Who Cares? Capitalism and the Reproduction of the Working Class

1. Introduction

The concepts of caring labor and a care economy are used today to describe the process of providing for the maintenance and generational reproduction (or “reproduction” for short) of the working class in a capitalist society. These terms are used to describe not only the work that takes place within the household that is assumed to constitute “care work” but also that provided by government employees, such as in those employed in the fields of health care and education. The term caring labor is thus similar to the term reproductive labor used, within Social Reproduction Theory, to refer to what is termed the unwaged social reproductive activity that takes place within the household—activity that in this theory is distinguished from the “productive labor” that takes the form of wage labor as, for example, in the work of Bhattacharya (2017), Fraser (2017), and Ferguson (2020). The term care labor takes on a broader meaning when used by them and others to go beyond this household labor and include the reproductive labor carried out in the public sector. The focus is thus on the reproduction of workers that results from this labor rather than on the direct, personal relationships between the givers and recipients of care such as those between teachers and students, or nurses and patients. As such it must go beyond these “caring” individuals to include the labor of all those employed in the educational and health sectors of the economy, including, for example, the janitorial and clerical workers whose labor is required for the provision of this care.

The major problem is that this concept of care has the effect of excluding from consideration the contribution of the labor embodied in commodities purchased by those engaged in wage labor to this reproduction of the working class. The members of the working class who substitute hours of wage labor for household labor do so in order to better “care” for their households by earning money that can be used for the payment of rent, food, clothing, etc.

Any increase in the resources of the working class that takes the form of an increase in the wage income of households, monetary transfers from the government, or the government provision of services to households, does indeed, ceteris paribus (other things being equal), increase the resources used for the reproduction of the working class. But other things, such as not only taxes but also the allocation of labor to household production, cannot be presumed to be equal.

Changes in the role of the government take place within a capitalist mode of production that is structured to maximize profits, or, in Marxist terms, surplus value, the monetized difference between total production and necessary production in all its forms. This can be described, alternatively, as the minimization of necessary labor. In a capitalist society, the extraction of the surplus takes place mainly through the payment of wages that are less than the (exchange) value produced by wage laborers. ¹ The labor embodied in wages must, therefore, be such as to ensure the reproduction of the working class. The term working class is understood here to refer not simply to those engaged in wage labor but to all those whose generational reproduction requires the performance of wage labor. The necessity of wage labor arises from the inability of the use values produced in the form of household production and obtained from petty-commodity production to provide in full for the reproduction of the working class (Quick 2020). Wages thus constitute a supplement to these use values (for simplicity, petty-commodity production is ignored in this article).

2. The Production/Reproduction of the Working Class

This article thus explores the relationship between three categories of labor, household labor, the labor of government employees that contributes to the reproduction of the working class, and wage labor. The first two of these together constitute what is termed care labor. The maximization of surplus value corresponds then to the minimization of these three categories combined.

As an illustration of this process, this article makes use of the distinction in Biden’s Build Back Better (BBB) proposal that was presented as one designed to improve the well-being of the working class. The proposal included the provision of monetary transfers in the form of tax credits based on the number of children in a household, as well as the provision of government-provided universal pre-Kindergarten (pre-K) care and subsidies to other forms of child care. Several components of the initial proposal that would have more directly provided for increased “care” of both adult and children within the working class, starting with the raising of the federal minimum wage to fifteen dollars per hour, were quickly dropped, and the length of time proposed for family and medical leave was quickly cut from twelve weeks to a mere four weeks, before being dropped entirely. But there was almost no opposition to the provision of universal free preschool programs or increased monetary subsidization of child care in general (several states, such as New York, have already put in place systems of free pre-K care for children aged three and four years).

All these proposed measures can be understood as involving an initial transfer of resources to the working class from the capitalist class (assuming no increase in the tax burden on the working class). As such, debate over them constitutes part of the ongoing process of class struggle that includes not only that between capitalists and the wage laborers they employ (including that over the intensity of labor) but the distribution of tax burdens and the allocation of tax revenue to different uses. It is necessary for the working class to understand not only each individual component of this class struggle but their totality as it unfolds over time. Thus, the struggle over the BBB proposal took place on many different levels (leaving aside for now the issue of climate change).

It is therefore striking that while monetary transfers, such as the child tax credit, were vehemently opposed by many politicians, the funds allocated for universal pre-K care received almost universal support. This support was based mainly on the effect it was presumed to have on the labor-force participation of women, rather than as a way to improve the well-being of children. This was then presented as a step forward in evidence of support for the interests of women.

