Introduction
At the heart of the class struggle under capitalism is the fact that for capital, labour-power is merely an element of production and source of surplus value, whereas for workers, it is inseparable from themselves as living human beings. Struggles over wages, the duration and conditions of waged work, and control over it, have easily been recognised by Marxists as important aspects of class struggle. Yet the relations and conditions under which labour-power is produced, though equally important, have received far less attention, except from Marxist feminists and feminist Marxists. Given the centrality of labour-power to capitalism – since as the only commodity that can produce surplus value, and therefore profit, it is the sine qua non of accumulation – it is somewhat surprising that Marx nowhere describes its production. Engels did recognise the existence of domestic labour and the gendered relations within it, but did not take the analysis further. The domestic labour debate of the 1970s was an attempt to fill this gap, but it left many of the crucial issues unresolved.
One consequence of the under-theorisation of this particular arena of class struggle by Marxists is that it has been largely ceded to reactionary ideologies and politics. In Third World countries like India, it also results in extremely high rates of infant and maternal mortality, malnutrition, and disability or premature death resulting from preventable or curable diseases. This article attempts to take up this theoretical task, using examples from contemporary India. Recognition that the production of labour-power constitutes a crucial arena of class struggle would enable Marxists both to combat male domination within the working class more effectively, and to play a more effective role in revolutionising the social relations of production.