The Marxist-Feminist tradition has successfully challenged the implicit androcentric and economistic biases traditionally afflicting Marxist theorizing. It has done so by bringing to light the existence of a vast array of highly gendered, racialized, and undervalued practices. These practices, despite not being fully mediated by markets, play an important role in sustaining capitalist societies and their members. Countering the invisibilization and devaluation to which so-called “lifemaking” practices are submitted in capitalist societies must undoubtedly count as one of this tradition’s greatest achievements.
More often than not, however, this has led to an uncritical defense of the domain of “social reproduction,” posited as external to the “productive” capitalist economy. This is often done without fully recognizing the fact that, in capitalist societies, the reproduction of human life is never external to the reproduction of the violent, irrational, and utterly destructive societies framing them.
Primary school teachers instructing their pupils into the values of self-discipline and responsibility also contribute to the pacification of the workplaces of the future: parents raising their kids cannot but keep an eye on their future employability; social workers helping maintain excluded populations simultaneously keep the potential disruption of the existing order at bay. Irrespective of their honest motivations and their well-intended affection, they cannot avoid an intimate complicity with the reproduction of the manifold violences inherent to capitalist societies. Insofar as social reproduction does not take place besides, but rather precisely through capitalist production, the reproduction of human life and that of capital are part and parcel of the same process.
Hence, the key distinction to be upheld is not between productive and reproductive spheres, but between productive and unproductive practices. As shown below, their different relation to value denotes a different relation to the world of social needs—and, by extension, a distinct temporal determination—rather than different degrees of essentiality. In the end, both sets of practices are equally implicated—albeit in a different manner—in the overall reproduction of capitalist societies.
What is Social Reproduction?
While the dominant meaning attached to social reproduction in Marxist-Feminist analyses is usually conscripted to the reproduction of labor power or life as such, a more expansive reading of it as referring to the ongoing reproduction of society as whole is more in line with Marx’s work.1Louis Althusser, On the Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (London: Verso, 2014); Etienne Balibar, “Reproductions,” Rethinking Marxism 31, no. 2 (2022): 142–61. To begin with, it must be noted that the most basic precondition of social life is its need to reproduce itself. This reproduction is a transhistorical and necessary condition of human existence. Like every other species, humans must engage in a continuous and dynamic exchange of energy and matter with nonhuman nature, a process that Marx termed metabolism. While the mediation of the social metabolism by social relations is a necessary condition of social existence, the specific form through which social reproduction is attained is underdetermined. Nevertheless, these social relations must satisfy two core requirements or imperil the very reproduction of the human collectivity.2Kohei Saito, Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2017); Teinosuke Otani, A Guide to Marxian Political Economy: What Kind of Social System is Capitalism? (Cham: Springer, 2019).
First, insofar as the needs to be satisfied are inherently heterogeneous, a division of labor must be in place that distributes limited time and physical resources over the various different tasks that must be completed to guarantee its own ongoing reproduction. Failing to distribute available labor resources effectively and in adequate proportion to social needs would compromise the reproduction of society. Second, and intimately related, the products resulting from the aforementioned division of labor must be allocated to individuals. Otherwise, the individual reproduction of some of its members would be compromised. This failure in the allocation could, by extension, jeopardize the reproduction of society as a whole.
Taken together, there is a distribution of labor and a distribution of its products. Those are the two unavoidable requirements that every set of social relations mediating the metabolism between humans and their environment must necessarily articulate. Because such processes must be articulated through social relations, social reproduction is susceptible of adopting an infinite variety of forms.
The Distinctly Capitalist “Form” of Social Reproduction
Capitalism represents a historically specific form that the process of social reproduction has adopted in human history—one whose historical appearance was neither necessary, nor grounded in any sense upon a transhistorical human nature. Despite playing a prominent role in capitalist social reproduction, neither markets, nor money, nor wage labor, nor even certain forms of capital, are specific to them. All have existed since time immemorial. Rather, what specifically characterizes capitalist societies is a situation of comprehensive dispossession—a radical and generalized separation between individuals and the conditions that make their very reproduction possible, such as land or means of labor.3Søren Mau, Mute Compulsion: A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital (London: Verso, 2023). Lacking access to the former, individuals are left with only one property at their disposal, namely, their labor power—that is, their capacity to produce use values susceptible of satisfying social needs. They are thus forced to sell their time in exchange for a wage, by means of which they hope to acquire all that is necessary for their individual reproduction. That which workers themselves had produced at the capitalists’ command, are then acquired in the guise of commodities. In capitalist societies, therefore, workers remain in charge of producing for their own subsistence, though they can only have access to the products of their labor through a detour.4Samezō Kuruma, Marx’s Theory of the Genesis of Money: How, Why, and Through What is Money a Commodity (Leiden: Brill, 2018).
