIlJSt full-time manual workers the ratio of women's hourly earninas to
men' s remained at 61'Tt from 1955 to 1971.[18J The sexual division of
labour in paid employment has. if anythina:. been reinforced with the
expansion of female employment. Most of the arowtb has oc::ci.med in the
service sector in occupations that have become established as women's work
e.,. shop work, secretarial, nursing, teachina:. In manufacturina there has
been a decline in the proportion of women doing work which is defmed as
skilled work.
It is widely recognised that the arowtb in women's employment has meant
a double shift for increasina numbers of women. This is because it has not
been accompanied by any sipificaot socialisation of housework or
childcare or any sipificant shift in the sexual division of labour in the
home.
e) Implica/ions o l ~ clulnges lor h ~ WLM
AmOllPt the chan&es we have described two tendencies appear to have
special relevance for the development of feminism in the current period. On
the one band there is the rise in the proportion of women who bear and rear
children at some stqe of their lives at a time when maternity has become
quantitatively less and less sianificant in women's lives. One the other there
is the rise in the proportion of married women and mothers in the paid
labour force and with it a rise in the proportion of women doina a double
shift of housework and paid work. As a result of these changes the
traditional cboices which women were expected to make between 'work'
and family. poUtics or family. trade union or domestic involvement. have
become less and less meaninaful. The WLM has cballenaed the need to
make such choices in a way that the broad stream of the 19th century
4
p
Women, stale and reproduction 2!5
feminist movement did not.
The earlier movement which fought to break the male monopoly over
professional occupations, and did Dot question the role of women within
the family. drew a large part of its strength from single women from
professional families who did Dot expect to many or have children. The
current feminist movement has on the other hand stressed the negative
implications of marriage, maternity and the family for women in our
society and rejected as a solution that women might choose between equal
opportunities for work with men and having children.
The ideology of motherhood as women's primary role and the economic
inequality associated with that ideology and embodied in the welfare state
and the labour market has generated increasing resentment among women.
The foUowing comment from the Finer Report on OneParent Families,
although revealing ignorance about the extent of women's paid and unpaid
work in the period before the demographic changes we have been
describing, is interesting as an example of recognition of the significance of
. these changes outside the feminist movement.
'Women's work used to be undertaken in the interval between school and
motherhood and the sting of occupational inequality was mild. Today.
motherhood is taking place in the interval between school and work and
the sting of inequality has become sharp indeed.'[20]
The WLM has developed primarily amongst women with relative
economic ndependence who seem to have the greatest possibility for
achieving sexual equality. Yet material, ideological and emotional factors
work together to prevent them from achieving it.
Analysis 0/ changes in Reproduction
This section represents an attempt to pull together some strands of an
analysis of women's role in reproduction since the 1930s in Britain. In doing
this we distinguish between the economic requirements of capital on the one
hand and the political pressures on the state on the other since the two are
not the same and do not always work in the same direction. This approach
differs from an economic determinist position which sees aD reforms and
political changes that occur in a capitalist society as a direct product of the
capitalists' search for higher profit. At the same time it recognises that a
constant and fundamental political pressure on a capitalist state is the
requirement that profit be maintained and expanded.
It has become obvious that to go further than we have as yet been able to,
requires greater understanding of the capitalist state, e.g. how has the state
changed from the 1930s? what is the extent of political pressure the working
class and social movements can bring to bear on the state? to what extent
are state policies a product of the economic requirements of capital? are the
various economic requirements of capital mutually consistent or contra-
dictory? We have only just begun through our reading, discussion and
writing to tackle such questions as they apply to women and reproduction.
In concentrating on the economic and the political aspects of !he problem
4
we are conscious of neglecting the important ideological component.
Let us look first at how the economic requirements of capital have
affected women's role in reproduction and production since the 1930s.
Firstly there is capital's need for reproduction of a healthy labour force
with the required skills. As was indicated in the section on the welfare state,
this need was not being adequately met during the 19305 on account of the
poverty which $0 many families suffered. Moreover. new technological
processes and speed-ups demanded greater dexterity and concentration, yet
much of the workforce was seriously debilitated from long unemployment,
sickness and malnutrition. Industrial fatalities and accidents increased.
