Economic reproduction and the new normal
Aug. 20th, 2020 06:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyWith the caveat that it has been a very long time since I read Das Kapital, I'd like to ramble on a bit about economic reproduction and reproductive labour. Marx's theories of labour and exploitation boil down quite simply: The work of the baker to produce bread all day pays him enough money to buy a loaf of bread; the value of the remainder goes to his boss as profit. But there are hidden costs; someone must launder the baker's apron to allow him to keep baking bread, and those costs are generally not borne by the boss. Marx talked about the physical maintenance of the worker's body and family, as well as the social reproduction of the workforce. Essentially you can't work someone 24 hours a day, or they die, and they don't have time to reproduce the next generation of workers.
Marxist feminists take it a step further to talk about reproductive labour—the domestic work of maintaining the workforce that is not factored into economic analysis because it's unpaid and gendered. It includes cooking, cleaning, childrearing, washing, and so on—activities that are necessary for the worker to produce profit for capitalists. Without this work, the baker can't go to work and bake every day, and his boss eventually won't be able to find new bakers to replace him. The capitalist ideal, for people who like capitalism, is based around the idea that one worker in the family unit receives a family wage, subsidizing the reproductive labour of a partner. This is an aberration, as few jobs supply a family wage and generally speaking, reproductive labour is performed around paid labour, during the (presumed female) worker's "free" time.
(Teaching in a public system is also an interesting case; as a public service, it generates no profit, but it's paid work and necessary for economic reproduction. The labour theory of value does not apply in the same way; economic reproduction and reproductive labour does.)
Regardless, reproduction is a cost that is largely subsidized by a worker. My employer gets 8-10 hours a day of labour from me. I receive a fraction of those profits as a wage, and the rest go to the employer. But there are a number of activities that need to be done in order to make those hours happen. If I commute an hour to get to my workplace, that commuting time is not paid. If I have to wear professional clothing to do my job, the cost of that clothing and its repair or replacement as it wears out, is not borne by my employer, even though I can't go to work in torn jeans and a dirty hoodie and it's therefore a requirement of completing the job. My employer probably doesn't pay for childcare or meals. All of those costs—financial and time wise—are required for making my 8-10 hours of labour happen, but however they may vary, this is an expense that affects me, not my boss's profits.
Enter the New Normal, as they call it. When COVID started, some of us fantasized about 4-hour days, working from home, flexibility with childcare, a universal basic income, even a narrowing of wealth inequality and a flowering of empathy brought about by our shared suffering.
Well, that didn't happen.
What's happened instead is that these externalities have increased in time and cost. If I want to buy groceries, I can't just easily pop to the store; I need to wait in line for an hour and pay more for what I buy. I have to do more laundry to avoid infection, and my clothing will wear out faster and need to be replaced sooner. I have to clean more to avoid surface contamination. All of this is necessary for the employer to profit, but I don't get an hour off to buy groceries, or to do a deep clean.
In my case, the employer has decided to use this opportunity to lengthen my work day and workload by 33%. I'm guessing this isn't uncommon. There's a renewed worry that workers might be taking advantage of the pandemic, that a child or pet is distracting them from staring at a computer screen, that CERB is preventing them from pounding pavement to get a job that doesn't actually exist, that grocery store workers getting danger pay are somehow getting soft. Even though everything is harder, more expensive, and takes longer, we're still being stretched thinner, every last drop of moisture in our bodies sucked dry. At a time when we should have expected compassion, the few individuals who've done quite well in this situation and are well-insulated from exposure themselves have taken the opportunity that our exhaustion and trauma has revealed to ensure that we don't relax, even for a second. Because we'll be in debt forever, don't you know? Prepare for pain, and more pain.
In this respect, the new normal looks exactly like the old normal. Except that the flip side of economic reproduction—rest and leisure, love, sex, friendship, community—is forbidden. You will work as hard, harder, harder than that, and you will risk your life, and at the end of the day you don't get a hug. You don't get to go to the pub or get a haircut. You don't get dancing or music. Just sickness, disability, premature death. And be grateful you have a job at all.
It enrages me that we as workers have taken this so placidly, docile cows awaiting the knife, but what can I say, I'm exhausted and traumatized too, and I'm not fighting nearly as hard as I should be either. Welcome to the new normal, which is the same as the old normal except you don't get to grab a beer with your friends after you're done being exploited for the day.
