Antonella Picchio, Social Reproduction: The Political Economy of the Labour Market. Cambridge University Press, 1992.
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‘In an economic system where access to the means of reproduction was guaranteed by access to land and the aim was to provide luxurious levels of consumption for the propertied classes, the social problem was to limit consumption by the labouring poor and to keep them subservient. In the capitalist system, where subsistence is guaranteed by access to money and the aim is accumulation, the problem is to contain the costs of reproduction of the labouring population for the sake of profit’ (137).
This is a great, important and topically relevant book. Its great strength is that it starts not with a supposedly abiding contrast between 'production' and 'social reproduction', as if they were two separate spheres, or production itself were not social, but with the reconstitution of the relationship between them in the capitalist system:
'Capitalism, like every other social system, imposes a specific relationship between the process of production of goods and services and the process of social reproduction of the population. The capitalist system is defined by the use of waged labour to produce commodities. In this system access to the means of subsistence is mediated by wages for the vast majority of the population. This mediation, a consequence of the private ownership of the means of production, determines the specifically capitalist relation between the process of production and the process of social reproduction' (1).
This – access to the means of subsistence mediated by wages – is the essential starting point for understanding social reproduction under capitalism, or ‘the political economy of the labour market’ (the sub-title of the book), and gender relations in the wider society. 'In a capitalist system’, Picchio goes on to say, ‘the labouring population no longer reproduces itself with self-produced goods or with market goods acquired by direct exchange of its own products; its reproduction depends on the sale of its labour’. The implication of this is not so much that the reproduction of the labouring population is no longer guaranteed, as it was far from guaranteed previously, but rather that ‘the capitalist system introduced a change in the meaning and objectives of the social system: the independent household produced for the reproduction of its members, the capitalist economy uses the reproduction of the labouring population for the accumulation of capital' (9). And among the major implications is that: 'When labour became waged labour, the work of reproduction became unwaged housework' (11).
Along with her analysis of changing relations between the market, the state and the family, Picchio is concerned to trace a key change in theoretical perspectives towards them with the emergence of the neoclassical perspective (in short, factors of production and supply and demand) and with it the removal of ‘politics’ from political economy through the burial of the social, historical and institutional perspective established by Ricardo and critiqued by Marx. The first two chapters – on the exogeneity of wages and the shift of late Ricardians to wages fund theory – may sound excessively abstruse, but do not neglect them. They are very illuminating on the replacement of a social conflict perspective with an apologetic ‘technical’ one which formed the basis for preaching to workers that poverty was inevitable and organization counter-productive.
Ricardo defined the 'natural price of labour' as 'that price which is necessary to enable the labourers, one with another, to subsist and to perpetuate their race, without either increase or diminution' (cited p. 23), and Marx followed him in regarding this price, and subsistence with it, as socially determined. Malthus, who believed that the population tended to increase at a faster rate than productive resources, identified at the same time a number of means by which subsistence needs could be met as population increased: 'by higher real wages, by saving in conveniences, by adopting a cheaper kind of food, by more task-work and the more general employment of women and children, or by parish allowances' (cited p. 28). As industrial society developed and the tensions and conflicting interests inherent in it began to make themselves clear, other commentators seized on Malthus’s iron law of population to develop a discourse which still flourishes today. At its heart was the insistence that for the benefit of all, wages should be set by competition between workers in a ‘free’ market, without interference from the state. By the mid-nineteenth century, J.R. McCulloch was able to draw the conclusions that ‘the condition and well being of the labouring classes … depends to a great extent on their conduct and habits, more especially on the description and cost of articles used by them, and on their frugality and forethought,’ and that ‘the lazy, the unskilful, and the improvident workman, whether he belongs to Australia or China, England or Russia, will always be poor and miserable’ (cited pp. 44-5).
'In given circumstances', Picchio argues in contrast, 'the normal supply [of labour] is determined by the material and political forces acting in the social reproduction of labour, including normal standards of living, hours, inclination to work, family structures and power relationships' (25). At any given time, then, the prevailing social production complex, as I shall call it, is structured around the wage relation, but shaped by struggles around a variety of interacting and changing social, political and institutional structures, options and processes. The great beauty of this approach is that the mediating role of wages is the only fixed feature of the interconnectedness of production and social reproduction. Everything else is subject to change.
