Jornadas “Precariedad laboral, cuerpo y vida dañada. Balances normativos de
una investigación de filosofía social”
Conferencia-Emmanuel Renault (Université Paris Nanterre)
everyone everybody thanks to all the participants for the excellent conferences yesterday today uh Professor U Reno will give the opening lecture thank you Professor for accepting our invitation for coming here to M he’s well known but simply to give a brief biographical profile Ren is a professor of philosophy in Paris at the University of n because of his career he’s one of the main theorist in France on marks critical theory the discussions on social suffering and recognition he’s also published extensively on Modern and contemporary philosophy addressing authors such as he and JY in the last years he authored books such as marks and philosophy the connaissance confli and Domin and his latest book from which our discussion today draws on is a explation experience Theory strategy you have the floor language because I use all the Spanish words that I know already so just so so so my title is um maybe a little bit bit mysterious so what does it makes what doesn’t oh sorry what difference does it make to think of work as exploited I’m aware that this title is somehow paradoxical for it could seem obvious that exploitation should be defined as exploitation of work the meaning of this title will probably become less paradoxical if I clarify what I mean by work by work here I mean work as a working activity as working activity or as concrete label if one use Mo terminology now it is simply a fact that in the Marxist tradition for instance the very concept of exploitation is more often conceived of as a means to analyze work as abstract labor than as a mean to analyze and criticize the capitalist organization of working activities my title also intends to draw attention to the fact that in contemporary discussion the analysis and criticisms of neoliberal work organization or work conditions is more often articulated in terms of Injustice at work domination at work or suffering at work than in terms of exploitation of working activities hence the twofold stake of my paper the first dealing with the very definition of exploitation and the other with the analysis and criticism of contemporary work organization and work conditions hence also a twofold way of rephrasing my title you get it on the screen first on the one hand what difference it makes for the concept of exploitation to think of working activities as exploited and second what difference it makes for the criticism of neural work organization and work conditions to think of working activities as exploited in what follows I will proceed in three steps in the first first step I will analyze and criticize two ways of disconnecting exploitation and work as activity that of the Marxist tradition but not of Marx himself and that of contemporary analytic philosophy of exploitation in a second step I will provide a Critical examination of the disconnect between critic of neoliberal work organization and work conditions on one hand and critic of exploitation on the other in the third step I will elaborate conception of exploitation where the criticism of exploited working activities plays a crucial role and I will suggest that such a conception could play a useful role in the critic of contemporary neoliberal work organization and work condition and I hope that uh this uh could be also useful in uh disc in our discussion concerning precarity at the neoliberal age so first uh let me consider the first way of disconnecting uh exploitation and work as activity so here one it become obvious that PowerPoints are better than word f anyway so for those who are familiar with the Marxist tradition or with critical theory it probably seems obvious that exploitation uh should be thought of as exploitation of Labor but as already said it is also true that in the Marxist tradition the concept of exploitation is usually connected to labor as abstract labor rather than to labor as concrete labor what matters in this tradition is to provide accurate explanation of the profit formation and to trace back the structure of distributive inequalities to and also structural domination between classes to trace them back to their relation the social relation of production that make it possible for a class to appropriate part of the value produced by the workers consider of as member of subon groups therefore the focus is on work as producing Surplus value or in other words the focus is on work on producing exchange value rather than use value work is conceived of as abstract labor producing exchange value or value rather than work as concrete labor producing use value the critical function of the concept of exploitation concern the appropriation of surplus value rather than the effects of exploitative processes on the very working activity sometimes the reduction of work to abstract labor leads to rejection of the critique of exploitation such as in in postone or in the ver critic Cycles but even when the concept of exploitation is considered as one of the main tenets of Mark Theory it remains that a relative disconnect between exploitation and work as activity or as concrete labor is at play in the analytic philosophy of exploitation for instance uh in Alan btim book entitled exploitation one find not only a relative disconnect between uh exploitation and work as activity but an absolute disconnect for for instance in this book exploitation and more generally in the contary discussion in analytic philosophy of exploitation also in uh some discussion concerning uh analytic Marxist discussion so exploitation is defined by the fact of benefiting of relationship to another person at the expense of this other person the key example is provided by a situation where someone is trapped in a pit and this