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Alain Bihr

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In: Farewell to Work?

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Alain Bihr

Alain Bihr
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Dar Hadith al Hassania

In the age where the internet and the so-called ‘new economy’ are everywhere, labour is not on headlines anymore.¹ At best, we still know and recognize it from the standpoint of its computerisation. The moment would definitely be that of communication and informational interaction and no longer of the Promethean effort to make oneself ‘master and possessor of nature’, according to the Cartesian formula. This is the latest version of a postmodern theme that, for almost twenty years, has taken place at the end of the century and millennium under the banner of the ‘end of work’ and the ‘farewell to workers.’

With this work, Ricardo Antunes deliberately places himself in conflict with the dominant ideology. Without falling into the latter’s facilities, its schematic form little-inclined to argument, which simply reiterates that its strength comes from repetition and media amplification, here the author presents a detailed analysis of the changes currently affecting labour’s reality, both objectively and subjectively.

From these transformations, Antunes strives, above all, to grasp the dialectical complexity, the unity of opposites and even contradictory movements that characterize them. There has been a de-proletarianization of industrial labour in core capitalist countries, followed by a relative and absolute reduction in the size of the traditional working class. Simultaneously, there has also been an increase in sub-proletarianization of part of industrial work and, particularly, of the tertiary sector, due to the development of subcontracting and precarious labour, not to mention the ‘informal economy’ or the ‘underground economy’, not restricted to peripheral countries. To further complicate matters, aligned with the computerisation of labour processes that rule the new paradigm of the fluid and flexible factory – which tends to replace the old Fordist factory – we witness the re-skilling and, consequently, the complexification of a part of the industrial work that was reduced to simple labour (in the sense that Marx employs these different terms).

Accordingly, the predominant idea Antunes advances is not that of an ‘end of work’, but of the fragmentation and heterogeneity within the world of work, and consequently of workers themselves. Essentially, in regards to the ideology of the ‘end of work’ Ricardo Antunes presents what it is, without a doubt, a definitive refutation, demonstrating that it rests on the misunderstanding of concrete and abstract labour (which brings us back, once again, to Marx). If one can speak of the ‘end of work’, it is not in the sense of the end of concrete labour, the end of social appropriation of nature, which, as a fundamental anthropological dimension, as an institution of social norm and language is intended to be what it has always been: the base on which social life is built. One can consider that, as labour productivity grows at the pace of accumulation of social means of production, the part of the ‘concrete labour’ in the lives of human beings decreases.

However, this is also what allows one to distinguish, within the ongoing changes, the premises of the end of ‘abstract labour’ – labour reduced to the substance of value, submitted therefore to market and monetary abstraction – thus, realizing the famous Marxian prophecy in the Grundrisse. If Ricardo Antunes deserves any criticism, it is because he showed a way, but did not systematically pursued and explored it. If so, he would have clarified the limits and contradictions of the current process of capitalist industrial automation.

As for those who waved farewell to workers and to the ‘class-that-lives-from-labour’ (as he renames the proletariat), Ricardo Antunes shows how they did it too soon. Undoubtedly, the changes currently affecting labour processes and production relations have an impact on workers. Antunes shows that such transformations have changed the material conditions of the proletariat’s labour and life, their professional or political composition and their class consciousness. Against those who believe in being able to extract, from the numerical contradiction of the old European or American working classes, arguments for predicting the disappearance of the proletariat, Ricardo Antunes – keen observer of Brazilian industrialization and trade union movements – reiterates that the future of the proletariat must, from now on, be considered based on the extension of capitalist production relations that are simultaneously a product, agent and cause of the dissolution worldwide. At this scale, the proletariat is increasing rapidly and constantly.

However, it is also at this scale that, more than ever, the current fragmentation and heterogeneity of the proletariat imposes itself. Therefore, the inevitable question of how to bring unity among the scattered fragments of a worldwide working class, separated by geography and also by history, given the heterogeneity of ethnic, civilizational, religious, national and political traditions must be addressed. Facing the globalization of capital, how can labour be globalized, not only as an objective reality, dominated and exploited by capital, but as an antagonistic pole, a subjective reality, a class not only in-itself, but also for-itself?

In short, this is the question, not intended to be answered, which Ricardo Antunes finally reaches. The usefulness of his work focuses on the direction and putting forth means to a possible solution for the readers.

Translated by Henrique Amorim and edited by Murillo van der Laan.

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Farewell to Work?

Essays on the World of Work’s Metamorphoses and Centrality

Series: Studies in Critical Social Sciences, Volume: 198

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004466067

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 03 Nov 2021

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- Social Sciences
  - Critical Social Sciences
  - Sociology & Anthropology

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Farewell to Work?

Essays on the World of Work’s Metamorphoses and Centrality

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