It is important to understand therefore that the provision of government-provided pre-K care constitutes a continuation of the historical process within the capitalist mode of production through which wage labor has increased as a substitute for household labor. This labor, the “care labor” that contributes to the reproduction of the working class, and that substitutes for household labor, is increasingly carried out by wage laborers.

This historical process has taken place within both the government and the capitalist sectors of production. The substitution of off-the-rack garments for clothing produced within the households is well documented. From the sowing of flax seed to the spinning of yarn, and the weaving of cloth on hand looms to the hand-sewing of garments for household members, the entire process has been transformed into one in which artificial fibers are woven by “power looms” into fabric that is manufactured into clothing in garment factories and then sold on the internet. The entire process can be understood as the substitution of wage labor for household labor. Less well recognized, but of at least equal importance, is the reduction in necessary household labor that has resulted from the provision of water and sewage systems, initially on a municipal level, that dramatically reduced the household labor required for the collection of water and the appropriate disposal of potentially hazardous human and animal waste. These constituted part of a governmentally constructed infrastructure that later included the provision of some measures of health care (such as vaccinations) and led to the institutions of universal health care in almost all “developed” countries (with the notable exception of the United States). This can be understood as the substitution of the labor of paid sanitation and medical workers, for example, for the labor formerly carried out in working-class households, while at the same time reducing the total resources required for the reproduction of the working class, as evidenced by a reduction in infant mortality and an increase in postbirth life expectancy.

The process is a complex one and cannot be understood at the level of individual decisions on the composition of production. The capitalists who developed infant formula as a substitute for breast milk, or disposable diapers that did not require the extensive laundering of cloth diapers, did not expect those “freed” from this labor to constitute, in person, the wage laborers that they themselves employed in this production. Nor were they motivated by a desire to increase the surplus value of the capitalist class as a whole. Nonetheless, these developments had their effect on the labor force participation of the women who had formerly carried out this household production.

The more recent process of substitution can be recognizable in the dramatic decrease in the household provision of child care over the past half-century. In the United States, the labor force participation rate for women with children under the age of three years increased from 34.3 percent in 1975 to 63.8 percent in 2019. ² For women with children under one year of age, it was 60.0 percent in 2019, of whom three-quarters worked “full-time,” that is, thirty-five hours or more per week. Many mothers “go back to work,” that is, substitute wage labor for the home care of newborn children, within a month of giving birth. The provision of free (i.e., taxpayer-funded) pre-K care as well as other forms of “support” for parents will undoubtedly contribute to a continuation of this trend, and are intended to do so.

Whether this development is itself a good or a bad thing depends on two things. One is how it affects gender relations within the working-class household. To the extent that women contribute a greater proportion of monetary resources to the household, this reduces their material dependence on men. It certainly makes it more possible for women to leave destructive relationships without resulting in dire poverty for themselves and their children. Whether it reduces the level of oppression as a whole, including such forms as gendered violence, is much less certain.

This change in the allocation of labor must therefore be understood as part of the complete “package” of proposals in such measures as BBB. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the monetary allocation of funds for pre-K and subsidized child care is completely matched by an increase in taxes on capital so that there is no initial redistribution of resources between capital and labor. What does it mean for the children in pre-K programs, and what happens to the time newly “freed” from the necessity of caring for them?

Enrollment of children in pre-K and other child care programs is not compulsory, unlike attendance at elementary and secondary schools. Those households that choose to do so must be presumed to see this as at least as good as the option of caring for these children at home. Breast-feeding of infants is generally impractical for women engaged in full-time wage labor, and the substitution of infant formula leads to an actual reduction in children’s health. This may, however, at least theoretically, be compensated for by the material benefits that result from the mothers’ increased monetary income. If the alternative to taking a wage-labor job and foregoing breast-feeding is eviction for nonpayment of rent or the crying of hungry children, the decision to take that job may be a good one. The ever-present threat of poverty can be presumed to lead household members (women in particular) to take advantage of the reduction in the labor required for child care. The time “freed” from child care then leads to an increase in the allocation of time to wage labor.

There can then be no presumption that the resulting combination of wage labor, household labor, and the labor of government employees will have the effect of increasing the overall standard of living of the working class. There can also be no presumption that it will contribute to a reduction in the oppression of women. These two presumptions must be addressed separately.

