Mies (1993), "The Subsistence Perspective"

Mies (1993) critiques the neo-liberal capitalist focus on commodity and suggests replacing this perspective with what she calls "the subsistence perspective." She argues that economies should be based on a bottom-up approach.

1. Housework is not understood as labor.

Mies (1993) interrogates capitalism's limited understanding of labor. In particular, she is concerned with housework and other forms of unpaid labor. Mies (1993) argues that capitalism cannot afford to pay for household labors, because these non-commodified forms would collapse a system based on commodity. Housework does not fit into the accumulation model of capitalism.

2. Economic equality can only occur when commodity models are discarded.

Mies (1993) argues that we should reverse the model that uses commodities to structure economics from the top down. Instead, she proposes a subsistence perspective that work from the bottom up with human need as its centerpiece. In the subsistence perspective, the goal of all paid labor must be to support life directly.