Reclaiming work: Beyond the Wage-Based Society

Capital & Class, Autumn 2002 by Cumbers, Andy

At the root of the book is the desire to free human subjectivity from the demands of capital-a task made more urgent by the way that capitalist social relations are inexorably percolating into every avenue of social life. As Gorz puts it: `the fault lines run through every sphere in which the right of persons over themselves, over their lives, over their capacity to produce themselves and understand themselves as subjects is in question' (p.115). In an earlier passage, he calls for `new rights, new freedoms, new collective guarantees... A society which shifts the production of the social bond towards relations of cooperation, regulated not by the market and money, but by reciprocity and mutuality' (p.65). At the end of the book, his concerns about human subjectivity lead him into a series of illuminating philosophical digressions that culminate in a discussion of the nature of late capitalism/modernity. He identifies in particular with Touraine's recent critique (Touraine 1995), which charts the emergence of a 'programmed' society where managerial power is increasingly shifting from the `administration of things to the government of men' (p. 135). However, it should be recognised that there are some dangers in what is essentially a teleological vision that seems to deny the very realities of human agency, of resistance, at both individual and collective levels, which it seeks to defend.

Reclaiming Work is an important contribution to a renewed Left project, challenging entrenched assumptions and attitudes and helping to forge an alternative vision which takes account of the rapid pace of technological changes in capitalist societies over the last three decades. For me, however, some of the political implications are flawed. Gorz, with many on the 'new' New Left, seems to set great store by third sector initiatives: the new social economy of LETS, credit unions, farmers' markets, etc. Certainly, these developments are of interest in charting emergent spaces of resistance and offering hope during adverse times. But, they remain limited in scope, with little evidence that they can, on their own, become the bases for broader mass social change. The vast majority of people are still ultimately defined by the material conditions of the formal sector, its production/consumption relations and the labour process. The latter must remain a critical site for struggle, resistance and hope. As Gorz himself says:

`What is at stake politically is, in the last analysis, the power to decide the destination and social use of production-that is to say, the mode of consumption for which it is intended and the social relations determined by that mode of consumption' (P.34-5).

References

Aaronowitz, S. and Cutler, J.(eds) (1998) Post-Work: the Wages of Cybernation. Routledge, London and NewYork

Touraine, A. (1995) Critique of Modernity, Blackwell, Oxford.

Reviewed by Andy Cumbers

Andy Cumbers teaches economic and political geography at the University of Glasgow.