Marxist feminists take it a step further to talk about reproductive labour—the domestic work of maintaining the workforce that is not factored into economic analysis because it's unpaid and gendered. It includes cooking, cleaning, childrearing, washing, and so on—activities that are necessary for the worker to produce profit for capitalists. Without this work, the baker can't go to work and bake every day, and his boss eventually won't be able to find new bakers to replace him. The capitalist ideal, for people who like capitalism, is based around the idea that one worker in the family unit receives a family wage, subsidizing the reproductive labour of a partner. This is an aberration, as few jobs supply a family wage and generally speaking, reproductive labour is performed around paid labour, during the (presumed female) worker's "free" time.(Teaching in a public system is also an interesting case; as a public service, it generates no profit, but it's paid work and necessary for economic reproduction. The labour theory of value does not apply in the same way; economic reproduction and reproductive labour does.)
Regardless, reproduction is a cost that is largely subsidized by a worker. My employer gets 8-10 hours a day of labour from me. I receive a fraction of those profits as a wage, and the rest go to the employer. But there are a number of activities that need to be done in order to make those hours happen. If I commute an hour to get to my workplace, that commuting time is not paid. If I have to wear professional clothing to do my job, the cost of that clothing and its repair or replacement as it wears out, is not borne by my employer, even though I can't go to work in torn jeans and a dirty hoodie and it's therefore a requirement of completing the job. My employer probably doesn't pay for childcare or meals. All of those costs—financial and time wise—are required for making my 8-10 hours of labour happen, but however they may vary, this is an expense that affects me, not my boss's profits.
Enter the New Normal, as they call it. When COVID started, some of us fantasized about 4-hour days, working from home, flexibility with childcare, a universal basic income, even a narrowing of wealth inequality and a flowering of empathy brought about by our shared suffering.
Well, that didn't happen.
What's happened instead is that these externalities have increased in time and cost. If I want to buy groceries, I can't just easily pop to the store; I need to wait in line for an hour and pay more for what I buy. I have to do more laundry to avoid infection, and my clothing will wear out faster and need to be replaced sooner. I have to clean more to avoid surface contamination. All of this is necessary for the employer to profit, but I don't get an hour off to buy groceries, or to do a deep clean.
In my case, the employer has decided to use this opportunity to lengthen my work day and workload by 33%. I'm guessing this isn't uncommon. There's a renewed worry that workers might be taking advantage of the pandemic, that a child or pet is distracting them from staring at a computer screen, that CERB is preventing them from pounding pavement to get a job that doesn't actually exist, that grocery store workers getting danger pay are somehow getting soft. Even though everything is harder, more expensive, and takes longer, we're still being stretched thinner, every last drop of moisture in our bodies sucked dry. At a time when we should have expected compassion, the few individuals who've done quite well in this situation and are well-insulated from exposure themselves have taken the opportunity that our exhaustion and trauma has revealed to ensure that we don't relax, even for a second. Because we'll be in debt forever, don't you know? Prepare for pain, and more pain.
In this respect, the new normal looks exactly like the old normal. Except that the flip side of economic reproduction—rest and leisure, love, sex, friendship, community—is forbidden. You will work as hard, harder, harder than that, and you will risk your life, and at the end of the day you don't get a hug. You don't get to go to the pub or get a haircut. You don't get dancing or music. Just sickness, disability, premature death. And be grateful you have a job at all.
It enrages me that we as workers have taken this so placidly, docile cows awaiting the knife, but what can I say, I'm exhausted and traumatized too, and I'm not fighting nearly as hard as I should be either. Welcome to the new normal, which is the same as the old normal except you don't get to grab a beer with your friends after you're done being exploited for the day.
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Date: 2020-08-21 12:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 12:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 12:36 am (UTC)Lordy, did he get cancelled over the Vampire's Castle essay? It seemed pretty prescient again about "cancel Twitter" to me and how it gets used. Yeah he failed at intersectionalism but I don't think it's in the same way as people blaring about how "class trumps EVERYTHING!", because he's a smarter and more interesting and less defensive thinker than that. (Like, I don't think anyone else would ever defend Owen Jones AND Russell Brand in the same essay, lol.) Then again I'm always going to have a very very soft spot for him because I discovered him through his musical and cultural criticism and I love it deeply. It was dumb but I felt his loss almost as a personal thing, even though I never even emailed him about k-punk or anything.
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Date: 2020-08-21 12:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 12:58 am (UTC)....yeah where was I going with that, God knows. Among the many, many reasons I hate Trump is that he turned me into my dad, politically speaking. (He used to scream at Reagan whenever he appeared on the TV until my mom and I were scared for his blood pressure. Dad's, not Reagan's.) I'm just fucking sick of the left's immortal ability to rip itself apart in the name of ideological purity. Argle.
