Life in value’s shadow: The capitalist state, depoliticisation, and the spectre of the far-right

This article explores the complex relationship between the capitalist state, the process of depoliticisation, and the current rise of the far-right. Drawing on Marxist critiques of political economy, queer and trans studies, and analyses of racial capitalism, the paper provides a deconstructive critique of contemporary far-right mobilisation of racial and gender orders in constructing anti-systemic rhetoric by examining how capitalist depoliticisation also reproduces race/ethnicity and sexual differences. It argues that understanding how capital reorganises social reproduction—and its limitations—reveals how racial and sexual orders organise life outside capital’s direct determinations but within capitalist class relations of dispossession. Marking life in value’s shadow, their reproduction is shaped by political processes alongside forms of personal domination and immediate extra-economic violence. The paper asserts that the far-right’s focus on racial and sexual violence within and beyond the state enacts social determination outside of value while reinforcing capitalist class relations.