The owners of the means of production, when hiring dispossessed workers to produce some specific use-value, do not do so for the sake of satisfying any predetermined social need; rather, they hire workers and produce use values in the expectation of making a profit in exchange by selling the produced use values as commodities. As the separation between workers and their means of reproduction becomes comprehensive, an increasing number of the manifold use values which social reproduction requires are produced to deliver a monetary profit in exchange, and not as use values intended to satisfy predetermined social needs. That is, they increasingly acquire the character of commodities. By extension, an increasing share of total social labor is executed as wage labor—that is, as labor time sold to others.
Insofar as social reproduction does not take place besides, but rather precisely through capitalist production, the reproduction of human life and that of capital are part and parcel of the same process.
Marx wrote in Capital: “If production has a capitalist form, so too will reproduction.”5Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 (London: Penguin: 1976), 711. What, then, does the capitalist form of social reproduction consist of? The capitalist form of securing social reproduction consists in myriad individual acts of producing particular use values. These acts are undertaken independently of each other and without coordination. The ultimate motivation driving them is not to satisfy some specific social need, though that is always a necessary condition, but to earn a monetary profit by selling their products in the market.
However, the hoped-for profit is never guaranteed. Capitalist production—that is, production for others—is always a wager. Only when commodities are effectively sold in the market can the acts of labor producing the former demonstrate that they were actually useful to someone, and thus be sanctioned as part of the social division of labor. In return, by means of money, the owner is taken into account in the distribution of society’s total product, and hence is afforded the possibility to have a share of society’s total production. Alternatively put, in Marxist jargon: in capitalism, concrete acts of labor are only socially validated as abstract labor in the eventual case that the commodities in which the aforementioned acts of labor had been objectified are successfully sold in the market in exchange for money (the general equivalent) by means of which to acquire the use values needed to secure their own reproduction in the objectified form of commodities.6Michael Heinrich, An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012).
How, then, does this anarchic and uncoordinated mode of production provide for the two core requirements of social reproduction, namely, the division of labor and the distribution of the ensuing products? How can social reproduction be successfully attained in the absence of explicit coordination? How, in other words, can the transhistorical content of social reproduction, adopt such an apparently irrational form? Plainly speaking, how is it decided who must do what, and who must receive what in return? How are both entitlements and responsibilities distributed over the population?
As the mediation of the social metabolism increasingly adopts a capitalist form—that is, as use values are increasingly produced not to directly satisfy some specific, predetermined need but, rather, to deliver a profit in exchange by satisfying the needs of others—regularities inevitably emerge regarding the proportion in which commodities are exchanged. By relating the products of their respective acts of labor in the market as commodities, producers are indirectly relating their acts of labor, albeit in an alienated and commodified form. In the words of Marx himself: “By equating their different products to each other in exchange as values, they equate their different kinds of labor as human labor. They do this without being aware of it.”7Marx, Capital, Volume 1, 166–67.
In capitalist societies, therefore, the division of labor is indirectly regulated through the fluctuation of prices, signaling the proportion in which commodities are exchanged and, by extension, the relation existing between the different acts of labor. The relation established among things in the market is but a relation among direct producers mediated by relations among the products of their acts of labor. The law of value, therefore, is the regulative force of the social division of labor when it adopts an inherently capitalist form; it is “the transmission belt which transfers the movement of working processes from one part of society to another, making society a functioning whole” in the words of Isaak I. Rubin.8Isaak Ilich Rubin, Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value (Indo-European Publishing, 2019), 59.
Yet whether production intended for exchange will be actually capable of satisfying some social need can never be known in advance. Only through the sale of products in the market can acts of labor be socially validated as socially useful and, hence, recognized as part of society’s total labor. If that is the case, by receiving in return an amount of money, the producer has access to a definite proportion of society’s total production, the actual extent of which is dictated by the amount of the general equivalent—that is, money—ending in their pocket.
In capitalist societies, therefore, it is through the operation of the law of value that the two core transhistorical requirements of social reproduction are satisfied. Both the collective production of use values through a division of labor that mediates the social metabolism and the distribution of these useful objects are simultaneously instantiated by the incessant movement of value along its different forms and the price fluctuations this movement brings forward. The circulation of value mediates the reproduction of social life. The reproduction of social life is thus conditioned and subordinated to the reproduction of the circulation of value. The ongoing reproduction of the latter is both necessary outcome and a necessary precondition for the former itself. In short, social life is not reproduced despite, nor behind, but precisely through, capital.9Rebecca Carson, Immanent Externalities: The Reproduction of Social Life (Leiden: Brill, 2023).
