Four Concepts for Understanding Contemporary Labour Relations

Maja Breznik, a member of the Peace Institute’s programme team, has published an article in the Croatian Sociological Review. The article offers a critical reading of theories of precarity, aiming to extract questions and concepts that can inform future theoretical work. Four concepts are proposed: (1) the class composition of the working class and the relation between its technical and political composition; (2) the co-exploitation of the proletariat by intellectual workers responsible for technical and social management, who receive part of the surplus value extracted from workers; (3) the super-exploitation of labour power, typical of the world periphery but increasingly present in the centre; and (4) unfree wage labour, in which workers lose control over their labour power. The analysis raises questions concerning workers’ political organisation, uneven forms of exploitation within the world capitalist system, and the transformation of employment from free to unfree wage labour.