“Work, why Marx was right”, the new special issue of the review Work in the future, examines the thought of the German philosopher. In this issue, readers will discover the texts of the author of the Capital presented and analyzed by philosophers, sociologists, economists and historians.
–
Review Work in the future devotes a special issue to the question of Marx’s work in the form of a set of texts commented on by authors from different disciplinary backgrounds. What was your guiding principle?
Jean Quétier The objective of this issue is above all to discover the different facets of Marx’s reflection on the subject of work. To achieve this, we particularly wanted to show the wide variety of its fields of application. Indeed, because it is always at the crossroads of multiple issues, it provides food for thought for philosophers, but also for sociologists, economists and historians.
We were keen to show it supporting texts, which is why we asked contributors to choose extracts that seemed particularly significant to them, so that the reader could confront them directly, with the help of their explanations. Thanks to these commented texts, we hope, among other things, to make more accessible the different conceptual distinctions that run through Marx’s work.
How is the question of labor, in its concept and reality, a central question both theoretically and practically for Marx?
Jean Quétier The highlighting of the centrality of work in human societies undoubtedly constitutes one of the main contributions of Marx’s work. The special issue intends to insist strongly on this point. Marx is far from being the first philosopher to take an interest in the question, other great authors have done so several centuries before him.
If he is a pioneer in this area, it is rather because he confers on work a cardinal function in the explanation of historical phenomena in general. In other words, if you don’t pay attention to what’s going on in the sphere of material production, you deprive yourself of the means to understand everything else.
Moreover, what makes Marx’s analyzes so interesting is that they also give this centrality of work a practical dimension by making it part of a political aim. In class societies, and particularly under the capitalist mode of production, the centrality of work is a hidden centrality, which is not recognized as such. And that is what it is a question of changing. In a text written in 1875, Marx sums it up very well by saying that “Society will only find its balance when it revolves around work, its sun”.
To what extent does the Marxian approach to work, developed between 1840 and 1880, since the Manuscripts of 1844 until Capital and beyond, is it still relevant today?
Saliha Boussedra The Marxian analysis of work is glaringly topical. The concept of exploitation, for example, makes it possible to shed light on the universalization of the proletarian condition in the world, whether in China, Brazil or Africa in the mineral extraction mines.
In addition, her work analysis makes it possible to make distinctions between the activity of housewives and their salaried work and to shed light on what is now called the double working day. The centrality it gives to work also sheds light on the phenomenon of unemployment and precarious employees. Labor power is always a commodity: employees always have to fight for employment and they are not guaranteed to keep it.
But Marx’s analysis also sheds light on the importance of wages and their increase at a time when the level of wages produces poor workers, in particular on the side of women and popular youth, and does not allow minimum maintenance of life.
The question of work is addressed particularly in this special issue of Work in the future from the angle of questions of communism and emancipation. Why ?
Saliha Boussedra Marx’s analysis does not provide any turnkey recipe for emancipation. On the other hand, it gives rise to a critical and dialectical analysis of a social formation and opens, by this way, paths for the communist way. This issue returns to the issue of the division of labor. Calling into question the social division of labor opens the way out of an anarchic production destined only to sell instead of producing according to social needs.
Likewise, the issue revisits the concept of “productive work”. New readings of Marx undertaken by Bernard Friot in particular make it possible to reassess the historical contribution of workers’ struggles in the new definitions of productive work but also of wages. By understanding the centrality of work, we can better orient the political struggle in relation to all those who are precarious, and therefore in difficulty to unionize, to create lasting bonds of solidarity in the workplaces.
The struggles around wages, feminists, ecological, against precariousness are linked together by the world of work and at the same time divided between them by the violent fragmentation of the world of work. The stake of a communist struggle is to bring to light these links and to participate in the union, political and associative struggle, to overcome these divisions and to create lasting bonds of solidarity within the framework of organized struggles.
–
