Selma James - payment for housework

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jun/08/life-in-writing-selma-james


A life in writing: Selma James

'By demanding payment for housework we attack what is terrible about caring in our capitalist society'

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The last time Selma James was interviewed by the Guardian was in 1976, by the feminist columnist Jill Tweedie. At that time, James was a household name – in feminist households at least – and this is how Tweedie began: "To many women in the women's movement, the Wages for Housework campaigners come over like Jehovah's Witnesses … Selma James and her sister enthusiasts … harangue conferences, shout from soapboxes, gesticulate on television, burn with a strange fever … On the street corner they go down well. Within the movement … they set up a high level of irritation. Eyes roll heavenwards, figures slump in seats as yet another campaigner leaps for the platform."

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Her campaigning and her writing – the two are indivisible – spring from one central insight: that "housework" (not just vacuuming, but all the work involved in meeting the physical and emotional needs of others, from cradle to grave) is central to the reproduction of humanity, and therefore to capitalism. By focusing on the unwaged, Wages for Housework revolutionises our idea of what work is, and who the working class are. It allows us to see the potential collective power of those who are most isolated and seem powerless: women stuck at home changing nappies. And it goes straight to the heart of a dilemma that still plagues many women: "I started," James says now, "as a housewife refusing housework. As a mother, doing this work that is so central to society, I was locked in and impoverished. But this work is not like other work: we hate it, and we want to do it. By demanding payment for housework we attack what is terrible about caring in our capitalist society, while protecting what is great about it, and what it could be. We refuse housework, because we think everyone should be doing it."