Apprenticeship and training declined to the detriment of industrial
production when the recovery occurred.C21] Given such experiences in the
lOs. the proposals for social legislation embodied in the 1942 Beverldge
Report clearly reflected capitalist interests. They committed the state to
intervene to make up for the inadequacies of the wage system in
guaranteeing the maintenance and reproduction of labour power. The crux
of the policy was the elimination of poverty deriving from male
unemployment on the one hand and the non-correspondence of wage
payments with responsibility for dependents on the other.
The social legislation dealing with insurance for unemployment, sickness
arid old age and with maternity. infant and child maintenance had to
conform with the economic requirements of capital (as did legislation on
health, housing and education). Two JSpectS of this concern us. One is how
the scheme was to be fmanced. The other was its perpetuation of women's
economic dependence and domestic labour.
The Welfare State of the late 1940s was premised on both male full
employment and economic growth. Full employment was important for two
reasons. On the one hand it offset the tendency for unemployment
insurance to reduce the incentive to work. On the other it was an essential
prerequisite for keeping down the costs of unemployment benefit provision
relative to employee contributions.
Economic arowth was essential to disguise the fact that state welfare
benefits were fmanced through redistribution of working class incomes:
from the healthy to the sick, from the employed to the retired, from single
individuals to families etc. For a major economic requirement of the
welfare state from a capitalist viewpoint was that it should not be fmanced
out of profits. In the 19505 this sytem worked relatively well, (although
never to the standards Beveridge intended) since wages were generally rising
considerably faster than the burden of taxation and insurance contribu-
tions. With the growing economic crisis of the 19605 and 70s, this ceased to
be the case. Firstly rising wages were increasingly eroded as they were
caught between inflation on the one hand and ever hiaher taxes on the
other. with the result of heightened waae militancy amongst wider and
wider sections of workers. [22] Amonst these were many state employees
whose increased demands raised the costs of welfare at the very time when
the state was attemptiq: to economise on its expenditure on reproduction
and to direct more resources into industrial investment and exports e.g.
4
,
Women. state and reproduction 27
through investment grants. The abandonment of the principle of
universality in favour of selectivity was partly a response to these growing
contradictions in a period of economic crisis.
The postwar welfare statc's perpetuation of women's dependence and
domestic labour also has an important economic rationale from a capitalist
viewpoint. as is indicated in the following quote from the Beveridgc Report.
'In any measure of social policy in which regard is had to the facts the great
majority of married women must be regarded as occupied on work which is
vital though unpaid without which their husbands could not do their paid
work and without which the whole nation could not continue'123] The costs
of reproduction borne by the statc would be infinitely greater both if
adequate socialised care were provided for all the dependents, both children
and others, that have remained women's responsibility within the family
and if women were to receive equal state benefits in their own right. State
acceptance of more of these costs of reproduction has only happened at
times when women's role as reproducers has been brought into conflict with
the need for women to be wage labourers.
This latter need has been a crucial economic factor in the postwar period.
As mentioned above, male full employment was an important premise of
the postwar welfare state. Full employment of women has at no time,
except during the war, been a goal of state policy. Women's unemployment
is conveniently, to a large extent, hidden on account of the nonregistration
of married women for unemployment benefit. Male full employment has,
however, had important implications for women's employment since it has
resulted in a steady growth in the female labour force. Married women
workers provided the only labour reserve, apart from the brief period when
net immigration from Third World countries was allowed at the end of the
19SOS and early 1960s. The existence of a female reserve was important
from a capitalist viewpoint since it modified, although did not undermine.
the increased bargaining power of male workers during the period. The
growth in married women's employment initiated during the boom years of
the SOS continued into the crisis years of the 60s and 70s when the major
area of expansion became part-time work (under 30 hours per week).
Women's wage labour has played an important role in the process of
cheapening labour costs borne by capital and the state: the capitalist way
out of the crisis. This has worked in three ways:
I . The low level of female wages;
2. Married women's earnings supplementing the male wage and reducing
pressure for higher male wages;
3. Married women's earnings reducing the costs to the state of benefits to
very poor families. (All family income is included in assessment for
eligibility to meanHested benefits.)
Finally in our discussion of the economic factors affecting changes in
reproduction it is important to note the effects of capitalists' search for
growing markets for consumer goods and services on the technology of
housework.