person tra the pit is obliged to pay a large amount of money to per person passing byone disconnected okay should I should I go [Music] so the key example illustrating this definition of exploitation so as a relationship to another person at the expense of this person of in fact benefiting of relationship at the at the at the at the expense of the person um with whom the there is a relation the key example is provided by a situation where someone is trapped in a pit and is obliged to pay large am of money to a person passing by that could help him to go to get out of the pit it is stking so the person in the pit is exploited by the person passing by because it’s obliged to accept the exploited offer it is uh striking that in such an example the structural relationships of domination and the structural injustices doesn’t play any roles structural justices between groups doesn’t play any roles it is also striking that in such an example nobody’s work neither the person passing by neither the person trapped in a pit in this sense it can be said that there is not only a relative but but an absolute disconnect between exploitation is work and activity this relative or absolute disconnect between exploitation and working activities are indeed Highly Questionable they are questionable from both an historical and a contemporary perspective they are questionable from a historical perspective first since the is issue of the effects of exploitative processes on the working activities uh was were isue was deemed crucial in the first conceptualization of exploitation let me recall that the emergence of the Socialist critique of exploitation uh must be traced back to simonis and more precisely to the two volumes of the exposition of the Simon Doctrine Exposition Simon so you have here two references so uh 18 13 of course not 19 18 13 and 18332 this text provide the first occurrences of the very idea of the exploitation of Man by man exploitation and then in this text one find a general conception of History has a history of exploitation of Man by man humans by humans and uh and exploitation is also conceived of as one of the main problematic dimension of the the emerging capitalist Society this text also set up the project of an abolition of exploitation of Man by man a project that will be used in the following decades to Define socialism let me also recall that the form abolition of Man by Man became quickly very popular in the working class of the time the emerging working class as shown by the fact that this formula was one of the main Moto of the 1848 revolution in France now the reason why it became so quickly popular is partly at least that the simonian critique of exploitation was also a critique of the effects of exploitative processes on the bodies and activities of the workers this critique made sense to the workers and give them the feeling that the notion of exploitation could help them to make sense of the condition of the working class they were experiencing and they would also help them to make explicit what was at stake in their work experiences for instance the expressive force of the simonian [Music] formula abolition the L the exploitation L was also associated with the expressive force of other simonian formula such as the reference to the worker s sweat and these expression with their expressive Force have endly played a role in the spread of the formula and more generally in the use of the notion of exploitation throughout the working class of the time in this Simon right things exploitation is conceived of as the exploitation of workers threat that is as an overload of work efforts and as a reduction of the working activity to m means to increase profit at the expense of the Workers Health in a word at the time of the emergence of critique of exploitation in the Contemporary sense of the term what was at stake was to criticize the effect of capital this work organization and work as an activity effect that H to form of dis skillings and suffering at work as well to various forms of health issues in a context of structural Injustice and domination that seemed in full contradiction with the promises of the French Revolution what matters for my argument is that this first socialist critic of capitalist exploitation was rooted in a description of the experience of exploitation as exploitation of concrete labor or as working activity it is worth noting that such a connection with the experience of exploitation of concrete labor is still at play in Marx account of exploitation in D Capital the chapters the Working Day the division of labor manufacturer and Ma machinary and large scale industry provide many description of the effect of capitalist exploitative process on concrete labor Mark Clearly wants to connect his theory of the exploitative character of the capitalist modes of production capitalist mode of production with a description of the experience of exploitation and one can consider as I tried to to show in my book exploitation that has been mentioned by seio that the main concepts of Mark theory of values are intended to capture some dimension of experience of capitalist exploitation they have also an expressive force uh in this in this in this sense for instance it’s not difficult to hear some kind of an EOD of the issue of the worker threat in the definition of abstract labor as expenditure of human labor power in the physiological sense at the end of section two of chapter one uh in D Capal it is even easier to find EOS of the experience of the constraints to work always more either more working hours or more intense working hours or both not difficult to hear of these constraints to work always more in the very concept of surplus labor it isn’t it significant that according to Mark theory of value the theory and critique of exploitation has to be elaborated from