Capitalism is intrinsically built on the process of dispossession the 1AC merely pretends like this isn’t the case which ignores the underpinnings of capitalist accumulation and leads to background exploitation

Economic inequality is understood as the concentration of wealth and income, reflecting how global production distributes among the population, where the concentration level is highly dependent on the historical context and must be understood as a worldwide phenomenon (Milanovic 2016, 2020). Leading economists agree that a highly unequal distribution of the surplus does not simply occur by the invisible hand of the market; it is supported and reinforced by specific action in the economic, political and social spheres (Stiglitz 2012; Piketty 2014, 2020; Milanovic 2016, 2020). In recent decades, there has been a constant broadening of economic inequality; despite financial crises or the COVID-19 pandemic, billionaires continue to rise and accumulate wealth; between 1995 and 2022, the top 1 per cent captured almost 20 times more global wealth than the bottom 50 per cent of the population (Oxfam 2022 p 7). These differences are closely tied to the so-called neoliberal economic policies implemented in the past four decades (Marchina 2016). While liberalisation of capital flows, free trade agreements and the delocalisation of production have facilitated growth, technology upgrading, and higher productivity, they have also fostered the consistent expansion of economic inequality gaps (Stiglitz 2012; Milanovic 2016, 2020; Oxfam 2018; Lockwood 2021). In addition, the reduction of state intervention in the economy has turned public policy priorities towards macroeconomic stability and budget balancing. This matter has reduced social services and the scope of social security networks, particularly in the Global South, limiting the redistributing role of the State (Bakker 2003). From a Marxist perspective, inequality is an intrinsic result of capitalism and one of its main contradictions: the aim to compensate for the loss of profit margin to maintain the endless pursuit of capital accumulation through the depletion of its conditions of possibility (Arrighi 1978, 1994; Marx 1993; Moore 2011, 2017; Harvey 2014; Fraser 2017). In this case, neoliberal policies were implemented as an exit strategy from the 1970s and 1980s longue durée crisis (Arrighi 1978, 1994; Harvey 2007; Brenner 2009). While they have managed to sustain capital accumulation and increase its concentration, they have shown limited capabilities of formal employment absorption, reduced the standard of living, and increased the pressure on households to solve daily subsistence (Benería and Floro 2005; Salvia 2015). Under neoliberalism, an increasing number of people are being excluded from decent and well-paying labour opportunities, which then resolve to informal practices for income and become highly dependent on non-paid domestic and care work to sustain subsistence (Salvia 2015). These outcomes speak of an uneven distribution of responsibilities that revolve around relationships to sustain daily and generational human life maintenance. When the labour market does not provide opportunities and the state has retreated from providing meaningful social services and security networks, who and where are living conditions sustained? While mainstream economics and critical political economy tend to disavow this question, Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) aims to shed light on these dynamics, which are essential to understand how our economy works (Bhattacharya 2017). Social reproduction is understood as the activities, attitudes, behaviours, responsibilities, and relationships involved in the maintenance of daily and generational life (Brenner and Laslett cited in Bhattacharya 2017 p 6). When economic inequality broadens, every day and generational maintenance of people become even more reliant on households, where unpaid domestic and care work expands to compensate for what income and social services do not cover (Elson and Catagay 2000; Benería and Floro 2005; Martínez 2008; Salvia 2015). SRT and feminist economics have made critical contributions to understanding the key role of gendered social reproduction dynamics for the economic system and how these are affected by crises and policy change. Regardless, an element that needs further research, particularly in the current context, is how social reproduction serves as a strategy to increase externalities that drive economic inequality (Marchina 2021). From the foregoing, this paper intends to question how social reproduction relates to the constant rise of economic inequality from a critical political economy and SRT perspective. This paper sets both frameworks and feminist economics into dialogue, aiming to take a closer look into how social reproduction represents a whole realm for capital