Does capital depend on unpaid reproductive labour? Revisiting John Harrison’s political economy of housework
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This comment revisits John Harrison’s 1973 analysis of housework in light of Gao and Bai’s recent costs-of-consumption framework. Its central claim is that Harrison should not be read simply as a representative of the “benefit position.” His model is better understood as a counterfactual replacement-cost analysis: taking the productivity of household provision relative to its market substitutes as a key variable, it asks when a given reproductive function is more advantageous to capital as unpaid household labour, and when its commodified substitute becomes preferable. This shifts the debate from the general claim that capitalism depends on unpaid reproductive labour to a more precise comparative question about the social forms of reproduction. Capitalism may still depend on some non-commodified background, but any systemic limit to commodification would require a separate explanation.
Source: Capital & Class
Author: Oliver Schlaudt
Institution: Eurac Research
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W7225084224