1 If feminist theories may justifiably be considered one of the principal sites for a renewed reflection on exploitation, it is due in large part to the development of what today is known as feminist social reproduction theory. In its initial phase, during the 1970s, [1] the aim of this theoretical enterprise was to extend the Marxian theory of exploitation as formulated in Capital. Its principal argument was that the mechanisms at work in the exploitation of labor for the reproduction of labor-power are analogous to those of wage exploitation, and are equally essential to the accumulation of capital. In later phases in the development of social reproduction theory, reproduction has often been understood in a broader sense than just the reproduction of labor-power, and in some cases the capitalist appropriation of reproductive activities is no longer identified with the exploitation of labor. The theme of the exploitation of reproductive labor thus marks certain divergences between the different stages in the development of feminist social reproduction theory, [2] and also, as we shall see, between various contemporary versions of these theories.

2 These divergences concern questions of definition (how are we to understand the concepts of labor and reproduction?), debates in social theory (what role should the concept of reproduction play in a theory of capitalism?), and disagreements as to what models of social critique are most appropriate (should the capitalist appropriation of reproductive activities be considered in terms of the exploitation of labor, or the expropriation of activities essential to social life?). In order to analyze these divergences, we will begin by recalling how Capital addressed the question of the reproduction of labor-power. [3] We will then consider the ways in which feminist social reproduction theories developed via differing critical appropriations of Marx’s concepts and theses. Finally, we will highlight the importance of taking into account the various forms of exploitation specific to capitalist societies.

Productive labor and the reproduction of labor-power

3 In Capital, Marx gives decisive importance to the problematic of the reproduction of labor-power, since the value of labor-power is defined by the amount of labor necessary for its reproduction, and the difference between this amount of labor and the value created by the expenditure of labor-power defines surplus-value, i.e., exploitation as a source of profit. The problem is that Marx conceptualizes the reproduction of labor-power in terms of the consumption of the commodities necessary for such reproduction, rather than in terms of reproductive labor. Indeed, the value of labor-power is identified with the amount of labor necessary for the production of the commodities that the worker must consume to satisfy his “necessary requirements,” whether they are “natural” or depend “on the level of civilization attained by a country [...], on the conditions in which, and consequently on the habits and expectations with which, the class of free workers has been formed.” [4] That domestic labor is also required does not seem to be taken into account.

4 Marx is certainly aware that a specific activity is necessary in order to transform produced commodities into consumed commodities. He also knows that it is the members of the working class who carry out this activity upon their own initiative. He even points out that the worker works on the reproduction of his labor-power, not only out of an instinct for self-preservation, [5] but also to give meaning to his own existence. In the chapter on simple reproduction, he points out that the worker seeks to consume “for his own pleasure” and that the capitalist takes care to “reduce the worker’s individual consumption to the necessary minimum.” [6] It is the fact that the exploited and the exploiter have different perspectives on the legitimate forms of reproduction of labor-power that leads to the idea that the work of social reproduction is not just a contribution to the reproduction of exploitation, but also the occasion for practices of resistance to the reduction of workers’ bodies to exploited bodies, and also for the reassertion of the worker’s dignity, which is violated by exploitation. As Angela Davis notes, even in the harshest systems of exploitation there remains a part of domestic labor that cannot be appropriated by the exploiter. Indeed, in the capitalist system of plantation slavery, reproductive labor was “the only labor of the slave community which could not be directly and immediately claimed by the oppressor.” [7] And as bell hooks has subsequently pointed out, even when women workers are exploited as wage earners rather than slaves, domestic labor may seem like more dignified, free, and satisfying work. [8]

5 Although it is therefore clear that Marx recognizes that the transformation of wages into the satisfaction of “necessary requirements” does not happen automatically but requires an independent activity on the part of the worker, he conceives of this activity as one of consumption, not of labor. More precisely, the reproduction of labor-power is attributed to an activity of “individual consumption,” in contrast to the “productive consumption” proper to the production process. [9] Yet it seems clear that a significant amount of domestic labor is required on a daily basis to satisfy the necessary requirements of wage earners, just as procreative and educational labor is required to ensure the intergenerational reproduction of labor-power. [10] In order to complete the Marxian analysis of the reproduction of labor-power, therefore, it is necessary to acknowledge, as Lise Vogel does, that the “necessary labour” for the reproduction of labor-power

