Doesn't treadmill of production theory thus suffer the same problems with respect to the nature of monetary sovereignty?
Yes and no. "Treadmill" thinking comes out of Molotch's work on urban growth machines. O'Connor's insight, gradually elaborated -- and in 1973 only glimpsed -- was that social reproduction was being internalized by capital. Of course that's a fraught process, but it helped us to understand how social reproduction -- health care, education, etc. -- has become one of the great battlegrounds of the class struggle in the Global North. And notwithstanding neoliberalization, reproduction costs continue to rise -- and state spending as a share of GDP with it.
Yes and no. "Treadmill" thinking comes out of Molotch's work on urban growth machines. O'Connor's insight, gradually elaborated -- and in 1973 only glimpsed -- was that social reproduction was being internalized by capital. Of course that's a fraught process, but it helped us to understand how social reproduction -- health care, education, etc. -- has become one of the great battlegrounds of the class struggle in the Global North. And notwithstanding neoliberalization, reproduction costs continue to rise -- and state spending as a share of GDP with it.
The closer parallel is between the treadmill theory of production and James O'Connor's work directly on a Marxist theory of how capitalism undermines natural capital. See O'Connor's second law.
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