Book contents
- Fronmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter One Introduction: Marx’s Field as Our Global Present
- Chapter Two Into the Field with Marx: Some Observations on Researching Class
- Chapter Three Marx’s Merchants’ Capital: Researching Agrarian Markets in Contemporary India
- Chapter Four The Ties That Divide: Marx’s Fractions of Capital and Class Analysis in/for the Global South
- Chapter Five Marx in the Sweatshop: Exploitation and Social Reproduction in a Garment Factory Called India
- Chapter Six Thinking about Capital and Class in the Gulf Arab States
- Chapter Seven Marx on the Bourse: Coffee and the Intersecting/Integrated Circuits of Capital
- Chapter Eight Learning Marx by Doing: Class Analysis in an Emerging Zone of Global Horticulture
- Chapter Nine Understanding Labour Relations and Struggles in India through Marx’s Method
- Chapter Ten Investigating Class Relations in Rural South Africa: Marx’s ‘Rich Totality of Many Determinations’
- Chapter Eleven From Marx’s ‘Double Freedom’ to ‘Degrees of Unfreedom’: Methodological Insights from the Study of Uzbekistan’s Agrarian Labour
- Chapter Twelve The Labour Process and Health through the Lens of Marx’s Historical Materialism
- Chapter Thirteen Marx and the Poor’s Nourishment: Diets in Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa
- Chapter Fourteen Marx In Utero: A Workers’ Inquiry of the In/Visible Labours of Reproduction in the Surrogacy Industry
- Chapter Fifteen Marx, the Chief, the Prisoner and the Refugee
- Chapter Sixteen Postcolonial Marxism and the ‘Cyber-Field’ in COVID Times: On Labour Becoming ‘Working Class’
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
Chapter Twelve - The Labour Process and Health through the Lens of Marx’s Historical Materialism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2022
- Fronmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter One Introduction: Marx’s Field as Our Global Present
- Chapter Two Into the Field with Marx: Some Observations on Researching Class
- Chapter Three Marx’s Merchants’ Capital: Researching Agrarian Markets in Contemporary India
- Chapter Four The Ties That Divide: Marx’s Fractions of Capital and Class Analysis in/for the Global South
- Chapter Five Marx in the Sweatshop: Exploitation and Social Reproduction in a Garment Factory Called India
- Chapter Six Thinking about Capital and Class in the Gulf Arab States
- Chapter Seven Marx on the Bourse: Coffee and the Intersecting/Integrated Circuits of Capital
- Chapter Eight Learning Marx by Doing: Class Analysis in an Emerging Zone of Global Horticulture
- Chapter Nine Understanding Labour Relations and Struggles in India through Marx’s Method
- Chapter Ten Investigating Class Relations in Rural South Africa: Marx’s ‘Rich Totality of Many Determinations’
- Chapter Eleven From Marx’s ‘Double Freedom’ to ‘Degrees of Unfreedom’: Methodological Insights from the Study of Uzbekistan’s Agrarian Labour
- Chapter Twelve The Labour Process and Health through the Lens of Marx’s Historical Materialism
- Chapter Thirteen Marx and the Poor’s Nourishment: Diets in Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa
- Chapter Fourteen Marx In Utero: A Workers’ Inquiry of the In/Visible Labours of Reproduction in the Surrogacy Industry
- Chapter Fifteen Marx, the Chief, the Prisoner and the Refugee
- Chapter Sixteen Postcolonial Marxism and the ‘Cyber-Field’ in COVID Times: On Labour Becoming ‘Working Class’
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
Summary
Abstract
This chapter illustrates the value of Karl Marx's historical materialist approach for the analysis of the relation between capitalist development and health depletion. Tracing Marx's observations on health and exploitation in Capital, the chapter highlights their contemporary relevance and limitations for the study of modern and more contemporary forms of homework. The analysis focuses on the Italian case and confirms the tight interrelation between high degrees of gendered exploitation in the home and adverse health outcomes. It stresses the benefits and challenges of deploying Marx's concrete methods of enquiry in relation to health and work – often based on detailed reports by labour inspectors and doctors – in general and with reference to the case of Italian homework in historical perspective, and it points at some of the theoretical limitations of Marxian understandings of domestic labour in relation to its social longevity, structural role in capitalist development and relation to the state.
Introduction
Among his many contributions, Karl Marx should have recognition for his ability to combine empirical analysis and theoretical elaboration with a diachronic and synchronic perspective. From the detailed analysis of the Reports of the Inspectors of Factories, the Reports of the Children's Employment Commission and the Reports on Public Health, Marx derives crucial elements to understand the relations of production and social reproduction in his age. Notably, Marx does not limit himself to reporting what inspectors and occupational physicians note during their work; rather he shows the interrelations between health and production by offering an analytical perspective that over time has inspired the work of generations of social scientists.
This chapter retraces Marx's observations on health in an attempt to highlight their close connection with work, and it stresses the value of the historical materialist explanation in the analysis of the connections between capitalist development and the expropriation of health. Marx's description of the working conditions in the sweatshops of nineteenth-century London are fully comparable to what happens today in sweatshops working for H&M, Zara, Benetton and other global fashion brands.
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- Marx in the Field , pp. 161 - 174Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2021