Global Labour in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

How COVID-19 Accelerated Humanity's Degradation

Series: 

In this latest work by the prolific Mexican theorist Adrián Sotelo Valencia, the COVID-19 pandemic is shown to have merely exacerbated the profound world capitalist crisis rooted in the 1970s structural exhaustion of the third industrial revolution. Sotelo explains how the current 4.0 revolution whose articulating axis is the development and expansion of artificial intelligence, Big Data, algorithms, 3D printing, the Internet of Things, and digital platforms constitutes a global strategy of capital and the state aimed at detaining the global capitalist crisis. The Digital Revolution heralds a new international division of labour with severe repercussions for labour, especially in dependent countries like Mexico. The foreword by Andrés Piqueras of the Universidad Jaume I de Castellón underlines the urgency to heed this insightful analysis.
Copyright Year:
2023
E-Book (PDF)
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Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-53271-7
Publication:
27 Feb 2023
Hardback
Availability:
Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-53270-0
Publication:
02 Mar 2023
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Dr. Adrián Sotelo Valencia is professor and researcher at the Center for Latin American Studies of the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the UNAM in Mexico City. He is author of numerous works on labor, capitalist crisis, and development, including United States in a World in Crisis (Brill, 2020), Sub-Imperalism Revisited (Brill, 2017) and The Future of Work (Brill, 2015).
List of Tables, Figures, Graphs and Diagrams

Foreword

Introduction

Part 1
Capitalism and the Human Hecatomb
1 The Coronavirus Pandemic Demolishes the “End of Work” Fallacy
 1 Introduction
 1.1 Debates and the Re-articulation of the World of Work


 2 Conclusion


2 Precarious Labor and the Extension of the Super-Exploitation of Labor
 1 Introduction
 1.1 Globalization of the Law of Value and the Super-Exploitation of Labor

 1.2 The Extension of the Super-Exploitation of Labor Does Not Cancel the Dependency: It Only Redefines It


 2 Conclusion


Part 2
Expansion, Crisis, and the Deterioration of Capitalism
3 The Crisis of World Capitalism
 1 Introduction
 1.1 Coronavirus-Accelerated System Decline

 1.2 The End of the “Long Expansion” in the United States: The Locomotive Slows Down
 1.2.1 The Hegemonic Crisis of U.S. Imperialism


 2 Conclusion


Part 3
The Sociology of Digitalization: The World of Dehumanized Labor in the Vicissitudes of the Global Hecatomb of Post-Pandemic Capitalism
4 The Pandemic Accelerates and Deepens the Crisis of Capitalism and Enriches the Multibillionaires
 1 Introduction
 1.1 The World of Work in the Post-pandemic Period

 1.2 covid-Cide, Precariousness, and Death in Transnational Maquilas in Mexico


 2 Conclusion


5 Remote Work, the Home Office, Digital Platforms, and the Super-Exploitation of Labor
 1 Introduction
 1.1 Platform Capitalism
 1.1.1 Remote Work

 1.1.2 The Home Office in the Fashion of the House

 1.1.3 Regulating Remote Work and the Home Office


 1.2 The Factory of the Future as a Builder of Skills and Talents


 2 Conclusion


6 The Vicissitudes of the Fourth Industrial Revolution
 1 Introduction
 1.1 Marx’s Theory of Value and the Fourth Industrial Revolution

 1.2 Three Industrial Revolutions

 1.3 The Fourth Industrial Revolution in the Making
 1.3.1 Revolution 4.0: Variable or Constant Capital?

 1.3.2 Productive and Unproductive Work in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

 1.3.3 The Digital Factory and the Law of Value


 2 Conclusion


  Conclusion


Bibliography

Index

Academic scholars, students and policy-makers seeking to understand the deepening structural crisis of capitalism in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the contradictory development of the 4.0 Digital Revolution.
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