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Spring 1976 WOHLFORTH ON TROTSKY'S WRITINGS Hyde Park to Called by the National Co-ordinating Ctte against cuts in the NHS Supported by NALGO NUS SMA AUEW Shetfield Dist Cite CLPs Mancester TC etc
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The political scene in Britain is dominated by the spectres of unemployment and of social service cuts. Industrial chaos has opened up once again. The motor industry is collapsing, in the textile industry entire factories are shut down for months at a time. Financial empires face disaster. The whiz kids of the 60s whiz no more, Jim Slater being only one of the latest to take a fall. Just now there are no safe investments for get rich quick merchants. Even Gold is a dubious proposition. On just one day, 9 December, the cost per ounce of gold on the London stock exchange dropped by $l.50.
In short, the news every day is "crisis as usual". Every section of the ruling class is obcessed by the need to cut losses and to get fresh investment. There are fierce fights of course about just which capitalists most deserve rescuing, but on one thing they are all agreed: the main burden is to be born by the working class. Cost-cutting by holding down wages and by lay-offs, and new investment by releasing the capital tied up in education, the NHS and the social services -these are the two main methods being used to redeem capitalism.
The main instruments of attack have been the Labour Government and their supporters in the trade union movement. The policy of Wilson and Healey has quite simply been to impose more and more cuts, to hold down wages via the £6 norm, and to kow-tow to the wishes of the bosses. Former 'lefts' like Jack Jones have dreamed up their own parcels of belt-tightening measures. And of course, they have been praised to high heaven by the capitalist press for their patriotism.
For the attack that Wilson, Healey and Jones are leading against the working class is not simply a matter of economic measures but it is also a political attack. Wilson sent a Minister off to Madrid to mourn the death of the old fascist dictator, Franco. Barbara Castle sneaked through restrictions on the right to abortion via the Select Committee recommendations. Roy Jenkins has been hacking away at democratic rights with a will. The Prevention of Terrorism Act, for instance, has resulted in over 600 arrests or deportations in the last year. There has even been an attempt to use it on Pat Arrowsmith-a well-known pacifist!
In the last edition of Socialist Woman we emphasised the need for political clarity amongst militants resisting these attacks. Events since then have only confirmed our views. The stream of propaganda in support of the family and traditional morality poured out daily in the press, radio and the telly came to a head recently with Archbishop Coggan's statement.
In one way or another sexism is continually being used to get workers to accept the burden of the crisis, and to have the effects of the cuts passed on women in the family. But the crisis has had its strain- newspaper headlines proclaiming daily yet another case of battered women and increasing attempts to aid these women has brought this to everyone's attention. The ruling class cannot take the family for granted. It has to fight to re-establish it. It has to win women and the whole working class to its ideas on the family and its political solutions. Socialists in the women's movement must mount the counter-attack.
The Labour Government's moves on abortion have been the main issue facing the women's movement in recent weeks. The recent conferences of the National Abortion Campaign (in London and Edinburgh) have seen the beginnings of an attempt to grapple with a new and more complicated situation now the White Bill has been magically transformed into the Select Committee. Elsewhere in this edition we explain the IMG's positions of the NAC, but one thing remains plain, regardless of the manoeuvrings that are going on in Parliament.
The abortion campaign must enjoy the support of all militants brought into action by the policies of the Labour Government. NHS cuts hit abortion and contraception facilities first and so we should see the DHSS moves against the right to abortion also as yet another attempt to sabotage the health service.
The restrictions on the right to abortion are the thin wedge of the sexist wedge and all the militants of the working class must be lined up to fight on it. This may mean dragging in these militants, for political unity will involve a fight also against the sexism that has been institutionalised into the traditional structures of the labour movement.
The fight against unemployment reached something of a high point with the demonstration on 26 November which attracted 20,000 despite the sabotage of the TUC. At the same time there have been a series of factory occupations and and strikes which have shown in action the depth of the potential resistance that exists. Time and again it has been women workers who have been in the forefront of such The recent disputes in Sheffield and Merthyr are just two examples. Such experiences strike profound blows to sexism. At the same time, the impact of the Working Women:s Charter in various individual unions and at the TUC has made it plain that a set of demands around the rights and needs of women can obtain the backing of militants of both sexes. The will to struggle is there, the demands are being taken up What remains is to hammer out political unity against the attacks of the ruling class and against the present "mis-leaders" of the working class-from the Cabinet right down to union branch level. To fight sexism is to knock a weapon from the hands of the class enemy. And there will be no unity in the present struggles unless the fight against sexism is firmly
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Millions of hours labour are spent every year by women doing housework, yet it is unrecognised as work and regarded as completely irrelevant to economic and political life. Much of the debate on domestic labour has centered on the task of understanding the precise nature of the relationship between domestic labour (housework) and capital.
