Michel Freyssenet
The Emergence, Centrality and End
of Work
For some time in the social sciences one has turned readily to the phrase
`invention of . . .' to mean the historical and localized character of the
notion which is being discussed, as for example the market or unemployment.
It may seem riskier to use the term for work, inasmuch as work appears an
obvious necessity of the human condition.
Work could be defined and demarcated, after eliminating the particular-
ities that it presents in all known societies, through activities contributing to
the necessities of human and social life. It can somehow exist independently
of any social relationship to organize it. Necessities are perceived ­ through
our common sense and by economic thought ­ as the necessary minimum for
human existence. Because of that, one attributes to work a pre-eminence over
all other activities.
This representation of labour, as a universal activity, poses a problem, for
several reasons.1
Work Has Not Always Existed. It Was Invented
Two arguments provoke reflection: the absence of the term or notion of work
in numerous societies, and the obligation to admit the hypothesis of homo
faber founding the universality of labour in nature.
Only Our Societies Distinguish Work from Other Activities
The study carried out by Marie-Noëlle Chamoux (1994) on the terms used
to refer to `work' in many societies is quite bothersome for the universalist
vision of labour. Either the term and the notion are absent; or they are split
into several words and realities; or their antonyms are neither `rest' nor
`leisure'; or they are invariably and explicitly linked to magic or religious acts;
Current Sociology, April 1999, Vol. 47(2): 5­20 SAGE Publications
(London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
[0011­3921(199904)47:2;5­20;008802]
or yet again, they do not include activities which are necessary to material
life, such as hunting, etc. Neither does the notion of effort that is found in
many societies present any homogeneity in the definition or in the activities
thus mentioned. The category of work has revealed itself therefore to be diffi-
cult to comprehend empirically. Chamoux then asks the question: can it be
said that labour exists when it is neither thought of nor lived as such?
Historians and anthropologists nearly all seem to agree that today, econ-
omics, production, labour and so on as they are meant in western society are
notions and areas which clearly came into being in the 18th century in Europe,
with the differentiation of a capitalist market within the market that predated
it. Before, economics, production and labour were, so to speak, embedded ­
mixed in with politics and religion or merged with them. One may attempt
to represent this embedding of economics and work by considering, for
example, the family sphere as it is thought of today. Many activities still come
indissolubly from education, affection, necessities, submission, recognition
and so on. From this common constant, research orientations diverge.
Karl Polanyi (1983), citing and developing observations made before-
hand by Karl Marx and Max Weber, notably on the `non-segregated' charac-
ter of economic aspects in relation to other aspects of life in all societies
besides the West, concludes that there is no universal `conceptual' definition
possible of economics. Each era experiences distinct economic forms. Con-
versely, he believes that it is possible to give `substantive' definitions of econ-
omics, production and work that are valid for all known societies: that is, the
activity necessary to material life of the people and the society. But this
activity, distinguished from some or firmly embedded in others, is not necess-
arily determinant through its nature on the other activities. Depending on the
era it can be of variable importance in social life in general. Karl Polanyi uses
this occasion to denounce the economism that was, in his opinion, invading
the historical and social sciences.
Maurice Godelier, in his work The Mental and the Material (Godelier,
1984), cites the Polanyian thesis, but without sharing the conclusions. He
writes that, on the contrary, this allows for the re-examination of the Marxist
notion of the social relationship of production and to separate from it any
reference to a particular society, notably western society, which has autono-
mized economics. Above all it allows for understanding ­ in opposition to
what Polanyi himself states ­ why social relationships called `superstructural'
(such as parenting or political relationships) can found and organize together
a whole society. Production is inserted in these relationships and conse-
quently they function as production relationships. It is even thanks to the
exception that western capitalist society has been since the end of the 18th
century that has revealed and designated economics as such, that it has
become possible `to comprehend the importance of material activities and
economic relationships in the movement of production and reproduction of
6 Current Sociology Vol. 47 No. 2
societies' (Godelier, 1984: 32). The fact that economic relationships once
autonomized appear determinant in social life would be proof that the politi-
cal and symbolic relationships which have reigned over certain societies have
only been able to because they integrate the social relationships of produc-
tion. This reasoning, then led by Godelier,2 therefore re-established the latter
to the foundation of all societies, different from that stated by Polanyi.
