The Political Economy of the American Working Class

Social Media platforms, from being simply a mode of communication, have, recently, evolved into digital “marketplaces”, which have been facilitating the exchange of commodities within the working-class. In addition to the digitalisation of the medium of exchange value creation, which gives the worker a certain amount of regulated autonomy, this has also reinvigorated the debate about owning property and its utilisation for credit and profit generation by the working-class. The term, ‘Property’ in the paper, is not restricted to only real estate property but encompasses everything which has the potential to generate an exchange value for its owner. The paper generalises Engels’s ideas about property owned by the workers from two of his major works, “The Housing Question” and “The Condition of the Working-Class in England” and uses the same to analyse the political economy and growing popularity of social media- based commerce among the working-class. Through data collected from the university town of Dunedin in Aotearoa New Zealand, a town with an extensive and established system of social media-based commerce, the paper puts forward the relevance of the Engelsian critique of the idea of uplifting the working-class simply by giving them control over the possession of property, in the age of digital capitalism. In doing so, the present paper talks about how digital capitalism utilises social media and its associated platforms for commercial exchange to keep the cycle of accumulation in the capitalist social system intact by further exploiting the working-class.

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Rationalisation and Working Class Response: the Context and Limits of Factory Floor Activity in Argentina

Journal of Latin American Studies ◽

10.1017/s0022216x00013791 ◽

1981 ◽

Vol 13 (2) ◽

pp. 375-402 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Daniel James

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Working Class ◽

Latin American ◽

Trade Union ◽

The Political ◽

Class Relations ◽

Deterministic Approach ◽

Structural Determinants ◽

The Social ◽

American Working Class

Elisabeth Jelin, in an important recent work, has criticized the overconcern in studies of the Latin American working class with the structural determinants of class relations and class activity. As she pointed out, this has tended to lead to a deterministic approach on the part of the social sciences, emphasizing the lack of autonomy of the working class in terms of its failure to construct a comprehensive, radical challenge to the dominant system on the political level and its domination by, and acceptance of, demobilizing, bureaucratic leaderships on the trade union level.

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Precarious Learning and Labour in Financialized Times

Brock Education Journal ◽

10.26522/brocked.v22i2.343 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 22 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Jamie Magnusson

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

Political Economy ◽

Working Class ◽

Homeland Security ◽

Adult Educators ◽

The Political ◽

Analytic Framework ◽

Carceral State ◽

New Wars ◽

Neoliberal Restructuring

Our current globalized economic regimes of financialized capital have systematically altered relations of learning and labour through the dynamics of precarity, debt, and the political economy of new wars. The risks of these regimes are absorbed unevenly across transnational landscapes, creating cartographies of violence and dispossession, particularly among youth, indigenous, working class, and racialized women. Presently there is surprisingly little discussion on the relevance of financialization for adult educators. Transnational resistances organizing against neoliberal restructuring, austerity policies, and debt crises are emerging at the same time that massive investments are being made into homeland security and the carceral state. This paper opens up discussion on the implications of financialized times for educators, and develops an analytic framework for examining how these global realities are best addressed at local sites of adult and higher education.

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The Political Economy of Progressive Uruguay, 2005–2016

Latin American Perspectives ◽

10.1177/0094582x18806587 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 46 (1) ◽

pp. 122-136

Author(s):

Gabriel Oyhantçabal

Keyword(s):

Political Economy ◽

Working Class ◽

Capital Accumulation ◽

Foreign Capital ◽

National Government ◽

The Political ◽

Historical Period ◽

Social Policies ◽

External Conditions ◽

Wage Increases

The 2005 election of the Frente Amplio (Broad Front) to the national government initiated a new stage in Uruguay’s recent history characterized by capital accumulation, increase of income for the working class, and the development of social policies. An analysis of the particularities of this historical period challenges official and liberal positions that attribute them exclusively to the capacities of government authorities. Progressiveness expresses a particular way of valorizing capital emerging from the crisis of neoliberalism that is characterized by the linking of capital accumulation with wage increases and social policies made possible by external conditions including the increase of ground rent and flows of foreign capital. La llegada del Frente Amplio al gobierno nacional en 2005 inició una nueva etapa en la historia reciente del Uruguay en el marco del cual se producirá un período virtuoso de acumulación de capital, mejora de los ingresos de la clase trabajadora y despliegue de políticas sociales. Discutiendo con las posturas oficialistas y liberales que atribuyen los resultados exclusivamente a las capacidades/incapacidades de los gobernantes, este artículo analiza las particularidades de este período histórico con foco en su economía política. Se propone que el progresismo expresa una forma particular de valorizar capital que nace de la crisis del neoliberalismo, y cuyo rasgo distintivo es que articula acumulación de capital con incremento salarial y políticas sociales gracias a condiciones externas ligadas al incremento de la renta de la tierra y al flujo de capital extranjero.

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