Against this background, Picchio traces the changing roles of market, family, household and state in the social production complex in three case study chapters, which together develop the theme that from the Poor Law of 1834 onwards governments sought to minimize the costs to the state of social reproduction by criminalizing and punishing those ‘unwilling’ or unable to work (Chapter Three), with specific negative consequences for impoverished women (Chapter Four), and for the women’s labour market (Chapter Five). Throughout, the focus is on the specificity of circumstances arising from the separation of production and reproduction under capitalism, and the mediating role of the wage, in circumstances in which the state set out to make access to the means of subsistence and reproduction insecure. Overall, the argument revolves around the twin process of establishment of the family as the primary site of social reproduction, and the rendering ‘invisible’ of unwaged housework through its expulsion from ‘economics’, always in a context of likely failure on the part of the state, as ‘the role of the state as an adjustment mechanism is a difficult one: plans to control the reproduction of labour like the production of other commodities have never succeeded’ (72). I summarize the argument through selective quotation, then offer a discussion:
‘The developing industrial mode of production within the capitalist logic of accumulation created a general insecurity of access to the means of reproduction that could serve as a lever of command over work both in production and in reproduction, disciplining both houseworkers and waged workers to adapt to the needs of the accumulation of capital. For all workers this meant control over bodies, minds and emotions; but it imposed on women new modes of reproduction in which they were expected to function more and more as reproductive workers instead of as persons. Women had to reproduce waged workers, the basic capitalist commodity. In order to do this they too had to become capitalist workers, although as they received no wage for their work this fact was effectively hidden. Not only was their work made invisible, but their bodies and feelings were controlled by powerful and specific forms of repression – necessary because giving birth and emotional nourishment are essential elements in the process of reproduction of labour … The failures of the social policies of the 1834 Act show in fact that the family, and women within and outside it, did not function smoothly as an adjusting mechanism between production and reproduction, for in spite of social engineering they did not absorb all the shocks of the industrial capitalist labour market’ (74-5).
‘The progressive members of the [1905-1909] Royal Commission fought to keep the ground open for new social policies but they assumed that on the whole the family would continue to function as the basic reproductive unit for the waged labour market, without ever questioning the specific capitalist relationship between production and reproduction’ (94).
‘When the relationship between production and reproduction disappeared from the context of economic analysis the concrete work of reproduction was hidden from view, and houseworkers became invisible social subjects even though they represent a large section of the labouring population. More precisely, what is hidden is not housework and houseworkers, but the capitalist relationship between production and reproduction. That is how the central problem for any economic system comes to be seen as a narrow and peripheral women’s issue’ (95).
Housework is the production of labour as a commodity, while waged work is the exchange of labour. To be exchanged, labour must be produced; and to be used in the production of other commodities, labour must be produced and exchanged (96).
‘There are two ways of making [housewives] politically invisible: one is to consider them as potential political subjects only if they become waged workers, and the other is to glorify their role and push it out of the economic and political sphere. Both these perspectives aim to neutralize housework as an issue for political negotiation’ (110).
Along the way, Picchio stresses that there are real contradictions involved in the separation of production and reproduction in capitalism, which render the state project of securing social reproduction through disciplinary means problematic. In the first decade of the twentieth century, increasing unemployment in industry, restructuring in key productive sectors, changes in pension schemes, unemployment insurance, health services, children’s and women’s work, education and working hours, falling birth rates, concerns over standards of living, increased working class representation in parliament, changing scientific and ethical views of society, changes in family structures and a massive women’s suffrage movement all combined to render a residual programme of state support based upon criminalization and punishment (the workhouse) inefficient (59). Commission members were divided over the implications for the role of the state and the forms and degrees of its intervention in the labour market, and produced Majority and Minority reports; the latter advocated supplementing the ‘individual moral responsibility of the poor’ with the ‘collective and state responsibility for prevention of destitution’ (69), arguing that ‘in the long run the prevention of destitution would cost less, both financially and politically, than its repressive disciplining’ (70). In consequence, ‘nineteenth century privatization of the family was to be followed by its twentieth-century institutionalization … State intervention was seen not as a substitute for the family but as its safety net’ (86), and ‘the head of the family became the major agent of control of the process of reproduction, and conflicts were internalized within the family’ (89). The outcome, in other words, was a welfare system that revolved around the ‘male breadwinner’ and the family wage, but it did not resolve the fundamental problem that the wage could not be preserved as the mediating element between the production of goods and services and the process of social reproduction of the population if those ‘able to work’ could survive without it.
