Skip Navigation
Books for changing the world
Menu
Menu
Immanent Externalities
The Reproduction of Life in Capital

In this important book, Rebecca Carson develops the concept of "immanent externalities" to grasp the non-capitalist life processes produced by—and necessary for—capitalist reproduction. Immanent Externalities thus considers the category of reproduction by means of a philosophical re-reading of the three volumes of Marx's Capital. In doing so, the book locates capitalism's fundamental contradiction as that between the reproduction of profit-driven activity and ecologically situated human life, suggesting new orientations for theory and practice today.

Series
Reviews
  • ";Carson blazes a path with a crucial, rigorous analysis that combines social reproduction theory with the capital-logic approach, proving rather than showing the contradiction between capital and life."
    —Marina Vishmidt

    "Carson's work is an original, and scholarly, investigation of the relation between social reproduction and capital's reproduction of itself." —Christopher J. Arthur, author of The Spector of Capital

    "Carson combines erudition and insight, conceptual sophistication and bold engagement, to offer an understanding of the new capitalist logic where the violent clash of extremes: the "life" of financial accumulation and the "life" of bodily reproduction, is pushed to its limits. Her theory will be passionately discussed, for the greatest benefit of scholars and activists"
    —Etienne Balibar