Beyond the Capitalist Workplace

Abstract

This article analyzes the public and household sectors of the economy as sites of surplus production within contemporary capitalist societies. It also shows how the coexistence of structurally distinct spheres of surplus production creates divisions among workers in the private, public, and household sectors of the economy, thus amplifying the racial, gender, and other divisions that have often in the past kept working people divided. Fueling these cross-sector divisions is the appearance that private-sector workers are paid for their labor rather than for their labor power. Thus, this article also explores an implication of this appearance, which Karl Marx, the thinker who did the most to expose it, did not himself explore.