| Author(s) | |
|---|---|
| Publisher | |
| Publication Year |
Revolution Begins at Home: Rethinking Marx, Reproduction, and the Class Struggle
From: Patriarchy of the Wage
$2.00
This essay’s argument is divided in four parts. Part 1 examines the evidence and reasons for Marx’s undertheorization of “reproduction,” focusing on his reductive concept of work and production and his implicit assumption that only waged industrial workers have the power and knowledge to subvert capitalism and create the material conditions for the construction of a communist society; Part 2 examines Marx’s response, as head of the First International, to workers’ demands for a policy change with regard to women’s labor and family life, confirming his silence with regard to the manifest patriarchalism of sectors of the English male working class; Part 3 contrasts Marx’s seemingly neutral stand on the contemporary reorganization of family life with the consequences of this reorganization on social life and class relations, arguing that it was a significant instrument for the cooptation of important sectors of the industrial workforce; and Part 4 reflects on the long-term political consequences of the marginalization of women and reproductive work in the program of both the socialist movement and the Marxist tradition, arguing it is time we ask to what extent this theoretical and political “mistake” affected their organizational capacity and their vision of the society to be built on the ruins of capitalist society.