a twofold point of view that of abstract labor and that of concrete labor Surplus value being always thought as connected to a surplus labor that is thought of both as abstract and concrete labor I have contented uh have just contented that the disconnect between exploitation and concrete labor and can be criticized from both historical and contemporary point of view so far have only discussed this disconnect from a historical point of view going back to Marx and sism in order to discuss this disconnect from a contemporary point of view I have to focus on second disconnect between critique of NE neoliberal working conditions and critique of exploitation I then come to the second part of this paper so I come to the second disconnect a striking feature of contemporary discussions in critical theory in the broad sense of the term is uh some kind of Return of work in critical theory this return of work in critical theory uh where work is no longer reduced there is a return of work in critical theory in which work is no longer reduced to employment or to work as SCE of distributive injustices through wages and profit appropriation but more and more work in this return of work critical theory so to say it thought us thought of as working activity while the first Decades of the neoliberal era gave rise to various theories of the end of work and to various theories of distributive Injustice intended to counter the neoliberal exploitation of work related distributive injustices after this first shift in the discussion the deepening of the neoliberal Dynamics has resulted in a new f on the effects of these Dynamics on the work experience the main Concepts used to analyze these effects are those of suffering at work but also um more recently attempts have been been made to think of domination at work and not only to domination to work related domination and also to Injustice at work and not only to um work related social injustices for instance injustices related to unemployment or to income inequalities as I’ve already mentioned the main concept used uh to analyze the effects on the neoliberal so so what what is at stake in this uh with the use of such Concepts suffering atw work Injustice and domination artw work it is to criticize some specificities of the neoliberal work organization neoliberal work organization uh organizations are intended to increase the productivity of the workers not notably through individualizing the worker activity and responsibility and through creating competitions between workers so so search for short-term profit also results in a degradation of the working conditions the concept of suffering at work capture one of the main results of these various Dynamics the experience of work is becoming less and less satisfying and more and more painful neoliberal work organization is also structured by new techniques of assessment through qu quantitative indicators and it is also structured by new modes of prescriptions uh such as Total Quality processes and all this innov managerial Innovation imply new modes of reward and recognition of the efforts made up work and of the definition of the quality of working activity all these result in new forms of injustices at work and not only to new forms of work related uh injust the fact that the issue of work related Injustice is no longer reduced to distributive injustices in terms of income but also associated with the issue of the Injustice of reward and recognition at work is another striking shift of the Contemporary discussion the third concept that is often used to capture the neoliberal transformations of the work experience is that of domination neoliberalism is characterized by various forms of precarization of work did through a weakening of the labor laws and the bypassing of the legal and social protections associated with wage work PA through the weakening of the work collectives be it through the undermining of the social State and the social protections offered to the unemployed all these forms of precarization result in an increased vulnerability to domination as well as in new forms of domination for instance a new form of domination suffered by platform workers through algorithm notably one striking feature of this renewal of interest in the critique of the working experience is that it hasn’t been associated with a renewal of the criticism of exploit labor there are probably many reasons for that the most obvious reason is probably that the concept of exploitation seems outdated it is simply a fact that in the academic sphere exploitation is considered as an outdated concept intrinsically associated with outdated ways of framing issues such such as the labor theory of value such as a simplistic conception of social relationship of domination between classes such as a monolitic conception of social domination you know that a lot have been written uh to support these prejudices but it is also a fact and it’s a interesting contrast for us as academics I guess but it is also a fact that the very notion of exploitation belongs still belongs to the vocabulary of ordinary social criticism Ordinary People remain convinced that in order to make sense and to criticize some work related social problems it is better to frame the issues in in terms of exploitation than rather than in other terms such as suffering at work Justice at work and domination at work for instance it seems more natural more accurate to address the issues of professional inter internships in terms of exploitation rather than in terms of suffering at work or Injustice at work or domination atw work even if what is at stake or what is problematic in the experience of forced professional inter internship so to say is also suffering at work Injustice at work and domination at work it is therefore tempting to hpo life that the concept of exploitation