My first introduction to Michael Lebowitz’s Beyond Capital: Marx’s Political Economy of the Working Class was through social reproduction theory. Specifically Tithi Bhattacharya’s chapter ‘How not to skip class’ in Social Reproduction Theory uses Lebowitz as a basis for centreing social reproduction and class struggle across the social factory within a Marxist analysis. Reading it six years ago, alone, and at the beginning of my PhD was a very different experience to re-reading it this time with the collective wisdom of the PPE reading group. My notes from 2017 capture my insecurity with the theory but also desire to find a framework from which to build my own theoretical approach to understanding the role of nature and social reproduction within capitalism. Returning to the text in 2022, its unique take on some old Marxist questions as well as some weaknesses were more apparent.
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