In particular, Mies developed a feminist conception of labor that took as its model, not the male wage earner, but the mother, for whom work was always both burden and enjoyment. For mothers, peasants, and artisans, work processes were connected with the direct production of immediate life rather than focused on things and wealth. A feminist conception of labor was oriented toward a conception of time in which work, enjoyment, and rest were interspersed. Work was a direct and sensuous interaction with nature, organic matter, and living organisms and yet was also useful and necessary for the people who did it and for those around them. For Mies, this arrangement constituted a political economy of bringing together processes of production and consumption within regions in an alternative economy that was self-sufficient.