Abstract
Class is not about distinct strata of population, and even if class reflects the conflictual dyad labour-capital it is not about the struggle between the capitalist class and the working class. It is not about two opposing armies (Benjamin, 2016; Holloway, 2005). The conflictual relation of labour and capital traverses individual subjects (Gunn, 2004; Houseman, 2018), these act as personification of social forms, such as money, capital, labour-power, wage-labour etc. and experience the labour-capital conflict as internal as well as external. External because capital and labour tend to be concentrated at the extremes (individuals do not coincide with concepts: so only at the extreme we have ‘pure’ capitalists and ‘pure’ proletarians). Internal because labour needs to be valorised as capital and capital needs to be valorised as more capital. This is part of the constellation within which class is necessarily posited: the dyad labour-capital necessitates a series of mediation which include abstract labour, money, money as capital and money as wage for the exchange of labour-power etc. The issue of class and precarity needs to be inscribed in these mediations: e.g. the necessity of selling labour-power on one side and the need to valorise abstract labour on the other.
Key to this discussion is that concept of class is ‘negative’ when it expresses the state of need of large part of humanity which is hierarchically subordinated, that is: it expresses a critique, rather than a picture of reality. ‘Labour’ does not come as either conceptual first nor it is assumed to be a historically primary transformative force, as labour is chained to the production of capital (Bonefeld, 2023). Indeed, the idea of class needs to be historical and anti-historical at the same time, the capital-labour tension needs to be represented in the present of social conflicts, like that around precarious employment. At the same time the subordination of human activity and creativity through labour to abstract wealth is not just part of the logic of valorisation of capital, it is part of the ever-existing and continuous “primitive accumulation” (Bonefeld, 2023b). As well as the law of value, OM insists on the force of value which historically recall the violent dispossession of an entire class from their means of social production, the force of value which means the continuous creation of an “objectless free labour” (Bonefeld, 2014; 2023).
Key to this discussion is that concept of class is ‘negative’ when it expresses the state of need of large part of humanity which is hierarchically subordinated, that is: it expresses a critique, rather than a picture of reality. ‘Labour’ does not come as either conceptual first nor it is assumed to be a historically primary transformative force, as labour is chained to the production of capital (Bonefeld, 2023). Indeed, the idea of class needs to be historical and anti-historical at the same time, the capital-labour tension needs to be represented in the present of social conflicts, like that around precarious employment. At the same time the subordination of human activity and creativity through labour to abstract wealth is not just part of the logic of valorisation of capital, it is part of the ever-existing and continuous “primitive accumulation” (Bonefeld, 2023b). As well as the law of value, OM insists on the force of value which historically recall the violent dispossession of an entire class from their means of social production, the force of value which means the continuous creation of an “objectless free labour” (Bonefeld, 2014; 2023).
| Original language | English |
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| Publication status | Unpublished - 22 Dec 2025 |
| Event | ESA sub-panel on platform economy and class : European Sociological Association - Online Duration: 18 Dec 2025 → 19 Dec 2025 |
Academic conference
| Academic conference | ESA sub-panel on platform economy and class |
|---|---|
| Period | 18/12/25 → 19/12/25 |