Abstract

Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) rejects the classical political economy distinction between productive and unproductive labor, the latter defined as all labor that does not produce surplus-value. Rather, much non-commodified labor, particularly that done in the domestic sphere, is not unproductive but necessary since it produces labor-power. Hence, SRT has proposed an alternative distinction: productive versus reproductive spheres of labor. This article argues that this opposition too is analytically and politically misleading. Capital is concerned with profit, not with the reproduction of the living labor within which labor-power is always embedded. It is the everyday struggles of living labor that determines its reproduction. These take place not just in the kin-based sphere of the family but in overlapping, shifting places and processes, including struggles for better wages and working conditions in capitalist firms. This paper uses two different contexts in southern Africa to make this argument: an influential debate over how to understand changes in apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s; and a sugar-cane plantation in Mozambique where interdependent contradictions of class, gender and race defined a social division of labor that systematically compromised the reproduction of living labor.

摘要

社会再生产理论 (SRT) 拒绝古典政治经济学对生产性劳动和非生产性劳动的区分，后者被定义为所有不产生剩余价值的劳动。相反，许多非商品化劳动，尤其是在家庭领域所做的劳动，并不是非生产性的，而是必要的，因为它会产生劳动力。因此，SRT 提出了另一种区分：劳动的生产领域与再生产领域。本文认为，这种反对在分析和政治上也具有误导性。资本关心的是利润，而不是劳动力始终嵌入其中的活劳动的再生产。正是活劳动的日常斗争决定了它的再生产。这些不仅发生在以亲属为基础的家庭范围内，而且发生在重叠的、不断变化的地方和过程中，包括在资本主义公司争取更好的工资和工作条件。本文使用南部非洲的两种不同背景来提出这一论点：关于如何理解非洲变化的有影响力的辩论1970 年代南非的种族隔离制度；以及莫桑比克的一个甘蔗种植园，阶级、性别和种族相互依存的矛盾定义了一种社会分工，这种分工系统地损害了活劳动的再生产。