is able to fulfill some critical functions better than other critical Concepts such as suffering Injustice of domination at work in my book on exploitation I have tried to show that this ethesis is fully legitimate not only because the very concept of exploitation is intended to disclose the structure of the social processes producing what can be criticized in terms of suffering Injustice and domination but also because this concept is able to capture the specificity of experiences of combine suffering domination and suffer and Injustice at work it is also tempting to hypothesize that some of the particularities of the work experience of the neoliberal age are better articulated or understood in terms of exploitation rather than with other terms in order to decide whether this hypothesis is relevant or not we first need to clarify the very notional exploitation and the particularities of the experience of exploitation of the working activity I said that it’s interesting for us to to to to to be aware that there is a contrast between the academic I mean the the the the the Prejudice uh prevailing in academic circles According to which the notion of exploitation is outdated the contrast between this Prejudice and the the fact that the notion is still of ordinary use this is quite interesting because it shows because of course the this prejudices this Prejudice is to be explained by a political Evolution the fact that Marx Marx and Marxism has be has become outdated but but what it means is that academic discussion is more deeply affected by political Evolution that ordinary language and or and and the common sense in that is that is operating in ordinary social critique while uh we uh academic in the academic sphere we are convinced that we are uh more independent from the political Evolutions than the Ordinary People this is an interesting Paradox in my opinion anyway so I’m coming to the third part of this paper in MOX exploitation is defined in general as appropriation of surplus labor so this is something that is quite important to keep in mind because one of the ordinary um reason why Mark theory of exploitation is rejected is that it is assumed that it presupposes a labor theory of value but it is simply wrong because Mark definition of exploitation is not a definition of exploitation as appropriation of surplus value and indeed the concept of surplus value presupposes a label theory of value but the general definition is not in terms of propriation of suace value but in terms of surplus labor it’s only in the capitalist societies that the appropriation of surplus labor takes the form of appropri an appropriation of surplus value so exploitation is defined in general as appropriation of surplus labor and this definition is indeed still relevant in capitalist mode of production where the appropriation of surplus labor takes the form of an appropriation of surplus value the r idea of appropriation of surplus labor implies that the worker have to spend more effort and to produce more then they would have to do they would have to produce or more effort than they would have to spend if exploitation was abolished it also means that exploitation is defined as an appropriation of worky fors at the expense of the workers on the one hand their body and lives are damaged by this surplus of work for and on the other hand since they get no real compensation for their or reward for their eorts this appropriation of surplus labor impoverish them while ening those who appropriate this working force hence we see that Mark’s conception of exploitation has two side one concerning concrete labor work fors and the other uh concerning structural Injustice and domination this appropriation of worker for presupposes structural injustices in the position of means of production presupposes the social relation of domination between classes and reproduce them and what is at stake in this domination is to be able to produce this this injustices um being able to to appropriate these working fors so on the one hand we have a reference to working ifs that is clearly a reference to concrete labor not only but also or to work as working activity and on the other hand we have an we have a reference to an appropriation of working force by um the one or the many ruling classes and it proses class domination and production and reproduction of structural injustices in terms of injustices and the distribution of incomes and opportunities of wellbeing there are indeed many other possible definitions of exploitation for instance it can be argued and and and I’m I’m not sure that it’s really possible to to counter this argument it can be argued that it is no longer possible to think of the structural do relation of dominations conditioning exploitation only as class domination as soon as the issue of exploitation of domestic labor is taken seriously but the main critical functions of the concept of exploitation clearly depends on the just mentioned interconnection between structural domination and Injustice conditioning exploitation and produced by it on the one hand and appropriation of work Thoughts by of the work fors of the members of suban groups on the other hand this interconnection is nicely articulated by Eric on right and his definition of exploitation uh in three criteria and it is interesting to note that in this definition the moxim concepts the marking concept of exploitation is rephrased without any reference to Surplus labor Surplus value and even to class even if Eric right is clearly focusing here on class domination rather than on patrial exploitation or domestic of exploit exploitation or exploitation of domestic labor and this can can be cried for for this but uh maybe it’s a point for the discussion so uh we have the definition on the screen exploitation is a complex and challenging concept it is