The Production of People and Domestic Labour Revisited

Abstract

In this chapter¹ I shall discuss some ways in which a primary concern with economics has dominated socialist analyses and policies. I shall argue that the analysis of the production process must be extended beyond the traditional boundaries of economics, and suggest some ways in which this can be done.

According to the materialist conception, the determining factor in history is, in the last resort, the production and reproduction of immediate life. But this itself is of a twofold character. On the one hand, the production of the means of subsistence, of food, clothing and shelter and the tools requisite therefore; on the other, the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species. The social institutions under which men of a definite historical epoch and a definite country live are conditioned by both kinds of production. (Engels, 1972, p. 26)