The article focuses on Marx’s concepts of different forms of subsumption to capital – formal, real, hybrid and ideal subsumption, which it applies to reproductive labour under capitalism. It summarizes the two main approaches of Marxist feminism in discussing the productivity of reproductive labour under capitalism: autonomist feminism and the Marxian school of social reproduction. As an original contribution to the analysis of the debate on the value and productivity of reproductive labour, it situates reproductive labour in capitalism through Marx’s concepts of subsumption. In doing so, it argues that the move towards a theory of subsumption builds on existing debates on reproductive labour in capitalism, as it most accurately points to the place that these productive and unproductive forms of reproductive labour occupy in the capitalist production process. With the apparatus of the theory of subsumption, it then analyses the possibility of a complete actual (formal and real) subsumption of reproductive labour to capital. It concludes that the concept of hybrid subsumption proves as a useful concept capable of capturing and situating the unproductive labour that serves the accumulation of capital.
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