Social Reproduction/Feminism for the 99%

Social reproduction theory has had a major revival in recent years among Marxist feminists. Briefly this is the view that expands on Marx’s observation that labor is the one commodity that capital cannot produce. SRT looks at the range of practices, from actual physical reproduction of new generations to the institutions such as schools and hospitals, that ensure the reproduction of capitalism as a system. SRT theorists point to the recent explosion of teacher strikes and other forms of activism to argue that crucial forms of resistance are emerging in these locations outside the formal workplace. This panel will explore these issues, including organizing to oppose the most recent legislative attacks on the right to abortion.
Participants
Jenny Brown helped organize the defeat of a special legislative session to restrict abortion in Florida in 1989 and has since organized innumerable consciousness-raising meetings, classes, speakouts, and campaigns around reproductive rights. She was a leader in the grassroots campaign to win...
Read moreProfessor of Sociology (ret.) at Rider University. Author of Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory, originally published in 1983, reissued in an expanded edition in 2013 (Brill/Haymarket), and translated into Turkish, Chinese, German, and Romanian (forthcoming). Veteran...
Read moreis an organizer, teacher, anthropologist, and ethnographer based in Brooklyn. They are a member of Red Bloom communist collective of the Professional Staff Congress (AFT), Fordham Faculty United (SEIU), and delegate to the Marxist Center network. They are a pleased parent, pug protector, and...
Read more