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5 - Exploitation and Labour Regimes: Production, Circulation, Social Reproduction, Ecology
- Edited by Elena Baglioni, Queen Mary University of London, Liam Campling, Queen Mary University of London, Neil M. Coe, University of Sydney, Adrian Smith, University of Sussex
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- Book:
- Labour Regimes and Global Production
- Published by:
- Agenda Publishing
- Published online:
- 20 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 31 January 2022, pp 81-100
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Summary
Introduction: Why Labour Regimes?
Capitalism's innate tendency to endless competitive accumulation and global expansion raises the question of where and how exploitation occurs. We argue here that exploitation is the primary starting point to understand the labour performed by the world's 3.5 billion workers, as well as the hundreds of millions of disguised wage labourers and unidentified homeworkers who appear to be self-employed (ILO 2018). The centrality of exploitation derives from Marx, who saw exploitation as an analytical category, not merely a normative description of poor working and living conditions. Exploitation refers to the difference in value between what workers produce and what workers are paid. This “excess” in value – surplus value – is derived from the part of labour time when workers are no longer working for their own reproduction but for the capitalist (Marx 1976 [1867]). As this process of value extraction from labour to capital is neither natural, nor homogeneous nor restricted to places and moments of paid work, its boundaries should be explored, rather than taken for granted.
In this chapter, we set out to develop the “labour regime” as a category of theory and tool of method to better undertake this endeavour. We develop labour regime analysis as a means to better understand the various ways in which exploitation manifests, occurs and intensifies. We draw on the analytical tools of historical materialism, and, like several other chapters in this volume, we counter “productivist” variants of Marxism that understand processes of capitalist exploitation as occurring exclusively within the “productive” sphere (e.g. the formal workplace). To this end, we draw on and develop debates on social reproduction and labour (e.g. Mies 1986; Bhattacharya 2017; and Mezzadri 2019) and on nature and labour (e.g. Barca 2019), by arguing that these spheres are as central to labour regimes and exploitation as the production of commodities and the circulation of capital. We start with the core assumption that production is the fundamental site of surplus value extraction, but we seek to show how the labour regimes that enable such a process necessarily straddle other spheres. In essence, there is no production without circulation, and also without the reproductive work that provides labour power, or the ecological relations that provide the matter, means and forces of production.
Chapter Eight - Learning Marx by Doing: Class Analysis in an Emerging Zone of Global Horticulture
- Edited by Alessandra Mezzadri
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- Book:
- Marx in the Field
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 25 February 2022
- Print publication:
- 15 February 2021, pp 103-116
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Summary
Abstract
The interior of North East Brazil has emerged over the last three decades as a fast-expanding zone of export grape production. Its growth is based upon fast-changing class relations. This chapter reflects upon the author's attempts to deploy Marxist class analysis to comprehend these dynamics. Illustrating the forces at work in the case and field-sites analysed, the chapter discusses a dual process of ‘learning Marx by doing’. First, it describes the author's process of learning how to move from abstract, static and structural conceptions of class relations, to dynamic and experiential ones, in order to decipher the region's social transformations. Second, it illustrates how field observations on the rising self-organisation of the export sector's labour force and its achievement of significant concessions from employers were informed by, but also informed, the author's understandings of capital– labour relations. The chapter also addresses the relevance of methods aimed at carefully mapping and recording field findings, as these greatly help in identifying key features of class and power in their concrete manifestations in given settings.
Introduction
The modern bourgeois society […] has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other – Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. (Marx and Engels 1969: 14)
This conception of class – of two ‘great classes directly facing each other’ – informed my early PhD research. Yet, after contact with empirical reality, I realised how it represents a theoretical abstraction that rarely exists in empirical reality. I found that really existing class relations are complex, dynamic and multistranded.
This chapter discusses processes of social transformation in North East Brazil's fast-expanding export grape sector and, interrelatedly, considers how they can be comprehended from a class-relational perspective by reflecting upon the author's fieldwork in the region during the 2000s. Part of this account entails a discussion of how, upon encountering and trying to decipher the region's social transformations, the author's conception of class itself underwent significant modification.
