For a Critique of Neoliberal Work. Toward a Neosocialist Conception of Emancipation

In this article I aim to counter the increasing socio-political marginalization of labor and reaffirm the social centrality of this activity. My goal is to clarify the necessary conditions of possibility for the liberation of labor, outside and inside the enterprises where it is performed. The first part of the paper will reconstruct the historical interconnection between the processes of the political sub jectification of labor and the material and spiritual transformations of capital, as well as their impact on the most recent processes of “forced entrepreneurialization of the precariat.” After critically analyzing the process of the neoliberal exaltation of labor and the political reactions it has sparked across the ideological spectrum, the second part of my article will identify the main theoretical pillars of a neosocialist conception of labor and focus on its institutional and organizational pre conditions. These preconditions envisage forms of cooperation—distinct from mere coordina tion—that challenge the Aristotelian-Arendtian distinction between labor, work, and action and invalidate Habermas’s rigid demarcation between a life-world oriented by domination-free under standing and a system dominated by strategic rationality. The democratic liberation of labor would not only influence the internal conditions, content, and quality of workplaces, but, by expanding the realms of freedom at work, could also render democratic institutions themselves more politi cally productive. Keywords: Subjective Experience of Work; Eleutheric Potential of Work; Christophe Dejours; Emmanuel Renault; Jean Philippe Deranty.