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Date: 2020-08-21 01:04 am (UTC)(Which is wild because I don't know how class became the least important intersection in intersectionality. I mean, I do know how, it was 90s neoliberalism, but ffs.)
I actually get the impulse to score own goals because rn I'm way angrier at the left for succumbing to a right framing, and I'm personally angry at individual liberals in a way that approaches my usual baseline of anger at conservatives. But I'm trying to restrain myself because that is not a productive direction of anger.
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Date: 2020-08-21 01:14 am (UTC)//facepalm
(Ooh if that's a link you could DM it to me, if you want.)
(Which is wild because I don't know how class became the least important intersection in intersectionality. I mean, I do know how, it was 90s neoliberalism, but ffs.)
Yeah, why are Black and Hispanic people dying at record rates in far greater number than white people? Because they have shit health care from the time they're kids and are poor and have to work jobs that are now literally life-threatening because they have no fucking savings or safety net or reliable housing! Why did that happen? Because of racism! It kind of all fits together! only now we're still seeing the "if you're a Black man you need to take care of yourself and eat healthy and stop smoking" and God knows what else blaming of the poor and sick that always happens. Except there's a pandemic.
But I'm trying to restrain myself because that is not a productive direction of anger.
Yeah, I just try never to go on Twitter, ever. Which means I do actually miss out on a lot of connections of all kinds right now because that's how it's done (altho I thought the user numbers were dropping?) but I just turn into a screaming whirling frothing banshee.
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Date: 2020-08-21 01:20 am (UTC)What are the material effects of privilege, at least as they are imagined by those who believe the concept to be something that must be sussed out and eradicated? A privileged person gets to live their life with the expectation that they will face no undue hurdles to success and fulfillment because of their identity markers, that they will not be subject to constant surveillance and/or made to suffer grave consequences for minor or arbitrary offenses, and that police will not be able to murder them at will. The effects of “privilege” are what we might have once called “freedom” or “dignity.” Until very recently, progressives regarded these effects not as problematic, but as a humane baseline, a standard that all decent people should fight to provide to all of our fellow citizens.
Here we find the utility in the use of the specific term “privilege.” Similar to how austerity-minded politicians refer to social security as an “entitlement,” conflating dignity and privilege gives it the sense of something undeserved and unearned–things that no one, let alone members of racially advantaged groups, could expect for themselves unless they were blinded by selfishness and coddled by an insufficiently cruel social structure. The problem isn’t therefore that humans are being selectively brutalized. Brutality is the baseline, the natural order, the unavoidable constant that has not been engineered into our society but simply is what society is and will always be. The problem, instead, is that some people are being exempted from some forms of brutalization. The problem is that pain does not stretch far enough.
This sorta ties in with my latest Thing about how the left has adopted Christian framings of Good and Evil and elevated suffering as a virtue.
I don't agree with everything they say in the post—like, I think overt racism is much more embedded than they suggest—but I think the underlying framework is correct.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 01:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 02:21 am (UTC)*
Date: 2020-08-21 03:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 04:29 pm (UTC)at least as they are imagined by those who believe the concept to be something that must be sussed out and eradicated?
If they mean people who speak out against privilege, I'm one such person but I'm not saying people shouldn't all have the same basic rights -- it's the exact opposite, and I think "eradicating privilege" is about making sure everyone gets access to some basic rights, rather than being, well, a privilege that only a few get to have. It's also expecting people to realise that thanks to their experiences, they might never have even noticed certain things that are wrong and that it's useful to learn from others. Literally nobody is saying "white people should get shot by cops more often", instead it's "it's not right that black people get shot by cops more often and this shouldn't happen".
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Date: 2020-08-21 04:34 pm (UTC)I think it's still useful in some instances—like the knapsack activity is good for demonstrating which rights some people get to take for granted and which are denied on the basis of race, etc.—but it needs to be carried further.
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Date: 2020-08-21 04:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 04:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 04:27 pm (UTC)I dunno. I just feel like me and people like me have been burned SO MANY TIMES by people whose only issue is being working class. It's hard to not feel grossed out when so many people think that fighting for "working class rights" means fighting for a very specific type of working class person that is somehow more "respectable". At least over here I feel like that's a big thing, people act like there's some kind of silent dignity in being a white (among other things) working class person, and then turn around and shit on everyone else because being foreign or not being white or not living up to certain values is just not a worthy somehow.
I 100% agree that class is an important factor but I've also got negative feelings about the people who should know better and don't because the easy way out is to feel like you're above someone else, rather than demand better for everyone.
