Selma James and the Wages for Housework Campaign
The way forward for James speaking politically is listed clearly in Women, the Unions and Work. In bold print the demands are:
It is on this political basis that James wants to unite women who work at home and at the factory. These demands are rooted in the lives of working class women—exactly where James believes the meaning of women’s liberation can be defined.
James’s combination of political program and organizational theory attempts to break out of what she considers to be obstacles to the liberation of women. What ends up developing is a course of action, “We can organise [sic] with women where they work for wages, where they shop, where they live and work. Women from many industrial estates have shopping areas very near, where they shop in their dinner hour. They often live close by. We can begin by leafleting in all three places, aiming to organise [sic] for their most pressing problems.”[36] And importantly for James and any future movement it is one where women “need not wait for the men to strike, we can ask them to strike to support what we are doing.”[37]
Moving to Today: Women’s Liberation from Above or Below?
On the one hand, Selma James prioritizes women’s autonomy, self-activity, and social power, yet an interesting paradox develops when looking at her campaign’s recent endorsements of the government of Venezuela. In the newspaper The Guardian James writes, “For Venezuela’s participatory democracy, which works from the bottom up, the ballot is only a first step.”[38] Her final words are informative of where she thinks the Venezuelan revolution is headed. The “first step” is meant to imply a spread of democracy and women’s autonomy. For all the cynicism that much of the population has shown towards elections—which is indicative of the wise instincts among the populace that real political power is not derived by choosing someone else to make decisions for them—James says that cynicism (and by implication the cause of it) is a reality of the past with Chavez’s ascent to power.
She goes on to applaud the social welfare programs implemented by Chavez. But has Chavez really gotten rid of the causes of political cynicism among everyday people? If the people of Venezuela are not able to directly make economic and political decisions for themselves, how do we know this cynicism won’t simply reemerge when they realize that Chavez is just another politician acting as a patron and making promises to constituents in return for their obedience to his programs, which they themselves do not govern?
This would seem to be an acute change of pace for James when one compares this analysis with her earlier writings. Others have questioned it as well. In an interesting interview in Mute Magazine, Laura Sullivan ponders,
“…how to reconcile James’ emphasis on the role of women and the celebration of the revitalisation [sic] of grassroots politics with the focus on the president, a top-down form of power, as opposed to spelling out that the ultimate goal is the end of representational politics altogether. In other words, women are identified as political levers in the revolutionary process in Venezuela, but to what end? Is their horizon ultimately antithetical to the goals of Chavez, who, after all, must not only work to stay in power but who has also been increasingly complying with neoliberalisation [sic] (i.e. the concessions he’s made post-coup)? Chavez is undoubtedly a unique leader very much in touch with ‘the people’: for the progress of women and all Venezuela’s disenfranchised it is presently essential that he stay in office. Yet isn’t there still a contradiction between Chavez’s position as a charismatic leader in a hierarchical system, and the WFH goal of the destruction of hierarchies?”[39]
Is there a strange reconciliation with the self-activity of women and state power as represented by Chavez in James’s analysis of the social movement in Venezuela? Like the feminists that James criticizes for believing there is a backwards capitalism and a progressive capitalism, rather than seeing that exploitation and barbarism are the very nature of capitalist relations, can it be said that James believes there is such a thing as a backwards and a progressive state? Does Chavez represent progress for working class women?
Many of these concerns and questions have come to the fore with Chavez’s implementation of Article 88 of the Venezuelan Constitution. Article 88 recognizes unwaged housework as economically productive. With oil money pouring into the country, Chavez has the resources to fund the program long envisioned by Selma James. In light of Selma James’s work, what can we make of this new initiative by Chavez? Is the new society to be built in cooperation with states and ruling classes? How does the campaign’s desire to be non-hierarchal mesh with its cooperation with a hierarchical state? How are wages for housework to be funded? From the State? How is it different from the welfare-state which has shown itself to be incapable of dealing with the fundamental crisis of modern society?
The measure of success of Article 88 or the Wages for Housework is not only in its implementation but the political context that frames it. There is always the danger that this program can justify the welfare state and the fundamental problems of capitalist society. That is why James’s insights and strategies for the campaign are key. The campaign is a tool to heighten the class struggle, to sharpen it, to lead it in a libertarian direction, and to gain more autonomy for women and men at the workplace and the home. If it is not with this in mind, the program is nothing more then the fight for a kinder and gentler capitalism. James’s own writings offer scathing critiques for this strategy. “It is not capital but bad capitalists. It is not the capitalist productive process but what you produce. It is not classes but individuals. What they mean is, it is not a political but a moral struggle, not armed revolution but moral rearmament, a better plan for a better, more contented set of slaves.”[40]
It is clear that James’s own writings provide a rigorous litmus test on how to measure the success of Chavez’s implementation of Article 88. Whatever James might say about Chavez and the social movements in Venezuela needs to be measured against such works as Women, The Unions, and Work; The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community; and Sex, Race, and Class.
Concluding Thoughts
Selma James is a visionary who offers few easy answers to the difficult problems facing women and the working class. She has been willing to formulate new strategies and hold onto basic principles of solidarity, self-activity, and internationalism. It is her unorthodox ability to handle old and innovative ideas which threatens not only the capitalists but also rigid ideologues of what the working class struggle should look like.
The strategy of liberation for both the working class and housewives cannot be separated. James has provided key strategic and ideological tools for the class struggle to encompass all people who have an interest in the abolishment of wage slavery and other forms of oppression. James points the way where people at home and work can work together in this struggle by demonstrating the strategic and moral importance of unwaged labor. Perhaps the ability of this campaign to succeed on a larger scale is not clear, but per Selma James’s argument: we need to try to find out.
Notes