Picchio is writing at a particular moment of intensified reliance on the family to bear the cost of social reproduction in a period of neoliberal reform, and with a primary focus on the contributions of waged and unwaged workers to capitalist accumulation. This makes Chapter Five in particular, with its perspective circa 1985-90, an extremely valuable benchmark contribution. It also means that other aspects of social reproduction or factors pertinent to it are not so thoroughly investigated. For example, while the advanced economies on which she concentrates her attention exhibit a high level of separation between production and reproduction, the same is not true of the developing world, as she briefly notes (115, 132-3). Similarly, there is little development of the theme, pressing today, of the international labour market. Even so, what she does say, towards the very end of the book, in the context of welfare and labour market reform in Eastern and Western Europe, is striking enough to merit quoting at length:
'The social relations determined by the functioning of the waged labour market are regulated, in their general form, by competition among workers. ... Everyone would sympathize with the hunger of an immigrant worker if he/she did not constitute a threat to the prevailing structure of access to the means of subsistence. Given the fear induced by the basic insecurity of the labour market, workers tend to erect barriers against 'outsiders' in order to protect their 'privileged' position in relation to wages and the state.
This is particularly important in a world where an international labour market is being built up, rapidly bringing different races, societies and culture into contact all over the globe, with physical and cultural differences often being used as lines of demarcation between sections of the population. While with respect to the right of subsistence demarcations are ostensibly based on physical differences, in fact they reflect less visible differences in power relationships with the labour market and the state. Hostility to those who are different is based on insecurity and the fear of being cut off from access to the means of subsistence - which are made scarce not by nature but by the structure of social power.
The issues become clearer when they are defined in terms of the relation between production and the reproduction of labour. This relation must be kept compatible with the formation and accumulation of profit. When the costs of reproduction of labour cannot be contained through reduced consumption, increased housework or lower value of wage goods, the system may use immigrant workers, whose living standards are historically lower and who have less power, to keep down the average cost of reproduction. This segmentation depresses everybody's wages, not only because of competition but because the living standards of the weakest groups dramatically emphasize the insecurity endemic in the system.
Competition on the labour market now operates on a global scale, as marked differences in standards of living and security of access to the means of reproduction create strong incentives towards mobility in the international labour market. "Economic refugees" are an important structural feature of modern labour markets' (138-9).
Finally, given her primary focus on the social reproduction of labour and its relationship with the structure of the waged labour market’ (117), Picchio makes only passing reference to other aspects of global capitalism, notably the division of labour and technological revolution, and to changing structures of household and family, or developments such as increasing commodification of ‘household’ activities and even of childbirth itself, the cheapening of wage goods and transnational female economic migration and marriage. These have all impacted significantly, in different ways, on patterns of social reproduction across the world in the last thirty years, and demand further analysis. But Picchio provides the best place to start on this task.
You can see a 2012 video lecture by Professor Picchio at http://journals.kent.ac.uk/index.php/feministsatlaw/article/view/47/125
This is a great, important and topically relevant book. Its great strength is that it starts not with a supposedly abiding contrast between 'production' and 'social reproduction', as if they were two separate spheres, or production itself were not social, but with the reconstitution of the relationship between them in the capitalist system:
'Capitalism, like every other social system, imposes a specific relationship between the process of production of goods and services and the process of social reproduction of the population. The capitalist system is defined by the use of waged labour to produce commodities. In this system access to the means of subsistence is mediated by wages for the vast majority of the population. This mediation, a consequence of the private ownership of the means of production, determines the specifically capitalist relation between the process of production and the process of social reproduction' (1).
This – access to the means of subsistence mediated by wages – is the essential starting point for understanding social reproduction under capitalism, or ‘the political economy of the labour market’ (the sub-title of the book), and gender relations in the wider society. 'In a capitalist system’, Picchio goes on to say, ‘the labouring population no longer reproduces itself with self-produced goods or with market goods acquired by direct exchange of its own products; its reproduction depends on the sale of its labour’. The implication of this is not so much that the reproduction of the labouring population is no longer guaranteed, as it was far from guaranteed previously, but rather that ‘the capitalist system introduced a change in the meaning and objectives of the social system: the independent household produced for the reproduction of its members, the capitalist economy uses the reproduction of the labouring population for the accumulation of capital' (9). And among the major implications is that: 'When labour became waged labour, the work of reproduction became unwaged housework' (11).
Along with her analysis of changing relations between the market, the state and the family, Picchio is concerned to trace a key change in theoretical perspectives towards them with the emergence of the neoclassical perspective (in short, factors of production and supply and demand) and with it the removal of ‘politics’ from political economy through the burial of the social, historical and institutional perspective established by Ricardo and critiqued by Marx. The first two chapters – on the exogeneity of wages and the shift of late Ricardians to wages fund theory – may sound excessively abstruse, but do not neglect them. They are very illuminating on the replacement of a social conflict perspective with an apologetic ‘technical’ one which formed the basis for preaching to workers that poverty was inevitable and organization counter-productive.
