Capitalism requires what Rosa Luxemburg (2003 [1913]) termed milieus of primitive accumulation in order to survive. Forms of unpaid labour constitute such territories. Housework has traditionally been such a milieu of exploitation that has sustained capitalism and wage-labour. Housework means “superexploitation of non-wage labourers […] upon which wage labour exploitation then is possible” (Mies 1986, 48) because it involves the “externalization, or ex-territorialization of costs which otherwise would have to be covered by the capitalists” (p. 110). Housewifisation means the extension of super-exploitation and unpaid labour into realms beyond housework so that work or labour is transformed in such ways that it shows some parallels with the conditions of housework (Mies et al. 1988; Mies 1986; Fuchs 2014). Housewifised labour “bears the characteristics of housework” (Mies et al. 1988, 10).
Facebook labour is just like unpaid internships and the precariat’s labour a form of housewifised labour. Unpaid forms of labour are differently exploited than wage-labour in that they form super-exploited milieus of primitive accumulation. How can unpaid labour today best be made visible in order to resist and overcome it? All labour is based on a specific degree of surplus-labour. In unwaged labour, surplus-labour-time is extended to a maximum. A universal basic income guarantee that is funded out of capital taxation is a progressive demand that builds on and extends the demand of wages for housework. That the organic composition of labour is around 5.8 in an advanced country like the USA shows the role that unpaid labour-time plays in capitalism. Socialist universal basic income does not aims at reforming or improving capitalism, but to provide humans with autonomous space and time beyond capitalism, so that foundations for thinking, living, producing, consuming, and usage beyond the logic of capital can be strengthened.
References
Chapter Ten | Capitalism, Patriarchy, Slavery
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References
Amnesty International. 2016. “This Is What We Die For”: Human Rights Abuses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Power the Global Trade in Cobalt. London: AI.