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includes several constituent processes. In the first place, it provides a certain amount of means of subsistence for individual consumption by direct producers. [. . .] A certain amount of supplementary labour must be performed in order that the necessaries can be consumed in appropriate form [. . .]. [. . .] [T]wo other sets of labour-processes can be identified. A portion of necessary labour goes to provide means of subsistence to maintain members of the exploited classes not currently working as direct producers—the elderly, the sick, a wife. And an important series of labour-processes associated with the generational replacement of labour-power may also take place—that is, the bearing and raising of the children of the subordinate class. [11]

7 Insofar as these different labor processes are necessary for capitalist production, as Marx argues, and capitalists benefit from them, while this labor remains unpaid it is tempting to conclude that this is exploited labor. Insofar as it is women who are generally assigned the labor of the reproduction of labor-power, this then leads to the idea that the capitalist exploitation of productive labor is accompanied by the capitalist exploitation of reproductive labor assigned to women. This is the thread that runs through the first phase in the development of feminist social reproduction theory, which thus proposed a Marxist feminism in which women’s oppression was conceived of in terms of exploitation (rather than extra-economic oppression), this exploitation being that of their reproductive labor (rather than just their wage labor), and according to which they were exploited primarily by capitalism (rather than primarily by men).

The exploitation of reproductive labor as a source of surplus-value

8 The first version of feminist social reproduction theory emphasizes first of all that the reproduction of labor-power within the domestic sphere presupposes labor; secondly that this labor does not only produce use-value but also exchange-value; thirdly that the exploitation of this labor is an extraction of surplus-value just like the exploitation of wage labor; and fourthly that the question of wages must be central to the struggle against the exploitation of domestic labor, just as it is central to the struggle against the exploitation of wage labor. [12]

9 In this early version of social reproduction theory, the concept of reproductive labor is conceived primarily with reference to the domestic labor of housewives. The legitimacy of the category of domestic labor can only be disputed by a narrow conception of labor as an activity performed in exchange for remuneration. But this conception is too closely linked to the specificities of the organization of productive activities in capitalist societies to claim any general applicability. The fact that wage labor is considered the paradigm of labor in these societies implies a lack of recognition of the social functions performed by domestic activities and of the hardships specific to them. These activities are indeed labor, if by labor we mean those activities that produce use-value (value in the form of goods or services), that include a dimension of drudgery that distinguishes them from activities undertaken for pleasure (even if there is pleasure to be found in all labor, including domestic labor), and that are subject to prescriptions in terms of both their objectives and the way they are to be carried out.

10 Contrary to what the “wages for housework” campaign might suggest, the concept of domestic labor must be understood to encompass more than just housework (shopping, cooking, washing up, cleaning, ironing, etc.). It also includes procreative labor, sexual labor, educational labor, and care labor on behalf of vulnerable persons. But this extension of the term is no less controversial than the idea of domestic labor itself. Against the idea of procreative labor, it could be argued that procreation is a biological function that does not involve labor—an argument that can be countered with the fact that human procreation is not just a biological but also a technical activity, [13] that it is subject to powerful social constraints bearing upon women’s bodies and behavior, [14] and that it often occasions an experience that is in many ways analogous to that of labor (as the literature on surrogate mothers has made abundantly clear [15]). The relevance of the category of sexual labor is even more contested. It is certainly indisputable that women’s sexual activities take the form of labor when they are paid for, but patriarchal ideology would have it that, within the family and marital context, they are invariably motivated by love, the search for pleasure, or even “marital duty.” Even if sexual activities in this context cannot always be categorized as labor, however, it is difficult to deny that in some cases they must be understood in this way. [16] Objections to the idea of educational and care labor are of a similar nature to those mentioned above. Since educational activities and those related to the care of vulnerable persons are generally considered to be labor when carried out in the private and public sectors, in order to resist seeing them as an extension of domestic labor it must be postulated that within the domestic space they can only be performed out of love or duty. The inadmissibility of such a postulate speaks for itself. Insisting that the various components of domestic labor can indeed be classed as labor makes it possible both to shed light on the hardships and social functions associated with these activities, and to emphasize that their underpayment means that domestic labor is exploited labor. [17]

