The Exploitation of the Family

Friedrich Engels' The Origin of Family, Private Property and the State is an important book on many levels, but particularly because it raises the questions of feminism in terms of how the exploitation of women is built into the capitalist system's blueprint for family relationships. Whether today's family is traditional, a "Mr. Mom" home or something much more egalitarian in terms of the couple, the system still depends on exploitation of the family's resources. In this seciton, Lebowitz sketches the nature of that exploitation.

Lebowitz writes:

Necessary labor within the household

32. Capital, we have argued, wants the lowest possible necessary labor. But, there is one kind of necessary labor that capital would like to expand—unpaid necessary labor. So far, we have only talked about the necessary labor in the things that workers buy. Marx did not ignore the fact, though, that people need to convert those things they buy in order to consume them; he talked about activities “absolutely necessary to consume things”—like cooking the food purchased. Indeed, Marx pointed out that the greater the “expenditure of labor in the house,” the less money you need to purchase things outside the house.

The most obvious example of this, "cooking food," is given in the example. Of course, there are plenty of other examples that come to mind--from home assembly of that furniture that you buy at Wal-Mart to the gas that is required to distribute things from the store to the home, generally a cost added to the consumer by shipping and handling or taken on by the consumer altogether.

Anyone who's ever lived in a poor neighborhood knows the irony of ghetto prices and distribution--there are no stores within a half hour's walking distance that have even halfway decent prices. So, you either live out of the Stop and Shop, or you find a way to make the mile-long journey to get what you need. Plenty of walking going on, which is yet more unpaid labor on the distribution end. What other examples come to mind of ways in which labor necessary for the consumption of commodities goes unpaid? It's amazing how many corners are cut that we don't even think about as corners to cut.

On top of that question, we might also consider the irony that people are increasingly moving to on-line shopping and, for a long time now, fast food eating. How and why does the price of fast food outweigh the cost-savings (for corporations) of providing food that people will cook at home? Also, how are these corporations making more money out of on-line distribution? (Cutting out the middle man?)

33. But this labor performed in the household is invisible. Why? Because capital does not have to pay for it. We know, too, that the majority of this work is done by women; and it is work that is generally not recognized or valued. Yet, without this labor within the household (which Article 88 of the Bolivarian Constitution recognizes as “economic activity that creates added value and produces social welfare and wealth”), workers would not be available for capital in the labor market.

This certainly suggests the motherload of answers to the questions posed by paragraph 32. What has traditionally been characterized as "women's work," all of the things that go into running a household, raising children and even knitting the social fabric in which the family functions and the children are raised--all of those things that contribute to the workers' lives and guarantee generation after generation of reliable wokers--that's all work that no one pays for.

The primary wage earner in the household, in a sense, pays for this help out of his or her paycheck by supporting the person and/or people that do this work, but the corporation does not accept responsibility for this work. I would suggest that this is why what we know of as a women's movement in this country has primarily made gains for people with different genitalia in the capitalist workplace while ignoring feminine values and the value of what has traditionally been labeled "women's work" to the social fabric.

[A historian friend of mine has an operating thesis that the women's movement of the 19th and early 20th century actually had a much more feminine-centered agenda than the second wave of feminism we all identify with the 1970s. As she would admit, a lot of it was reactionary to a fault, but it was still genuinely about family values as opposed to corporate priorities, ranging from abolitionism to the many temperance unions, and an end to long working hourse for women and children, etc.)]

To the extent these issues are addressed, they get called "family values," and the assumption is no one should have to be paid to do the right thing by their family and their children. Of course, no one knows how to argue in response. But there is a response. If this society gave a flying flip about social justice in terms of family values, then we'd find a way to put the cash on the barrelhead to make sure all family work is some way monetarily supported by the society as a whole. You pay for what you see as important; family work is not a commodity within the corporate system, so it is not important as anything more than an idea and a guilt trip to coax people into accepting the status quo.

34. While capital does not pay for this invisible labor, it benefits. The more work that is done free in the household, the less the wage has to be. The more free time that men have as a result of women’s work in the household, the more capital can intensify the capitalist workday. As the purchaser of labor power, capital is in a position to gain from the unpaid labor of women within the household. And the more intense and lengthy that work in the household, the more capital can gain. And, it works the other way, too: the more capital drives down wages and intensifies the workday for both male and female wage-laborers, the greater the burden placed on the household to maintain workers.

This is good stuff, the logical extension of paragraphs 32 and 33. Capital depends upon exploiting the labor of women (and sometimes men) who work 70 to 80 hours a week maintaining a household (even women who work full time jobs still tend to spend something like 57 more hours a week working on the home--men, considerably less).

When you start adding these things together, the thievery that is the modus operandi of capitalism borders on mind-boggling. The worker is paid a wage that is only worth a portion of the output of his or her day's work; that's one way the corporation steals from the worker.

Secondly, the corporation works the employee harder with each passing year in order to increase profits, profits never proportionately shared with the employee.

As Isaac pointed out, corporations offer benefits as a lure to employees and then let many of those workers go before they can claim those benefits--this is not to mention the many ways that benefits don't necessarily translate into all that is promised when the worker tries to collect on them.

Then there is the other excellent point Isaac made that workers are paid more for overtime hours because the profits that come with not having to increase the workforce to cover these additional hours yield much more into the corporate coffers than the rate of overtime pay.

Add to all of that the ways in which corporations take advantage of all of the domestic work that keeps employees coming in to work, reasonably happy, healthy, presentable and mentally sound, and the calculations of the ways capital exploits the common person's capacity for labor become overwhelming.

Yet another list we might generate would be other, so far unmentioned forms of unpaid labor that the corporation counts on in its exploitation of the employee. What comes to mind? Again, as Isaac said, there is no easy way to get such ideas over to the average American, but beyond simple activism (which I know from experience can lock itself into a deadend mindset that teaches people nothing), I think it's terribly important that we prepare ourselves for each of these conversations as they might come up.

35. How could we deny that the logic of capital is contrary to the need for the development of women?

In part, of course, this is about the double burden handed women in our society. If she takes on a career, it must be balanced with this concept of being a home-maker, and when the corporations are only set up to cover the labor capacity of the employee, that home-maker job necessarily gets short shrift.

But I would add to this the way in which, maybe not women as a whole, but feminine perspectives, ideas, ideals and values get short shrift by the system. What kind of world would we live in if we did not prioritize such feminine values as the care and nurturing of children, family systems and community? The one we live in? The one driven by war, dog-eat-dog competition and austerity programs that throw 650,000 people out of work each month with very few social services to support their families?

I'm all for a much more feminine society, one in which masculine values are on an equal playing filled with feminine values. Capitalism ensures that masculine values take first priority, and that's got us locked into endless war and an ongoing cheapening of life and all of the qualities of life that make it worth living.

Your thoughts?