Power in the Reproduction Paradigm

Abstract

This chapter has two main purposes, both of them sympathetically critical of the classical Marxist version of the reproduction paradigm. The first, pursued in Sections 2 and 3, is to examine the traditional Marxist response to what I called at the end of the last chapter the central claim of the exchange paradigm. I shall show that whilst this response has a certain force, it remains enmeshed within the same conceptualisation of power as its rival. Moreover it fails to exploit the potentialities inherent within the reproduction perspective for embracing an extended, three-dimensional view of the power relations between labour and capital. In Section 3 I illustrate some of the ways in which these relations may be structured by power in the second and third dimensions.