Acknowledgements
Richard Smith, my husband, had been urging me to do a collection of my articles for a while. He thought ‘Exploitation and Modes of Production’ was particularly important, as the key to Marx’s method and way of understanding the world, and the implicit organising theme of all my work. I first shared the idea of the book with my friends Laura Esikoff and Allan Scholom, both psychoanalysts in Chicago, as well as socialists, who were enthusiastic.
A few years ago I was pleasantly surprised that an Australian novelist Julienne van Loon decided to focus on my work in her chapter on work in her book The Thinking Woman.1 The fact that she took such abstract ideas like self-ownership and whether labour power is a commodity seriously enough to consider, intellectually and on a personal level, what alternatives there are to alienated work encouraged me to think that they might be useful to a broader audience. A documentary filmmaker named Mary Filippo had also relied on my work on public goods in her film ‘My Mis-education in 3 Graphics’ about how economics is taught.
Also very stimulating to me has been the socialist feminist reading group led by Sally Haslanger of MIT. Ann Ferguson, Alison Jaggar, Robin Zheng, Mirjam Mueller, Lori Gruen, Anna Moltchanova, Ege Yumusak, Rose Lenahan, and others, from literally all over the world—Singapore, Berlin, Amsterdam, as well as the United States, thanks to the wonders of Zoom—have gathered together to discuss many of the themes featured in this collection. I sometimes sent a paper around to explain my thoughts on a topic more fully than I could at the meetings. The favourable response of members of the group, particularly Rose Lenahan, again made me think that these papers spoke to important issues today.
Meanwhile my close collaborator and real co-thinker Johanna Brenner had joined the group, and I shared with her my idea of the book. Her encouraging response and active editing advice were invaluable because she knew the field well and had done a similar collection.2 She generously read all the articles I had organized in a Table of Contents, advised me as to what to include and in what order and gave me feedback on the Introduction. My daughter Alexandra Holmstrom-Smith, and my friends Laura Esikoff, Nancy Romer, Elizabeth Rapaport, Gary Young and Jane Reid, also advised me on this Introduction and some or all of the contents.
van Loon 2019. This highly original work, intended to connect philosophical thinking and everyday experience, is a mix of memoir and interviews with six ‘thinking women’ (Laura Kipnis, Siri Husfeldt, myself, Rosi Braidotti, Marina Warner and Julia Kristeva) on love, play, work, fear, wonder and friendship.
Brenner 2000.