CHRISTINE THOMAS reviews a fascinating book which traces the evolution of domestic labour in class society and offers a glimpse of what socialism could mean.
After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time
By Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek
Published by Verso, 2023, £16-99
Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek want a world in which we all work less and have more free time. Not many working people would take issue with that. After Work, however, is concerned not with paid work – the ‘exchange’ of a workers’ labour power for wages – but unwaged ‘social reproductive’ work: housework, childcare, household management etc, work in the family that is still predominantly performed by women, even in the more advanced capitalist countries in the ‘west’ – which this book concentrates on. Could society be organised differently in order to reduce this work as much as possible? Could the remaining work be redistributed more equitably? These are questions posed in the introduction to this interesting and thought-provoking book.
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