Maria Mies

References for Theme: Maria Mies

Patriarchy and Accumulation On A World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour (1986)
Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale (1986)
(p.47) It is thus necessary, with regard to the concept of productivity of labour, to reject its narrow definitionand to show that labour can only be productive in the sense of producing surplus value as long as it can tap,extract, exploit, and appropriate that labour which is spent in the production of life, or in subsistence productionwhich is non-wage labour mainly done by women. As this production of life is the perennial preconditionof all other historical forms of productive labour, including that under conditions of capital accumulation,it has to be defined as work and not as unconscious 'natural' activity. Human beings do not only live: they produce their...