11 Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Selma James, and Silvia Federici emphasize that domestic labor contributes to the production of a commodity—labor-power—which has a use-value as well as an exchange-value, and which indeed is “the most precious product to appear on the capitalist market.” [18] They add that this value-producing labor is underpaid, and that this underpayment is the source of a capitalist appropriation of surplus-value. [19] The principal argument for identifying reproductive labor with surplus-value-producing labor is that if reproductive labor were paid for by capitalists, then profits would be reduced. If all profit could be explained by the appropriation of surplus-value, then one could indeed deduce that there is a capitalist appropriation of surplus-value-producing labor. However, as Marx rightly points out, even in the capitalist mode of production, there are multiple sources of profit. In particular, it is necessary to distinguish between industrial profit, whose origin is surplus-value produced by surplus labor, and merchant’s profit, which comes from the sale of goods above their value or their purchase below their value. [20] In the case of reproductive labor, however, it seems more straightforward to say that the source of profit is the purchase of labor-power below its value—namely, because the domestic labor necessary for its reproduction is underpaid—rather than to explain it as a capitalist appropriation of surplus labor generative of surplus-value. Indeed, in the case of domestic labor there is no equivalent of the capitalist tendency to produce ever greater surplus labor capable of producing ever more surplus-value. [21] Moreover, insofar as, according to Marx, value is created not by concrete labor but by abstract labor, subject to the norms of average productivity and intensity of socially necessary labor, it should be possible to distinguish between concrete and abstract labor in domestic labor. Leopoldina Fortunati has defended the existence of such a distinction, [22] and it is true that domestic labor is subject to constraining social norms. However, insofar as there is no constraint on the production of surplus-value, no materialization of this constraint in constant surveillance systems, and no process of validation of the norms of domestic labor on the market, it is difficult to see how the Marxian definition of the substance of value in terms of abstract labor could be applied to domestic labor. Indeed, one is inclined to wonder whether, in early social reproduction theory, the thesis that reproductive labor produces surplus-value is not based more on a general interpretation of capitalism as a process of subordination of all activities to the production of surplus-value, or as an extended process of “real subsumption,” than on the Marxian theory of value itself. [23]

12 At this stage of the analysis, it is difficult to avoid asking the naive question: Why couch the argument within the framework of the theory of value at all? If the essential argument in favor of the thesis that there is capitalist exploitation of reproductive labor is to point out that a better remuneration of this reproductive labor would imply a decrease in capitalist profit, then a detour via the theory of value is entirely superfluous. Indeed, it is obvious that an increase in wages (whether it be the family wage, a wage for women subjected to the double working day, or “wages for housework”) would imply a fall in the rate of profit. This fact is enough to endow the demand for “wages for housework” with the anti-capitalist significance it enjoys in early feminist social reproduction theory [24]—even if it is also true that capitalism survived significant wage increases during the Fordist period. In any case, the direct financial correlation between a rise in costs and a fall in profits is independent of the thesis that domestic labor produces surplus-value: it is a purely financial correlation! Moreover, if we want to justify paying a wage for domestic labor, it is not necessary to show that this labor is value-producing; it is sufficient to show that it performs a fundamental social function that deserves to be remunerated in proportion to its social utility—precisely the kind of argument that underpins the campaigns of public service workers for improved wages.

13 With regard to the theorization of capitalist exploitation, the main significance of early feminist social reproduction theory is undoubtedly that it draws attention to the potential contradiction between the demand to increase surplus labor (and thus the tendency to transform women and children into exploited workers) and the need to reproduce labor-power—a contradiction that is expressed in particular by capitalism’s oscillation between strategies for placing women in wage labor and strategies for confining them to the domestic sphere. [25] These theories also rightly point out that the problem of exploitation tends to be posed in different terms depending upon whether wages are conceived as remuneration for an individual wage earner only, or as remuneration for all those involved in the process of the reproduction of the labor-power of the exploited wage earner: wives, children, and those deemed too old for professional labor but who can still contribute to domestic labor. Wage exploitation and domestic exploitation thus appear as two sides of the same class experience.

