Abstract
The concept of “caring labor” obscures the process of surplus extraction in the capitalist mode of production. In particular, the government’s provision of services such as preschool child care needs to be understood as having the effect of substituting for the care provided by the household rather than adding to it. The process of substitution is one that involves a decrease in household labor and a corresponding increase in wage labor, in particular that of women. Within the capitalist workplace, the labor time “saved” by the development of a “more efficient” form of child care (as a component of the labor necessary for the reproduction of the working class) is appropriated by the capitalist class. The increasing labor force participation rate of women that results from this process of substitution does not necessarily constitute a decrease in their oppression.
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