Labor, Dispossession and Suffering in Capitalism. From the Crisis of the Liberal Moment to Neoliberalism

This paper critically addresses the relationship between labor and suffering in contemporary societies, based on a reflection on the condition of labor in capitalism and its historical transformations from the crisis of the liberal world to the present. In order to do so, the argument unfolds from Marx's analysis on the impersonal coercion that forces the dispossessed of other means of subsistence to sell their labor power as the only means of livelihood. From this understanding of this social antagonism that underlies labor in capitalism, the papers address some historical transformations that affect the concrete features of the proletariat, wage labor or relative overpopulation. The aim is to think critically about the different modalities and dimensions in which the historically specific relationship between labor, domination, subjectivity and suffering unfolds.