14 Christine Delphy and Diana Leonard pose the objection to theories of social reproduction that the actual experience of exploitation is one of exploitation by husbands rather than by capitalists, [26] and that bourgeois women’s domestic labor is also exploited. [27] It is certainly unfair to accuse Dalla Costa, James, and Federici of ignoring the fact that women assigned to domestic labor are in a situation of economic dependency and that male domination based on that dependency is a fundamental problem for these women. Indeed, Dalla Costa and James argue that the family wage transforms the exploited factory employee into an agent of exploitation (a “foreman”) in the domestic space. [28] And Federici sees this transformation as one of the mainsprings of male complicity in wage exploitation: not only does the domestic wage “discipline” women, whom it places in a relationship of economic dependency, but it also offers male proletarians a “social power” that acts as partial compensation for their own experience of servitude. [29]

15 It would be equally erroneous to think that male domination is the only type of domination that is experienced, and that the idea of exploitation by capitalism finds no correspondence at all in the experience of those women confined to domestic labor. Is it not obvious that the lower one’s income, the more difficult it is to feel that the demands of domestic labor are fully met: the difficulty of finding cheap, quality food; the difficulty of housework in substandard housing; the difficulty of care work when one’s spouse is plagued by occupational illnesses, afflicted by workplace accidents, or undermined by fear of dismissal or ever-increasing productivity demands. [30] These hardships, as well as the skills developed to overcome them, are part of a class experience that can undoubtedly be connected to the experience of wage exploitation. One of the aims of feminist social reproduction theory is precisely to develop theoretical tools to help establish this connection.

16 Nonetheless, some experiences of the exploitation of domestic labor cannot be adequately represented by the model of capitalist exploitation of reproductive labor. In the case of an upper-middle-class housewife with no resources of her own who delegates to other women the aspects of reproductive work she finds the most unrewarding, one can imagine that her husband’s salary will be high enough to ensure remuneration in kind (consumer goods, housing, etc.) and a right to a share of the income which more than make up for the domestic labor she carries out. Such a woman will not generally see herself as exploited—which is not to say that she is not oppressed as a woman—nor is there any theoretical or political reason to try to convince her that she should see herself as such. On the other hand, a middle-class woman who earns the same or more than her husband, but who also does all the domestic labor, may experience her situation as exploitative, but not as an exploitation by capitalism, and here again there is no theoretical or political reason to try to convince her that she should think otherwise. In this case, the model of patriarchal exploitation of domestic labor—that is to say, the appropriation by the “male class” of the surplus labor of the “female class” [31]—seems the most appropriate. Between these pure cases of capitalist exploitation of reproductive labor and patriarchal exploitation of labor, there are undoubtedly various mixed cases.

The shifts of a problematic

17 Subsequent developments in feminist social reproduction theory have been marked by a series of notable shifts. Not all of these shifts involve a break with the original theoretical orientations and political objectives, so it may seem legitimate to speak of social reproduction theory as a unified whole, [32] especially when viewed in terms of the renewal of the socialist project to which it contributes. [33] But there have also been major discontinuities that bring into play profound theoretical and political divergences. In order to identify these shifts, we will start from the text that has contributed the most to raising awareness of the specificities and the political force of contemporary developments in social reproduction theory: Feminism for the 99%. [34] We will also refer to the books and articles written independently by the three authors of this manifesto, Cinzia Arruzza, [35] Tithi Bhattacharya, [36] and Nancy Fraser, [37] in order to highlight the theoretical and political divergences between the first two, who continue to think social reproduction through Marx, and Fraser, who thinks it more through Polanyi.

