For Marx, “to be radical is to grasp things by the root…the root is man [sic] himself”. For Marxist feminist Lise Vogel, “beneath the serious social, psychological, and ideological phenomena of women’s oppression lies a material root” which “Marxism has never adequately analysed”. From this lacuna in Marx’s work proceeded materialist analyses of feminised domestic and caring labour: social reproduction theory.
Our philosophical premise is that social reproduction theory can ultimately be understood as a theory of the subject – and thus of subjectification under capitalism – yet the course also has a political remit. Social reproduction theory remains vital for bringing to light the elided labour and invisible subjects who maintain and reproduce capitalism, but we are obviously still far overcoming capital or patriarchy, let alone becoming what Juliet Mitchell called “whole people”. As subjects of an increasingly authoritarian capitalism, what resources might social reproduction theory offer for resistance?
Proceeding from Marx and Engels to Nancy Fraser and Sophie Lewis via Angela Davis and Silvia Federici, the course will trace social reproduction theory’s historical development and contemporary iterations; readings focus on thinkers in dialogue with each other. The role of historically feminised and unwaged labour in the reproduction of capitalist social relations is a key site of investigation: we will also consider notions of the family, the child and carework. Contemporary social reproduction theory involves imagining how collective reproductive labour might be re-directed towards a society where radical caring relations supplant capitalist exploitation and patriarchal oppression. The abolition of the family and the liberation of children underpin such utopian visions, yet we must know the history of our social relations and how our labour reproduces them before we can think beyond them.
Course Schedule
Week 1 – Feminised Labour
Social reproduction theory developed from gaps in orthodox Marxism, as feminists sought to bring the historically feminised and culturally elided labour of housework and carework to the surface. They demonstrated such labour’s indispensability for the reproduction of both capitalist subjects and a capitalist social formation. Although Siliva Federici highlighted that “housework was under Marx and Engel’s theoretical horizon”, Marxism remains indispensable for conceiving of “social reproduction theory” as a philosophical tradition. To begin, we examine what human labour is, as we trace the emergence of feminised labour – often conceived as work – as a distinct site of theoretical investigation and political struggle. Texts by Juliet Mitchell and Silvia Federici allows us to locate the emergence of what we now call social reproduction theory from second wave feminism.
Key Texts/Readings
- Karl Marx: ‘The Commodity and Money’ in Marx, K 2024 [1867], Capital: Critique of Political Economy (Vol. I) trans. Paul Reitter, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
- Hannah Arendt: ‘Labour’ (from Section 12 ‘The Labour of our Body and the Work of Our Hands to Section 14 ‘Labour and Fertility’) in Arendt, H 1988 The Human Condition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
- Juliet Mitchell: ‘The Politics of Women’s Liberation: 2’ in Mitchel, J 1977, Women’s Estate, Penguin. England.
- Silvia Federici: ‘Counterplanning from the Kitchen’ in Federici, S 2012, Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle, PM Press; Autonomedia, Oakland; Brooklyn.
Week 2 – The Nuclear Family and Capitalism
The most “natural” site of reproductive labour is the nuclear family. The family as a social institution and familism as ideology continue to support and stabilise capitalist societies: the family is ground zero for the reification of a patriarchal gender order and a capitalist mode of production. This week we consider the function of the family in reproducing capitalist subjects and thus capitalist social relations: this in turn necessitates engaging with what queer theorist Lee Edelman termed “reproductive futurism” via the figure of the child. While ultimately Edelman’s rejection of the dialectic limits the political usefulness of his critique, it is nonetheless vital to interrogate the ideological work done by “the child”— in Week 5 we will explore more recent accounts of childhood that offer a more promising grounds for radical politics. This week we also read a crucial section of Engels’s The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, which despite its limitations prepared the ground for what is now known as social reproduction theory.
Key Texts/Readings:
- Michèle Barrett & Mary McIntosh: ‘A Question of Values’ in Barrett, M & McIntosh, M 2015, The Anti-Social Family, Verso, London; New York.
- Helen Hester & Nick Srnicek: ‘Families’ in Hester, H & Srnicek, N, 2023, After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time, Verso, London.
- Shulamith Firestone: ‘Down With Childhood’ in Firestone, S 2015, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, Verso, London.
- Lee Edelman: ‘The Future is Kid Stuff: Queer Theory, Disidentification and the Death Drive’ in Narrative (1998), vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 18-30.
- Friedrich Engels: extract from ‘The Family’ in Engels, F 2010, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Penguin, London.
Week 3 – Social Reproduction Theory: A First Wave?
