ABSTRACT
The term ‘social reproduction’ is used by authors such as Marx and Bourdieu to refer to a broad circuit for the reproduction of capitalist society, and by social reproduction theory to refer to a more restricted sphere (Bhattacharya). This chapter begins by suggesting that while we need to attend to both we should be explicit about which we are referring to and how the one circuit conditions the other. It is then argued that the ways in which social reproduction theory has discussed the devaluation of labour and the labourer can be extended to the broader understanding of social reproduction. Noting, with Gramsci, that Marx’s work ‘contains in itself all the fundamental elements needed to construct a total and integral conception of the world…,’ I address the following question: is it an inherent and necessary function for the reproduction of capital to divide up populations? Or is the devaluation of selected populations a relatively autonomous political moment that is historically contingent? In one section I discuss capitalist technologies of anti-relationality (Gilmore) directed toward the working class, and in another the characteristics of the proletarian nation (Zavaleta) and the implications for the heterogeneity of labour therein.
