Selma James

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.

ocialist activist

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 founding member of the Black Regional Action Movement and editor of its journal in 1969.

Wages for Housework

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 [http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/platform/institu.htm#object3] . 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.

Recent activity

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. [http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1282133,00.html]

She is general editor of Crossroads Books.

She 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 [http://www.globalwomenstrike.net/USA/SelmaTour.htm] .

In May 2008, Selma James signed the Letter of British Jews on 60th anniversary of Israel published in the "Guardian" explaining why she will not celebrate Israel's 60th anniversary.

Sources

*"The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community", The Falling Wall Press, Bristol, October 1972 (2nd edition February 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.

Bibliography

*"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

External links

* [http://www.globalwomenstrike.net/ Global Women's Strike Campaign]
*Selma James, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/venezuela/story/0,12716,1282252,00.html An Antidote for Apathy] , "The Guardian", August 13, 2004. Retrieved on 08 January 2008.
*Selma James and Maria Dalla Costa, [http://libcom.org/library/power-women-subversion-community-della-costa-selma-james The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community] . Retrieved on 08 January 2008.
*Selma James, [http://libcom.org/library/sex-race-class-james-selma Sex, Race, and Class] . Retrieved on 08 January 2008.
* [http://nbjournal.org/2007/07/selma-james-and-the-wages-for-housework-campaign/ Selma James and the Wages for Housework Campaign]
* [http://clarke.dickinson.edu/media.php Sex, Race, and Class] Audio Recording of a Lecture given by Selma James at Dickinson College on 07 November 2007.
* [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7833071098858951174&q=%22selma+james%22+video&total=1&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0 Rape, Race, Prostitution and the Cash Connection] Video Recording of a Lecture given by Selma James in San Francisco.