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Date: 2020-08-21 04:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 04:41 pm (UTC)I don't know if the majority of working class people here are PoC (I think that's more common in bigger cities) but a large amount certainly are. And it's weird to me that so many white working class people aim for middle-class standards but like to pull out the working class card to screw over foreigners/PoC. I also think there's definitely a scale, where the shittier working class jobs are more likely to be worked by immigrants.
Though I guess that depends on what people mean by "working class". I'd definitely be in favour of this meaning "everyone who needs to work for someone for a living" with different degrees within that, since a) it would allow for what I meantioned above where the Scale of Job Shittiness is a thing, and b) it could lead to people who are teachers, doctors, etc. to realise they're just as likely to be screwed over and need to help out.
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Date: 2020-08-21 04:44 pm (UTC)Most of the economy here is service sector (manufacturing being largely outsourced) and that's nearly all BIPOC. The only large segments of traditional white working class are the extractive industries, and they tend to be quite reactionary.
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Date: 2020-08-21 12:43 am (UTC)I mean people in Amazon warehouses and immigrants in slaughterhouses were always risking their lives and ruining their health for a non-living wage but now it's ACTUAL SUFFERING AND DEATH, and....nothing's changing. (Remember how the US meat packing plants were deemed "essential" because OMG the food chain supply?! I read an article about where most of that meat went -- to China, at a huge profit, they wanted Trump to let them profit off a global pandemic and he wrote an executive order to let them do it. At the cost of actual lives. It's fucking amazing.
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Date: 2020-08-21 12:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 01:03 am (UTC)Hahahah oh boy....yeah, I think that's part of the whole thing about cultural capital vs actual money paid kicking in, and boy do the universities take advantage of that. Did you read this article on burnout? https://www.edsurge.com/news/2020-08-14-burnout-is-coming-to-campus-are-college-leaders-ready It had some good points about how burnout is normalized in the academy -- and it's certainly normalized and glorified in what could be called the post-job capitalist economy, where people hold positions for one or two years at tech places where you're encouraged to work 10-12 hours at the office or even sleep there (Microsoft was infamous for this). Except the young people at the top of that pyramid get high compensation and perks, but that's probably even less than 1% of that working population in tech, let alone everyone working.
....and oh yeah, the google "perks" -- I read an article by a guy who was visiting a friend who worked at Google and was marvelling over the wonderful cafeteria, and then thought, oh right, the person making the sandwiches probably doesn't even work for Google and they certainly don't get any perks. And he asked his friend if that bothered him and the friend was like "Well uh yeah sure" but it was obvious he didn't really think about it. (Remember the Google drivers trying to unionize?)
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Date: 2020-08-21 01:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 01:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 12:46 am (UTC)https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/20/alexei-navalny-russian-opposition-figure-unconscious-in-hospital-says-aide
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Date: 2020-08-21 12:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 12:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 01:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 01:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 03:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 12:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 03:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 04:20 pm (UTC)It's ridiculous to me that people, including people who SHOULD be angry because they're definitely getting screwed over, can be so naïve and just believe any bullshit.
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Date: 2020-08-21 04:28 pm (UTC)Not to mention that women and POC are often targeted by higher appearance standards at work, which is extra difficult when doing laundry, replacing clothes, or getting a haircut is not what it used to be.
Oh, yes. The farther you are from the Default Human, the harder you need to work to be socially acceptable.
The level of anxiety is, in general, much higher among women because we know where the burden is going to fall. Like, one of my colleagues posted, "why are you all complaining so much? Just go to the can when you need to. I'm looking forward to the challenge," to which I'm like, "I can see you've never had a period."
But teachers are a very docile and placid bunch who can't believe, even now, that the government might actually look at our deaths as a plus.
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Date: 2020-08-21 04:33 pm (UTC)Exactly! Not to mention that if women need to jump through hoops to be able to earn money to feed their families while juggling taking care of their kids, that's not going to be magically fixed by "returning to normal".
It's definitely going to be harder for women and for people who have vaginas, as opposed to men. The period thing, the burdens of extra work (much of which is domestic work), etc. etc. I don't know how people can feel ok with this. I worry that if we're not careful this will become even more normalised. :(
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Date: 2020-08-21 04:37 pm (UTC)I keep screaming into the voice that we're not going to get these rights back if we cede them now. Like, last year the employer demanded a live video feed into our homes. And everyone was fine with it, the union didn't fight it, people just did it.
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Date: 2020-08-21 04:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-21 04:30 pm (UTC)