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Value, Productive, and Reproductive Labor · Mechonomist Podcast

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, all.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: He starts crying as soon as as soon as I start alive.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Appropriate.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: There's been some discussion about the role of women in communist organizations recently,
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: and I think part of it is back to what I said on the last live,
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: which is that the value relation and Marxist Leninism is taken as a given.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: instead of picked apart and critiqued and transformed.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: And from the perspective of socialist feminists,
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: reproductive labor is more important than productive labor.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Productive labor produces a commodity and reproductive labor produces life itself.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: So under capitalist social relations,
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: the production of life itself is subservient to the production of the commodity.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's also this way under Marxist-Leninism because Marxist-Leninism doesn't critique
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: socially necessary labor time,
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: also known as the value relation.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: So if you start to look at the value relation and pick it apart,
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: you realize that the socialist feminists are right and that the production of life,
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: the reproductive relation should be the center to any
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: socialist or communist or anarchist economic system going forward well that looks
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: totally different from the production of commodities production of commodities
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: would still happen but the production of commodities would be subservient to the
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: production of life it would be flipped on its head right so taking care of this
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: baby is central to
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: the economy of a socialist feminist economic situation,
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: whereas under Marxist-Leninism,
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: the production of a car would be central.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: So it centers reproductive labor,
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: and reproductive labor is anything from giving birth to making a sandwich to
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: repairing equipment,
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: anything that reproduces life itself.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: or reproduces the means by which life can happen, is reproductive labor.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: So,
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: the question was that women were seen as essentially nurturers and caretakers of
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: the family,
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: and that they were family-centric.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well,
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: it's not really a family-centric situation if the production of commodities is
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: central to your economic system.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: A real family situation is going to be where the production of life is central to your economic system.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: So the idea that you can keep the value relation or socially necessary labor time
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: which produces commodities as central to any socialist or communist economy is,
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: I hate to say it,
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: is basically misogynist.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: because it still relegates reproductive labor to a second-tier status instead of being central.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: So those are my arguments for a different kind of communism and why
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Marxist-Leninism is to a degree,
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: it's a good start,
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: but it can't end there.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: There has to be a broader engagement with different types of approaches to dialectical materialism.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, we'll see y'all next time.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Peace, y'all.