About Labour and the Left

The seminar about labour staged by Espaces Marx in Paris, on 18 November, brought together during the whole day, some fifty trade unionists, researchers and political activists. There was a broad consensus on the decisive place occupied by work in our lives, as well as on the transformations linked with the role played by the

The seminar about labour staged by Espaces Marx in Paris, on 18 November, brought together during the whole day, some fifty trade unionists, researchers and political activists.
There was a broad consensus on the decisive place occupied by work in our lives, as well as on the transformations linked with the role played by the financialization of capitalism and its globalization, but also with new methods of management, individualization of social relations in the real “crisis” work is facing, crisis of meaning, content, recognition.
The primacy given to employment in the public debate was also pointed out, while work – which is the source of the creation of wealth, but also the source of the construction of individual and collective identities, dissemination of values and formation of social groups – is virtually absent.
What are the causes of the silence of the Left about labour? What is expected as discourse and as proposals for work, from parties who give themselves the goal of transforming society? The contributions will be published and the debate should be continued in 2012.