18 The first shift is associated with the introduction of an opposition between “social reproduction” and “societal reproduction.” [38] For Johanna Brenner and Barbara Laslett, who first introduced this distinction, the concept of societal reproduction covers what Marx theorized through the concept of “reproduction” when he emphasized that “every social process of production is at the same time a process of reproduction.” [39] The specific economic dynamics of the capitalist mode of production (production of surplus-value and accumulation) can only develop if they reproduce their own conditions. The reproduction of labor-power is only one of these conditions, because it is also necessary to reproduce the existence of a working class forced to sell its labor-power to a capitalist class, and to maintain functional relations between the sector producing production goods and that producing consumer goods. The Marxian concept of reproduction thus refers to the reproduction of labor-power, the reproduction of structural inequalities, and the reproduction of capital, as well as the interweaving of these three types of reproduction. This point of view, which is maintained in early feminist social reproduction theory, is judged insufficient in the later version because it entails that “the sphere of reproduction is submerged into production, thereby losing its very specificity.” [40] Marx, it is argued, proposed a pertinent analysis of the systemic reproduction of capitalism, but failed to understand that the process of social reproduction, although always conditioned by it, was irreducible to it. Already in Brenner and Laslett’s work, the distinction between social and societal reproduction broadly overlaps with the opposition between the social and the economic, the process of reproduction being conceived of as the origin of “the perpetuation of society,” as opposed to the economic process of commodity production. [41] This distinction can be understood as pertaining to two different factors within the same socioeconomic process, as when Arruzza and Bhattacharya point to the processual and unitary orientation of social reproduction theory, [42] or it can be thought of according to a dualistic conception of the social and the economic, as in the work of Fraser, who reformulates the thesis of the potential contradiction between the production of surplus-value and social reproduction on the basis of Polanyi’s notion of the self-defense of society against the capitalist economy. [43] In both versions, the concept of social reproduction has a normative scope, and not a purely functional one as in Marx and early social reproduction theory, making it possible to oppose the demands of social reproduction to those of societal reproduction in its capitalist form.

19 These first two shifts (the opposition between social and societal, and the addition of a normative dimension to the concept of reproduction) are linked to an extension of the concept of social reproduction. It no longer refers only to the reproduction of labor-power, but to all the conditions for the “perpetuation of society.” In Feminism for the 99%, the concept of social reproduction is said to refer to “the work of people-making.” [44] In Bhattacharya, this is still understood in terms of the reproduction of labor-power, [45] but in Capitalism: A Conversation in Critical Theory, Fraser gives it maximum extension. After criticizing early feminist social reproduction theory for having “construe[d] social reproduction quite narrowly, as concerned only with the reproduction of labor power,” she adds:

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social reproduction encompasses the creation, socialization, and subjectivation of human beings more generally, in all their aspects. It also includes the making and remaking of culture, of the various swaths of intersubjectivity that human beings inhabit—the solidarities, social meanings, and value horizons in and through which they live and breathe. [46]

21 Doesn’t such an extension risk entirely depriving the concept of social reproduction of its specificity? Don’t the activities of productive labor, which belong to the sphere of societal reproduction, opposed by definition to that of social reproduction, produce a socialization and subjectivation effect? Do they not also contribute to the making and remaking of culture? Are they not a place where specific solidarities, social meanings, and value horizons are formed? To deny this would be to adopt a narrow conception of labor as instrumental activity, a conception that has been repeatedly criticized by the contemporary social sciences and critical theory. [47]

22 A fourth shift concerns the legitimacy of the problematic of the exploitation of reproductive labor. In Feminism for the 99% as in the publications of Arruzza and Bhattacharya, the activities of social reproduction are considered as labor [48] and as being subject to a specific form of exploitation. The thesis that this labor is exploited is based on the observation that both domestic labor and professional labor in the sectors involved in social reproduction are underpaid, owing to a relative devaluation of reproductive labor in comparison to productive labor, indicative of the general deprecation of the activities typically carried out by women. It is no longer a question of proving either that there is exploitation or that this exploitation is necessary for capitalism, as was the case in early social reproduction theory, but only of acknowledging the theoretical and political consequences of the existence of the “differential of exploitation that characterizes feminized labor.” [49] The thesis that exploitation is a class issue, as well as the traditional political link between exploitation and striking, remain central. The strategy of the feminist strike is designed to reveal the importance of the social functions of reproductive labor, and thereby to prompt a revaluation of reproductive labor that should lead to an increase in its remuneration and to the establishment of more balanced relations between productive and reproductive labor. As in early feminist social reproduction theory, the problematic of reproductive labor thus makes it possible both to broaden the concept of labor and to draw attention to the diverse manners in which labor is exploited. Nevertheless, this stands in stark contrast to the “antiwork politics” [50] characteristic of early feminist social reproduction theory. The strategy is no longer so much to liberate women from their assignment to reproductive labor by calling for its socialization—a strategy that, moreover, leads to the interpretation of the strike as an escape from work [51]—as to revalue the activities that have been assigned to women, as well as the skills and social relations associated with them, while emphasizing that this revaluation would also benefit a large proportion of men, in particular those employed in the education, care, and social services sectors, since these fall within the scope of reproductive labor, being concerned with care in the broad sense.

