CAPITALIST accumulation entails a combination of waged and unwaged work involved in production and social reproduction. Production of goods and services must be supported by a process of social reproduction that refers to producing the labour power required for production.

Capitalism is defined as a system of generalised commodity production which includes commodification of labour power. And this process involves continuously reproducing the conditions of dispossession of labour within the society either through the normalised process of capitalist production which is apparently non-coercive and guided by the equivalence of exchange, meaning labour selling labour power in exchange of wages.

Workers are exploited to produce surplus value for the owners of the means of production and remain perpetually impoverished, never being able to own any means of production. The other mode of continuous dispossession is enacted through explicit coercion or primary accumulation where the direct producer is forcibly separated from the means of production and the separated means of production is converted into capital while the dispossessed workers have no other alternative but to sell their labour power. Hence proletarianisation emerges to be the dominant trend in capitalism where workers sell their labour power in exchange of wages.

In late capitalism, the dispossession of labour is not necessarily followed by proletarianisation as the dispossessed workers may not be required to be employed by capital directly. But the capitalist process of accumulation has always been supported by a simultaneous process of creating labour power which also involves labour, mostly unwaged and often unrecognised. This labour which converts the raw material into food, looks after the children and elderly members of the family, provides care and empathy to all the family members is a crucial contribution of unpaid labour of largely female members of the household. But it is not only household work, but otherwise also unwaged work is on the rise in developing countries and recently in advanced capitalist countries as well. Many factors contribute to this rising trend: destruction of the ‘family wage’, declining employment in organised sectors, substitution of human labour by new technology, rise of unpaid labour both in developed and developing countries and for different income groups for different reasons.

REDUCING PRODUCTION AND CIRCULATION COST

The process of production and consumption are crucial components of capitalist accumulation. The circuit of capital begins with money which is mobilised by the capitalist to buy raw materials, machines and labour power and then in the phase of production, surplus value is being produced. But this surplus value which is being produced is only potential profit. Converting surplus value into profit requires realisation of the value produced, meaning, the goods or services produced must be sold in the market. Commercial capital or merchants and sales and advertising agencies are involved in this post-production process. This process of circulation is equally crucial in the conversion of surplus value into profit. A cut out of the produced surplus value is shared by the producer capital with commercial capital in the form of return to capital invested for marketing the final product. All these involve labour, and a capitalist can reduce the cost of the conversion of surplus value into profit replacing waged work by unwaged work.

With the destruction of ‘family wage’ that is, single earning taking care of the family, one outcome would be more female participation in the labour force as both need to work to make both ends meet. But the other outcome could also be a decline in female labour force participation as male bread earners migrate to work as wage labourer in distant locations and the female member of the household would be held responsible to maintaining conditions for subsistence through unpaid agricultural work and provide care to the family staying back in the original residence. It is also important to note that even in urban areas there has been a substantial increase in unpaid labour offered by buyers in the process of consumption. Unpaid labour in the process of consumption reduces the cost of circulation for the commercial capital. In most of the departmental stores, clothing shops, catalogue showrooms there is a drastic cut in the number of salespersons. Retail costs can be drastically reduced by massive use of vending and teller machines and promoting self-service. In other words, unpaid labour is no longer confined to the private sphere alone rather increases in the public sphere also and helps reducing the cost of sales.

The fact of rising unwaged work in different forms do not directly generate profit because it is only through waged work that capital can exploit the worker and squeeze the surplus value. But unwaged work in different forms reduces the cost of labour power and can reduce the cost of circulation which contributes to extracting larger amount of surplus value.

 It is also important that as more and more waged workers are being replaced by unwaged work in combination with machines, the bargaining power of existing waged workers also declines with rising unemployment. Therefore, the dynamics of waged and unwaged work with changing proportions in different situations is driven by the nature of accumulation but altogether they serve the purpose of increasing profit. Particularly in developing countries, vast number of self-employed workforce produce goods and services for the low-end market that help containing the cost of reproducing labour power. Also work as externalised labour for the organised sector through subcontracting also helps in reducing the cost of production. Hence unwaged work contributes both in production and social reproduction.

VARYING IMPACTS ON CLASSES

The scope of supporting principal wage income through unwaged or waged work varies according to class positions. The concept of ‘family wage’ where a single earning takes care of the necessities of the working-class family hardly exists. The value of labour power should ideally take care of the cost of reproduction of the future stream of supply of labour power. Now as real wages stagnate or decline, the crisis of subsistence is met by dual earner households with increasing participation of women in the labour force. This helps to make both ends meet but also reduces the scope of unwaged work that went into managing the household chores particularly care work.

 In the case of upper middle-class families, the household work and care giving are performed by low waged domestic helpers so in this case unwaged work is being replaced by waged work. The other increasing trend particularly in developed countries is the rise of household appliances that can be used to perform household jobs. This self-service is possible for those who can buy those appliances and can spend time using them. Hence for the richer families the unwaged proportion of work can take care of some of the activities related to social reproduction at lower costs.  But in the case of working-class families, total earnings barely meet the requirements of the family and cannot afford to employ anybody to share responsibilities of household work. Hence unwaged work is not substituted by waged work while the scope of unwaged work shrinks, and this further aggravates the crisis of social reproduction particularly affecting the health and education of the children. Therefore, the proportion of waged and unwaged work has differential impacts on different classes of households.

Finally, the use of new technology particularly use of robots and AI would once again alter the proportions of waged and unwaged work in the future. It seems that instead of more waged work being replaced by another set of waged work, waged work being replaced by unwaged work has a greater probability and in that case wage deflation for the existing workers could be one of the likely outcomes.

In the realm of social reproduction, impact of technology may further reduce the cost of producing labour power. But since capitalism is a system that only recognises exchange value embodied in commodities, the use value produced by unwaged work at home can only be considered useful if they impact upon the exchange value of the labour power or wages. Hence improvements in technology that reduces costs of repair and maintenance of house and various modes of self-service that reduces costs of circulation is meaningful to capital if all these contribute to reducing the cost of reproducing the labour power or the cost of circulation. Therefore, the use values created through unpaid or unwaged work, with or without using technology, is subordinate to the realm of exchange value. But if the share of waged work shrinks with rising share of unwaged work and if the latter is increasingly delinked from the former, valorising unwaged work would be increasingly difficult under capitalism.