The conference, held at the University of Copenhagen, took place between the 4th and 5th of October, and had the title Class and its Dis/contents.

Darío's presentation treated the definition of gender that has been developed by different strados of Marxist thought and seeked to strengthen this definition.

Abstract: Social reproduction theories, among other frameworks derived from Marxism, have elaborated their conception of gender based on a social division of labour that separates productive labour from reproductive, domestic, unpaid labour. They consider both phenomena to be forms of “productive” labour for which remuneration has historically been separated on the basis of gender, as inheritance from pre-capitalist forms of work organisation. We contest this conception as one that is outdated and only superficially understands the complex nature of identity under capitalism, which ultimately makes it ineffective as a framework for class struggle. Instead, it leads to reformist activism such as the “Wages for Housework” movement. Building upon previous research, we argue waged labour has lost its centrality in contemporary capitalist economies; a global phenomena, in spite of spatiotemporal heterogeneities, affecting both so-called deindustrialised Western, high-income countries and emerging economies. This process is still undergoing, with relative surplus populations on a global scale being about 60% of the global population before the 2008 crisis. This has displaced a large part of the proletariat to illegal, informal or subsistence economic activities, including domestic work and caregiving. As a result, a growing proportion of the proletariat performs waged reproductive labour. Through this, we argue that the Marxist conception of gender cannot be based simply on the remuneration of an activity or its domestic setting, but on more complex interrelations of structures and dynamics such as private property and the market economy.