Selma James
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Selma James is the author of
the women’s movement classic The Power of Women and
the Subversion of the Community, founder of the
International Wages for Housework Campaign and
coordinator of the Global Women’s Strike. Selma James was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1930. As a young woman she worked in factories and then as a full-time housewife and mother. At the age of 15 she joined the Johnson-Forest Tendency, one of whose three leaders was CLR James. |
In 1952 she wrote the classic A Woman’s Place, first published as a column in Correspondence a bi-weekly newspaper written and edited by its readers with an audience of mainly working class people. Unusually at the time the newspaper had pages dedicated to giving women, young people and Black people an autonomous voice. Selma was a regular columnist and edited the Women’s Page. In 1955 she came to England to marry CLR James who had been deported from the United States during the McCarthy period. They were together for 25 years and were close political colleagues.
From 1958 to 1962 Selma lived in Trinidad where, with CLR James, she was active in the movement for West Indian independence and federation. Returning to England after independence, she became the first organising secretary of the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination in 1965, and a founder member of the Black Regional Action Movement and editor of its journal in 1969.
In 1972, the publication Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community (authored with Mariarosa Dalla Costa) launched the “domestic labour debate” by spelling out how the housework and other caring work women do outside of the market produces the whole working class, thus the market economy, based on those workers, is built on women’s unwaged work. The 1983 publication of Selma’s Marx and Feminism broke with established Marxist theory by providing a reading of Marx's Capital from the point of view of women and of unwaged work.
In 1972 Selma founded the International Wages for Housework Campaign which demands money from the State for the unwaged work in the home and in the community. A raging debate followed about whether caring full-time was "work" or a "role" — and whether it should be compensated with a wage.
A number of autonomous organizations were formed in 1975 -- Black Women for Wages for Housework, Wages Due Lesbians, the English Collective of Prostitutes and some years later WinVisible (women with visible and invisible disabilities). Selma is the first spokeswoman of the English Collective of Prostitutes, which campaigns for decriminalization as well as viable economic alternatives to prostitution.
From 1985 Selma co-ordinated the International Women Count Network which won the UN decision where governments agreed to measure and value unwaged work in national statistics [1]. Legislation on this has since been introduced in Trinidad & Tobago and Spain, and time use surveys and other research are underway in many countries. In Venezuela Article 88 of the Constitution recognizes work in the home as an economic activity that creates added value and produces wealth and social welfare, and entitles housewives to social security.
Since 2000 Selma has been international coordinator of the Global Women's Strike, a network of grassroots women, bringing together actions and initiatives in many countries. The Strike demands that society “Invest in Caring Not Killing”, and that military budgets be returned to the community starting with women, the main carers everywhere. She has been working with the Venezuelan Revolution since 2002 [2].
Selma James is general editor of
Crossroads Books.
Selma James lectures in the UK, US and other countries
on a wide range of topics including Sex, Race & Class,
What the Marxists Never Told Us About Marx, The
Internationalist Jewish Tradition, Rediscovering
Nyerere’s Tanzania, CLR James as a political organizer
and Jean Rhys: Jumping to Tia
[3].
Publications include: ● The Power of Women & the
Subversion of the Community 1972 ● Sex, Race &
Class 1974 ● Women, the Unions and Work 1972
● Marx & Feminism 1983 ● Hookers in the House
of the Lord 1983 ● The Ladies & the Mammies: Jane
Austen & Jean Rhys 1983 ● Strangers & Sisters:
Women, Race and Immigration 1985 ● The Global
Kitchen 1985, 1995 ● The Milk of Human Kindness:
Defending Breastfeeding from the Global Market & the
AIDS Industry 2003 ● Introduction to Creating a
Caring Economy: Nora Castañeda & the Women's Development
Bank of Venezuela 2006 ● Introduction to The
Arusha Declaration, Rediscovering Nyerere’s Tanzania
2007 ● Forthcoming publication: Editor of Jailhouse
Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners Vs the USA by
Mumia Abu-Jamal
- The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community, The Falling Wall Press, Bristol, October 1972 (2nd edition Februrary 1973, 3rd edition September 1975);
- Waging the War Over Wages, Los Angeles Times 7 May 1987;
- Labours of Love, or Maybe Just a Rip-Off, The Times 19 Feb 1992;
- Home Truths for Feminists, How Should the Work Women do as Mothers be Rewarded?, The Guardian, 21 February 2004;
- An Antidote for Apathy, Venezuela's president has achieved a level of grassroots participation our politicians can only dream of, The Guardian 13 August 2004.