meant to designate particular form of interdependence of the material interests of people namely in situations that satisfy three criteria the Inver independent welfare principle the material welfare of the exploiters Cally depends on upon the material deprivation of the exploited this mean that the interest of actors within such relation are not merely different they they antagonist the realization of the interest of exploiters imposes harms on the exploited the exclusion principles is inter inverse interdependence of the welfare of the exploiters and exploited depends upon the exclusion of the exploited from access to certain productive resources the appropriation principle exclusion generates or exclusion second principle generate M advantage to the exploiters because it enables them to appropriate the laborary fors of the exploited this definition in three criteria stresses that exploitation especially capitalist exploitation relies on an economic dependency due to the exclusion of some productive resources economic dependency makes it necessary for the sub groups to accept exploitative offers and the fact that exploitation is grounded in in ground on an acceptance of exploitative offers rather than on violence is something that should be stressed because it implies that exploitation often goes with conent this definition also suggests that exploitation implies both Injustice and domination and so also consent to Injustice and consent to domination consent to Injustice and the distribution of productive resources and in compensation of Labor efforts consent to domination between social groups and also domination within the workplace since exploitation requires constraints to produce Surplus labor in a form that is in Conformity with the production of surplus value and then it necessary requires in F terms discipline and Punishment of the labor power in other words this definition in three criteria suggest that exploitation result in specific forms of experience of Injustice and domination at work in order to give flesh to this hypothet this is such a definition in three criteria is not enough indeed what is required is an inquiry into the specificities of the domination at of the experience of domination and Injustice at work concerning domination at work it could be useful to recall that according to Marx himself the specificities of do ation implied by exploitation are not only related to a w contract conceived as a contract of BS but also to a power technology Den noted by the concept of fabric despotism and to technological dis dispositives since technical Innovation is also used as a means of domination of the workers according to Marks do Capital another interesting aspect aspect of marks account of the domination of domination as a factor in exploitative process is that exploitation is giving power of resistance to workers instead of depriving them of any power of resistance the simple fact that the production of surplus value is depending on the labor efforts of the worker give them a power to undermine the process of production of surplus value to undermine this process through restriction of production through sabotage Sab sabotage okay I don’t know how to say in English or through strikes and so exploitation giving rise to this type of resistances against exploitation also give the worker to to give to the worker the opportunity to become aware of their social power when they engage themselves in such resistances far from depending on a monolitic conception of domination Mark theory of exploitation implies a differentiated conception of domination at work and a focus on the capacity of the worker to resist this domination indeed it would be wrong to believe that Mark analysis of exploit Abomination as a factor of exploitative processes could be simply applied without any reformulation or retif rectification to our neoliberal period neoliberalism is characterized by a multiplication of exploitative processes and of mes of domination playing a role in exploitative processes the exploitation of platform workers for instance is freed from the type of subordination involved in the W work relationships and it is rooted in technological modes of domination through algorithm that Marx couldn’t have imagined moreover neeral techniques provide illustration of a power dispositive that Marx couldn’t have imagined these examples suffices to show suffice to show that Mark theory of exploitation has to be revised to account for the neoliberal forms of exploitation but these examples also show that it still makes sense to analyze the relationships between exploitation and domination from the threefold marksim point of view for firstly from point of view of the type of Labor contract or commercial contract commercial relation secondly from the point of view of the power dispositives are play uh in the workplaces and certainly from the point of view of the Technologies structuring the production process in order to analyze the specificity of the Injustice at work implied by exploitative processes it is not really possible to draw on marks since he claim that exploitation should be criticize in terms of domination rather than in terms of Injustice a theory of value and the methodological simplification implying that that in a capitalist economy exchanges are always exchanges of equ equalent in value value equivalent this assumption have made it impossible for him to take seriously the fact that the experience of exploitation is always that of an Ender remuneration of a working activity in order to clarify what is at stake in such an experience of under remuneration one has to disclose two types of normative expectations am man to the working activity work is an activity of production and as an activity of production it is a contribution to the production of wealth but work is also an activity