Capitalist societies are those where social reproduction predominantly adopts a capitalist form. All those activities, which are initially intended for exchange in the expectation of securing a profit, are privately undertaken. Whether these activities will be eventually recognized as actually belonging to society’s division of labor can only be ascertained after the fact, in the always uncertain eventuality that commodities are actually sold on the market. Otherwise, inasmuch as commodities are, by definition, useful only to others, failing to find demand for them in the market would render all the labor exerted in their production useless.
Nevertheless, even in today’s most advanced capitalist societies, the activities subsumed by capital do not exhaust the totality of tasks and activities needed to secure ongoing social reproduction—far from it. Myriad other activities remain articulated through direct personal relations rather than market mechanisms. For example cooking my own dinner, taking my nephews to school every other morning, or washing my parents’ clothes are articulated through such personal relations. These activities are immediately socially useful and a detour through the market is not necessary for them to be so. They are guaranteed from the outset to meet a specific social need. Being rendered utterly useless is not an option.
In sum, the activities subsumed under capital—and hence intended from the beginning for exchange—are neither exhaustive of the total ensemble of tasks whose ongoing deployment is required to secure social reproduction, nor in any sense more important or essential. Wherein, then, does their essential difference ultimately lie?
Why Is “Value” Important?
The question of which acts of labor are productive of “value” and which are unproductive is neither a dispensable theoretical digression, nor an indication of those acts’ political salience, , nor their essentiality to human life. Rather, it concerns their specific social form, and hence their relation to the eventual satisfaction of social needs—a necessary presupposition of every act of labor.10Paula Varela, “Social Reproduction in Dispute—A Debate,” Spectre, no.4 (2021), https://spectrejournal.com/social-reproduction-in-dispute/ In this regard, the capitalist mediation of the social metabolism between humans and nature is internally fractured. Whereas all labor practices through which social reproduction is attained are ultimately capitalist, they are so in different ways.
On the one hand, those initially intended for exchange and subsumed by capital are only socially validated as part of society’s total labor so long as the commodities in which they had been embodied are effectively sold in the market. To do so they must inevitably comply with a social standard of productivity, namely, socially necessary labor time. This is an all-or-nothing scenario. Either subsumed practices comply with productivity standards—in which case they can be sold and thus validated as social labor, granting the producer access to the ensemble of social production—or else they will fail to find demand in the market, thus rendering them useless and denying their producer the offered reward.11Werner Bonefeld, A Critical Theory of Economic Compulsion: Wealth, Suffering, Negation (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023).
In reproducing ourselves, we cannot but be complicit in reproducing capitalist societies.
On the other hand, myriad other labor activities remain out of the purview of capital, and hence their relation to social needs is articulated through direct personal relations, rather than the market. As a result, they need not comply with market imperatives in order to be useful. The standards of socially necessary labor time simply do not apply.
Therefore, whether labor practices are productive or unproductive of value has nothing to do with whether they are more or less essential to the reproduction of social life, nor with any aprioristic division of spheres (such as the one counterpoising households to workplaces), nor with different types of activity. Rather, the distinction between productive and unproductive practices is always a matter of the social form they relate to, how they satisfy social needs and, by extension, a key difference in the temporal determination that these practices must go through. It thus follows that the distinction between productive and unproductive labor is always context-specific, contingent, dynamic, and ever subject to change.
Nonsubsumed practices—such as unpaid domestic labor, or care provision within families—are neither external to the domain of capitalist production (as several autonomist visions contend), nor a mere background condition of possibility of the latter (as argued by some taking up the mantle of Social Reproduction Theory). Rather, they are part and parcel of the collective mediation of the social metabolism. These nonsubsumed practices are still mediated by commodities all the way down, making capitalist production as much a condition of possibility of unpaid labor as the latter is of the former. Moreover, the timing, duration, and conditions in which they are done are intensely constrained by the necessity that (at least, some) household members participate in paid employment. The actual content of these practices can rarely be decided upon without taking into account the need to participate—either at present or in the future—in capitalist labor markets.
