Abstract

Feminists have long criticized Marx’s political theory for its exclusionary concentration on industrial production and waged labour as the key components of the capitalist organization of work, and the main terrain of working-class struggle. While supporting this critique through an analysis of Marx’s major works, and discussing the consequences of this reductive conception for Marx’s understanding of the function sexism and racism in capitalist society, the article shows how feminists have nevertheless found in Marx the foundation for anti-capitalist perspective grounded on the recognition of social reproduction as a crucial terrain of capital accumulation and social change. ‘Reproduction’, however, is not conceptualized as the opposite or the complement of production, but as a broader, more inclusive perspective from which to rethink work, class, ‘revolution’, beyond the fragmentations capitalism imposes upon our lives. Feminism is the necessary perspective for a reconstruction of Marxism fit to respond to the struggles of our time.