accumulation by proposing an expansion of Marx’s formula of capital. Rising economic inequality, its conditions of possibility From a critical political economy interpretation, economic inequality can be understood as the appropriation rate and concentration of the surplus generated through production, trade, and investment (Marx 1993, 2011). While Marx states that the distribution of wealth is expressly dependent on the established relationships between capital and labour that yield x or y productivity levels, it vaguely recognises how social reproduction dynamics sustain profit margins by providing unpaid inputs to the economy (Vogel 2013). These concepts disavow a crucial element in the increase or reduction of surplus appropriation: the degree of externalisation of our economy depends on the costs of labour, raw materials, and lower-value intermediate goods (Moore 2011, 2017). Taking the latter into account deepens our understanding of the factors that raise profit rates and sustain income levels. To dive into this conversation, it is necessary to discuss the capital accumulation process, why it rises or falls, and how it adapts to historical changes. The Expansion of Capital Accumulation When attempting to define capitalism from a critical political economy framework, the literature allocates the endless pursuit of capital accumulation as its constitutive driving force; where multiple mechanisms that allow for adaptation in times of crises ensure the constant expansion of capital (see, for example, Arrighi 1978, 1994; Wallerstein 1979; Marx 1993; Polanyi 2007; Fraser and Jaeggi 2018). While private property, free markets, and contractual labour forms are usually defined as the primary institutions that support the valorisation of capital (Fraser and Jaeggi 2018), history has shown that capitalism has gone above and beyond them to increase surplus extraction. Geographical expansion, the expropriation of natural resources, slavery, indentures, and unpaid and underpaid/non-contractual employment forms have allowed higher rates of value extraction (see Wallerstein 1979; Quijano and Wallerstein 1992; Quijano 2000; Moore 2011, 2017). This approach does not intend to deny the role of private property, free markets, and wage labour in value extraction processes, but to emphasise their obscured relationships with a broader range of spheres that transfer value to capital accumulation. Within those relationships, gender hierarchies and racism have been recognised as providing symbolic justification for noncontractual labour forms and the unrecognised inputs of unpaid domestic care work (Quijano 2000; Segato 2007; Fraser 2018; Hall 2019). From a decolonial perspective, labour segmentation is seen as the result of colonisation and hegemonic domination that have justified the inferiority of the Global South and coloured populations throughout history (Segato 2007; Quijano 2014;Hall 2019). Under neoliberalism, this can be seen in the following phenomena that shape the increasing asymmetries between today’s capital/ labour relations: 1. The deindustrialisation of the Global North with the expelling of workers towards precarised labour opportunities in the region (Harvey 2014). 2. The rise of highly specialised workers in the Global North tending to receive income levels that allow them to become capital owners and collect multiple forms of rent (Milanovic 2020). 3. A quick industrialisation of the Global South that sustains international outsourcing of raw materials and intermediate goods, relying on cheap labour supply, especially for the stages of low-value-added production chains (Milberg 2004). 4. The proliferation of technology upgrading in the Global South, from lower to higher value-added processes, increasing the layoff of lower-level workers (Tejani 2012). Randolph Persaud (2003) identifies in the mentioned phenomena a global labour supply regime that has its roots in the colonial, enclave, and rentier world system. All of the above show a global dynamic that results directly in a distribution of wealth and income that is highly unequal and dependent on racial, gender, and geographical asymmetries. Fraser and Jaeggi (2018) locate racism and gender hierarchies as co-constitutive of capitalism, serving as the background conditions of possibility to the foreground mechanisms of surplus extraction: private property, waged labour, and free markets. Nancy Fraser (2018) further explains that for value extraction through the exploitation of “free labour” to take place in the foreground, processes of expropriation of non-free labour must take place in the background.2 This concept is similar to David Harvey’s (2007) accumulation by dispossession, which he conceptualises as the continuous proliferation of primitive accumulation practices, such as multiple forms of labour control, natural resource extraction, and enclosures.