Now let us turn to the political pressures affecting in this
28
period. especially those operating in the 19408 and in the late 19605 and
early 19705. The earlier period saw an important political shift within the
trade union movement which was a product both of industrial changes that
bad been occurring in the interwar period and of the experiences of the 2nd
World War. Industrial change resulting from capitalist attempts to pin
greater control of the labour process and to reduce labour costs had resulted
in a slow erosion of the skilled workers position both in numbers and
bargaining strength and an expansion of labour. By the 19408
many skilled workers unions had recognised the need to ally with the
semi-skilled. This change undermined the skilled workers' traditional.
opposition to state welfare benefits which bad been based on their own
ability. because of relatively high wages and relatively low unemployment,
to provide benefits for their members, and opposition to paying additional
contributions to fmanoe insurance for tbe more needy semi-skilled and
unskilled workers. Greater unity amongst male workers in the 1940s
increased the political pressure from the labour movement for state
insurance and other welfare benefits. The setting up of the Beveridge
Committee in 1941 happened in response to a deputation from the rue.
In addition the 2nd World War gave the trade unions, or sections of
them, both a new relationship with the state and a new conception of its
potential benevolence. It inaugurated state consultation with trade union
leaders on a wide range of political matters. It also illustrated bow state
intervention to plan the economy and improve the welfare of the people
made possible both full employment and an attack on poverty. That the
benevolence of the state was premised in large part on a context of wartime
class collaboration was clear only to the small minority of marxists in the
trade union movement. After the depression of the 19305 the experience of
the 2nd World War created expectations in the labour movement which
demanded to be met at least in part by the post war government. The fact
that it was a Labour Government strengthened these political pressures.
However an important pOint to stress is that the form tbese political
pressures took reflected tbe continuing male domination of the trade union
movement despite the siJnificant growth in women's union membership
during the 2nd World War. The major demands were for male full
employment and adequate insurance for male workers, for themselves and
their families. Although there were certain women's organisations
pressurising the state on behalf of mothers and married wocmn, their
political weight was insignificant. [241 The failure of the post-war welfare
state to question women's economic dependence on the family must partly
result from the political and economic weakness of women at the time.
Despite the key role of political pressure from the trade union movement
in setting up the post war welfare state there has been little systematic
attempt by the trade unions to defend the gains it embodied from the
attacks on it in the 60s and 70s. Although there has been a considerable
increase in trade unions' strength since the 2nd World War their power has
not surprisingly remained largely based on grass roots organisation around
workplace wages and conditions. Because of this, one response to the
,
I
Women. state and reproduction 29
failure of the welfare state to establish and maintain adequate social
benefits on a universal basis has been increased. emphasis on company
sickness and pension schemes which have been fought for alorlJSide higher
wages and other fringe benefits. Defence has therefore mostly taken the
fonn of sectional struggles to force employers to pay higher wages or to
finance social benefits for their workers. However. on the issue of state
pensions. there has been a more unified political strategy within the unions
e.g. the Transport and General Workers Union call for industrial action
over pensions, and a considerable although still inadequate rise in pensions
has been achieved as a result. This particular campaign, although limited to
pensions, indicates the potential power the trade union movement can have
in influencing the development of the welfare state.
The other crucial political developments in the late 60s and 70s are of
course the WLM and the growth of militancy and self-confidence amongst
women workers. The state has responded to these developments by
introducing an Equal Pay Act and proposing Anti-Discrimination
legislation. neither of which question in any way women's reproductive
role. Such reforms promise equality whilst leaving untouched the
fundamental causes of women's oppression. Despite their limitations they
are likely to raise women's awareness and expectations further and thus
stimulate further pressure for changes which will cballenge the ways in
which capitalism has traditionally relied on women's specific role in
reproduction and in production.
Political Implications
One of the eternal problems of the left is how to regard refonns, and to
decide in what sense they are progressive. Many women, for instance, are
ambivalent about increased state provision of nurseries. given the power
that might give the State over the early ideological formation of children.
Many people also feel that the material advantages of the Welfare State
have been almost outweighed by the repressive wsays in which services have
been administered. and the social control exerted through them..
