Capitalism Also Depends on Domestic Labour

By Wes Carroll

Capitalism does depend on domestic labour. Just like the oceans can regenerate themselves after overfishing, reproductive labour replenishes workers making it possible for them to participate in productive labour. Capitalist culture effectively makes invisible the ecological strains it causes. In the same way, the doctrine of exponential capital accumulation is not seen within popular discourse as the driving force of youth delinquency and family dysfunctionality. It is a system that offsets ecological systems and communities alike. Domestic labour has been around for thousands of years longer than capitalism. The neoliberal shrinking of the welfare state and deregulation of capital has in recent years placed added pressure on women to revitalize Capital’s human life-force. Patriarchy coupled with the paradox of exponential growth capitalism makes domestic labour invisible through its profit based tunnel vision. Nonetheless, reproductive labour, done predominantly by women in the world safeguards some of the most important and fundamental aspects of life: food, clothing, caring for the elderly, cleaning and raising future generations. These elements of community form the foundation for any and all systems of production. Capitalism is no exception.

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Linda and Charlie Bloom: Overwhelmed Parents: a National Crisis (2013)

By Wes Carroll

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-bloom-lcsw-and-charlie-bloom-msw/overwhelmed-parents-a-nat_b_3308576.html

Linda and Charlie Bloom’s article, “Overwhelmed Parents: a National Crisis” provides incites and potential remedies to America’s care deficit. In their article, L. and C. Bloom critique the US’s dysfunctional social and economic systems that force parents into a work vs. family tug of war where work predominantly wins. They note that legislation has not dramatically shifted since the 1960’s when the male breadwinner could provide for his nuclear family and reproductive labor could be taken for granted. In contrast, the countries with the lowest levels of stress-disorders in Scandinavia have responded to greater gender equality in the workplace with universal health care, extended paid maternity and paternity leave and free day-care. These social systems prioritize reproductive labor as an essential element to a healthy society.

Linda and Charlie Bloom’s article addresses a cultural and ideological crisis within the US. It is clear from their statistics and comparisons that neoliberalism does not even benefit many citizens within neo-colonizing countries. This newspaper article in conjunction with Hochschild’s article form a scathing critique of neoliberalism’s endless thirst for profit at the expense of community and family. My favourite part of his article is the way in which it offers feasible remedies to this crisis. While within the discourse of American politics Universal Health healthcare may seem like a sneaky bolshevik invasion, it becomes clear that maternity and paternity leave, free child care along with caring for the elderly and other vulnerable people is a step that must be taken. Attaching real political and cultural value to reproductive labor is the only socially just solution. This article does have its shortcomings. Its Amerocentric gaze leaves migrant care workers invisible. They way in which they are exploited, undervalued and pressured to leave their own families to care for wealthier ones abroad is a symptom of a larger globalized economic system that takes for granted reproductive labor and as a result creates dysfunctionality.

Hochschild: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work (1997)

By Wes Carroll

Arlie Russell Hochschild’s article, “When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work (1997), seeks to explain the reason why both men and women in the US are spending an ever-increasing amount of time at work, away from their families. By using the company Amerco in her case study she presents persuading statistics on the experiences of parents at work and at home in regards to time famine, neglected parental responsibilities and the feeling of a fundamental imbalance between work and family. At the core of her argument, she critiques the “cult of efficiency” (pp. 90) that indoctrinates employees of capitalist franchises, affecting their behavior both at work and at home. This has a mechanizing effect on parent-child relations that often leads to “time-tantrums” and a “third-shift” as parents spend their limited free time “noticing, understanding and coping with the emotional consequences of the compressed second shift” (pp 92).

While Hochschild’s article never directly refers to America’s “Care Deficit” like many of her other publications, it interrogates its sociological causes. Central to her argument is the way in which companies like Amerco socialize their employees through varying strategies including rewards for efficiency, company celebrations, free workshops in improving team effectiveness and worker-management improvement teams. While many workers would benefit from more substantive child-support programming it is simply not a priority to the “powerful men at the top of the company hierarchy” (pp. 80). In addition, she suggests that many parents are not interested in reducing their hours. This is perhaps a result of the “cult of efficiency” (pp. 90) she describes in detail. Capitalist socialization compels employees to be efficient both at work and at home. This cult of efficiency creates dysfunctional families as ‘family time’ takes a quasi-industrial shape. While reproductive labor is still necessary, Hochschild notes that it does note produce the same esteem that productive labor does for both men and women. Short cuts are taken when ever possible with this logic in the name of efficiency. While Hochschild does not talk about migration, care chains or anti-racism, her dissection of the dysfunctionality of America’s capitalist dream and the fertilization of efficiency locates the cause of the cultural care deficit in the US and the devaluing of reproductive, feminized labor.

Reference: Hochschild, A. R. (1997). When work becomes home and home becomes work. California Management Review, 39(4), 79-97.

Care Deficit

By Wes Carroll

In both the global North and South, the hyper-masculine system of neoliberal capitalism has created a globalized economy that does not value reproductive labor and feminizes much of the productive labor by making it temporary, insecure or part time (Acker, 2004). As a result, men are generally not able to provide for their families causing women in the North to find work and reduce their daily reproductive labor. The care deficit in the North is also a direct result of men in general not increasing their domestic labor contributions.

The care deficit is an example of the effects of neoliberalism in creating first world societies that are not self-sufficient in their own social reproduction. Child care and domestic work are taken for granted by employers through insufficient paid maternity and paternity leave and by the state though unaffordable child-care programs, lack of regulations on employers and insufficient state assistance programs. Furthermore, reproductive labor is taken for granted culturally through patriarchy, profit based decision making, careerism and economic competition. The dysfunctional organization and near sided aims of certain first world countries makes them dependent on second/third world migrant nannies and domestic workers. The care deficit has created care crises in areas of the global South as mothers leave their families to care for the children and homes of wealthier women in the North. It is yet another example of how the nature of neoliberal capitalism creates global structures of inequality. Lack of self sufficient, sustainability caused by the profit doctrine has led to social economic and ecological crisis.

Reference: Acker, J. (2004). Gender, capitalism and globalization. Critical Sociology, 30(1), 17-41.