Back to Basics with Labor-Power

Ted Striphas recently called for a return to the “problem of culture” within cultural studies. This is a political as much as a methodological provocation: “culture” became an object of analysis among mid-twentieth century scholars in dialogue with Marxist accounts of ongoing political crises. Taking a cue from this past, this essay rethinks culture in relation to the ongoing crisis in social reproduction via Social Reproduction Theory (SRT). Within some Marxist feminist currents, “social reproduction” refers to the reproduction of labor-power, Marx’s term for the capacity to work sold on the market in exchange for wages. Marxist feminists have theorized such matters at length via their analyses of the practices undergirding the reproduction of labor-power. SRT is not unfamiliar to cultural studies scholars, but those engaged with it tend to explore the representation of socially reproductive practices within culture rather than the ways culture itself contributes to labor-power’s reproduction. This is unsurprising. Historically, the field has discussed labor-power in terms of its circulation rather than its reproduction, detailing culture’s role in reproducing social systems. Drawing upon Michael Denning’s “labor theory of culture,” recent work in SRT, and Marx, I argue that culture functions in a socially reproductive capacity within the logic of capitalism. In doing so, it casts cultural struggle as a form of social reproduction struggle at the intersection of labor-power’s reproduction and that of the society that requires it. This essay constructs a systematic account of culture’s socially reproductive before using it to consider its historical expression in the current moment.

Unproductive Workers and State Repression

Social Reproduction Theory, as advanced by scholars such as Bhattacharya (2017) and Ferguson (2019), is at its core a theory of the revolutionary capacity of “unproductive” workers such as teachers, nurses, and social workers who are disproportionately women and disproportionately employed by the state. However, Social Reproduction Theory overlooks the contradictory and antagonistic role of the state in the lives of people, as the reproduction of labor power in capitalism proceeds via antagonism and state repression. The task of teachers, nurses, and social workers is the production of not just any life but that of a docile, exploitable worker. JEL classification: B51, B54, P1, I3

THE TIME-SPACES OF CAPITALISM: SUZANNE DE BRUNHOFF AND MONETARY THOUGHT AFTER MARX

The paper is dedicated to Suzanne de Brunhoff’s monetary thought and shows how her analysis of very concrete monetary and financial problems of her time led her to develop the most innovative contributions to Marxist theory of money since classical Marxism. Concepts such as non-contemporaneity of capitalism with itself, pseudo-social validation, conflict centralization, or State management of money and labor power reflect her profound analysis of the ways capitalism generates very particular relations to space and time. By looking at this spatio-temporal dimension of de Brunhoff’s concepts, this paper aims to reveal the novelty, power, and fruitfulness of her monetary analysis. The first part of the paper seeks to define the meaning of the concept of general equivalent, drawing on her reading of Karl Marx’s Capital, before situating her approach in relation to institutionalist theories of money. The second part considers de Brunhoff’s analysis of the particular time-spaces of capitalism.

Life versus Capital: The COVID-19 pandemic and the politics of life

Like all ostensibly “natural” disasters, the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic unceasingly reveals the depths of social inequality and political myopia or governmental recklessness that predictably exacerbate the effects of a more strictly natural calamity. The pandemic thereby exposes the grotesque disparities in how illness, death, and suffering are unevenly distributed. As the COVID-19 public health crisis has summarily provoked a global economic crisis, furthermore, it is simply unthinkable to comprehend the real ramifications of the pandemic outside of the sociopolitical relations of labor and capital, more generally. Furthermore, the global public health crisis commands that we reflect anew on the relations between human life and state power. Both for those who have historically and enduringly been subjected to expulsion from gainful employment, as for those whose labor-power is a commodity of choice for capital, exceedingly selected for hyper-exploitation, the coronavirus pandemic is a toxic matter of both class and race. These dire and increasingly desperate circumstances, however, reveal not only what is most barbaric about capitalist social relations but also the opportunity latent within this crisis.

Projection of Orientalist Elements

The age of discovery is one of the most important periods in human history whose effects continue to be seen. In this period, the world was traveled by European sailors, new continents were discovered, and the discovered resources, work, and labor power flowed to Europe. All these developments have led to changes in the perception of the East in the West. Orientalism, defined as the manifestation of the West on the East, has found a place in art, literature, all kinds of written or printed media, especially cinema. The purpose of the study is to examine the domination structures starting with colonialism in the context of orientalism through the narratives of cinema in light of information. The narrative of 12 Years a Slave (2013) was examined using the discourse analysis method which is one of the qualitative text analysis. As a result, it was seen that the dialogues, images, character depictions, and the language used played an important role in the presentation of the othering; the white man was in the role of savior/god/good, and this situation was also supported by metaphors.

Relationship of Psychological Readiness to Maternity with Women’s Socio-Psychological Set

The article presents the results of the study of psychological readiness to maternity of reproductive-age women, the analysis of its relationship with their socio-psychological set and the semantics of the maternity discourse. The sampling included 47 reproductive-age women, with 16 having a child and 31 childless. The study has revealed that actual maternity has a non-liner relationship with a socio-psychological set aligned with a traditional model of “care”. There are certain differences in group attitudes according to the criteria with focus on individualism, labor, power and money, process and activity results. The study revealed the correlation between psychological readiness to maternity and the semantics of the concepts of “mother”, “child”, “happy woman”, “modern woman”, “seeing oneself in five years”. The semantic assessment of a “mother” concept of women with a low degree of psychological readiness to maternity is more in line with traditional requirements to maternity. The semantics of a subjective view of their future was more optimistic in the group of women with a marked degree of psychological readiness to maternity.