Since its inception Marxism has largely operated with a narrow definition of the economy which closely resembles capitalism’s own, focusing on wage labor as the pre-eminent example of capitalist relations of labor. A century-long series of challenges from heterodox radical economists, including those based in feminism and anti-colonial theory, has yet to broaden this definition of capitalism, but the fading importance of wage labor and the advent of new forms of precarious labor relations may allow us to break the hold of restrictive ideas of the economy.
Rosemary Feurer is Professor of History at Northern Illinois University. She is the author of Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950, among others. She is working on The Illinois Mine Wars, 1860-1940 and a new biography of Mary Harris “Mother” Jones.