23 By contrast, in the work of Nancy Fraser, the maximal scope given to the concept of social reproduction makes it impossible for all activities contributing to reproduction to be considered labor, while the Polanyian opposition between economy and society leads to the argument that the concept of exploitation loses its relevance when applied to the process of social reproduction. Rather than identifying reproduction in a broad sense with the “labor of the production of society,” [52] as in Susan Ferguson, Fraser prefers to describe it as a set of “activities.” Drawing on Marx’s chapter on “so-called primitive accumulation,” as well as on the concept of “accumulation by dispossession” coined by David Harvey, Fraser further proposes to distinguish between the “hidden abode of production,” [53] the site of labor exploitation, and another, better hidden and more fundamental “hidden abode,” that of the “expropriation” of the activities of social reproduction. She credits Marx with showing that the sphere of market exchange, where freedom and equality seem to reign supreme, is in fact based on the structural relations of inequality and domination that prevail in the sphere of production and which are adequately described by the concepts of labor and exploitation. But she adds that the processes of market exchange and labor exploitation are made possible by the fact that reproductive activities, conceived as non-economic conditions of the economy, are subject to capitalist appropriation. [54] This is a strong and attractive thesis, even if one might still legitimately ask whether most activities oriented toward reproduction, even in this extended sense, are not in fact labor. Moreover, it might be considered that the concept that best accounts for the experience of the reduction of an activity to a commodity destined to contribute to capitalist profit remains that of exploitation. The question of the experiential content of the distinction between exploitation and expropriation also arises here. For the women concerned, is the experience of the commodification of their labor and their bodies not also invariably an experience of exploitation? [55]

24 The maximum extension Fraser gives to the concept of social reproduction is therefore open to a twofold theoretical objection: it tends to dissolve the opposition between social reproduction and societal reproduction, and it establishes a distinction between the exploitation of labor and the expropriation of activities whose criteria are uncertain and whose experiential content seems limited. Furthermore, it is questionable whether social reproduction should be promoted to the status of ultimate foundation of the social process, rather than being just one factor in it. [56] In addition to these theoretical objections, there are also political objections. The strength of Feminism for the 99% lies in the fact that its broadening of the concept of reproduction makes it possible to present the majority of wage earners as reproductive workers, and thus to envisage a broad convergence of the struggles of domestic workers and wage earners in the private and public sectors, in response to neoliberal capitalism’s attacks on social reproduction. This means drawing on an expanded concept of the working class—defined by the different experiences of exploitation of productive and reproductive labor and taking into account its gendered and racialized dimensions [57]—in order to construct an anti-neoliberal and anti-capitalist political perspective. But to give maximum extension to the concept of reproduction is to “do away with class,” since it is likely that everyone in some way contributes to the reproduction of social life. [58] Introducing a dualism between exploitation and expropriation weakens the proposition of the feminist strike, insofar as its political force depends upon the fact that the strike is seen to be an appropriate response to labor exploitation. [59] Moreover, one may wonder whether the assumption that one “hidden abode” is more fundamental than another does not run the risk of renewing a hierarchy between struggles against neoliberalism and capitalism, some of which could then appear more fundamental than others, when one of the functions of the perspectival dualism previously defended by Fraser, in which social injustice is understood conjointly in terms of recognition and redistribution, was to refuse any such hierarchization of struggles. [60]

Incompatible or complementary models?

