Abstract
This chapter suggests that a post-capitalist society will not come through the options offered by a post-crisis Left that until recently sought to escape work alone (principally via automation and universal basic income), as opposed to escaping the social relations that characterize a capitalist society. The association between transcending capitalist social relations and transcending work misses what is specific about capitalism: the subordination of the social reproduction of human and non-human life to the value-form. The main feature of capitalism is not its productive activity, but rather the social conditions that underpin a society where we must work to live in the first place and the specific social forms the results of production assume in the market and society. We contest both the common interpretation that the problem with capitalism is work and the proposed solution of prefigurative forms featuring less or no work. In contemporary society, work is not just an activity undertaken to produce something, but capitalist work or labour. We explore the implications of this insight for how we understand prefiguration and the futures of work. First, we explain how specifically capitalist relations of social reproduction precondition work, and the relevance of this for prefigurative politics. We then set out how work in a capitalist society is mediated by abstract social forms, and the relevance for creating prefigurative alternatives to the unfolding futures of work. Subsequently, we reflect on the impact of these insights in the broader question of how prefiguration is understood in theory and practice.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | The Future Is Now |
| Subtitle of host publication | An Introduction to Prefigurative Politics |
| Editors | Lara Monticelli, Eleonora Gea Piccardi, Laura Centemeri |
| Place of Publication | Bristol, U. K. |
| Publisher | Bristol University Press |
| Chapter | 6 |
| Pages | 93-105 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Volume | 1 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781529215670, 9781529215687 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781529215656 |
| Publication status | Published - 20 Sept 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Ana Cecilia Dinerstein (MA, PhD) is Reader in Sociology at the University of Bath (UK). She teaches political sociology and Marxist, critical, decolonial and feminist theory, and has opened up a new research field: the global politics of hope. She is a member of the core group of the Global Tapestry of Alternatives. Her publications include The Politics of Autonomy in Latin America: The Art of Organising Hope (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), Social Sciences for An Other Politics: Women Theorising without Parachutes (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, editor), Open Marxism 4: Against a Closing World (Pluto Press, 2019, co-edited With Alfonso García Vela, Edith González and John Holloway) and A World Beyond Work? Labour, Money and the Capitalist State between Crisis and Utopia (Emerald, 2021, with Frederick Harry Pitts).Frederick Harry Pitts is Lecturer in Work, Employment, Organization
and Public Policy in the School of Management at the University of Bristol (UK), where he leads the Perspectives on Work research group in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law. He also co-edits the Bristol University Press online magazine Futures of Work. He is a research fellow of the Institute for the Future of Work. He is co-author of A World Beyond Work? Labour, Money and the Capital State Between Crisis and Utopia (Emerald, 2021, with Ana Cecilia Dinerstein) and author of Value (Polity, 2021).
Keywords
- work
- capitalism
- universal basic income
- post-work hypothesis
- social movements
- automation