This is in sharp contrast to how James saw the purpose of the women’s liberation movement. She did not believe that having an identity of womanhood exempted her peers from the very critiques they were making of men and mainstream society.

“Capital itself is seizing upon the same impetus which created a movement—the rejection by millions of women of women’s traditional place—to recompose the work force with increasing numbers of women. The movement can only develop in opposition to this. It poses by its very existence and must pose with increasing articulation in action that women refuse the myth of liberation through work.”[14]

Comparing the National Organization of Women’s (NOW) “Statement of Purpose” reveals the borders of what would be polite and acceptable feminism: “The purpose of NOW is to take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men.”[15]

What about how NOW viewed housework for women? NOW saw housework only in relationship to how it affected the ability of women to climb higher in the professional fields: “…childbearing and rearing which continues to be a most important part of most women’s lives-still is used to justify barring women from equal professional and economic participation and advance.” If NOW’s argument is followed closely, the purpose of their statement should be ideologically and programmatically clearer. James’ demands and those of NOW reveal sharp differences in their audiences. NOW is addressed to middle class women. James felt solidarity with the working class, “…the role of the working class housewife, which we believe has been indispensable to capitalist production, is the determinant for the position of all other women.”[16] Whereas NOW was worried that, “In all the professions considered of importance to society, and in the executive ranks of industry and government, women are losing ground.”

This is not surprising considering that Betty Friedan was one of the founding members of the organization. In her work, The Feminine Mystique, when women ask themselves, “Is this all?” is an implicit commentary on housework.[17] Friedan’s introductory chapter titled, “The Problem that has no Name,” ends by naming that problem, “I want something more than my husband and my children and my home.”[18] James is not in complete opposition with what Friedan says. But Friedan’s solution also carries a deep commentary on the inherent degradation of housework with the prescription being professional work.

While Friedan’s and NOW’s liberal sensitivities found paradise in the office, or careers in academia or the arts scene which gave them a sense of freedom outside the realm of class or racial conflict, more radical feminists were rooting their sense of paradise in a head-on collision with class and racial conflict—towards revolution. But even socialist feminists, as they were apt to call themselves, could not escape prescriptive and problematic measures towards solving the “woman question.”

Shiela Rowbotham’s article in Radical America, “The Carrot, The Stick, And the Movement,” challenges many of Selma’s assertions of a woman’s power at home. “If we only say women should organise [sic] where they work how do women on strike get support from other workers?…How do they get strike pay?” Rowbotham hits a sensitive nerve in the campaign by asking important strategic questions that cannot be discarded easily. Is there an indiscrete endorsement of women staying home over working? Rowbotham argues that an emphasis is being put on the housewife, on “…organisation [sic] at home, around the reproduction of the labour [sic] force at the expense of organisation [sic] at the point of production.”[19] This is taking Selma out of context. She does not believe that a woman’s place is in the kitchen, bedroom, or the farm. In fact, she wants to link the struggle at the points of production in the factory, farm, mine, or office with struggles at the point of production in the home.

The key piece that Rowbotham misses is that the home is in fact a crucial point of production. Rowbotham’s criticism continues, “It’s no good making a demand like paying people to do housework. This does not socialise [sic] housework. It merely confirms the isolation of the houseworker [sic], in her, or less likely in his, nuclear home. It does not connect those who are responsible for the reproduction of the work force to wage workers in the commodity production.”[20]

Years later, Ellen Mallos in the introduction to The Politics of Housework would point to three reasons why women should not be paid for housework: 1) It continues the patriarchal assumption that housework is for women; 2) It does not end the isolation of housework; 3) No society, whether socialist or capitalist, can pay a proper wage for housework. What these critiques have in common is that they see the wages for housework campaign in a social democratic welfare framework. As much as the demand is about getting a few dollars and cents in the hands of women it is more about theorizing a course of action from a point of view which takes into account where women are at and not where we would like them to be.

James is trying to deal with a difficult question. Millions of women do unwaged housework every day. If they went running to get a job in the factory, the nature of capitalism would potentially drop wage prices and artificially create women as the opponents of the male and female workers in the factories where the women are trying to get a job. James is constantly trying to unite the working class, place the self-activity of women at the front, and paint a giant bull’s eye on the capitalists for all working people to fight.

James’ program does not appear to be a solution to capitalism, but should be looked at as a transitional program with the goal being the abolishment of wages, oppression of women at the workplace and home. James makes a bold attempt to start her political and strategic theorization from where the actual lives of women are at. No amount of prophecy or theory can change the fact that for many women, the point of production is not in a car factory or office but the home. No one ever tells students to get jobs, peasants to become working class, workers to become revolutionary before they can take political action. Why should it be any different for housewives?

Capitalist society has devised many ways to exploit the labor of working folks. One of them is the unpaid labor of women. The work women do at home is critical for the functioning of the working class family. So far, it has gone unrecognized and costs nothing for the capitalists. Capitalism has benefited tremendously by not recognizing the value of labor at home. James wants to end this free ride. Not for the purpose of making capitalism more accountable, but for the strategic needs of women at home and the working class in general.

There are other questions which must be asked as well. How does the payment of women’s labor at home transition into a wageless society as James envisions? Doesn’t the payment of wages from the State add to the dependency of working class women on the State? How does this benefit the working class in general? What kind of organization will handle the needs of housewives and working folks? On what basis will they work together?

These questions seem hostile in light of theories which say that a reserve army of labor is the strategic enemy of working folks and comment little on housewives as strategic partners to the working class in the class struggle. And this is exactly the frame of thought that James is trying to break out of. She thinks of the working class not to be found only at the point of production, but other sites as well which are critical for the working class and capitalism to function. “To the degree that we demand and win a wage we can refuse to be the army of wageless threatening from outside the factory every struggle of women (and men) inside to work less and get paid more.”[21] James does not believe that workers at the point of production can fight the class struggle alone. James is clear in recognizing the role unemployed folks play in breaking strikes. She sees her demands for wages for housework as giving women social power to resist the temptation to go into factories and crack the bargaining power of workers.

Nor does James have intentions of isolating women in housework. In fact she sees housework as part of an important social function in capitalist society as mentioned earlier in this essay. She believes that housework is the basis of organization and socialization through the movement; women can build to get wages for their work at home. “We can offer to housewives a social existence other than another job—we can offer them the power of the movement and the struggle itself.”[22]

Digging Deeper

Understanding what Selma James is saying is complex and sophisticated. To clearly understand her perspective, we need to look at her political thought in relationship to the movement trajectories she was a part of. In particular, it is helpful to consider the proposals and perspectives of her mentor and co-thinker, C.L.R. James. C.L.R.’s intellectual relationship with Selma James allowed them to collaborate on works such as the 1956 edition of American Civilization and a small pamphlet Selma James wrote with C.L.R.’s encouragement called A Woman’s Place, published in 1953. C.L.R.’s own vision, which was the title of a small pamphlet and the foundation of his philosophy, Every Cook Can Govern, was a powerful statement against experts and official society, and for a world, governed “…by the principle of direct democracy.”[23] Using the example of Ancient Athens, C.L.R. explains that direct democracy is a form of governance whereby all social, economic, and judicial affairs are decided by popular councils and committees, participated in and run by all members of society. There should be no class of managers or elite who governs as a class above society.

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