This groundbreaking collection explores the profound power of Social Reproduction Theory to deepen our understanding of everyday life under capitalism. While many Marxists tend to focus on the productive economy, this book focuses on issues such as child care, health care, education, family life and the roles of gender, race and sexuality, all of which are central to understanding the relationship between economic exploitation and social oppression.
In this book, leading writers such as Lise Vogel, Nancy Fraser, David McNally and Susan Ferguson reveal the ways in which daily and generational reproductive labour, found in households, schools, hospitals and prisons, also sustains the drive for accumulation.
Presenting a more sophisticated alternative to intersectionality, these essays provide ideas which have important strategic implications for anti-capitalists, anti-racists and feminists attempting to find a path through the seemingly ever more complex world we live in.
"This book is required reading for anyone interested in understanding the world in order to change it. Theoretically robust and empirically grounded chapters demonstrate the enduring value of a Marxist feminist approach that accounts for the reproduction of life and for gender and race oppression as crucial to capital accumulation, while also offering numerous examples of organized resistance. A welcome collection!" -Rosemary Hennessy, Rice University
"In recent years, scholars and activists seeking to unite Marxist and feminist approaches have converged on the field of social reproduction theory. According to Marx, capitalism requires, not only labor, as the commodity that produces surplus value, but also the economic and social structures, from the family to the state, that make the creation and re-creation of human labor possible. The varied and suggestive essays in this rich collection will be of great value, not only to newcomers to the field, but also to those already grounded in this rich arena for inquiry and organizing." --Hester Eisenstein
Tithi Bhattacharya is professor of South Asian history at Purdue University.