Household Production, Household Activity, and Human Development

Abstract

In a socialist mode of production, human activity is no longer constrained by the capitalist need to maximize surplus labor, and correspondingly minimize necessary labor. The guiding principle for its organization can therefore be the development and realization of human potential. Some idea of what this could consist of can be derived from observations of the struggle by both wage laborers and household laborers for such goals within the capitalist mode of production, a struggle that is distinct from that necessary to resist the capitalist appropriation of surplus labor. In so doing, it directs attention to the large proportion of the human activity of the working class within capitalist societies that takes the form of household labor, relative to wage labor, and thus its potential significance for the restructuring of human activity in a socialist mode of production.