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I would like to congratulate you on conducting serious theoretical discussions in Socialist Woman, in contrast to the inferior woman's magazine format of your SWP rival. May I takeuptwo points about the article by Celia Holt on Domestic Labour in Vol.6, No.1?
I should start by saying that I agree with the theoretical substance of her argument, i.e. that housework does not produce value, at least if we stick to the theoretical categories of Marxist political economy. However, I would like to offer two criticisms of her position.
First, one important feature of the idea that Marxism is scientific socialism is that questions of theory are not subordinated to immediate campaigns or prejudices of the movement. For example, in developing his scientific political economy Marx was led to give a more favourable account of the position of the working class under capitalism than the one he started with. Between 1844 and 1867 he decided, for instance, that trade unions could raise wages, whereas he started by thinking that they could not; he decided that the subsistence which wages pay for includes a social element which can raise the working ciass well above biological subsistence, whereas in 1844 he thought that the working class was condemned to be reduced to biological subsistence. Both of these conclusions are unpalatable for someone with a position which in general argues for the forceable overthrow of the bourgeois state as the road to socialism, for they tend to foster reformism.
It is alarming, then, to find that Celia Holt's first two arguments about the dangers of Ann Chesterton's position concern the practical effects of the theory she advocates, not its truth. These are that the Chesterton arguments might help the wages for housework campaign, and that they fail to prove that capitalism cannot socialise domestic work, "which destroys our case against an idea current on the left that women's liberation is an "ideological issue", not a real part of the class struggle*.
I would rather suggest that if the Chesterton arguments were correct, then the current positions of Socialist Woman should be questioned, and the possibility of changing possibly incorrect policies should be welcomed.
Second, the substance of Holt's conclusions from her correct argument that housework does not produce value is false. Holt argues that because domestic labour is not a source of profit it is of no interest to capitalism, hence capitalism cannot socialise housework. In doing so she contradicts two fundamental ideas of Marxist political economy, namely that capitalism seeks to expand the market, and that capitalism tends, unevenly, to seck to expand the labour force. Both of these can readily be combined by the 'capitalist" socialisation of Consider the labour involved in, say, the production of food in the traditional domestic economy and today. Instead of preparing raw vegetables a modern housewife will usually open a tin or etc; her cooking will start with a frozen chicken, not a live one, or with a shop bought pie, not with flour and meat. This will save her time, which can then be spent working for a capitalist (a pea-canner, for example); it will also create a larger market for the capitalists. This sort of socialisation of housework is already dramatically advanced in the middle classes, with the decline of domestic service, which is, of course, unproductive labour, and the departure of servants to work productively in factories or etc; it is also constantly advancing in the working class.
I am not saying that this process, backed by the expansion of Welfare State child-care 'at a snail's pace', is as effective or as desirable as the socialist road to the socialisation domestic work. But I do think that, far from being impossible, it is happening and will continue to happen. And I also think that it is more desirable that it should happen than that it should not, for the traditional Marxist reason that it makes for the independence of women and their entry into the life of the community.
Finally, I think that if my argument is correct, then, like the conclusions of Marx which I refer to above, it strengthens the case for reformism to some extent. I hope that at least it will lead to some useful discussion. Yours in comradeship, MARK COWLING