Thanks Chris for your response - you are going to have to excuse the
crudity of my responses -
At 12:45 PM +1100 1/9/03, Chris Jones wrote:
>It is very important not to understand the above distinction of
>nonproductive and productive work in moral and ideological terms which
>again and sadly far too often unconsciously echo a neo-Hegelian or some
>other sort of dialectical ideology. That is, not to attempt to morally
>valorise domestic labour as productive labour in a capitalist system or
>even worse to claim that paying to have housework done and children
>looked after by childcare workers is in itself class exploitation which
>not only claims that women are being exploitative but in the final
>analysis does not recognise and denies women the right to work and
>insists that women should remain domestic slaves.
The fact remains that these distinctions have been widely interpreted
in moral and ideological terms, and that these have had practical
consequences. The assumption that reproductive work (having children
&c) has no economic value rebounds on women - all right, men who are
raising children, but women especially - in very practical ways.
Economic value means status. The particular syndrome you name, and
the kinds of valorisation that lead to Nazism and so on, are problems
we are dealing with now in Australia. I certainly do not subscribe
to those ideologies.
Marx's idea of gender being a false problem is why women have had
problems with his work. It may well have been a false problem for
_him_, but he was, after all, a man of his time.
Best
Alison
--
Alison Croggon
Home page
http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
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