This volume addresses the long-standing neglect of the category of labour in critical social theory and it presents a powerful case for a new paradigm based on the anthropological significance of work and its role in shaping social bonds.

The first book to explore the philosophical foundations of labour law in detail, including topics such as the meaning of work, the relationship between employee and employer, and the demands of justice in the workplace.

In this book Ernesto Screpanti provides a rigorous examination of Marx’s theory of exploitation, one of the cornerstones of Marxist thought. With precision and clarity, he identifies the holes in traditional readings of Marx’s theory before advancing his own original interpretation, drawing on contemporary philosophy and economic theory to provide a refreshingly interdisciplinary exegesis. Screpanti’s arguments are delivered with perspicuity and verve: this is a book that aims to spark a debate. He exposes ambiguities present in Marx’s exposition of his own theory, especially when dealing with the employment contract and the notions of ‘abstract labor’ and ‘labor value’, and he argues that these ambiguities have given rise to misunderstandings in previous analyses of Marx’s theory of exploitation. Screpanti’s own interpretation is a meticulously argued counterpoint to these traditional interpretations. Labour and Value is a significant contribution to the theory of economics, particularly Marxist economics. It will also be of great interest to scholars in other disciplines including sociology, political science, and moral and political philosophy. Screpanti’s clear and engaging writing style will attract the interested general reader as well as the academic theorist.

From John Maynard Keynes’s prediction of a fifteen-hour workweek to present-day speculation about automation, we have not stopped forecasting the end of work. Critical theory and political philosophy have turned their attention away from the workplace to focus on other realms of domination and emancipation. But far from coming to an end, work continues to occupy a central place in our lives. This is not only because of the amount of time people spend on the job. Many of our deepest hopes and fears are bound up in our labor—what jobs we perform, how we relate to others, how we might flourish. The Return of Work in Critical Theory presents a bold new account of the human significance of work and the human costs of contemporary forms of work organization. A collaboration among experts in philosophy, social theory, and clinical psychology, it brings together empirical research with incisive analysis of the political stakes of contemporary work. The Return of Work in Critical Theory begins by looking in detail at the ways in which work today fails to meet our expectations. It then sketches a phenomenological description of work and examines the normative premises that underlie the experience of work. Finally, it puts forward a novel conception of work that can renew critical theory’s engagement with work and point toward possibilities for transformation. Inspired by Max Horkheimer’s vision of critical theory as empirically informed reflection on the sources of social suffering with emancipatory intent, The Return of Work in Critical Theory is a lucid diagnosis of the malaise and pathologies of contemporary work that proposes powerful remedies.

This book makes sense of New Labour by interpreting its ideas and practices as symptoms of the times in which we live. Making Sense of New Labour is an in-depth study, interpreting a wide range of material, including party political broadcasts and other election material, Tony Blair's speeches, and internal policy discussion. Finlayson disentangles and analyses the different elements of New Labour's political philosophy, which he argues is in large part a reflection of the culture and politics of contemporary capitalism. As such the party inevitably finds itself managing a status quo rather than driving genuine change. The book considers: - Labour's marketing strategy and susceptibility to consumer culture - the rhetoric and practice of modernisation - the place of the Third Way in the context of recent British political and intellectual history - the meaning of the 'knowledge economy' and significance of welfare-to-work - Labour's conception, and management, of the state Alan Finlayson is a Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Wales Swansea.

This book mounts a forceful critique of fashionable thinking on the possibility of a post-work, post-capitalist society achieved through automation, a basic income and the reduction of working hours to zero, suggesting this popular utopia is nothing of the sort.

Moishe Postone undertakes a fundamental reinterpretation of Karl Marx's mature critical theory. He calls into question many of the presuppositions of traditional Marxist analyses and offers new interpretations of Marx's central arguments. He does so by developing concepts aimed at grasping the essential character and historical development of modern society, and also at overcoming the familiar dichotomies of structure and action, meaning and material life. These concepts lead him to an original analysis of the nature and problems of capitalism and provide the basis for a critique of 'actually existing socialism'. According to this new interpretation, Marx identifies the core of the capitalist system with an impersonal form of social domination generated by labor and the industrial production process are characterized as expressions of domination generated by labor itself and not simply with market mechanisms and private property. Proletarian labor and the industrial production process are characterized as expressions of domination rather than as means of human emancipation. This reinterpretation entails the form of economic growth and the structure of social labor in modern society to the alienation and domination at the heart of capitalism. This reformulation, Postone argues, provides the foundation for a critical social theory that is more adequate to late twentieth-century capitalism.

Alfred Sohn-Rethel’s Intellectual and Manual Labour is a major text of post-war Marxist theory with ongoing relevance to current debates about value, abstraction, and domination.

The ontology of work and the economics of value underpin the legal institution, with the existence of modern law predicated upon the subject as labourer. In contemporary Europe, labour is more than a mere economic relationship. Indeed, labour occupies a central position in human existence: since the industrial revolution, it has been the principal criterion of reciprocal recognition and of universal mobilization. This multi-disciplinary volume analyses labour and its depictions in their interaction with the latest legal, socio-economic, political and artistic tendencies. Addressing such issues as deregulation, flexibility, de-industrialization, the pervasive enlargement of markets, digitization and virtual relationships, social polarisation and migratory fluxes, this volume engages with the existential role played by labour in our lives at the conjunction of law and the humanities. This book will be of interest to law students, legal philosophers, theoretical philosophers, political philosophers, social and political theorists, labour studies scholars, and literature and film scholars.

Why do people work for other people? This seemingly naïve question is at the heart of Lordon's argument. To complement Marx's partial answers, especially in the face of the disconcerting spectacle of the engaged, enthusiastic employee, Lordon brings to bear a "Spinozist anthropology" that reveals the fundamental role of affects and passions in the employment relationship, reconceptualizing capitalist exploitation as the capture and remolding of desire. A thoroughly materialist reading of Spinoza's Ethics allows Lordon to debunk all notions of individual autonomy and self-determination while simultaneously saving the ideas of political freedom and liberation from capitalist exploitation. Willing Slaves of Capital is a bold proposal to rethink capitalism and its transcendence on the basis of the contemporary experience of work.