Читать книгу The Dignity of Labour - Jon Cruddas - Страница 21

Work and human labour are clutch political issues.

In this first part of the book we chronologically address the political representation of labour since the end of the Second World War and inspect how various economic frameworks have directed alternative approaches to labour regulation.

Throughout we reflect on the influence of Classical Political Economy, Marxism and Neo-Classical Economics in shaping competing political debates on labour regulation. The first considers embodied labour as the source of a commodity’s value, the second the exploitation of a person’s capacity to work as the source of profit under capitalism, whilst the third essentially ignores the organization of work. Each abstract economic framework has influenced the study of industrial relations, industrial sociology and personnel management, and we review their contributions in post-war debates over the organization of work.

The story shifts from post-war social democracy by way of Thatcherism to fractured neo-liberalism and fashionable Marxism and ends in modern political bewilderment and a desperate desire for something different; a journey navigated through the contested political representation of human labour.