Making humans capital: The real subsumption of childhood social reproduction

Abstract

This article demonstrates how motherhood and childhood provide a unique vantage point from which to understand contemporary shifts in capital’s domination of subjectivity in neoliberalism. Under the guises of increasing the odds of children’s ‘success’ in a precarious future, capital stealthily tethers mothers’ care of children to the rule of value through human capital theory. Human capital theory provides capital’s unique form of power – ‘the silent compulsion of economic relations’ with tentacles to intricately govern social reproduction, facilitating capital’s deeper penetration into the psyche while simultaneously invisibilizing this yoke. These transformations proceed apace, yet have not adequately registered in Marxist theory because they are enshrouded in dissimulation and because childhood is thought to be outside of politics. I outline conceptual resources that make visible how capital drives to subsume the developing child’s subjectivity, revealing childhood social reproduction as an active terrain of the struggle of life against capital.