For instance, take the case of arguably the lifemaking practice par excellence, namely, child-rearing. Certainly, many of the items needed to rear children can only be acquired as commodities in exchange for money, which, in turn, makes labor market participation a necessary condition of this lifemaking practice. Moreover, child-rearing cannot occur in a time of either the children’ or the parents’ own choosing but, rather, in the time left available by working hours. Nor can child-rearing occur with a substance of the children’ or parents’ own choosing, inasmuch as the infant’s future employability operates as a constraining influence on the upbringing she may receive.12Kirstin Munro, “‘Social Reproduction Theory,’ Social Reproduction, and Household Production,” Science & Society 83, no. 4 (2019): 451–68, https://doi.org/10.1521/siso.2019.83.4.451. It thus follows that maintaining a strict difference between capitalist production and the rest of the practices partaking of the collective mediation of the social metabolism is untenable. Nevertheless, despite being integral to capitalist societies and the terms of their occurrence being dominated by capital, not all practices are subsumed by it.
This distinction between being merely dominated by capital and being actually subsumed by capital is crucial. Consider the practice of cooking. If I open up a restaurant, my cooking adopts a capitalist form, and hence has to be validated in exchange through the sale of the meals I produce. I must comply with market imperatives in terms of productivity for my products to be sold, and hence for my labor to be socially recognized. Either I manage to beat my competitors, and thus be rewarded with money, or else all the labor that I had put into it will be proven useless. However, if I am cooking for my own family, the situation is different. I may exert a greater or lesser effort, dedicate more or less time to it, and be more or less skilled at it. The quality will surely differ, and the extent to which my family’s needs are satisfied will be likewise affected. However, while I confronted an all-or-nothing scenario in the first case (that is, I either manage to beat my competitors and receive monetary compensation in return, or lose all the effort I had put in), in the second case the extent to my activity meets a social need is a matter of degree. My family will be fed—better or worse, certainly—but the threat of my act of cooking failing to meet a social need will not be present.
As practices are subsumed under capital, their social form compels them to respond to social forces they can neither anticipate nor master, and thus they become autonomized into a system of abstractions whose ultimate goal is the limitless accumulation of value, rather than the direct satisfaction of social needs. Capital’s self-referential activity disregards everything it does not integrate within its own accounting schemes. Simply put, capital does not care.
Towards the Abolition of Capital
To recap, a transhistorical condition of human existence is the need to collectively mediate the metabolic relation between humans and their environment. In capitalist societies, this collective mediation is internally fractured. While satisfying some social need is a necessary presupposition for undertaking all activities involved in this collective mediation, their relation to the world of social needs is divergent. Some activities remain tied to specific social needs by direct personal relations, which were in turn determined beforehand: I cook a meal because my family is hungry, I mend my clothes because they were broken, I take care of my partner because she is ill. The terms of their occurrence may be overdetermined by other influences: their times may be thwarted, distorted, constrained, or squeezed; their quality may be better or worse; and the need’s satisfaction more or less partial. Nevertheless, their eventual usefulness will be a matter of degree. Utter uselessness will hardly be an option.
Some other activities, however, are intended to meet social needs in an entirely different manner. Subsumed under capital, meeting a social need is, for them, merely a presupposition. Obtaining a profit in exchange is their only true motivation. Not being tied directly to any specific social need, these acts of labor cannot but relate among themselves in an alienated, objectified form, in the guise of commodities. To be sold in the market—and hence to be socially rewarded and recognized—they must comply with dynamic market standards of productivity, which are impossible to predict in advance. Otherwise, all the effort put into them will be lost, and the products would be waste and not commodities. The perennial uncertainty of market outcomes and the incessant competition with other producers introduces a compulsion to both lengthen and intensify their work, and to relentlessly seek new ways to do things faster and more cheaply. Capital, rather than human needs, is in command.
The specificity of subsumed practices lies not in their being more essential or important, but in their autonomization into a self-referential system of abstractions unresponsive to social needs. Always uncertain regarding whether they will be finally validated as useful through the market, they carry a compulsion to further extend their operations and to further improve the production techniques that springs exclusively from their social form.
Such a compulsion is absent from all the other nonsubsumed practices. Nevertheless, that does not make them any less implicated in the overall reproduction of capitalist societies, with all its attendant violence, inequalities, and ecologically destructive effects. They are an “other” to capital, but nonetheless internal to capitalism. Far from uncritically “valorizing” them as lifemaking practices, they should be criticized as part and parcel of an exploitative and utterly irrational totality.
It is never human life in the abstract that is reproduced under capitalism, but one intimately attuned to capital’s demands. In reproducing ourselves, we cannot but be complicit in reproducing capitalist societies. No degree of valorizing, protecting, or dignifying noncommodified labor will do; only an abolition of the capitalist form of social reproduction, and its substitution with a collective, comprehensive, and democratic control of social reproduction will. While such abolition is definitely not an easy task, it will, at least, not be self-defeating.