Ricardo defined the 'natural price of labour' as 'that price which is necessary to enable the labourers, one with another, to subsist and to perpetuate their race, without either increase or diminution' (cited p. 23), and Marx followed him in regarding this price, and subsistence with it, as socially determined. Malthus, who believed that the population tended to increase at a faster rate than productive resources, identified at the same time a number of means by which subsistence needs could be met as population increased: 'by higher real wages, by saving in conveniences, by adopting a cheaper kind of food, by more task-work and the more general employment of women and children, or by parish allowances' (cited p. 28). As industrial society developed and the tensions and conflicting interests inherent in it began to make themselves clear, other commentators seized on Malthus’s iron law of population to develop a discourse which still flourishes today. At its heart was the insistence that for the benefit of all, wages should be set by competition between workers in a ‘free’ market, without interference from the state. By the mid-nineteenth century, J.R. McCulloch was able to draw the conclusions that ‘the condition and well being of the labouring classes … depends to a great extent on their conduct and habits, more especially on the description and cost of articles used by them, and on their frugality and forethought,’ and that ‘the lazy, the unskilful, and the improvident workman, whether he belongs to Australia or China, England or Russia, will always be poor and miserable’ (cited pp. 44-5).
'In given circumstances', Picchio argues in contrast, 'the normal supply [of labour] is determined by the material and political forces acting in the social reproduction of labour, including normal standards of living, hours, inclination to work, family structures and power relationships' (25). At any given time, then, the prevailing social production complex, as I shall call it, is structured around the wage relation, but shaped by struggles around a variety of interacting and changing social, political and institutional structures, options and processes. The great beauty of this approach is that the mediating role of wages is the only fixed feature of the interconnectedness of production and social reproduction. Everything else is subject to change.
Against this background, Picchio traces the changing roles of market, family, household and state in the social production complex in three case study chapters, which together develop the theme that from the Poor Law of 1834 onwards governments sought to minimize the costs to the state of social reproduction by criminalizing and punishing those ‘unwilling’ or unable to work (Chapter Three), with specific negative consequences for impoverished women (Chapter Four), and for the women’s labour market (Chapter Five). Throughout, the focus is on the specificity of circumstances arising from the separation of production and reproduction under capitalism, and the mediating role of the wage, in circumstances in which the state set out to make access to the means of subsistence and reproduction insecure. Overall, the argument revolves around the twin process of establishment of the family as the primary site of social reproduction, and the rendering ‘invisible’ of unwaged housework through its expulsion from ‘economics’, always in a context of likely failure on the part of the state, as ‘the role of the state as an adjustment mechanism is a difficult one: plans to control the reproduction of labour like the production of other commodities have never succeeded’ (72). I summarize the argument through selective quotation, then offer a discussion:
‘The developing industrial mode of production within the capitalist logic of accumulation created a general insecurity of access to the means of reproduction that could serve as a lever of command over work both in production and in reproduction, disciplining both houseworkers and waged workers to adapt to the needs of the accumulation of capital. For all workers this meant control over bodies, minds and emotions; but it imposed on women new modes of reproduction in which they were expected to function more and more as reproductive workers instead of as persons. Women had to reproduce waged workers, the basic capitalist commodity. In order to do this they too had to become capitalist workers, although as they received no wage for their work this fact was effectively hidden. Not only was their work made invisible, but their bodies and feelings were controlled by powerful and specific forms of repression – necessary because giving birth and emotional nourishment are essential elements in the process of reproduction of labour … The failures of the social policies of the 1834 Act show in fact that the family, and women within and outside it, did not function smoothly as an adjusting mechanism between production and reproduction, for in spite of social engineering they did not absorb all the shocks of the industrial capitalist labour market’ (74-5).
‘The progressive members of the [1905-1909] Royal Commission fought to keep the ground open for new social policies but they assumed that on the whole the family would continue to function as the basic reproductive unit for the waged labour market, without ever questioning the specific capitalist relationship between production and reproduction’ (94).
‘When the relationship between production and reproduction disappeared from the context of economic analysis the concrete work of reproduction was hidden from view, and houseworkers became invisible social subjects even though they represent a large section of the labouring population. More precisely, what is hidden is not housework and houseworkers, but the capitalist relationship between production and reproduction. That is how the central problem for any economic system comes to be seen as a narrow and peripheral women’s issue’ (95).
Housework is the production of labour as a commodity, while waged work is the exchange of labour. To be exchanged, labour must be produced; and to be used in the production of other commodities, labour must be produced and exchanged (96).
