Art work as value-generating labor: Rethinking exploitation and collective resistance in cultural production

Abstract

This article argues that art work—the labor processes underlying cultural production—functions as value-generating reproductive labor that capitalist cultural economies systematically exploit while framing it as autonomous creativity rather than labor. Drawing on Marxist-feminist political economy and early social reproduction analyses (Federici, Mies, Elson, Fortunati, Mezzadri), the article conceptualizes art work through the lens of housewifization: an ideological and material process that naturalizes unpaid labor and enables the extraction of material, social, and ideological value. While cultural labor studies document precarity, they rarely explain how unpaid artistic labor contributes to capital accumulation. This article addresses that gap by extending value theory into cultural production and specifying who benefits from art work’s exploitation. Empirically, it examines Zasuk, Slovenia’s first union of freelance art workers, using militant co-research. The case reveals both the possibilities and limits of organizing, showing that feminist labor politics must redefine autonomy as collective agency capable of enforcing labor conditions.