Tithi Bhattacharya and Susan Ferguson — Deepening our Understanding of Social Reproduction Theory

Probably not of interest to all but worth posting for those interested in a contemporary Marxian approach.

When we embarked on our project to explore Social Reproduction Theory (SRT), at the back of our mind was the phrase from the Marx and Engels’ German Ideology, ‘[human beings] must be in a position to live in order to be able to ‘make history’’. In class societies, since there lies between ‘living’ and ‘making history’ webs of social relations that enable and inhibit life, Marxism has always been about theorising both. Indeed, one can go as far as to say that historical materialism seeks to show how access, or lack thereof, to life-making resources in a class society shapes the making of history. SRT takes this question of life-making very seriously and that is, simply put, its specific inflection on Marxist theory as a whole.

But what is life-making exactly?

One way to answer that question is via the category of labour power, or the capacity to labour. Capitalism as a system is a unity of two kinds of social processes: the production of commodities and the production of workers who produce those commodities. Workers are ‘produced’ in a double sense, through biological reproduction and as bearers of labour power. SRT concerns itself with grasping the dynamics involved in both ‘productive’ processes....

Pluto Press
Deepening our Understanding of Social Reproduction Theory
Tithi Bhattacharya and Susan Ferguson

See also

Occasional Links & Commentary
Disappearing poverty
David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics, University of Notre Dame