Out of joint? The dual character of capitalist temporal domination

Abstract

This essay investigates the peculiarities of contemporary temporal experiences under capitalism by analysing its relationship to the capitalist ‘form’ adopted by social reproduction. It argues that the extent and modalities in which capital mediates the field of social reproduction is responsible for the widespread time-related concerns and anxieties relative to social acceleration and time scarcity. The abstract time of the clock provides crucial conditions of possibility for both the relations of direct domination in the workplace between capitalists and workers, on the one hand, and markets’ impersonal domination over society at large, on the other. However, it is argued that it is not abstract time, but capital, that stands at the root of contemporary temporal concerns. From a value-form reading of social reproduction, it is argued that capital's domination over social reproduction is comprehensive, albeit internally differentiated: on the one hand, capital dominates the practices it subsumes by forcing them to comply with dynamic standards of productivity if they are to be socially recognized as having contributed to society's ongoing reproduction. On the other hand, capital dominates the myriad practices it does not subsume by moulding their terms of occurrence to better serve capital's own context-specific reproductive needs. This approach is contrasted with the social acceleration and total subsumption theses, respectively.