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considerations.
ANN CHESTERTON'S main argument in her article Domestic Labour [Socialist Woman, Spring 1976] is wrong. It is important to take this up because the real relation of domestic work to capitalist production has political consequences for us.
She argues that domestic work forms part of the value of labour-power, because it transforms wage goods before they can be consumed.
This is a dangerous argument for three reasons. One is that it can be a basis for demanding wages for housework, although her article takes a position against this demand.
Secondly, the argument cannot prove that capitalism could not socialise domestic work, which would climiinate the material basis of our oppression. This destroys our case against an idea current on the left that women's liberation is an 'ideological issue', a question of changing attitudes', not a real part of the class struggle. Finally, the separation of public and family life — the political and 'personal' - cannot be properly In the continuing series on Domestic Labour, CELIA HOLT has submitted a reply to Anne Chesterton's contribution which appeared in the Spring 1976 issue of Socialist Woman. The columns of Socialist Woman continue to be open to further contributions on this important debate, subject to length understood if housework is considered as part of value-production. These latter points will be developed in a later article.
NO VALUE Housework does not produce value; the domestic worker is neither productive or unproductive for capital, but performs a socially necessary function which goes on outside the sphere of social production. The critical point which is not understood by those who refute this argument is the separation of labour-power from the labourer under capitalism. The worker does not sell herself or himself as a labourer to a capitalist. What we sell is our capacity to labour, our labour-power. Labour-power is a commodity but the labourer is not. We are not like slaves, who were owned in person, or like the serfs tied to a landlord and his land. Capital accumulation is based on the emergence of the wage-labourer as a free agent' who enters into an apparently equal contract with an employer.
### LABOUR POWER
The development of labour-power as a commodity separate from the individual creates the category of abstract social labour — as opposed to specific, individual labour — which is the basis for capitalist exchange. (Money, the medium of universal exchange, is the expression of this abstract social labour). Productive labour - labour which makes profit for a capitalist - creates both something useful, and something of value which can be exchanged for money. Unproductive labour, such as most of nursing, teaching, or social work, is paid for out of state revenue, which is
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a tax on profits, but is part of capitalist production; it has been socialised by the state.
### REPRODUCE
What the housewife does is to reproduce the labourer. This is not the same thing as adding value to labour-power. Cooking, cleaning and child rearing reproduce and maintain the labourer as an individual, but have no bearing on the value of the commodity which this labourer sells. If it did, capitalism would have an interest in socialising, modernising and streamlining housework in order to depress the value of labour-power, as it has done in the production of wage-goods such as food, clothing, etc.
Ann Chesterton agrees that housework is not abstract, social labour, but then argues that it produces value. She also argues that domestic "labour" produces value which is not realised in exchange. Neither of these things is possible. Marx explains in the first few pages of Capital that exchange value is the only form in which the value of commodities can manifest itself or be expressed... A use-value, or useful article... has value only because human labour in the abstract has been embodied or materialised in it.? (My emphasis).
### VALUE PRODUCTION
Two things follow from the exclusion of domestic work from valueproduction. One is that since the "freeing' of the wage labourer, and the existence of labour-power as a commodity producing value, is the basis of capitalist production, capitalism cannot overcome this exclusion. To do so would be to overturn the wage-capital relation, to abolish the wage-labourer and the wage system which depends on it. Since we do not sell ourselves as individuals, and are not a source of profit as such — only our capacity to labour is — capitalism has no interest in that part of the day in which we reproduce and maintain ourselves. It is of course in the indirect interests of the capitalist that we do, but we can be relied upon to do it anyway.
WORKFORCE MAINTAINED It is true that in the interests of maintaining a minimally healthy and literate workforce, capitalism has taken over some social functions previously fulfilled in the family. But it has only done this, and to a very Limited extent, when state intervention in the economy on a vast scale has become necessary for the continuation of private profitable production. It is also true that during the war, state nurseries, canteens and laundries existed on a large scale because of the wholesale introduction of women int o the workforce. But war, although it is endemic to capitalism, is not a permanent feature of it.
On the contrary, the destruction of values during the war, and the political defeat of the workforce by tying it to its national bourgeoisie, are preconditions for capital getting on its feet again, for the regeneration of profitable production. A striking feature of the post war boom has been the extent to which 'A woman's place is in the home' has not been challenged.
The proportion of state spending going on in nurseries, for example, has been minimal. This is why a large part of the female workforce works part time outside the home. The crisis takes away even those facilities which do exist, but capitalism even in a boom period cannot create full employment, and cannot make the maintenance of the labourer an absolutely social conWOMEN'S OPPRESSION This means that woman's oppression, based unpaid, private domestic worker within the nuclear family is inherent in capitalist social relations. The 'issue' of woman's liberation from her "private' sphere is a central part of the class struggle. Only socialism can socialise housework.
Ann Chesterton's only argument for capitalism's interest in maintaining the family — which she does not attempt to say is an absolute one — is that if domestic work became wage labour, capital would have to pay more for labour-power. This is not true. The socialising and rationalising of any labour-process which determines the value of labour-power will lower that value, by shortening the time necessary for its production. Domestic work does not add value, and the capitalist has no interest in socialising it.
### SOCIALISATION
Demands for the socialisation of housework strike at the core of capitalist production relations, because they assert that society must take responsibiltiy for the reproduction of the labourer, must abolish "private" life. It is true that the family has other ideological, political and psychological uses for the ruling class, but it is essential to recognise that these have a material basis.
Otherwise the working class movement can afford to ignore women's liberation, to break up the totality of our oppression into a purely trade union, economic level on the one hand, and a 'personal and private" sphere on the other.
