markets control the economic activity in a capitalist system.
who controls the economic activity in a capitalist system?
markets
in 2017, he again teamed up with jacob kornbluth to produce the documentary "saving capitalism", based on his book of that name. netflix chose the film to be a netflix original documentary. in the documentary, reich says the election of donald trump has driven resentment on the part of the american working class that the prevailing capitalist economic system no longer worked for them. reich characterized the common fundamental beliefs about capitalism to be false: the first that free markets exist outside of government intervention, and the second that capitalism can be regarded as inherently good or bad for the majority. instead, he argues that the choice faced by policymakers was about the nature of government intervention, and the performance of the capitalist system for the majority was a function of the rules governing it, rather than the system itself. reich posits that large corporations began in the late 1960s to use financial power to purchase influence among the political class and consolidate political power, highlighting in particular the influence of the 2010 citizens united ruling that allowed corporations to contribute to election campaigns. in the documentary, he advocates for grassroots political mobilization among working class americans to countervail the political power of corporate america.
robert reich
in the capitalist system, two types of labor exist, a division stressed by marxist feminists like margaret benston and peggy morton. the first is productive, in which the labor results in goods or services that have monetary value in the capitalist system and are thus compensated by the producers in the form of a paid wage. the second form of labor is reproductive, which is associated with the private sphere and relates to the social production of current and future workers needed for the function of the capitalist system; the domestic needs of current workers, and care for those who can't work (e.g. the sick and elderly). reproductive labour therefore involves anything that people have to do to maintain their existence outside the domain of wage earning labour (i.e. cleaning, cooking, having children). due to their physiological attributes of childbearing, cis women (and, therefore, passing trans women) have traditionally been assigned to the domestic sphere where the labor is reproductive and, since this role lost its status with the development of private property, it has since been uncompensated and unrecognized in a capitalist system. it is in the best interest of both public and private institutions to exploit the labor of women as an inexpensive method of supporting a work force. for the producers, this means higher profits. for the nuclear family, the power dynamic dictates that domestic work is exclusively to be completed by the woman of the household thus liberating the rest of the members from their own necessary reproductive labor. marxist feminists argue that the exclusion of women from productive labor leads to male control in both private and public domains.
marxist feminism