The Role of Household Production in the Determination of Wages and the Process of Capitalist Production

Abstract

Wages in the capitalist mode of production must be sufficient to ensure the resources necessary for the production/reproduction of labor power. As such they constitute a supplement to the production by the working class in the form of household production and petty-commodity production. The growth of capitalist production, and the increase in the proportion of total labor time that takes the form of wage labor, can thus be understood as resulting from the reduction over time in the labor allocated by the working-class household to these two other forms of production. These changes must be distinguished from the changing gender/age composition of the components of labor.