‘There are two ways of making [housewives] politically invisible: one is to consider them as potential political subjects only if they become waged workers, and the other is to glorify their role and push it out of the economic and political sphere. Both these perspectives aim to neutralize housework as an issue for political negotiation’ (110).
Along the way, Picchio stresses that there are real contradictions involved in the separation of production and reproduction in capitalism, which render the state project of securing social reproduction through disciplinary means problematic. In the first decade of the twentieth century, increasing unemployment in industry, restructuring in key productive sectors, changes in pension schemes, unemployment insurance, health services, children’s and women’s work, education and working hours, falling birth rates, concerns over standards of living, increased working class representation in parliament, changing scientific and ethical views of society, changes in family structures and a massive women’s suffrage movement all combined to render a residual programme of state support based upon criminalization and punishment (the workhouse) inefficient (59). Commission members were divided over the implications for the role of the state and the forms and degrees of its intervention in the labour market, and produced Majority and Minority reports; the latter advocated supplementing the ‘individual moral responsibility of the poor’ with the ‘collective and state responsibility for prevention of destitution’ (69), arguing that ‘in the long run the prevention of destitution would cost less, both financially and politically, than its repressive disciplining’ (70). In consequence, ‘nineteenth century privatization of the family was to be followed by its twentieth-century institutionalization … State intervention was seen not as a substitute for the family but as its safety net’ (86), and ‘the head of the family became the major agent of control of the process of reproduction, and conflicts were internalized within the family’ (89). The outcome, in other words, was a welfare system that revolved around the ‘male breadwinner’ and the family wage, but it did not resolve the fundamental problem that the wage could not be preserved as the mediating element between the production of goods and services and the process of social reproduction of the population if those ‘able to work’ could survive without it.
Picchio is writing at a particular moment of intensified reliance on the family to bear the cost of social reproduction in a period of neoliberal reform, and with a primary focus on the contributions of waged and unwaged workers to capitalist accumulation. This makes Chapter Five in particular, with its perspective circa 1985-90, an extremely valuable benchmark contribution. It also means that other aspects of social reproduction or factors pertinent to it are not so thoroughly investigated. For example, while the advanced economies on which she concentrates her attention exhibit a high level of separation between production and reproduction, the same is not true of the developing world, as she briefly notes (115, 132-3). Similarly, there is little development of the theme, pressing today, of the international labour market. Even so, what she does say, towards the very end of the book, in the context of welfare and labour market reform in Eastern and Western Europe, is striking enough to merit quoting at length:
'The social relations determined by the functioning of the waged labour market are regulated, in their general form, by competition among workers. ... Everyone would sympathize with the hunger of an immigrant worker if he/she did not constitute a threat to the prevailing structure of access to the means of subsistence. Given the fear induced by the basic insecurity of the labour market, workers tend to erect barriers against 'outsiders' in order to protect their 'privileged' position in relation to wages and the state.
This is particularly important in a world where an international labour market is being built up, rapidly bringing different races, societies and culture into contact all over the globe, with physical and cultural differences often being used as lines of demarcation between sections of the population. While with respect to the right of subsistence demarcations are ostensibly based on physical differences, in fact they reflect less visible differences in power relationships with the labour market and the state. Hostility to those who are different is based on insecurity and the fear of being cut off from access to the means of subsistence - which are made scarce not by nature but by the structure of social power.
The issues become clearer when they are defined in terms of the relation between production and the reproduction of labour. This relation must be kept compatible with the formation and accumulation of profit. When the costs of reproduction of labour cannot be contained through reduced consumption, increased housework or lower value of wage goods, the system may use immigrant workers, whose living standards are historically lower and who have less power, to keep down the average cost of reproduction. This segmentation depresses everybody's wages, not only because of competition but because the living standards of the weakest groups dramatically emphasize the insecurity endemic in the system.
Competition on the labour market now operates on a global scale, as marked differences in standards of living and security of access to the means of reproduction create strong incentives towards mobility in the international labour market. "Economic refugees" are an important structural feature of modern labour markets' (138-9).
Finally, given her primary focus on the social reproduction of labour and its relationship with the structure of the waged labour market’ (117), Picchio makes only passing reference to other aspects of global capitalism, notably the division of labour and technological revolution, and to changing structures of household and family, or developments such as increasing commodification of ‘household’ activities and even of childbirth itself, the cheapening of wage goods and transnational female economic migration and marriage. These have all impacted significantly, in different ways, on patterns of social reproduction across the world in the last thirty years, and demand further analysis. But Picchio provides the best place to start on this task.
You can see a 2012 video lecture by Professor Picchio at http://journals.kent.ac.uk/index.php/feministsatlaw/article/view/47/125