Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 20:22:02 -0500
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: Sexual liberation and male chauvinism


Bill,

>You say,
>>I haven't read Linda Mcdowell, but food preparation and sex aren't the only
>>kinds of domestic labor that women have performed. In fact, one of the most
>>burdensome parts of domestic labor is care-giving--raising children, caring
>>for the sick, the disabled, the elderly, etc.
>I do not think that capitalism would collapse if the sick who could not
>afford treatment, the aged that could not purchase care or derive an
>income, or the disabled where left to their own devices. Just because an
>activity such as caring is under taken in a capitalist society does not
>mean that it is necessary for the reproduction of capitalism, this I
>believe is one of the old traps of Althussers structuralism. Such actions
>as caring are undertaken under capitalism for reasons usually unrelated
>to systemic reproduction, such as  ethical, cultural or historical
>considerations. I think then you confuse the conditions required to
>reproduce capitalism with the functions that have to be undertaken to
>secure a humane society.

How about raising children, that is, bringing up babies into the state
where they can become workers? Labor power must be reproduced, no?

>The withdrawl of the welfare state has perverse effects as while caring
>is devolved onto the 'family' women are increasingly compelled to under
>take paid labour frequently in commodified caring. While the rich are
>certainly better placed to contract out of 'caring' economic necessity
>compells many of the poor to do so to as the obligation to engage in paid
>labour becomes generalized (things such as work testing the dependents of
>welfare recipients). To me it increasingly appears that we are seeing
>women being forced to undertake their traditional caring roles for low
>pay as opposed to the fordist 'family' wage model.

Yes, and this intensifies the contradictions of social reproduction under
capitalism, doesn't it, in that poor women in paid employment also have
childrent to take care of. And the kinship/community support network has
been so drastically eroded in many places that positions of poor women
chased off welfare may be said to be worse in some respects than those of
poor women in the pre-welfare-state past.

>>The so-called 'post-Fordist' worker/family seems to me to be very
>>geographically specific and also historically contingent, and I don't think
>>that it can be generalized worldwide.
>I dont think such a thing has emerged as post fordism as yet and in fact
>feel there is little evidence that it will in the near future, despite
>the academic cottage industry that has sprung up round post fordism.

I agree. I was merely using the term that appeared in your post.

>This
>is actually a source of great irritation to me and I would like to do
>something very creative involving string, peanut butter, a seatless
>unicycle and perhaps a leather clad troll to the likes of Piore and
>Sabel,Hirst and Zietlin or even better Martin Jaques and everyone who
>ever wrote anything in Marxism Today.

Go ahead. Love to see the spectacle like that. Make it very obscene.

Yoshie




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