As we further explicate the spheres of DMM and IMM in relation to that which is waged or unwaged, we elucidate the overlapping of these spheres through the principle of *social validation*. En route we will explore the ways in which the activities in question can be called labour or not; that is, if they qualify as labour or not in this mode of production. Endnotes, The Logic of Gender, Endnotes #3 (2013), https://endnotes.org.uk/articles/the-logic-of-gender

those [activities related to the reproduction of labour power] which are unwaged are the non-social of the social: they are not socially validated but are nonetheless part of the capitalist mode of production. Importantly, however, these do not map directly onto the spheres of IMM and DMM. […] They are cut off from social production; they must not only appear as, but also be non-labour, that is, they are naturalised. They constitute a sphere whose dissociation is necessary to make the production of value possible: the gendered sphere. Endnotes, The Logic of Gender, Endnotes #3 (2013), https://endnotes.org.uk/articles/the-logic-of-gender

We see that within the interplay of these four terms there are some waged activities which overlap with those of the IMM sphere: those organised by the state (the state sector). Within this imbricated set of categories, the sphere of IMM activities intersects with the sphere of waged labour. These waged and IMM activities are forms of state-organised reproduction that are not directly market-mediated. These activities reproduce the use-value of labour-power but are waged and thus socially validated. Nevertheless, these activities are not productive of value, nor are they subject to the same criteria of direct market-mediation. They are social because they are remunerated through the social form of value. Because they are not productive of value, they are the forms of reproduction which are a collective cost to capital: they are paid indirectly through deductions from collective wages and surplus-value in the form of taxes. Endnotes, The Logic of Gender, Endnotes #3 (2013), https://endnotes.org.uk/articles/the-logic-of-gender

For us, labour will be defined, in its opposition to non-labour, as an activity that is socially validated as such, because of its specific function, its specific social character in a given mode of production. Other bases for definitions of labour are also possible, to cite a few: exchange between man and nature, expense of energy, distinction between pleasant/unpleasant activities. However, we think that none of these definitions can help us understand anything about the character of unwaged IMM activities. These definitions only take into account their concrete characteristics, and in the case of unwaged IMM activities, this leads to banal or absurd descriptions. Is comforting a child an exchange with nature? Is sleeping a labour that reproduces labour-power? Is brushing one’s teeth labour? Brushing somebody else’s teeth? We think that our definition of labour, while it may seem banal at first glance, is the only one capable of passing over these meaningless questions, and that it constitutes the right starting-point for research into the specific character of these activities. Endnotes, The Logic of Gender, Endnotes #3 (2013), https://endnotes.org.uk/articles/the-logic-of-gender

the wage validates the fact that labour-power has been employed adequately, whilst universally recognising it as social labour, whatever the concrete activity itself might have been, or whether it was “productively” consumed. Endnotes, The Logic of Gender, Endnotes #3 (2013), https://endnotes.org.uk/articles/the-logic-of-gender