But history is a dynamic process and the outcome of refonns is Dot
predetermined. It depends rather on struuJ.e around them.. Welfare services
have not been entirely repressive. One contradictory outcome for instance
has been that those very services designed to support and maintain the
family unit have in many instances provided women with sufficient means
to break away from it, to bring up their children independently of their
husbands. And the more remedial benefits are introduced for single parent
families. the more parents in unsatisfactory relationships are likely to
separate and the weaker men's sense of obligation as breadwinnen for their
families may become. The concept of equal pay may well also change men's
attitude to their wage packet, alteri.na their dermition of it as a family waae.
Certainly ",eater welfare provision for the elderly has reduced the sense of
responsibility of children for their parents.
There are several reasons why the repressive aspects of the Welfare State
30
have not been more effectively combatted. One is that until recently state
sector workers. mostly women, have been very poorly organised. Another is
that in the euphoria of the post war period of reform the labour movement
was unaware of how repressively those services might be developed and how
far the level of provision might be undermined. At that period. the notion
of democratic control by workers and users was not discussed.
Furthermore, the left has never placed much emphasis on struaaIc in the
sphere of reproduction, either domestic or socialised. Recent organisation
of hospital workers. teachers, local government workers, some of whose
strugales are now concerning the content of services they provide. struggles
against the private sector of the health service for instance and amoDg social
workers against many professional assumptions and practices. are a very
excitina departure.
There are limitations attached to reforms, but reforms also set up new
contradictions and new possibilities for struggle. The question we should
therefore ask is not whether changes in legislation since the 30s or 40s have
improved the position of women. Rather we should ask of any particular
reform what new contradictions it sets up for women, how these affect their
consciousness and the ability to oraanise.
Generally it seems that women' s moments of potential power have
coincided with periods of crisis. Both world wars brought about radical
chanaes in the role of women. But in the crucial immediate post war years,
there was no sufficiently strong feminist current to maintain and further the
pins for women, except of course for the successful struggle for suffz'sae
after the rmt world war. The ideological onslaught sawt owmen's
independence was extreme in the 40s and SOS. As in 1918. women were
required to band over their jobs to the war heroes. And how could they
demand such luxuries, as they suddenly became dermed, as nurseries and
childcare facilities amidst the housing crisis and the enormous task of
reconstruction? Those were the year which aave birth to Bowlbyism,
glorification of the mother-dilld relationship and of homemakina.
Similarly now the upsUfJe in feminism since the late 19605 has run into
direct conflict with world capitalist recession and Britain's particularly
unfavourable position in that. Thus the Government is forced to make
concessions to women in the JUise of the Equal Pay and Anti-Discrimina-
tion reforms, while trying to enforce the Social Contract and limiting
increases in public expenditure. out of which childcare facilities would have
to be rmanced. to 4'11 per year. There are contradictions on both sides.
While the capitalist class try to outmanoeuver the reforms through job
evaluation and employing women part-time etc, the reforms themselves
accelerate ideoloJical change in favour of women and result in increased
pressure for full implementation of the existing legislation and for further
change. Within the workina class, there arc also deep conflicts however.
While women and those sympathetic to feminism strugale for equality in
work, childcare provision, abortion etc, and force trade unions to take up
these issues. countervailina: political and trade union forces try to limit
changes to those allowed by the Social Contract. and many male workers,
4
,
,.
,
Women, state and reproduction 31
particularly those most threatcned by redundancies, short-time and fallback
in wages, react with hostility to pressure for jobs and resources from
women.
The important difference between the current crisis and that after the
second world war is that the present moment of potential power for women
derives from their own strength. Women experience the crisis even more
sharply than men, since they are threatened not just at their place of work
but also more directly than men in their domestic role, from risina prices
squeezing their household budgeting and from the decline in health, welfare
and education services. which they, as primary reproducers of labour power
mainly deal with. But despite women's continuing difficulties in trade
unions they are organised on an unprecedented scale and rapidly becoming
more so. This means that they can argue with men for solidarity from a
position they have not held before. They comprise a much larger proportion
of the workforce than ever before, and appeals to unity and against the
weakening of working class struggle by the exclusion of women are
therefore very powerful.
What should our demands be?
Reforms in the sphere of employment and in social legislation since the
19305 bave failed to alter the exploitation of women in domestic labour.
