Meanings Of Work, The: Essays On The Affirmation And Negation Of Work

Ricardo Antunes is Professor of Sociology at University of Campinas (UNICAMP/Brazil). He was Visiting Research Fellow at Sussex University and his books and articles has been published in France, Italy, England, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, among others countries.

• Foreword by István MészárosPreface to the English editionPreface to the second editionPreface to the first editionIntroduction1. Capital’s Social-Metabolic Order and its System of MediationsThe system of first-order mediationsThe emergence of the system of second-order mediations2. Dimensions of the Structural Crisis of CapitalThe crisis of Fordism and Taylorism as the phenomenal expression of the structural crisis3. The Responses of Capital to its Structural Crisis: Productive Restructuring and its Repercussions in the Labour-ProcessThe limits of Taylorism/Fordism and of the social-democratic compromise The emergence of mass worker-revolts and the crisis of the welfare-state4. Toyotism and the New Forms of Capital-AccumulationThe fallacy of ‘total quality’ under the diminishing utility-rate of the use-value of commoditiesThe ‘lyophilisation’ of organisation and labour in the Toyotist factory: new forms of labour-intensification5. From Thatcher’s Neoliberalism to Tony Blair’s ‘Third Way’: the Recent British ExperienceNeoliberalism, the world of work and the crisis of unionism in EnglandElements of productive restructuring in Britain: ideas and practiceBritish strikes in the 1990s: forms of confrontation with neoliberalism and the casualisation of workNew Labour and Tony Blair’s ‘Third Way’6. The Class-that-Lives-from-Labour: the Working Class TodayTowards a broader notion of the working classDimensions of the diversity, heterogeneity and complexity of the working classThe sexual division of labour: transversalities between the dimensions of class and genderWage-earners in the service-sector, the ‘third sector’ and new forms of domestic labourTransnationalisation of capital and the world of work7. The World of Labour and Value-Theory: Forms of Material and Immaterial LabourThe growing interaction between labour and scientific knowledge: a critique of the thesis of ‘science as primary productive force’The interaction between material and immaterial labourContemporary forms of estrangement8. Excursus on the Centrality of Labour: the Debate between Lukács and Habermas1. The centrality of labour in Lukács’s Ontology of Social BeingLabour and teleologyLabour as the model of social practiceLabour and freedom2. Habermas’s critique of the ‘paradigm of labour’The paradigm of communicative action and the sphere of intersubjectivityThe uncoupling of system and lifeworldThe colonisation of the lifeworld and Habermas’s critique of the theory of value3. A critical sketch of Habermas’s critiqueAuthentic and inauthentic subjectivity9. Elements towards an Ontology of Everyday Life10. Working Time and Free Time: towards a Meaningful Life Inside and Outside of Work11. Foundations of a New Social-Metabolic OrderAppendicesAppendices to the second edition1. Ten Theses and a Hypothesis on the Present (and Future) of Work2. Labour and Value: Critical Notes Appendices to the first edition1. The Crisis of the Labour-Movement and the Centrality of Labour Today2. The New Proletarians at the Turn of the Century3. The Metamorphoses and Centrality of Labour Today4. Social Struggles and Socialist Societal Design in Contemporary BrazilReferencesIndex