Mezzadri’s article argues that social reproduction must be understood as value-producing if Marxist and feminist theory are to explain contemporary capitalism beyond a Western, wage-centred framework. The article intervenes in debates between earlier radical feminist accounts of housework, wagelessness and reproductive labour, and newer approaches grouped under social reproduction theory. Mezzadri contends that some recent theories risk separating production from reproduction too neatly, especially when they refuse to recognise reproductive activities as part of value-generation. This refusal becomes especially problematic when analysis shifts from Europe and North America to the majority world, where informal and informalised labour dominate. In these contexts, the boundaries between paid work, unpaid work, household labour, community survival, dormitory life and capitalist production are often blurred. Mezzadri identifies three ways in which reproductive realms generate value: they intensify labour control beyond formal working time, absorb reproductive costs that capital and the state externalise, and enable the formal subsumption of labour through fragmented, home-based and informalised production. The article is especially important because it connects feminist value theory to global labour regimes, showing that capitalism depends not only on waged factory labour but also on the unpaid, underpaid and hidden labour that sustains workers and cheapens production. Ultimately, Mezzadri argues for more inclusive theories and politics capable of recognising wageless and informal workers as central to class struggle. A genuinely anti-capitalist politics must therefore connect productive and reproductive struggles rather than treating them as separate or unequal domains.
