Is capitalism structurally indifferent to gender?: Routes to a value theory of reproductive labour

The contributions of Ellen Meiksins Wood to social property relations arguments have facilitated an enhanced understanding of the historical specificity of capitalism and its structuring conditions. Yet such arguments also have some questionable assumptions when it comes to theorising gender and so-called ‘extra-economic’ identities, most noticeably regarding capitalism as indifferent to gender relations. This article delves into such issues by delivering a set of quandaries about various aspects of the social property relations approach and its relevance to wider debates on economy and space. We contend that debates in Marxism Feminism and social reproduction theory therein should be elevated to centre stage in considerations of political economy and economic geography. Consequently, it is possible to dispense with the notion that capitalism is structurally indifferent to gender, which mars the social property relations approach. At the same time, however, there are tensions within Marxism Feminism, not least revolving around questions of value, the role of unpaid labour in the household, and wider theorising on the relationship between ‘market’ conditions and extra-economic relations of ‘state’ power. We explore two major contending routes to what we call a value theory of reproductive labour within Marxism Feminism and conclude that this reconnaissance provides an opportunity to initiate enhanced discussion on future political struggles against capital's requirements.

Structure and Agency in Historical Materialism: A Response to Knafo and Teschke

This essay argues that Knafo and Teschke fundamentally misread Brenner’s original contribution to the transition debate. They equate his rejection of trans-historical or trans-modal laws of motion with the notion that social-property relations do not have strong rules of reproduction that structure the actions of agents and give rise to ‘developmental patterns’ specific to each form of social labour. Knafo and Teschke’s critique of Brenner’s analysis of capitalist expansion and crisis is also theoretically and empirically questionable.

Experiments in ownership: Immaterial labour and social property

In Yugoslavia, the social ownership of property was the driving force of self-management. At the same time, it was supposed to become the promoter of the free association of workers. Using the institution of ‘free artist’ as its focal point, this article analyses the forms of socialization that socially ownership of property made possible, and argues that artists’ groups were the true militants of self-management in Yugoslavia.

Anything Can Happen

This set of texts by Lorraine Perlman, a founding member of the Detroit Printing Co-op, and Danielle Aubert discusses several of the projects printed by Fredy and Lorraine Perlman in 1968 and into the 1970s. The Detroit Printing Co-op, which existed from 1970 until 1980, was open for use by anyone willing to learn to maintain and operate the equipment, which was considered social property. It was the site of production of thousands of leftist books, pamphlets, posters, and flyers over the course of the 1970s. In her text, Lorraine Perlman describes her time with her husband Fredy, a writer and printer, when they lived in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and first began publishing the magazine Black and Red, which would later become the name of their press, Black and Red. Danielle Aubert, a graphic designer, describes how Fredy Perlman’s anti-capitalist approach to craft led to experimentation with graphic arts equipment, layout, typography, and printing.

Food Democracy as ‘Radical’ Food Sovereignty: Agrarian Democracy and Counter-Hegemonic Resistance to the Neo-Imperial Food Regime

This article argues that a thoroughgoing and meaningful food democracy should entail something closely akin to ‘radical’ food sovereignty, a political programme which confronts the key social relational bases of capitalism. The latter comprise, in essence, ‘primitive accumulation,’ the alienability or commodification of land and other fundamental use values, and market dependence. A thoroughgoing food democracy of this kind thus challenges the structural separation of the ‘economic’ and ‘political’ spheres within capitalism and the modern state (the state-capital nexus), a separation which enables purely political rights and obligations (‘political’ freedom or formal democracy) whilst simultaneously leaving unconstrained the economic powers of capital and their operation through market dependence (‘economic’ unfreedom or the lack of substantive democracy). We argue that much ‘food democracy’ discourse remains confined to this level of ‘political’ freedom and that, if food sovereignty is to be realized, this movement needs to address ‘economic’ unfreedom, in other words, to subvert capitalist social-property relations. We argue further that the political economy of food constitutes but a subset of these wider social relations, such that substantive food democracy is seen here to entail, like ‘radical’ food sovereignty, an abrogation of the three pillars upholding capitalism (primitive accumulation, absolute property rights, market dependence) as an intrinsic part of a wider and more integrated movement towards <em>livelihood</em> sovereignty. We argue here that the abrogation of these conditions upholding the state-capital nexus constitutes an essential part of the transformation of capitalist social-property relations towards common ‘ownership’―or, better, stewardship―of the means of livelihood, of which substantive food democracy is a key component.