The Cyclical Temporalities of Capitalist Social Reproduction: Social Rhythms and Temporal Scales

This article analyses the temporalities of capitalist social reproduction, which occurs in every spatiotemporal setting by orchestrating a plurality of heterogeneous collective rhythms, in conjunction with myriad others of biological, cultural, or cosmic provenance. Despite the pervasiveness of abstract clock time, capitalist social reproduction is inherently cyclical, involving the ongoing orchestration of a plurality of interconnected rhythms, where those springing from capital play a dominant role, and which repeat themselves along hierarchically articulated temporal scales: the day, the week, and the year, which pre-date the emergence of capitalism; as well as the business cycle, and the long wave, which are social periodicities immanent to capitalist activity. The article concludes with an exploration of the implications of this conceptualization for the successful politicization of social time in an emancipatory direction. JEL Classification : B51, B54, P10