which principles labor effort has already said and as such it is characterized by forms of hardships these two dimensions of work contribution on the one hand and hardships on the other are decisive in the experience of exploitation as Injustice because each of these two Dimension can give rise to a distinct form of experience of Injustice the first form arises when the feeling emerges that one’s contribution to the production of wealth is not properly rewarded recognized or remunerated and we can call this contributory Injustice the second form of experience of Injustice arises when um we feel that our efforts are not sufficiently compensated and uh we can call this compensatory Injustice being aware that we are condemned to work for others because of an inequal distribution of productive resources is not enough to produce feeling of exploitation nor it is enough to become aware that inequalities in wages and wealth are reaching astronomical levels for experiences of exploitation to occur what is required is moreover is there a feeling of disproportion between a wage or reward generally between a reward and the value of one’s productive contribution contributory contributory Injustice or a feeling of disproportion between a wage or reward more generally and the natures and the nature of one’s effort compensatory Injustice an experience of distributive Injustice therefore be combined with an experience of contributory Injustice or compensatory Injustice to give rise to an experience of exploitation and of course these latter two experience can themselves be combined in different way conver conversely feelings of contributory or compensatory Injustice are not enough on their own to give rise to a feeling of exploitation it is only when the experience of one of in injes or both of them is accompanied by the feeling of working to one’s own detriment and to the advantage of e of others so we find here again the inverse independent weer principle of right is only when these two feeling of Injustice are associated so on the one hand contributory or compensatory Injustice and feeling of in of distributive Injustice in the sense of inverse independent welfare principle that a feeling of Injustice it trans is transform or takes a specific form of an experience of exploitation in other words in addition to the experience of contributory Injustice or cont compensatory Injustice the experience of distributive Injustice is necessary for the experience of exploitation to to exist experience of exploitation as contributory Injustice and compensatory Injustice are n nonetheless decisive and so here we see how uh what the reason why even if we think of Injustice at work or related at work we say something more when we think of Injustice in terms of exploitation than simply a specific form of economic Injustice yeah I’m concluding these few remarks and this is my conclusion lead me to to to my conclusion because they help to answer to the question raised by my title what difference it makes to think of work as exploited as a conclusion let me point out that uh we have been led to answer that this difference is three fold firstly thinking of work as exploited enables us to capture specific forms of experience of domination and Injustice that are pervasive in the neoliberal work experience but that are rarely considered when philosopher discuss the issue of domination at work for instance in debate about workplace democracy we talk about that yesterday or when they discussed uh the issue of Justice at work discussion that is often focused on work related distributive Injustice or on Injustice in recognition at work but this remain a restricted way of friending the issue secondly thinking of work has exploited as thinking the combination of various types of experience of Injustice and domination various types of Injustice and dominations that are often combined and combined in very experience of exploitation in other words it helps us making sense of the work experience in the Neal age notably and of some of its most pratic dimensions for the workers some of these most protic Dimension being precisely related to a combination of feelings of Injustice with feeling of being condemned to Domination by economic dependency and this is this dimension of consent Force consent because of an economic dependency that that is a very um specific feature also of the experience of EXP ation and of the feelings of domination and Injustice that are associated to it certainly thinking of work has exploited help us connecting the description of the experience of domination and Injustice with an analysis of the specificities of the exploitative process of the Neal age I don’t have enough time to to provide a an extended description of such specificity but let me recall refer once again to Marx concept and let me claim that at the neoliberal age the Dynamics of production of surplus value of the T to to transform itself we can speak of a shift of the dynamic of production of relative Surplus value that tends to be replaced by a dynamic of production of absolute Surplus value that is with intensification of work extension of the Working Day blurring of the Divide between the working and private life that result in new dynamics of colonization of private life not only as life of the consumer but also as life of the producer and of course should be also uh we could also refer to the post post abundant of their retirement age uh to find another illustration of a dynamic of absolute Surplus value production and indeed one should also complement marks analysis for instance in pointing out that the very notion of precarization describes some of the specificities of the ne neoliberal Dynamic of production of absolute supp value thank you for attention thank you very much just a clear Common Ground between your presentation and