What Is Required of the Labor Movement? : From Capitalism to Post-Capitalism

Since the inception of the twentieth century, when socialism became a reality in the world, the labor movement has seemingly pursued the transformation of social relationships, that is, the replacement of capitalist relations with “post-capitalist” ones.

However, as is also true with social movement unionism in recent years, it has really seemed to pursue the replacement of “precapitalist” relations with capitalist relations. It is because social movement unionism, for example, has been improving deteriorated working conditions－extremely low wages and personalistic labor control－and establishing new institutions for capitalist justice. These relations cannot be capitalist but “precapitalist” ones, through which workers are super-exploited and their personalities are degraded.

Therefore, winning living wage and/or higher minimum wage can make industrial relations truly “capitalist”. Nevertheless, given that globalization and neoliberal ideology are expanding capitalist market, the labor movement should also pursue the formation of “post-capitalist” relationships, not “capitalist” ones.

From the neo-Polanyian perspective, this paper theoretically attempts to suggest that the labor movement should aim at the formation of “postcapitalist” relationships. In neo-Polanyianism, instead of market exchange, reciprocity and redistribution should be more recovered to embed the economy in society and stabilize it. This paper considers that “post-capitalist” relations can contain recovered reciprocity and redistribution.

First, this paper tries to indicate that the conventional labor movement has paradoxically had tendency to pursue the formation of “capitalist” relations”. Second, this paper asserts that the labor movement should be required to pursue “post-capitalist” relations through recovering reciprocity and redistribution in globalization. Third, clarifying the concept of reciprocity, this paper is focused on the issue of recovering reciprocity and addresses some examples for such attempts in the labor movement in a wide sense. It examines the significance of workers’ collectives as an example inside enterprises and immigrant community organizing as an example outside enterprises.