CELIA HOLT
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Almost one year ago, Michael Foot and Barbara Castle were wining and dining in the resplendent surroundings of Whitehall. They were joined by such defenders of women's rights as Lord Longford. The Occasion: a celebration of the introduction of the Equal Pay and Sex Discrimination legislation.
In a more modest and qualified style, the legislation was also welcomed by the Women's Movement and the labour movement as a gain — however limited — for women's rights. On the one hand, we recognised that it corresponded to economic needs for more skilled female labour, and the need to catch up with EEC legislation. On the other hand, we saw it as a response to a decade of struggles by women, including the strikes by the Leeds clothing workers and Ford machinists, backed by mounting pressure from the Women's Movement.
MORE DEFEATS THAN VICTORIES The last year has allowed us to take stock. The real limitations of the legislation have become blatantly clear. In the first six months after the Acts came into force, 72% of equal pay cases and 73% of Sex Discrimination Act (SDA) cases were rejected by the tribunals. Cases brought under the SDA have not fared much better.
Evidence is mounting from sources as varied as Woman's Own and the Labour Research Department that employers are driving unimpeded through the gaping loopholes in the legisiation. A recent study by the GMWU of its tribunal claims concludes: "In common with other women we have met more defeats than victories under the Act."
In most cases, employers have found shelter in the arguments that women are not doing "like work" with men, or that there is a material difference in their conditions of employment.
Avoidance of equal pay is made even casier for many employers because the Act does not cover jobs which have Be new women's destionnaire me to fill in. We hy they didnt; hat problems they ned the questionnaire mple. Their replies WOMEN AND WORK: OUR NATIONAL SURVEY RESULTS amic future of the country argely ignoring the needs of three Women with children need more help • One third of mothers at home wants to go back to work but can't find child-care motheri the kind of com Even Woman's Own exposed the loopholes in the legislation been traditionally become women's work", where over 75% of employees are women. An estimated two-thirds of women who work outside the home are in this position, including the Trico workers at Northampton, earning only £23 for a 40-hour week. Because there are no men with whom to compare their work, these women are still earning only half the average male wage for the industry.
BUILT IN DISCRIMINATION Apart from the loopholes and avoidance of the legislation, both Acts have built-in discrimination against women. The Equal Pay Act (EPA) is allowing for job evaluation schemes to determine equal work, provided management with a handy manipulative tool. Naturally the criteria employed to evaluate jobs militates against women. the law says you should Mothers forced to take poor jobs • Having children makes a woman three times as likely to be stuck in a badly paid job We found tha twa-thinds of our In comparing skill, length of experience, responsibility and flexibility, women are always at a disadvantage. Childcare problems, inequality of education and training, inadequate maternity leave and other handicaps make it impossible to compete on equal terms.
The SDA has similar failings. In explicitly excluding cases where woman is denied a job because she is less skilled, creditworthy, etc, it totally ignores the centuries of discrimination which hold women back from these starting points for equality.
In short, the legislation does nothing to provide women with the material prerequisites for equality and independence: equal pay and opportunity, adequate childcare and fertility control provisions, and the other basic needs
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outlined in the Working Women's Charter.
UNDER ATTACK -BUT FIGHTING BACK In practice, even the limited rights provided by the legislation are under attack. Mounting unemployment and social expenditure cuts are strengthening the grip of women's family resonsibilities. Far from laying the foundations of equality, the Labour Government is tying the millstone of full-time childcare, second-rate education, low-paid jobs, inadequate facilities to control their fertility, and unemployment around necks.
Far from taking this lying down, women throughout the country are taking the struggle for their rights into their own hands. The most significant example of this is the Trico equal pay strike. Recognising the need to rely on the strength of their collective action, the Trico strikers boycotted the Tribunals and emerged victorious from their fight. Their victory has lit the path to equal pay based on collective working class action. And in claiming - and winning — more than the 4% per cent permitted by the Social Contract, they have demonstrated to all workers that they should refuse to take responsibility for the crisis.
Women are also fighting the cuts in jobs and services as part of the struggle for women's rights. It is ironic that within a year of the passing of the equal rights legislation, women were marching to save the Elizabeth Garrett Industry Chemicals Car assembly Office machinery Food Clothing manufacture Total manufacturing unions, women's groups, dence and many more.
Average gross hourly earnings in industry, 1975 (women's earnings as % of men's)
Germany France Italy 74.8 74.1 83.1 85.6 89.6 90.8 81.6 86.2 105.9 70.3 80.2 91.2 78.2 82.0 88.8 72.6 76.4 80.3 for Women's Rights*. This rally has been called to assess the situation and pool experience of fighting for women's rights. It will bring together trade Tabour movement bodies and campaigns for and literature, these organisations can exchange their experiences. Already support for the rally has come from 15 Labour MPs, prominent labour move- support ment figures, NUPE National Executive, students unions, trades councils, Holland Belgium Britain 70.1 66.3 66.4 n.a. 94.4 78.2 n.a п.a. 80.2 74.5 78.2 73.0 81.7 74.8 72.6 73.2 71.6 66.9 We ask all readers of Socialist Woman to obtain support for the rally and build for it by taking part in local activities to investigate the implementation and/or sabotage of the Acts, by gathering details of the struggle for women's rights, and by publicising the Rally in your area.
For information write to: 49 Lowther Hill, London SE23 IPZ. Financial for the Rally is urgently needed. Make cheques payable to the Rally for Women's Rights.
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No you are
women's rights to abortion, nursery facilities, financial and legal indepen- Through speakers, theatre, exhibitions, stalls
Labour Party branches and the Co-op Political Committee.