The belief that economic growth in capitalist society will automatically, if unevenly, result in an improvement in the well-being of the working class has been shaken by the experience of the last half-century. While the US government’s measure of productivity in the business sector shows an increase in labor productivity (real GDP/output per hour) of 152 percent from 1975 to 2019, real average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees increased by only 8 percent in that same period. This pattern has continued since then, with real wages continuing to fall. This is, of course, a very incomplete picture of the historical development of capital-labor relations but serves to illustrate how very minor is the transfer toward labor contained in the BBB proposal. It would take only a few years of wage increases below the rate of inflation to erase the initial monetary benefits of government-provided child care.

An equally strong belief must also be challenged, namely, that that women’s oppression can be reduced by an increase in their participation in the wage-labor force.

The feminist movement’s struggle for recognition of the importance and complexity of the household labor that is today carried out disproportionately by women has yet to do away with this idea that household labor is, in and of itself, “drudgery” when compared to wage labor. This idea has two very different origins. One represents the perspective of ruling-class women whose role in precapitalist societies was transformed in the transition to capitalism, and who sought the right to participate in the economic and political decision making of the capitalist ruling class. This indeed required a feminist challenge to the structures and belief systems of society and an assertion of moral and intellectual equality between women and men. But the “work” that they sought did not include the substitution of their own labor for that of their domestic servants. Such work continued to be “beneath them,” as was most of the work carried out by both women and men of the working class.

This disrespect for household labor and those who carried it out was incorporated into the understanding of women’s oppression by early socialists. The Russian socialist feminist Alexandra Kollontai who wrote in 1929 of women as “enslaved by a thousand menial household chores, bearing the whole burden of maternity,” determined to free herself from this “enslavement” by working as a teacher. Her mother’s response was revealing:

You, work! You, who can’t even make up your own bed to look neat and tidy! You, who never picked up a needle! You, who go through the house like a princess and never help the servants with their work! (Clements 1979: 15)

The traditional socialist approach to women’s oppression was thus to advocate the commodification of household production that would take women out of the “drudgery” involved in carrying out “menial” tasks at home, and integrate them into the “wider” world where production was carried out by wage laborers. Then, like other wage laborers, a socialist revolution would free them from capitalist control, and their equally important production would be brought under the control of the working class as a whole. Early Russian socialists proudly pointed to the extent of women’s wage labor as evidence of their commitment to ending women’s oppression.

This presumption that wage labor was inherently preferable to household labor continued. Simone de Beauvoir is an excellent example of the disdain with which pre-second wave feminists viewed housework. In The Second Sex, she wrote that “few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day. The housewife wears herself out marking time: she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the present” ([1949] 1997: 420).

This perspective continues today. It is not surprising, but nonetheless regrettable, that a strongly worded advocacy of incorporating consideration of “care” into the decision making of international financial institutions includes the belief that government-provided care will reduce the “drudgery” of household production (Oxfam International 2021).

The economic component of the United Nations Development Programme’s index of Gender Inequality (GII) is measured by the “labor force participation rate of female and male populations aged 15 years and older” (UNDP 2022). It thus continues the presumption that the hours spent in capitalist (or government) workplaces are inherently “better spent” than those used for household production.

It should not be hard to recognize that taking care of children, for example, certainly requires more skills and is more “rewarding” than working on a production line or operating a cash register, and yet this is not generally recognized. In this can be seen an ideology that derives from the perspective of capital, for whom it is only wage labor that is “important” and is therefore “counted” since it is from this that it extracts surplus value. The account books of capitalists include the wages paid to their employees and the results of their labor; employers obviously make no attempt to follow or “account” for workers’ activity after they have left the workplace. National income accounting systems represents a continuation of this same form of record keeping.

From the perspective of the working class, both women and men generally look forward to the end of their hours of wage labor, to the time when they will be “free” of capitalist supervision, and able to use the remaining portion of their labor power, beyond that sold in commodity form to capital, for their own benefit, that is, in household production. Among the possibilities open to them is that of having and raising children, an option that is increasingly out of reach for many (Brown 2019). The characterization of “care labor” as necessarily burdensome and thus to be reduced must be challenged.

3. Conclusion

The reproduction of the working class takes place through the allocation of resources in three forms: the government provision of free services, household labor, and the commodities purchased with the wages of household members. An increase in the government provision of “care” can only be celebrated if its effect is to add to these resources rather than to substitute for one of the other two components. Insofar as it results in an actual increase in total production (i.e., that carried out by all three sets of laboring people), this accrues, in the long run, in the capitalist mode of production to the capitalist class.