Louis Dumont proposes developing the Polanyian thesis up to what
seemed to him to be its logical conclusion: that is to renounce definitively any
economism, including, in capitalist societies, to
. . . refuse the compartmentalism that our society alone offers steadfastly, and
instead of searching for the meaning of social totality in the economy ­ which
Polanyi is most certainly opposed to ­ looking rather in social totality for the
meaning of what economy is within our society and for us.3
In actual fact, many anthropologists consider that culture is already present at
the point where history begins. Production is symbolic right through. Bour-
geois society first of all is a culture before being an economy: `Considering
trade as advantageous to both parties represented a fundamental change and
signalled the accession to the economic category' (Dumont, 1985: 45).
Two major orientations can therefore be distinguished. For the first, the
capital­labour relationship autonomized activities making use of material
reproduction and thus allowed for the definition of economics in general,
beyond its capitalist form. So work would always have been this activity
which consisted of using, mastering and dominating nature to produce from
it the utilities necessary for humankind. Consequently, there would have
been a substantive definition possible for work, permitting analysis of this
form of activity in every society with common criteria and determination of
which place it was able to take up in the structuring of social relationships.
Whereas for Polanyi economics and labour would only be structuring in
capitalist societies, for Marx and Godelier (1984) the capital­labour relation-
ships would also have revealed that they are structuring in all societies.
According to the second orientation, a culture ­ and up to now a sole
culture, the Burgess ­ has invented an area called the economic. A universal
definition of the economic is therefore impossible both conceptually and sub-
stantively. Work, as it is understood today, corresponds in this perspective to
the emergence of the labour relationship and `free worker' selling her or his
work capability. The progressive spread and hegemony of this social relation-
ship have become the reference to perceive, think and organize a number of
activities. The consequence would have had an extension of the term work to
activities which were not designated as such and which do not stem from the
labour relationship, such as `domestic work' and `independent work'. A nat-
uralization of work would thus have resulted. From this point work is per-
ceived as a universal reality and as having always existed. It would have been
Freyssenet: The Emergence, Centrality and End of Work 7
projected on the past and on other societies, instead of realizing it through
the historical conditions that made it emerge three centuries ago.
A good way of going forward in such a debate is to search for both pos-
itions' presuppositions.
The Hypothesis of the Unveiling of Work and Economics Through
the Capital­Labour Relationship and Therefore of its Universality
Supposes Agreement with a Naturalist Materialism Unacceptable
Today
An American journalist had already objected to Karl Marx, after having read
the preface to Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy in which
Marx exposed his distinction between relationships founding a society (infra-
structures) and those which govern it (superstructures), that the determi-
nation of social life through social relationships of production cannot be
considered as universal. Ancient and feudal societies, he remembered, were
founded on essentially political relationships. Marx responds, in a note in Das
Kapital, that, during the breakdown of feudal relationships, Don Quixote still
had to find by himself something to eat and drink. In other words, deprived
of the relationships which in some societies both encompass and mask the
relationships by which a society's material reproduction is guaranteed, people
find themselves confronted with their primary physical obligation: nourish-
ment. The determination through the economic would therefore clearly have
originated in unavoidable vital necessities.
It would be useful to remember where this natural-materialist position
comes from. It took root in the first philosophical works of Karl Marx. React-
ing against the idealism and Hegelian universalism, Marx and Engels wrote
in L'Idéologie allemande that the human in general does not exist and that
humans only exist as actual historical individuals.
It is men who produce their representations, their ideas, etc., but [they are] real,
active men, such as are conditioned by a determined development of their
productive forces and of the mode of relationships which correspond to them,
including the widest forms that these can assume. The conscience can never be
other than the conscious Being, and men's Being is their process of real life.
(Engels and Marx, 1968: 50)
Thus to `dissipate the universalist phantasmagorias of thought and break
free of them', they propose a work programme aiming at studying concrete
historical human beings, the relationships they maintained among them, their
living conditions and the process of real life. To justify this programme, they
put forward three arguments. First a methodological argument: the material
life of real human beings can be verified by purely empirical means. It is an
important argument if it tries to denounce the omission of real living con-
ditions and their relationships with the common differences and forms of
reflection through universalist thought. It is also an argument, however
8 Current Sociology Vol. 47 No. 2
insufficient, to justify the primacy accorded to material life in order to under-
stand other human manifestations. At this point a second argument comes into
play: it can be proved that there is a link in human history between the differ-
ent stages of development in the division of labour and forms of properties,
namely the relationships of individuals among themselves. But this noticeable
correlation, not logically, implies that material production is thereby more
determinant. Finally, there intervenes a third, clearly naturalist, argument:
. . . we are led to begin by the first observation of any human existence, in any
history; that is, that men must live to be able to `make history'. But in order to
live, man must first and foremost drink, eat, house and clothe himself, among
other things. The first historical fact is thus the production of the means
allowing him to meet these needs, the production of material life itself, and even
there is a historical fact, a fundamental precondition of any history that today
must be filled day after day, hour after hour just like thousands of years ago,
simply to keep man alive.
