Selma James

Uh, no, it wouldn't have, and that criticism is very valid, but I guess the question is, at the end of the day, you know, women who have no access to money now have it.

So I would say what, uh, C.L.R. James was once asked what he thought of Selma James' proposal of wages for housework and all the work she was doing, and he, he had a very pithy response.

He said, "You can't be against it." So it is true, this capitalism.

And, you know, we would all love for, you know, that to change, and we should work towards it.

[upbeat music] Welcome to Postscript, a podcast from Tribune Magazine.

I'm Barnaby Raine, and today I'm joined by an icon of feminism, of Marxism, of anti-racism, um, Selma James.

Welcome.

Thank you.

I wrote it.

I guess I can't, I can't walk it back now, but I feel like it needed to be said, like it needs to be said that Again, going, and this is why I try to do this kind of longer historical arc into the formations of these categories, right? Like womanhood in particular, that I think the early kind of social reproduction theorists Some of the early people, which eventually became international wages for housework, so like the Selma James, the Silvian Federici's, the Maria de la Costa's, and Daye and the Caribbean.

And others were really kind of trying to point to, right, which is like you have to go back to the moment of the enclosures and that whenever capital is, even though primitive accumulation, like so many people have already pointed to, right, like is is not a singular event.

Right.

And within the movement itself, there were different strands of thinking.

One strand, uh, led by Selma James, calls for a care income in recognition of women's unpaid work.

Whereas the other perspective, uh, from Silvia Federici, talks about wages for housework as being a political perspective, which is to put a price on unpaid work so as to reject it, so as to create time for women to be able to paint, to be able to take a walk, to engage in leisure, and not simply become yet another necessarily productive member of the economy.

Uh, or...