Back to basics: A political economy of workplace change and learning

Abstract

This paper argues that political economy and labour process theory are essential to a proper understanding of workplace change and learning. In our time there is a struggle for comparative advantage as enterprises and nations compete to see which can most effectively exploit new technologies and human capital. This is the latest manifestation of the logic of capitalism, which creates an unwinnable competition among producers and in turn generates periodic crises, massive inequalities within and between nations and what appear to be radical changes in the organisation of production. But the way work is organised in capitalism does not fundamentally change—it still rests on the attempts of capital to control the work process and extract the labour surplus. Worker resistance is endemic in this intrinsically exploitaitive labour process, and this resistance has a learning dimension. If they are going to act effectively on them adult educators need to understand the capitalist political economy and labour process and the resistance and learning they generate.