25 Let us recapitulate. What is specific to early feminist social reproduction theory is that it emphasizes that the exploitation of domestic labor is analogous to wage exploitation (it is a capitalist appropriation of surplus-value) and that domestic workers are exploited by capitalism, a claim that confers an anti-capitalist dimension upon the refusal of the exploitation that such workers undergo. The strength of this theoretical proposal lies in the fact that the capitalist nature of this exploitation is analyzed from the point of view of a theory of the specificities of the capitalist mode of production. But the fact that this theory is drawn from Marx has as its counterpart the fact that everything ends up being based on a theory of value that can be seen as somewhat inapplicable to reproductive labor, since it is difficult to see in precisely what sense the latter creates surplus-value. Moreover, it seems superfluous if the intention is to establish an inverse proportional relation between capitalist profit and the remuneration of domestic labor. However, the political strength of this early feminist social reproduction theory is that it opens up the horizon for an anti-capitalist alliance between those who refuse domestic exploitation and those who experience wage exploitation, while taking into account the irreducibly different nature of the struggles against these two forms of exploitation. Its drawback is that the patriarchal structures of domestic exploitation seem to be minimized, or that gender seems to dissolve into class.

26 The shifts linked to later developments in social reproduction theory have led either to downplaying the relevance of the problematic of the exploitation of domestic labor, or to reformulating it according to the model of the structural underpayment of activities to which women are assigned. The concept of exploitation is no longer defined within the framework of a theory of the economic dynamics specific to the capitalist mode of production, but in reference to a socioeconomic conception of capitalist societies that emphasizes that they are characterized both by a class relation and by a gender relation that makes productive labor, understood as masculine, the norm of labor, while systematically devaluing reproductive labor, understood as feminine. Since the concept of social reproduction no longer refers only to the reproduction of labor-power, but to a set of essential social functions, it is then possible to present the experience of the contrast between the underpayment of a form of labor and the essential social functions of this labor as an experience of exploitation. And insofar as neoliberalism systematically attacks socialized forms of education, health care, and social protection, lowering wages and increasing the drudgery involved in these activities, all the while generating what can be presented as a crisis of social reproduction, these experiences of exploitation, as well as the feminist strike in which they can find an immediate political outlet, can be recognized as being of fundamental strategic significance. The counterpart of this theoretical-political proposition is that the link between the exploitation of productive labor and the exploitation of reproductive labor tends to become more tenuous, and the critique of the exploitation of productive labor remains largely unthematized, even though it too has given rise to manifestos in the age of the labor crisis and of extreme inequality [61] and seems equally essential from the perspective of a struggle against the exploitative nature of capitalism.

27 What can we conclude from these strengths and weaknesses, if not that there are possible complementarities to be found here? There is nothing absurd in thinking that, as bell hooks suggests, it is essential for the feminist movement to give a central place to the question of “the economic exploitation of women” [62]—which does not mean reducing everything to exploitation—while also taking into account the fact that not all women are exploited in the same way and to the same degree. [63] Yet, as Maria Mies notes, women may be subject to a threefold exploitation—as human beings by men, as housewives by capital, and then also as wage earners—and these three forms of exploitation must be analytically distinguished from each other in order to understand how they can overdetermine one another and compound their effects. [64]

28 Nor is it absurd to think that an authentically socialist project should adopt the perspective of an alliance of different struggles against the exploitative nature of capitalism, while taking into account the diversity of ways in which exploitation is experienced, including those ways that are not directly linked to the most fundamental economic dynamics of capitalist societies. The challenge is then to link the different feminist theorizations of the patriarchal exploitation of domestic labor and the capitalist exploitation of reproductive labor with the analysis of the exploitation of wage earners or self-employed workers, which is based on different mechanisms to those of the exploitation of domestic or reproductive labor. And yet affirming that the alliance of different refusals of exploitation is necessary both from a feminist perspective and from the perspective of a socialist overcoming of capitalism does not stop us from thinking that other alliances may be required, in particular with the struggles against the undemocratic (particularly evident during our era of neoliberal de-democratization) and ecocidal nature of capitalism. [65]