. . . One can distinguish men from animals through conscience, religion, or
anything that one wishes. They themselves begin distinguishing themselves
from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of existence, a step
forward that is the very consequence of their bodily organization. (Engels and
Marx, 1968: 57, 45)
Engels and Marx add that very quickly other needs and indeed a whole
lifestyle develop. Nonetheless, they found the pre-eminence of the produc-
tive activity on vital needs, evidence which is not really proof, and through a
discourse on the origins of humankind, which actually is a discourse on what
humans were at their origin.
The thesis's presuppositions of `first historical fact', in other words the
production of the means allowing the satisfaction of needs for food, are too
numerous and uncertain to be retained today. It would be necessary that, in
the animal species, proto-human did not find anything to eat or drink in its
ecosystem. This would have had to be this vital need ­ being an absolute con-
straint ­ and not any other that set off invention and human reflection, as well
as the first social intercourse. It would be necessary to seek recourse in an
`artificial' means for the acquisition of food, being the peculiarity for humans,
which is well known not to be the case.
In other words, it no longer seems possible to establish a thesis as preg-
nant as this with theoretical consequences and practices as that of the social
relationships of production at the basis of any society on the fragile hypoth-
esis of homo faber. We can reasonably postulate that there was a `complete'
social being, freed from any primitivism. The conditions of existence are a
society, a language, the transmission of knowledge, reasons for life and death,
etc., as well as eating and drinking, without going into other natural or cul-
tural conditions, just as essential, but that are simply ignored because they
are given.
Is this a throwback to Dumont's position? Is one obliged to seek the
Freyssenet: The Emergence, Centrality and End of Work 9
reasons for the division and the designation of activities in each society? It
would be necessary to represent society as an organism, endowed with a
unique principle of existence, order and regulation, which would give meaning
to each of its parts; instead of attempting to build such `totality', it would seem
more prudent and heuristically more fruitful to start from the primary
acknowledgement of the existence of social relationships, having their own
logic ­ acted upon, updated and changeable by the social players that each of
these relationships institute, coexisting or articulating between them, creating
social fields, whose designation and borders shift in relation to the place and
size that these social relationships acquire, each in relation to another.
Curiously, Marx gives the opportunity and possibility of committing
himself to this path and thinking that the concept of the social relationship is
disengaged from any `substantive' determination.
The Capital­Labour Relationships and the Work That This
Relationship Has Historically Engendered Are Not Linked
Conceptually to Material Production
In his research on productive and unproductive labour, Marx showed that
this distinction only has meaning in relation to a form of social accumulation.
Taking up Adam Smith's thesis and defending it against J. B. Say and the post-
classicists, he shows that the definition of the productive worker as producer
of use values has no scientific interest, any person being this from the moment
when the material or immaterial product of her or his activity finds some use,
even if it is fantasy. The goal of capitalist production not being the produc-
tion of use values or goods for themselves, but the reproduction of ancient
worth and the creation of added value, productive labour is thus that which
is exchanged against capital, whereas unproductive labour is that which is
exchanged for income, whatever their form (salary, profit, annuity, tax and so
on).
Marx differentiates himself from Smith on an important point. For
Smith, productive capital labour corresponds to the production of material
goods in the form of merchandise, and unproductive work in the form of `ser-
vices', defined as person-to-person exchanges. He therefore establishes the
productive­unproductive distinction not only on the relationship of labour
to capital, but also on a difference in the nature of the activity. He introduces
a second determination: that of the product's materiality. On the contrary,
Marx shows that, if it is true that productive capital labour produces material
goods most often, its definition has nothing to do with its concrete contents,
but designates a social relationship exclusively. A person exercising the same
activity ­ cooking for example ­ will be productive or unproductive from the
capital point of view, depending on whether she or he sells their work
10 Current Sociology Vol. 47 No. 2
capability to a restaurant owner or to an individual: that is, depending on
whether his or her work capability is exchanged for capital to enhance him
or her or for income to meet the holder of this income's needs. A teacher will
be productive (from a capital point of view) if she or he is employed by a for-
profit scholastic institution, but unproductive of capital if she or he gives
private lessons in a family or in the national education system. When Marx
says, the characteristic of `productive workers, which means workers pro-
ducing capital, is that their work manifests itself in goods or material wealth',
he speaks of goods in the sense of value for exchange, he designates `a fictive,
purely social existence of goods, absolutely distinct from its physical reality;
. . . the illusion stems here from how a social relationship manifests itself in
the form of an object' (Marx, 1932: 33­4).
