Equity and the social reproduction of capital

Abstract

This essay draws on Marxist thinking to argue that equity is essential to the social reproduction of finance capital. Equitable doctrines can be seen as assemblages that define and reproduce the way in which money, people and property relate to each other. Assemblages of equity/capital are ideological complexes – ways of being, thinking and acting that effectively legitimize a particular mode of production. The role that equity plays in the functioning of a regime of profit making is effectively concealed from the student of the subject. Feminist scholars have perhaps been the most successful in drawing attention to the “hidden” patriarchal logic of the subject. However, unless feminist insights are linked to an understanding of the social reproduction of capital, we cannot appreciate how modes of capital accumulation operate under cover of the legitimizing effects of equitable doctrines