A return to the critique of political economy: the classics' contribution to the contemporary world of work

Abstract

The debates about the contemporary world of work reconfigurations have peculiarly demonstrated themselves as symptomatic in supposing that, as a result of theses as the post-industrial, post-modern and post-capitalist condition of societies in the present time, the relations of production would no longer be limiting, but boosting, in an emancipatory way, the productive forces development. Revisiting some of the classics contributions regarding the social division of labour in modern societies, this article aims to analyse the recent efforts that, analogous to traditional studies on the relationship between the instances of production, distribution, exchange and consumption, have shown similar trends in reducing the diagnostic of capitalism as social system and productive mode to the contemplation of the world of work transformations, justifying thus a necessary return to the critique of political economy to the effective understanding of the meanings inscribed by the application of new techniques, technologies and scientific knowledge to the currently existing productive relations.