Some reflections on the capitalist labour process, nature and social reproduction

Abstract

This article suggests that Labour Process Theory (LPT) could engage more substantially with the spheres of ecology and social reproduction. By drawing on ecological and feminist Marxist literatures, it seeks to recast a materialist analysis of the capitalist labour process, which is reconstructed as an ecological process as well as a process structurally shaped by spaces and institutions where the social reproduction of workers and the working class take place. Drawing from the collective and individual work done over the last few years within these areas, the article translates abstract observations in more operative analytical categories by reinstating the relevance of socio-ecological indeterminacy of the labour process, the materiality of the body, the commodity and the workplace, the intertwining between exploitation and disciplining and by introducing the notion of reproductive subsumption.