James J. Brittain
James J. Brittain is a Professor within the Department of Sociology, faculty members of the Social & Political Thought graduate program, and a steering committee member of the Marxism & Disability Network. Thinking through how capital and its social relations impede the flourishing of all, Brittain is attentive to how social reproduction theory can be used to more broadly make sense of how the class antagonism remains substantively unchallenged while exploring avenues that may assist an emancipatory transformation. It is vital to appreciate that in no way are those exploited (and oppressed) lacking the ability to respond to said conditions. Through its overt intention to accumulate (and alienate), so does capitalism inescapably foster its own inherent contradictions. Much can and needs to be understood about, and learnt from, the vast majority of humanity who sell and replenish labour-power; the class that capital is so fundamentally dependent upon yet equally dismissive of. In this vein, Brittain appreciates and navigates the aptitudes, breadth, and capabilities of a holistic working class that houses the potential to collectively organize and challenge capital’s current concentration of social power in the hope of one that is prefaced on meeting the needs of the human and non-human world rather than their destruction for profit.