Other major problems for women are associated with this; the continued
division of labour in production as well as in the home, the position of
economic dependence of mothers, whether on a man or on the State, as well
as the subordinate position of women in trade unions. It is the domestic
labour of women which continues to be the material basis of women's
oppression generally in society. We therefore support the demands of the
Working Women's Charter, and make the following points. We feel that
struggles around the position of women in the home to sOCialise the
reproduction of labour power are of the utmost importance. The purpose of
this is not just to free women from their privatised situation, but .to free the
dependents from it too, whether children, the handicapped or the elderly. A
major priority to fight for is free, socialised and democratically
controlled daytime provision for all dependents, and full national
insurance coverage for all those who are still at home. Breaking
down the division of labour between men and women in tbe borne
is important as a first stage in easing the unequal share of solitary
evening babysitting done by women, but eventually the redesign
of housing will be necessary if a rational solution to this problem is
to be found.
The fight against the sexual division of labour must be carried out in
employment, in the unions and in the home. Concessions should not be
made to the argument that this is demanding sacrifices from men at a time
when they themselves are threatened. The struggle of socialists is not to ask
one set of workers to make compromises for another, but to direct their
anger in unity against the capitalist system. Conflicts between workers for
jobs must be used for revolutionary purposes so that all workers understand

32
the way the oppression of women in the home and in employment, in the
reproduction of cheap labour power serves the interests of capital, divides
the working class and can only be eliminated under socialism.
The Reproduction 0/ lAbour Power under Socialism
lbroughout this century there has been little energy on the left directed into
discussing with workers the nature and potential of socialist society. The
result is that socialism and communism are often associated with grey
uniformity and rule by bureaucratic clites. In order to fight for feminist
demands, however. it is essential to discuss the reproduction of labour
power under socialism. It is not sufficient to destroy the family, it is
necessary to replace it. The working class has very deepseated beliefs in the
naturalness of the family and very good reasons for defending it. They are
not likely to ft&ht for feminist issues, which necessarily presuppose
fundamental chanaes in the family. unless they are convinced that a
preferable alternative is attainable.
It is difficult to predict in detail what social relations would be like under
socialism since presumably we would all relate to each other qualitatively
dirferently. Public and private life would be less separate, 'work' would be
less alienated and therefore the family would not have to be the refuge it is
to so many people now. The family would no longer have the function of
authoritarian repression and certainly children would have much freer lives,
more choice of where and how they lived from a much earlier age. Childcare
would be much more flexibly provided for. People who wanted to bring up
their own children certainly could, but there would be much more support
both in the form. of socialised provision for all those who wanted it, on the
basis they want it, and in the form of shared help from tbose living in the
same or neiJhbouring households. There would be a less possessive
relationship between parents and children and a greater sense of collective
care from those around, in line with the new ethos of collective solidarity
and in contrast to the competitive individualism engendered by capitalist
society.
Housing would be quite differently designed, not to eradicate every bit of
privacy and intimacy but to make possible more collective living and
therefore the collective reproduction of labour power. Cooking, cleaning,
washing, repairing, childcare etc, therefore would no longer be done by
sin,gle households and living groups. It would either be shared in collective
households and living groups or it would be more formally and publicly
performed by brigades of workers, men and women, in nurseries,
playcentres, laundries, restaurants etc, and by cleaning and mending
brigades who could service whole streets, but whose labour would be
reaarded as essential as any other and comparably rewarded. The role and
concept of the housewife would pass out of existence. The low status, the
isolation and the sexual division of labour characteristic of the reproduction
of labour power under advanced capitalism would become a historical
curiosity.
.
,

Women. state and reproduction 33
In many respects, therefore. a great many more resources would be
allocated to the reproduction of labour power and to the care of people. But
on the other hand capitalist society engenders many costs specific to its
system such as mental strain and illness, industrial accidents and disease,
social case work, police. A great deal of capitalist expenditure under the
broad category of Social Se<:urity involves transfer payments to alleviate
problems of poverty and low pay. and a substantial part of the budgets for
housing, health and education are interest payments on capital borrowing.
6(0)'0 of local authority spending goes on wages and salaries for the
'excrescent bureaucracy'. Many of these jobs are unproductive supervisory
roles, necessary only under capitalist relations of production.
--
Notes
1.
2 .
5.
4.
l.
6.
7.
8.

