• the continued existence of capitalism depends not only on the circuit of production but also the circuit of reproduction. social reproduction is the process by which the working class prepares and maintains itself for the exchange of labor-power for a wage. this can also refer to how the bourgeoisie maintains its power generationally. marx introduced this concept in capital but did not explore it in depth.
• there are two scales of social reproduction: day-to-day and intergenerational. the labor pool is replenished via three processes: gestation (having kids), immigration, and slavery.
• day-to-day social reproductive labor is usually carried out by women. this includes the work of cooking, cleaning, budgeting, and all the other work that goes into running a household. the wife in a typical nuclear family does this labor unpaid, but many affluent households choose to hire cheap migrant laborers (usually also women) to carry it out for them.
• intergenerational social reproductive labor is usually understood as the work of raising children - that's as far as it's been theorized in existing marxist feminist work. but i believe that children are responsible for the bulk of this type of labor. the work of formal and informal education for the dual purposes of developing job readiness and internalizing capitalist norms - it's not recognized as labor by, well, much of anybody but i hope that changes in the future.
• one of the key features of capitalist education is establishing the alienation of labor, so that by the time children grow up, they're ready to integrate into a compliant labor force. another key feature of education is maintaining the reserve army of labor, which works to undercut attempts to organize labor or establish worker solidarity. the neoliberalization and globalization of the economy has extended this second feature of education both to adults and previously inaccessible labor markets around the world.
• this (unpaid) labor occupies most of childhood and its imperative is reinforced by three pillars: the family, the market, and the state. you could argue for the education system to be considered a fourth pillar since it operates somewhat independently of other state apparatuses, at least in the US. depends on how you look at it. the family, the market, and the state work together (imperfectly, unevenly) to reproduce capitalism.
• the family is the smallest unit of social reproduction. the nuclear family form developed around the same time as the industrial revolution and is inextricable from patriarchy, white supremacy, ableism, and all the other -isms we usually talk about. the family form in general developed after the agricultural revolution, as a mechanism for inheriting wealth and maintaining socioeconomic hierarchies. families aren't just a source of violence and coercion; they're also most people's primary source of care and support. but abolishing capitalism also necessitates abolishing the capitalist family form (as stated in the communist manifesto).
• family abolition doesn't just mean tearing families apart. it means expanding systems of care so that the family isn't the only place that people can receive it. in their original writing, hegel, marx, and engels all used the word aufhebung to refer to abolition, which is really better translated as "positive supercession." so people should still be able to get care from their families if they like, but it shouldn't be their only option. marx believed that this principle was well represented in the paris commune. i believe that the 2022 cuba family code referendum also provides a great model.
• to me (an adult), if a socialist/communist movement is going to last, it requires a thorough analysis of minors as an oppressed class. the continued existence of capitalism depends on the extended disenfranchisement of young people until they internalize capitalist norms and prove themselves capable of capitalist reproduction. this process is absolutely key to establishing the alienation of labor. dialectical analysis of children vs. their parents, children vs. the state, working class children vs. the bourgeoisie is all sorely needed. the thing is that hardly anyone has explored this! marx and engels make some passing references to it, and contemporary marxist feminist theorists like m.e o'brien and susan ferguson incorporate this idea into their analyses somewhat. but nobody that i can find has approached this question comprehensively or systematically. which is why i'm here! writing! a lot!