Contributors
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- By Aakash Agarwala, Linda S. Aglio, Rae M. Allain, Paul D. Allen, Houman Amirfarzan, Yasodananda Kumar Areti, Amit Asopa, Edwin G. Avery, Patricia R. Bachiller, Angela M. Bader, Rana Badr, Sibinka Bajic, David J. Baker, Sheila R. Barnett, Rena Beckerly, Lorenzo Berra, Walter Bethune, Sascha S. Beutler, Tarun Bhalla, Edward A. Bittner, Jonathan D. Bloom, Alina V. Bodas, Lina M. Bolanos-Diaz, Ruma R. Bose, Jan Boublik, John P. Broadnax, Jason C. Brookman, Meredith R. Brooks, Roland Brusseau, Ethan O. Bryson, Linda A. Bulich, Kenji Butterfield, William R. Camann, Denise M. Chan, Theresa S. Chang, Jonathan E. Charnin, Mark Chrostowski, Fred Cobey, Adam B. Collins, Mercedes A. Concepcion, Christopher W. Connor, Bronwyn Cooper, Jeffrey B. Cooper, Martha Cordoba-Amorocho, Stephen B. Corn, Darin J. Correll, Gregory J. Crosby, Lisa J. Crossley, Deborah J. Culley, Tomas Cvrk, Michael N. D'Ambra, Michael Decker, Daniel F. Dedrick, Mark Dershwitz, Francis X. Dillon, Pradeep Dinakar, Alimorad G. Djalali, D. John Doyle, Lambertus Drop, Ian F. Dunn, Theodore E. Dushane, Sunil Eappen, Thomas Edrich, Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, Jason M. Erlich, Lucinda L. Everett, Elliott S. Farber, Khaldoun Faris, Eddy M. Feliz, Massimo Ferrigno, Richard S. Field, Michael G. Fitzsimons, Hugh L. Flanagan Jr., Vladimir Formanek, Amanda A. Fox, John A. Fox, Gyorgy Frendl, Tanja S. Frey, Samuel M. Galvagno Jr., Edward R. Garcia, Jonathan D. Gates, Cosmin Gauran, Brian J. Gelfand, Simon Gelman, Alexander C. Gerhart, Peter Gerner, Omid Ghalambor, Christopher J. Gilligan, Christian D. Gonzalez, Noah E. Gordon, William B. Gormley, Thomas J. Graetz, Wendy L. Gross, Amit Gupta, James P. Hardy, Seetharaman Hariharan, Miriam Harnett, Philip M. Hartigan, Joaquim M. Havens, Bishr Haydar, Stephen O. Heard, James L. Helstrom, David L. Hepner, McCallum R. Hoyt, Robert N. Jamison, Karinne Jervis, Stephanie B. Jones, Swaminathan Karthik, Richard M. Kaufman, Shubjeet Kaur, Lee A. Kearse Jr., John C. Keel, Scott D. Kelley, Albert H. Kim, Amy L. Kim, Grace Y. Kim, Robert J. Klickovich, Robert M. Knapp, Bhavani S. Kodali, Rahul Koka, Alina Lazar, Laura H. Leduc, Stanley Leeson, Lisa R. Leffert, Scott A. LeGrand, Patricio Leyton, J. Lance Lichtor, John Lin, Alvaro A. Macias, Karan Madan, Sohail K. Mahboobi, Devi Mahendran, Christine Mai, Sayeed Malek, S. Rao Mallampati, Thomas J. Mancuso, Ramon Martin, Matthew C. Martinez, J. A. Jeevendra Martyn, Kai Matthes, Tommaso Mauri, Mary Ellen McCann, Shannon S. McKenna, Dennis J. McNicholl, Abdel-Kader Mehio, Thor C. Milland, Tonya L. K. Miller, John D. Mitchell, K. Annette Mizuguchi, Naila Moghul, David R. Moss, Ross J. Musumeci, Naveen Nathan, Ju-Mei Ng, Liem C. Nguyen, Ervant Nishanian, Martina Nowak, Ala Nozari, Michael Nurok, Arti Ori, Rafael A. Ortega, Amy J. Ortman, David Oxman, Arvind Palanisamy, Carlo Pancaro, Lisbeth Lopez Pappas, Benjamin Parish, Samuel Park, Deborah S. Pederson, Beverly K. Philip, James H. Philip, Silvia Pivi, Stephen D. Pratt, Douglas E. Raines, Stephen L. Ratcliff, James P. Rathmell, J. Taylor Reed, Elizabeth M. Rickerson, Selwyn O. Rogers Jr., Thomas M. Romanelli, William H. Rosenblatt, Carl E. Rosow, Edgar L. Ross, J. Victor Ryckman, Mônica M. Sá Rêgo, Nicholas Sadovnikoff, Warren S. Sandberg, Annette Y. Schure, B. Scott Segal, Navil F. Sethna, Swapneel K. Shah, Shaheen F. Shaikh, Fred E. Shapiro, Torin D. Shear, Prem S. Shekar, Stanton K. Shernan, Naomi Shimizu, Douglas C. Shook, Kamal K. Sikka, Pankaj K. Sikka, David A. Silver, Jeffrey H. Silverstein, Emily A. Singer, Ken Solt, Spiro G. Spanakis, Wolfgang Steudel, Matthias Stopfkuchen-Evans, Michael P. Storey, Gary R. Strichartz, Balachundhar Subramaniam, Wariya Sukhupragarn, John Summers, Shine Sun, Eswar Sundar, Sugantha Sundar, Neelakantan Sunder, Faraz Syed, Usha B. Tedrow, Nelson L. Thaemert, George P. Topulos, Lawrence C. Tsen, Richard D. Urman, Charles A. Vacanti, Francis X. Vacanti, Joshua C. Vacanti, Assia Valovska, Ivan T. Valovski, Mary Ann Vann, Susan Vassallo, Anasuya Vasudevan, Kamen V. Vlassakov, Gian Paolo Volpato, Essi M. Vulli, J. Matthias Walz, Jingping Wang, James F. Watkins, Maxwell Weinmann, Sharon L. Wetherall, Mallory Williams, Sarah H. Wiser, Zhiling Xiong, Warren M. Zapol, Jie Zhou
- Edited by Charles Vacanti, Scott Segal, Pankaj Sikka, Richard Urman
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- Book:
- Essential Clinical Anesthesia
- Published online:
- 05 January 2012
- Print publication:
- 11 July 2011, pp xv-xxviii
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