A categoria do trabalho em Marx e as transformações no mundo do trabalho

Abstract

This Undergraduate Thesis proposes a critical analysis of contemporary labor transformations, grounded in the Marxian category of labor. It investigates the configuration of current capitalist accumulation strategies that reinforce the economic exploitation of labor. To this end, a bibliographic research was conducted, anchored in seminal works by Marx—such as Capital, Volume I, the Unpublished Chapter VI, Theories of Surplus Value, and The Communist Manifesto—in dialogue with classical and contemporary interlocutors such as Engels, Mészáros, Barroco, Montaño, Duriguetto, and Ricardo Antunes. Thus, an examination of the labor process in its general form and its conversion into a valorization process under the command of capital is carried out. Similarly, the study addresses the particularities of the formal and real subsumption of labor to capital, as well as the distinctions between productive and unproductive labor. In light of this framework, the study delves into contemporary reality, considering the political, economic, social, and productive axes based on three central elements: neoliberalism, productive restructuring, and technological advancement. The results demonstrate that, although the history of society is dynamic and its analysis occurs within the movement of its own construction, Marx’s works prove to be an accurate prognosis of the contemporary era. It is evident that the categories developed by the author remain relevant for critically examining current forms of exploitation and the intensification of labor. It is concluded that capitalism is configured as a system crossed by structural crises, arising from the mismatch between production, circulation, and consumption. Thus, as the uninterrupted pursuit of accumulation fosters cyclical crises, the system systematically responds through the intensification of the exploitation of labor power.