Social Reproduction as a Critique of Political Ecology

Abstract

The article aims to put in value the concept of social reproduction as a fundamental perspective to criticize the political ecology of capitalism. On the basis of the analysis of the Capitalocene advanced by Jason W. Moore it is indeed possible to conceive the capitalistic system as a specific organization of natural context and human relationships. Moving from the exam of the environmental conditions of capitalism in Rosa Luxemburg’s Accumulation of Capital (1913), our purpose is to highlight the cruciality of the exploitation of the eco-social reproduction also in the contemporary process of accumulation. Assuming Nancy Fraser’s description of the social-reproductive contradiction in financial capitalism, the article tries to consider the so-called “struggles over boundaries” as the example of a new politics of connections and interdependency.