Bhattacharya’s Social Reproduction Theory argues that capitalism cannot be understood only through waged labour, factories or commodity production, because the worker must first be produced, sustained and regenerated through immense forms of social reproductive labour. The central question is therefore not simply who produces wealth, but who produces the worker capable of producing it. Social reproduction theory makes visible the unpaid or underpaid labour of cooking, cleaning, childcare, education, health care, emotional support and community maintenance, which capitalism depends upon while treating as natural, feminine or economically secondary . This framework challenges narrow Marxist accounts that locate class struggle only at the point of production, insisting instead that homes, schools, hospitals, prisons, pensions systems and migration regimes are also crucial sites where labour power is reproduced. A key case study is care work: Nancy Fraser’s chapter shows that contemporary capitalism creates a crisis of care because it relies on reproductive labour while simultaneously depleting the time, resources and institutions needed to perform it . This contradiction is intensified under neoliberalism, where welfare cuts, privatisation and women’s increased participation in paid work shift care burdens onto households, migrants and racialised working-class women. Social reproduction theory therefore links exploitation and oppression within one total system, rather than treating gender, race and class as separate issues. Ultimately, Bhattacharya’s volume shows that capitalism survives by consuming the labour that sustains life itself; consequently, struggles over wages, housing, childcare, health care, pensions and migration are not secondary to class politics, but central to any emancipatory project.
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