Domestic labour does not have the clear and direct relationship with capital that wage labour has. I. the latter case, the worker sells their labour power that is, their capacity for labour to an employer a representative of capital, for a wage. The employer buys capital, for a wage. Effectively, they put their labour power on the market as a commodity for sale.
The employer buys the labour power at its exchange value, represented by the wage, and uses it to produce commoditities which he will then sell. What is important in this relationship, is that whilst the wage is sufficient to pay the costs of maintaining the workст (more or less, and at a historically determined level) its value is less than the I DONT WORK - value produced by the worker through their labour, so that capital acquires the surplus (the difference between the [wo). This is the source of profit. In this way, the worker is exploited" since he or she does not receive back all the value which they have produced.
As a housewife-that is, working in her own home for her own family-the woman's labour power has no value on the market and she does not sell her labour power to anyone. No-one sets her to work on the production of commodities which they will then sell for profit.
What the housewife is doing in her work, is reproducing labour power by her washing, cooking cleaning, chilrearing, etc. She enables the worker (herself and/or husband and the next generation of workers, her kids) to work. Her la bour isn't all that is necessary. Obviously the commodities that are bought with the wage food, fumiture, etc. are essential, and the labour power of many workers has been expended in producing these commodities.
The significance of this is that, as Marx said, the value of a commodity is determined by the labour-time necessary for the production of that article.
This is essentially the labour theory of value. The value of labour power is determined in the same way.
However, it has been argued by some writers on the subject of domestic labour, that the housewife's labour-time does not figure in this because her labour is not 'social labour because it is not producing a commodity, but only "use-values'. That is, the food she cooks, for example, is not for exchange on the market but only for direct consumption What follows from this conclusion is that domestic labour is not actually reproducing labour power and has no economic relationship with capital.
It is true that the housewife's labour is not 'abstract, social labour', but neither can we deny that her labour is necessary in the production and repeoduction of labour power. The commod ities which are bought either have to be transformed through her labour before they can be consumed (eg. food prepared and cooked), or maintained by her labour. And in the case of child-rearing. it is certainly her labour which is the mun contributor in this process... babies don't come out of factories!
So we have the anomaly that a house wife's labour is essential in the reproduction of labour power and yet her labour does not contribute to the exchange-value of that commodity. In this sense, her labour is not productive" and there is no surplus value created.
This is the anomaly that exists in reality, but at the level of theory this anomaly must be explained, otherwise we find that the theory itself can seem to be faulty. For example, if we substituted for the 'free" labour of the housewife, the waged labour of a nanny and housekeeper, we would find that the exchange value of labour-power had risen astonogically even though no more labour-time had been spent on its production. This would appear to make nonsense of the labour theory of value as outlined above The clue to this problem can be found in a passage in Capital Volume 1 where Marx explains that the terms "value and exchange value are not synonymous, but are in fact distinguishable. "Value. he says is the mere congelation of
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human labour power'; exchange-value is 'the only form in which the value of commodities can manifest itself or be expressed. We (can) consider the nature of value independently from this, its form'.
Thus, the situation of the housewife is this: although her labour is labour-time necessary in the production and reproduction of labour power; although it is part of the labour congealed in the commodity labour power and therefore that labour constitutes part of its value, that part does not take form as exchange-value and is never realised. In this way her crucial part in the economic process is obscured and unrecognised. This will remain the case as long as housework is privatised and un waged.
We can see, though, how capital benefits from this anomalous situation. If domestic labour were to become sociaiised and therefore waged, this exchange value of labour power would rise and capital would have to pay out a larger proportion of the value that workers create, in its costs for labour, and thus capital would be able to expropriate less surplus-value.
So we can see that capital has an interest in maintaining the family in its present form with the woman as housewife. And at the present time we can actually see capital using this anomalous and obscured situation, for as real wages are being cut, so the housewife is being encouraged, via the media, to do more work in the home to compensate for the loss of income.