10.
11.
12.
Il.
14.
ll.
16.
17.
18.
".
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
Fiaures are taken from Socilll Trends. 1972 HMSO.
Fiaures are taken from Office of Population Censuses and Surveys: Report 0/ the
Population hMi, Cmnd 5258 1973 Table 11 p.40.
FigllfCS quoted in Report of tbe Commiltee on One-Parent Families (Finer Report)
Cmnd 5629 1974 Volt p. 60
Finer Report Vol 1 p. 32
R.M. Titmuss in Essays on the State, 2nd ed. AlIen and Unwin 1963
Social rnnd,s 1970, 1974 HMSO
Social Trends 1974 HMSO
SociIlI Trends 1914 HMSO
Btanson. N. and Heinemann. M. Brita;n in the Nineteen 71rirties, Panther 1973
Beveridie Report on Social Insurance and Allied Services Cmnd 6404 1942
Eleanor Rathbone, The DisinheritM Family
Youna. M. and Willmott, P. The Symmetrical Family. 1973
Women and Work. Department of Employment Manpower Paper 9 \974 HMSO p.7
Census of Population 1966, 1971
Sociol 7h!1Ids 1974
Womm and Work, p. 13
Audrcy Hunt, SWW10/ Women's Employment, 1968 HMSO
Office of Manpower Economies. Report on Equal Pay HMSO
Women and Work
Finer Report Voll p. 37
Branson and Heinemann (see DOle 9)
See Paper by Frank Wilkinson in Do TraM UniOIJ$ Inflation? Turner, Jacuon
and WilkiDson
8everidge Report (see note 10)
For funher infennatien on the political background to the Beveridge Report. see Finer
Report Vol2 Appendix. 5.
Glossary
Abstract Labour. The quality that labour has when its specific character as
useful labour is abstracted from. Thus tailoring, coal-mining and house
building have the property of being abstract labour, even though when
considered as useful labour they are all different. When labour is.sed to
produce commodities, abstract labour is expressed quantitatively in values.
Abstract Labour Time: A standard unit of labour time with all inequalities
arising from skills and location accounted for. 'Labour creating exchange
value is ... abstract, general labour'. i.e. expressed in exchange ratios
between commodities.
Asiatic Form (mode of production): Non-capitalist in the sense that the
individual producers still 'own' their products. 'The broad basis of the
mode of production here is fonned by the unity of small scale agriculture
and home industry, to which in India we should add the form of village
communities built upon the common ownership of land ... ' Capital, vol 3,
p.B3, New York 1967.
Capitalism: A method of organisation of society; a specific set of historical
relations at the economic, political and ideological levels, the primary
characteristics being, production being undertaken for exchange value,
separation of the producer from his product, the value of labour power
appearing as wages, the self expansion of value and its accumulation into
capital. the pursuit of profits and the division of society into classes, the
owners (bourgeoisie) and the non-owners (proletariat).
Capitalist Commodity Production: Specifically refers to the production of
commodities (goods) for exchange, the sellina prices being greater than the
costs of the inputs, in a competitive market economy.
Contradictions in Capitalism: There are many, tbe chief being between
capital and labour foUowina their class interests; also the accumulation of
hUle piles of wealth with vast pools of poverty; the necessity of collective
action with individual competition; between the forces of production and
the relations of production. Capitalism advances through overcoming its
contradictions, although the resolution of some of these will have to await
the establishment of a communist mode of production.
Commodity: An article or service which is produced for exchange, and
'"
Glossary 3S
therefore possesses both exchange value and use value.
Co-operation: Any process of work in which many workers produce use
values together.
Division oJ Labour. It ... 'simplifies and multiplies the qualitatively
different parts of the social collective labourer .. .' i.e. Adam Smith's pin
factory where a complex task was broken down into several simpler ones,
the main objective being to increase the rate of surplus value.
Exchange: The process whereby commodities are transferred to different
owners, either using a barter process or suing money. Represented by
C-M-E (Commodity-Money-Exchange). In capitalism the appearance of
"; value is exchange value.
\'
Exploitation: The form in which surplus labour is extracted under
capitalism. Here the capitalist owns the product produced by the worker but
only pays him for some of the time that he works i.e. he pays the worker the
value of his labour power, but this is less than the value that the worker
created during his working day.
