A reading on labor and critical theory

• Autor(a) principal: Klein, Stefan Fornos
• Data de Publicação: 2024
• Outros Autores: Bachur, João Paulo
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Sociologias (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://seer.ufrgs.br/index.php/sociologias/article/view/132327
• topic: teoria crítica; reificação; economia flexível; novo welfare state; labor; critical theory; reification; gig economy; new welfare state; trabajo; teoría crítica; reificación; economía gig; nuevo estado de bienestar

This paper reconstructs the development of labor as a conceptual category within the intellectual tradition that calls itself critical theory of society, in its transformations throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century. The paper will demonstrate a pendulum movement: starting from a theoretical formulation in the early days of the Frankfurt School, it moves to a purely empirical conception in the sociology of labor in the 1980s, associated with the diagnosis of the “end of the labor society”, a diagnosis that is now questionable in light of the new labor relations of the Gig Economy. So, we shift today to a context in which labor can once again occupy a central position for critical theory, perhaps enabling a new political project. This article reconstructs this movement, showing how the centrality of the labor category has oscillated over time, according to structural transformations of world capitalism.