What does a dignified life--transforming gendered labor divisions and a racialized, exploitative, feminized care economy--look like and how can we collectively build it.

In this important book, Antonio Negri develops the key ideas that were to form the basis for the highly influential analyses of new forms of power and social struggle presented in Empire and Multitude. He shows how new technology and the break-up of the traditional factory have created new social subjects whose value is no longer tied to their skill. The spread of communication networks and the globalization of production mean that capitalism has become totalized - but not, Negri stresses, monolithic. On the contrary, the possibilities for subversion have correspondingly increased. Going beyond classical Marxism, he shows how old solidarities must be reformulated and new alliances created. The struggles which marked the political end of the twentieth century are now being repeated in a new historical conjuncture, giving rise to new forms of transnational solidarity that can challenge dominant global powers. This new paperback edition, which includes a new Preface by the author, is an excellent introduction to the work of one of the most influential political thinkers writing today and will be essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the new forms of conflict and struggle that will shape the world in the twenty-first century.

What does a dignified life-transforming gendered labor divisions and a racialized, exploitative, feminized care economy-look like and how can we collectively build it.

Safe drinking water counts for nothing. A pollution-free environment counts for nothing. Even some people - namely women - count for nothing. This is the case, at least, according to the United Nations System of National Accounts. Author Marilyn Waring, former New Zealand M.P., now professor, development consultant, writer, and goat farmer, isolates the gender bias that exists in the current system of calculating national wealth. As Waring observes, in this accounting system women are considered 'non-producers' and as such they cannot expect to gain from the distribution of benefits that flow from production. Issues like nuclear warfare, environmental conservation, and poverty are likewise excluded from the calculation of value in traditional economic theory. As a result, public policy, determined by these same accounting processes, inevitably overlooks the importance of the environment and half the world's population. Counting for Nothing, originally published in 1988, is a classic feminist analysis of women's place in the world economy brought up to date in this reprinted edition, including a sizeable new introduction by the author. In her new introduction, the author updates information and examples and revisits the original chapters with appropriate commentary. In an accessible and often humorous manner, Waring offers an explanation of the current economic systems of accounting and thoroughly outlines ways to ensure that the significance of the environment and the labour contributions of women receive the recognition they deserve.

In recent years there has been both a renewed interest in theories of social reproduction and an explosion of womens struggles and strikes across the world. This collection offers both historical and contemporary Marxist feminist analysis of how the reproduction of labor and life functions under capitalism, using Dalla Costas insights into the vibrant and combative womens movement that emerged in Italy and across the world in the early 1970s. Since the first publication of Women and the Subversion of the Community in 1972, Dalla Costa has been a central figure in the development of autonomist thought. Her detailed research and provocative thinking deepens our understanding of the role of womens struggles for autonomy and control over their bodies and labor.

This book contributes to timely debates on the conditions of resistance and changes with the aim to offer a ray of hope in times of ecological, economic, social and democracy crisis worldwide. In the context of the crisis of social reproduction, impoverishment and growing inequalities, myriads of women-led grass-root initiatives are bubbling up. They reorganize social reproduction; redefine the meaning of work and value; explore new ways of doing economics and politics; construct solidarity-driven social relationships and combat their subordination. In doing so, these initiatives challenge the patriarchal, financialized and dehumanizing capitalist system and offer transformative, sustainable paths for feminist social change. Drawing on fine-grained ethnographies in Latin America and India, this book sheds light on women’s daily struggles, their difficulties, contradictions, fragilities, and also their successes and achievements. This book seeks to inspire activists, researchers and policy-makers in the field of feminism and solidarity economy to contribute to amplifying the movement, which rests on the articulation of the various initiatives.

With intellectual reference points that include Foucault and Freud, Wittig, Kristeva and Irigaray, this is one of the most talked-about scholarly works of the past fifty years and is perhaps the essential work of contemporary feminist thought.