• the communist manifesto (lol)
• the origin of the family, private property, and the state by friedrich engels
• capital by karl marx (heinrich's introduction to capital is much more beginner-friendly btw)
• marx's 1844 economic and philosophical manuscripts (to understand the theory of alienation, specifically)
• childhood in world history by peter n. stearns
• social reproduction theory: remapping class, recentering oppression edited by tithi bhattacharya
• family abolition: capitalism and the communizing of care by m.e. o'brien
• making workers: radical geographies of education by katharyne mitchell
• schooling in capitalist america: education reform and the contradictions of economic life by samuel bowles and herbert gintis

Dick Cheney Departs The World He Made | Defector

At its heart, American conservatism is a fantasy. It’s a vision of a world too evil to be saved or cared about, and fearsome enough to justi

defector.com

At its heart, American conservatism is a fantasy. It's a vision of a world too evil to be saved or cared about, and fearsome enough to justify any and every impulse toward cruelty and violence that a person might have. A world resolutely unworthy of knowing, except as a danger. A world in which you will always need a gun, and to shoot somebody with it, instead of just lusting for both. Because the world isn't actually like that—because, in general, people are just people, and mostly want to live peaceably and get along with each other—most American conservatives must mainline Fox News (or Newsmax, or whatever) directly to their brains at all hours in order to remain within the fantasy that both sustains and degrades them. In this respect, Dick Cheney got luckier than most American right-wingers could ever dream. Fanatics with brown skin crashed commercial jet airliners into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, at a time when, as vice president under the harebrained and banally evil George W. Bush, Cheney for all practical purposes ran the most lethal death-dealing apparatus in the history of the world. He got to spend seven years deciding who the bad guys were and how to kill them. He got to scrawl the simplest possible moral calculus across the world in blood. He lived the dream. This is the Mega Millions jackpot for the American conservative. This is the golden ticket to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. No one has ever welcomed their firstborn child to the world with greater joy than that with which the American reactionary greets a Pearl Harbor, a 9/11, a dead cop, an assassinated YouTube bigot. Dick Cheney's celebration lasted more than 20 years; by the time it ended—to the extent it ever did—a crucial portion of American civil liberties had gone with it. More than half a million Iraqis were dead. Against the sheer scale of that mountain of corpses, it seems almost ghoulish to mention that Cheney, more than any other person, brought us today's political reality. He did, though; the American conservative project, the old dream of making the world into a place awful enough to justify American conservatism, never had a better champion. He was a shamelessly self-dealing con man, for one thing: Chosen as a trusted associate of the elder George H. W. Bush to lead the search for the right running-mate for George W., Cheney picked himself, and then ran the Iraq War as a monumental graft machine for his Halliburton oil company and as many cronies as could be dealt in. The nature of Cheney's con—aided by its contrast against Donald Rumsfeld's burlesque vamping, John Ashcroft's spiral-eyed eschatological lunacy, and the president's plain brainlessness—was a thin performance of steely, flinty-eyed competence laid over arrogance, ignorance, and ineptitude. He wrecked everything he touched, and was wrong in all of his predictions and analyses, and as a result completely discredited America's respectable establishment. Along the way, he played white America's (and mainstream media's) Islamophobia and bloodlust like arcade joysticks, to rearguard each next extension of authoritarianism and paint the administration's critics as traitors. His vileness and cynicism were corrosive, and have by now more or less fully eaten through every surface and institution exposed to them. Cheney, that is to say, gave Donald Trump a template for looting the government and for what to run against and for who to scapegoat and how. In 2024, Cheney endorsed Kamala Harris's presidential candidacy and denounced Trump as a grave threat to democracy. You could almost laugh, or cry. He died on Monday, aged 84. What do you do with a life like his, at its end? Shiver at the thought of it, mostly. Bury him in a salt cavern. Bury him face down.

War Tribunal Finds Bush, Cheney Guilty of War Crimes | Common Dreams

Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal orders reparations be given to torture victims

Common Dreams

Former US President George W Bush, his Vice-President Dick Cheney and six other members of his administration have been found guilty of war crimes by a tribunal in Malaysia. Bush, Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and five of their legal advisers were tried in their absence and convicted on Saturday. Victims of torture told a panel of five judges in Kuala Lumpur of their suffering at the hands of US soldiers and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the evidence, Briton Moazzam Begg, an ex-Guantanamo detainee, said he was beaten, put in a hood and left in solitary confinement. Iraqi woman Jameelah Abbas Hameedi said she was stripped and humiliated in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.