>> a public school is not a capitalist relation
> A public school in America, under capitalism, IS a capitalist relation. [...] The bourgeois relations of social production permeate EVERYTHING we do. For Graeber--and many Marxists--this is not sexy enough. Too bad. Sleep IS a capitalist relation.
I don't think I get this. I understand a capitalist social relation to be one where someone's time is purchased for money, and the output are sold for money, and these sales/purchases happen on competitive marketsm under the direction of someone who owns means of production.
You seem to be making the point that, in a predominantly capitalist society, activities that don't meet this description are still conditioned to an extent by capitalism. That's fine, but I think defining them as a "capitalist relation" is a semantic rather than analytical argument.
> Insofar as we go to sleep exhausted from working, can't fall asleep because we're stressed, and sleep poorly because of sleep apnea, snoring, anxiety, or whatever else, sleep is a thoroughly capitalist relation.
Yes, but if I get a job at Acme Sleep Services, where I am paid an hourly wage to sleep in front of an audience of sleep-fetishists (who buy tickets from my boss), that's qualitatively different from me just sleeping because my actual job has worn me out, right? I think that's what most people would be talking about when they differentiate between capitalist production and non-capitalist social relations that continue to exist under capitalism.
This is not to endorse Graeber who is being silly. And obviously non-capitalist relations have to be made compatible with capitalism, or they'll be destroyed by it. But there is certainly a conceptually useful distinction between things that are placed within M-C-M' and things that are placed outside it.
Cheers
CWS