Labour Power: The ability to work. This is literally what the worker brings
to work every day. 'Its value, like that of all other commodities, is
determined by the working time necessary for its production.' (Capital vol
I, p.231). The amount of work time for its reproduction does not, in
general, equal .the time that the worker actually works. See Socially
Necessary Labour Time, and Surplus Value.
Labour Process OJ Capital: This is the sequence of events that result in the
production of exchange value, which is appropriated by the capitalist, and
the reproduction of the worker, who, after his work, has received the value
of his labour power. Thus at the end of the process the classes of workers
and capitalists have been recreated through the separation of the worker
from his product.
Labour: Labour power that has been used to create commodities, which are
owned by the capitalist. 'By working, (the labourer) becomes actually what
before he only was potentially, labour power in action. a labourer. In order
that his labour may reappear in a commodity, he must, before all things,
expend it on something useful, on something capable of satisfying a want of
some sort.' voll, p. l77, Capital.
Necessary Labour Time: This is the amount of labour time needed for
producing the goods necessary for the reproduction of the worker: see
Subsistence. The quantity and quality of the goods is historically
determined: the quantity of necessary labour time must be less than the
length of a working day for capitalist profits to arise.
Political Economy: A more general study of long term trends in a society
often from a historical perspective. Property relations are considered an
important factor, and the existence of classes is assumed. This is to be
contrasted with the narrower subject of 'Economics' that concentrates on
market behaviour. and individual motivations, based almost exclusively on
the forces of supply and demand.
Producers/Non-producers: Any society which produces a surplus will have
two classes; the producers who labour to create the surplus and the
non-producers who control it. The aruy society in which this class division
does not exist is communism. Under capitalism the producers are the
working class, the non-producers the idle bourgeoisie.
Productivity: The amount of use values that can be produced for a given
length of working time.
Profits: The part of surplus value that is retained by industrial capital.
Other parts become rent, interest etc. This does not coincide with profits
measured by bourgeois accountants etc.
Real Wages: Wages measured in terms of commodities rather than in units
of money.
Reproduction of Labour Power. In the short run this consists of food,
clothes, rest. in amounts sufficient to more or less replace the strains of the
previous day's work. In the long run it refers to biological reproduction of
the species.
Sexism: Discrimination on the basis of sex, c.f. racialism. Often officially
encouraged as a means of breaking working class unity.
Socially Necessary Labour Time: The average amount of labour time
needed to produce a commodity for a given set of technological conditions
in an industry.
Subsistence: The level of consumption necessary for the working class to
reproduce itself. This is not a bare. physical minimum level of subsistence.
but involves cultural and historial elements too. In general the workers wage
fluctuates around a level just sufficient to provide a worker with his
subsistence.
Surplus Labour. Production above that necessary to provide for the needs
of the producing class.
Surplus Value: The amount of value produced by a worker over and above
the necessary labour time for his survival. The surplus is owned by the
capitalist, and starts as the commodities tbat are converted into money.
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):
'.
Glossary 37
Some of this money eventually becomes profit. See, Reproduction of
Labour Power, Labour Power, Labour, Labour Process and Socially
Necessary Labour Time.
Tendency Towards the Equalisation of Working Conditions: Refers to the
reduction of all jobs to progressively simpler ones following from
co-operation and division of labour, and thus tending also towards abstract
labour. This tendency occurs throughout the capitalist mode of production.
Value: ' We see then that which determines the magnitude of the value of
any article is the amount of labour socially necessary or the labour time
socially necessary for its production.' Capital, voll , p.39.
Value of Labour P o ~ r The value of commodities entering into the
worker's subsistence i.e. the value necessary to reproduce labour power. On
of the questions considered in the paper is whether we should include time
spent in domestic labour in the value of labour power.
Variable Capital: This is the amount of capital that is represented by labour
power. This labour power changes the value of the commodities produced
because of the ability of the worker to not only produce enough value to
reproduce himself, but also to produce surplus value that is kept by the
caitalist. Since this part of capital (that represented by labour power)
changes, it is called variable capital. c.f. constant capital, which is value
transferred to the commodity in a fIXed quantity from the machine. See
Surplus Value, Labour Power, Labour Process, Socially Necessary Labour
Time, and Value.