Reproduction (economics) - Reproduction of Labor Power

Reproduction of Labor Power

Reproduction can also refer to the worker's daily reproduction of his own labor power. This consists of the tasks of everyday existence — food preparation, laundry and so forth — that maintain him and his ability to show up at his job as required. Since roughly the 16th century, much of this domestic labor has been made the responsibility of women, through various developments put in motion by the power-institutions, in the transition period from feudalism to capitalism. Adding to the process of social degradation of women in that period, was the devaluation of the reproduction of labor. As Silvia Federici notes: "In the new monetary regime, only production-for-market was defined as value-creating activity, whereas the reproduction of the worker began to be considered as valueless from an economic viewpoint and even ceased to be considered as work". Thus it is of particular interest in feminist economics. It was, for example, reported in 1988 that the paid work done by both men and women outside the home in West Germany totals 55,000 million hours a year, earning them a total of $335 billion; but housework done by women inside the home totals 53,000 million hours a year, which earnt them no employee salary at all (New Internationalist, issue 181, March 1988).

One can conclude that for the business economy to operate, a total amount of unsalaried labour hours is required which may be close to the total amount of salaried hours worked. If that unpaid work had to be separately paid as a cash wage, at market rates applicable for that sort of work, the economy would break down, since neither employers nor paid employees could afford the bill - in particular given that women must already work more salaried hours these days to supplement household income. This example brings out the point that the "market economy" in reality cannot even function and reproduce itself without a very large amount of non-market activity, i.e. without a lot of (voluntary) work performed "for free". This reality has been largely ignored in official economics until recently, and the total value of household labour has never been accounted for in the standard national accounts, even although such social accounts do acknowledge that non-market production exists, and to some extent impute values for non-commercial services (such as government services and the "service" of owner-occupied housing).

One of the principal inventors of modern national accounts, Simon Kuznets, did at one time suggest that the value of household labour should be estimated as a standard measure, even just for the sake of objectivity about the economy, but that argument was rejected. Later, the economist Robert Eisner tried to estimate the value of "non-market outputs" (Eisner, The total incomes system of accounts. University of Chicago Press, 1989). His calculations suggested that in the United States, the value of unpaid household work declined from about 45% of conventional Gross National Product in 1945 to about 33% in 1981 (p. 41f.; cf. Review of Income and Wealth, series 37, number 4, December 1991, p. 455).