Silvia Federici was a pivotal figure in the Wages for Housework movement, which is retrospectively acknowledged by many thinkers – although not by Federici – as the “first wave” of social reproduction theory. Her claim that “capitalism requires unwaged reproductive labour in order to contain the cost of labour power” was theoretically innovative, allowing us to conceive and contest the “separate spheres” model of (waged and masculinised) productive labour and (unwaged and feminised) reproductive labour. This week we discuss texts by Federici and Alessandra Mezzadri that articulate a “first wave” position, in addition to an overview of its tendencies: an insistence that reproductive labour produces value for capital unites these thinkers.
This week we also encounter Lise Vogel’s pioneering work, which exemplifies the first wave’s expansion of Marxism via a materialist analysis of historically invisiblised and feminised reproductive labour processes.
Key Texts/Readings:
- Silvia Federici: ‘The Reproduction of Labour Power in the Global Economy’ in Federici, S 2012, Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle, Autonomedia, Oakland.
- Silvia Federici: ‘Social Reproduction Theory', in Radical Philosophy (2019), vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 55-7.
- Alessandra Mezzadri: ‘On the Value of Social Reproduction’ in Radical Philosophy (2019), vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 33-41.
- Barbara Laslett & Johanna Brenner: ‘Gender and Social Reproduction: Historical Perspectives' in Annual Review of Sociology (1989), vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 381-404.
- Lise Vogel: ‘The Reproduction of Labour Power’ in Vogel, L 2013, Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory, Haymarket Books, Chicago, IL.
Week 4 – Social Reproduction Theory: A Second Wave?
The Wages for Housework movement was theoretically ground-breaking, yet as Angela Davis noted at the time, “women of colour…have been receiving wages for housework for untold decades”. A relatively recent revival of social reproduction theory, often taking inspiration from Vogel, has contested the analytical priority that the first wave ascribed to domestic labour and housework, although in positing two waves of social reproduction theory, genealogy is less important than the question of what exactly constitutes “social reproduction”.
This week we explore several texts that grapple with this question, expanding the terrain mapped out by the thinkers we encountered last week. Maintaining that reproductive labour does not produce value for capital, the “second wave” are more likely to differentiate carework from domestic labour and housework. Similar to last week, we will discuss texts that define the second wave and a summary of its tendencies: Vogel’s prescient chapter “Beyond Domestic Labour” is particularly useful, as it is here that we can observe a second wave theorisation of reproductive labour emerging from first wave propositions.
Key Texts/Readings:
- Angela Davis: ‘The Approaching Obsolesce of Housework’ in Davis, A 2019, Women, Race and Class, Penguin Books, London.
- Susan Ferguson: ‘Renewing Social Reproduction Feminism’ in Ferguson, S 2020, Women and Work: Feminism, Labour, and Social Reproduction, Pluto Press, London.
- Paula Varela: ‘Social Reproduction in Dispute: A Debate Between Autonomists and Marxists’ in Spectre: A Marxist Journal (2021), <https://spectrejournal.com/social-reproduction-in-dispute/>.
- Nancy Fraser: ‘Contradictions of Capital and Care’ in New Left Review, vol. 100, no. 99, pp. 100-116.
- Lise Vogel: ‘Beyond Domestic Labour’ in Vogel, L 2013, Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory, Haymarket Books, Chicago, IL.
Week 5 – Family Abolition, Capacious Care and Child Liberation: Social Reproduction Today
We conclude by examining a number of contemporary currents in social reproduction theory. Whether family abolitionist, child liberationist or centred on carework as a site of resistance to capital, advancing and radicalising the theory and practice of reproductive labour unites these projects. We will explore key tenets of family abolitionism and consider the question of children’s agency, as well as how the ideological work performed by “the child” might be dialectically negated to bolster emancipatory projects. Contra Edelman, an “explicitly anti-utopian logic” undermines solidarity with children: imagining the future in our present demands a radical negation that is grounded in what The Care Collective call capacious care. Caring labour is not inherently structured by the commodity form—it therefore contains a non-commodifiable kernel whose ontological possibilities demand investigation.
We find an unabashed utopianism throughout all the texts we encounter this week. However partial or polemical, this utopianism remains essential to imagining new horizons for subjectification, for human being; just as family abolition, capacious care and child liberation offer promising avenues for social reproduction theory’s future development.
Key Texts/Readings:
- The Care Collective, 2020, The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence, Verso, London.
- Sophie Lewis: ‘Comrades Against Kinship’ and ‘But I Love My Family’ in Lewis, S 2022, Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation, Verso Books, London.
- M.E O’Brien: ‘Communist Social Reproduction’ and ‘Conclusion’ in O’Brien, ME 2022, Family Abolition: Capitalism and the Communizing of Care, Pluto Press, London.
- Madeline Lane-McKinely: ‘Child Liberation: A Utopian Problem’ in Lane-McKinely, M, 2025, Solidarity With Children, Haymarket Books, Chicago.