Welfare State and Reproduction of Labour Power: Notes on the Effect of State Policy on the Structure of Reproduction

Abstract

This presentation outlines a theoretical analysis of the reproduction of labour power in contemporary capitalism. The starting point is the critique of political economy as developed by Marx, especially the analysis of the forms of reproduction in capitalism. As wage work (Lohnarbeit) is seen as the central determining aspect of reproduction, a short exercise is made outlining the dominant types of problems of reproduction connected with the two main types of capital accumulation in the theory by Marx: exten sive and intensive. A short theoretical discussion of state intervention in the reproduction of labour power is given. The last part of the article is not an empirinal analysis but a demonstration of how the theoretical concepts in discussion make it possible to grasp the more fundamental changes in the structure of reproduction, and shows how to analyse the new and specific forms of appearance for the general contradictions in capitalism, making state policy more complicated but leaving the central relations in capital unchanged.