ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on life reproduction as a crucial inroad into the analysis of value accumulation in capitalist society. I use ethnographic material from Spain, gathered during four decades in different regions and sectors of the economy focusing on labor reproduction and its value. The ethnographic cases point at the various forms of dispossession and disposability that have become key to the accumulation of capital as systemic reproduction rests on the decaying environments, bodies, and lives of the many, making their social reproduction increasingly difficult. In the chapter I address the contradictions that connect the accumulation of value, the reproduction of life, and the continuity of the political economic system by considering the tension between necessary and surplus value in capitalist processes. I do so by revisiting recent theories that connect the devaluation of life and value accumulation, in particular racial capitalism and necroeconomic perspectives. A final section considers the interlocking aspects of value, living value, and negative value, and their potential effect on systemic social reproduction.