Have you noticed the increasing number of articles in newspapers and magazines, aimed at women, about how to make do with less? They all have one thing in common they involve more work by the housewife-more time spent shopping for bargains, food home grown, meals cooked from scratch rather than using prepared foods, remaking old clothes, etc.
In this way, waged labour, in the form of commodities is replaced with the free' domestic labour of the housewife. Thus, the blow of lower wages is softened, making it easier for captial to cut wages and realise more surplus value.
The housewife is also forced to do more work in the home by such things as the closing of nurseries. So because of their anomalous situation, women can be made to take on a large part of the burden of the economic crisis without anyone even noticing it. What is also clear from this analysis is that the struggle of women against their exploitation and oppression is inseparable from the struggle of the working class as a who whole, particularly at this time when the the working class is being 'asked" to pay for for the crisis, for which they are not responsible.
The answer to the problem of the unrecognised and unrewarded labour of housework is not to demand wages for housework'. This would implant women all the more firmly in the home reinforce their role as housewives (which remember is aiso used as a rationalisation for unequal pay and opportunities) and would allow the housewife to be under the scrutiny of the State employer--making her home even more like a factory.
Rather the demand should be for the socialisation of housework so that the tasks are shared across the sexes and across family units, and be alleviated by the introduction of improved domestic technology which is precluded whilst housework is privatised. Furthermore, this would end the isolation of the housewife.
This demand also challenges the role of 'housewife' itself, which is essentially an oppressive one. We can begin to make this demand concretely even now, in the context of the present situation. For example, we can demand more nurseries and 24-hour nurseries, free state launderies, and so on.
Another demand we should be making is for the recognition by the statefor example, in taxation and social security - of women as individuals in their own right, not as dependent appendages of their husbands. Thus we should demand, for example, that women not working outside the home should be classed as unemployed and receive full benefits regardless of whatever financial support they are theoretically receving from their spouses. This demand is a good one, not only because it challenges the enforced financial and legal dependence of women by the state, but also because it contains the principle that ALL WO MEN have the RIGHT to work. At the same time, it would guarantee housewives an income of their own.
This demand can be made realistically and taken up actively NOW because it challenges the sexism and discrimination by the state at a time when it is claiming to be stamping out sexual inequalities and discrimination.
In these ways, we can begin to take forward bur struggle against the dependent, oppressive and unrewarded role of domestic labourer.
Footnote:
L. Terms such as "capital", "productive", and 'exploitation" etc. are used in the Marxist sense.
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Unemployment has once again become one of the central issues of the class struggle. It now stands at 1.2 million people registered as unemployed. Of those registered, there are 300,000 women. The table below gives the rate of increase of the number unemployed in the period from November 1973 to May 1975 —for the population as a whole and for racial minorities.
GROUP AlL All male All female All minorities Male minority Female minorin In other words, blacks and women are getting laid off quicker than white men. The conclusions are very simple on a general level. Women and racial minorities are being made to perform the same role in the labour force as they did in the last major capitalist crisis - that of the industrial reserve women workers.
% INCREASE part-time labour. A survey in the Department of Employment states:
eral and this is reinforced when one examines the industries in which the workers are located.
portion of married women within the aggregate of women workers has increased by 25% In other words, it is far less the setting this are a number of important specific factors especially when we look at the present situation of In particular, we must note that the traditional methods of containing women's contribution to the work force has suffered in recent decades.
For example, it is not longer the case that an exceptionally high proportion of women are used as temporary and hand, The incidence of female temporary employment by occupation is similar to that of female employment in genAt the same time, DEP figures also note that while the involvement of all women in the work force has risen by about 7% since the early 50s, the prothe Sex Discrimination Act, etc. While these will in no way liberate women, they can certainly pose additional difficulties for the bourgeoisie-particularly insofar as they have become the focus of many fight-backs against the attacks of the Labour Government. They were introduced to ensure that the radicalisation of women workers does not get out of But their consequence has been to solidify women's place within the workforce. The wave of equal pay struggles at shop floor level surrounding the Act meant that the Equal Pay Act didn't simply acknowledge the increased numbers of women workers, but also attempted to cope with their increased militancy and consciousness.
It would be a mistake however to think that all problems on either side of the situation have fundamentally changed. A few more facts ought to kill off any ideas that the position of women has changed so much that they can't be returned bag and baggage to
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I'M ONLY HOUSEWIFE!