Despite troubles with Microsoft Teams, I managed to take enough part in an autumn conference (I say 15th to 17th September is autumn even when the weather says otherwise) at Brighton University to acquaint myself with Social Reproduction Theory (SRT). That's not just an academic wheeze. It's most striking feature is expanding the old Marxist conception of exploitation to include women at home in the family. I guess this expansion implies womens' (unpaid) domestic labour should be paid by their partners' employers - or by their own employers if they have an outside job. But the fundamental ideas behind SRT are ones spelt out by Jeff Noonan (The Troubles with Democracy, 2019): First, democracy is to be understood as collective self-determination by and for all people, and second, the way productive and caring labour is exploited is the unifying core of all forms of oppression.
Noonan's political philosophy has much to teach about our discontents. Also he understands that any democratic movement (however understood) must come up from below and aim to meet people's real needs. Noonan is vaguely aware, however, of the authoritarian hazard in his position, shared by SRT, that struggling for democracy requires everyone to recognise their universal needs and interdependence. That is true enough, but would be democrats must avoid sliding into telling people what their needs are and how they must exercise their capacities. Perhaps Chantal Mouffe is wiser in accepting plurality and diversity in democratic movements.
If SRT (and Noonan) are to avoid Marxist authoritarianism, they will need also to grasp the contrast between crisis - or emergency - and routine, a contrast neglected by Marxists and marketeers alike. Groups or peoples who are genuinely oppressed will often find their chance of change in a crisis, of whatever kind. But there remains the danger that organisation set up to fight in a crisis (and claim universality therein) turns into the oppressive power of a routine. Wisdom and democracy suggest a minimum of two political economies - one for crisis and emergency and another for routine.