Re: [Marxism] meaning of labor time in Capital

["Joaquin Bustelo" <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jon Cloke writes: "This labour/economic accountancy include the value of the
input by partner/wife in supporting the individual labourer/family? i.e. is
it gendered labour accountancy?"

I don't think that labor is included. Capital was meant to be a description
(in parts at an extreme level of theoretical abstraction) of the system as
it actually exists. The work of women in the household within the capitalist
economy is treated as if it does not exist, or more precisely, as being
outside the sphere of the capitalist economy. 

I believe this is a theoretical mistake or blind spot in Marx's Capital.

Subsequent developments have shown, especially in the advanced capitalist
countries after World War II, that unpaid domestic labor can be replaced by
commodities brought into the household economy from the sphere of the
capitalist economy (e.g., washers, dryers, dishwashers, TV dinners,
"permanent press" clothes, etc. etc. etc.), so much so that many/most women
are enabled to sell their labor power (which was in previous decades
expended within the home) on the market for labor. But this very clearly
imputes an actual monetary (exchange) value to the labor of women in the
household, even if it is not always explicitly recognized by the money
economy through an explicit exchange of money for X amount of labor time.

In practice, the calculation is constantly being made by working-class
families, especially with younger children. For many if not most such
families, the cost of child care and other services required by very young
children lead to the "pre-schooler stay-at-home mom." But whereas in the
1950's and 1960's the "stay at home" phenomenon often extended through
grammar school and even junior high school, now it ends much more frequently
in the earliest grades of formal schooling.

Another aspect of this is that the 2-4 children families of the immediate
postwar epoch have been replaced by the 1-2 children families of today. As a
social phenomenon, what this tells us is that the cost of raising several
children, not just one or on the very outside two, is beyond the reach of
most working people in societies like that of the U.S., western europe,
japan, etc.

"Beyond the reach" in terms, of course, of what is considered in a given
society "necessary." Thirty years ago, by and large neither home computers
nor internet connectivity nor what was then often still called "pay TV" was
considered necessary by most working people in the United States, but that
is not true today. Into the 1960's, it was not considered "necessary" that
each child have their own room, whereas today I would say that would
generally be considered a hallmark of the difference between a "middle
class" family in the United States and one living "in poverty" or close to.

It has also always been true under capitalism that the (unpaid) labor of the
wife could easily and directly be replaced by the (paid) labor of the
housekeeper, cook, etc. 

Therefore the claim that "women's work" in the home is outside the sphere of
the money economy falls apart quite thoroughly. This UNPAID labor can be
directly substituted (in part) with "labor saving" equipment or (completely)
with PAID labor. Thus the failure to include this contribution by women to
the creation and maintenance of labor power is a reflection, WITHIN Marxist
economic theory, of the exploitation of women within capitalist society.

And it raises a number of other vexing questions: The woman contributes to
the creation of a commodity she does not own, the labor power of a male,
which the male sells on the market, just as in classical Marxist theory,
"the worker" --abstracted from all gender-- gets paid for his/her labor
power by the capitalist, but the capitalist winds up owning something
entirely different: the commodities created by that labor power.

To say that a "wife's" unpaid labor in the household has no economic meaning
for the value of labor power, but the (paid) labor of a housekeeper, or the
proportionate part of the average cost of labor-saving devices, plus their
operating costs, DO and --if Marxist economic theory is right-- MUST have an
impact of the value of labor power is nonsensical in the extreme. 

It is the same as saying that slave labor imparts no value to commodities.
Many housewives may not consider themselves slaves, and their conditions may
as a rule be better than say, slaves on cotton plantations in the antebellum
South, but the economics are very similar. The stay-at-home female spouse
just like the slave entails a whole series of costs that are incorporated
into the value of the commodity they produce, in the case of the slaves I
mentioned, typically cotton, in the case of women, typically male labor
power. 

A reworking of Marxist economic theory to include a full accounting for the
exploitation of women in households, as far as I know, remains to be done.

Joaquin


________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: 
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40archives.econ.utah.edu