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Marx, Housework, and Alienation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Philip J. Kain
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Abstract

For different feminist theorists, housework and child rearing are viewed in very different ways. I argue that Marx gives us the categories that allow us to see why housework and child care can be both a paradigm of unalienated labor and also involve the greatest oppression. In developing this argument, a distinction is made between alienation and oppression and the conditions are discussed under which unalienated housework can become oppressive or can become alienated.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , Winter 1993 , pp. 121 - 144
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 by Hypatia, Inc.

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