By considering the concept of the capital­labour relationship as a purely
social relationship, by showing that it is not linked to material production,
Marx thus turns this `social relationship of production', historically dated,
into a relationship whose pre-eminence over other relationships can no
longer come out of activities serving a society's material reproduction. He
never seems to have drawn such a conclusion. Still, it stems logically from his
analysis of the productive work of capital. It is, as has been seen, in contra-
diction with the materialistic naturalism of L'Idéologie allemande.4
So, today, as in the past, it is impossible to give a substantive definition
to work, namely to define it by the nature of the activities it is supposed to
regroup or by their use.
In capitalist societies, the same activity can be work or non-work. Its
nature makes no difference. It depends if the activity is carried out or not in
one of the three social relationships: the employee relationship, the merchant
relationship (not in every case) and the domestic relationship (which is begin-
ning to be, but not admitted by everyone). It must finally be noted that an
increasing number of activities, held as not being part of economics and not
being labour, become work with the spread of the employee relationship and
particularly that of capital­labour.
A given activity can be work or non-work according to the moment or
the person who carries it out: gardening, driving, cooking, building, singing,
etc. The same activity can be work and non-work at the same moment. Thus
a person with their own children simultaneously looks after others' children
in exchange for remuneration. It therefore can only be said that an activity is
work if the social relationship in which it is carried out is specified. And
today, there are barely only three social relationships that stimulate thought
about work: employee, merchant and domestic relationships.
The social relationships that transform activities into work are no longer
linked to a particular social area either. They are susceptible of organizing
very diverse activities of which many are not part of what is commonly
agreed upon as production, or the economic field.
Freyssenet: The Emergence, Centrality and End of Work 11
The capital­labour relationship, for example, has expanded and con-
tinues to expand more and more beyond activities considered in the past as
outside the economic sphere: leisure, sports, politics, religion, symbols,
science, art, philosophy, the police, etc. It did not concern the origin of the
essential activities of material life. It was late in including agricultural activi-
ties in some countries. Its variable limits in time and space, the often vain
attempts to contain expansionism, show that it is a relationship indifferent to
the nature of the activities that it organizes. For example, today, discussions
are beginning to find out under which social relationship (donation, com-
pensation, purchase or salary) all or part of human reproduction is going to
be carried out in the future, or even the act of `accompanying' the dying. The
capital­labour relationship is therefore a social relationship capable of
spreading to all sorts of activities. None of them a priori can escape from this
relationship through its nature. Even this expansion, going beyond all the
frontiers set today in western societies between the types of human activities,
confirms the purely social and historical characteristic of economics and
labour.
From this point of view, it can be said that work always becomes central:
both because it is, for the largest number, the indispensable form of activity
to accede to the material and immaterial resources necessary to live in our
societies, and because it is becoming the manifestation of human activities
more and more. Today, it is a question of society to find out if limits should
not be set to the mercantilization of human relationships.
As soon as one of the known social relationships called production ­ in
this case the capital­labour relationship ­ is not linked conceptually to
material reproduction of life in society, it becomes impossible to make the
latter the criterion of definition and to insist on pre-eminence of social
relationships of production in general on other social relationships. This fact
invalidates the possibility of building a universal concept of social relation-
ships of production and brings one to consider the capital­labour relation-
ship as a `totally social' relationship ­ namely, as a relationship which does
not belong to a particular area of activity which would exist outside itself;
which does not belong to a particular category of social relationships; which
is unique as all social relationships are; which is able to organize the near-
totality of social life, as other social relationships in history seem to have been
able to do; and finally which does not present a dimension which prevails
over others, as the analysis of the capital­labour relationship itself shows, this
relationship being just as political and symbolic as economic.
Would work then be a pure social construction without any link with
natural demands? How is it possible to understand that a social relationship
can historically prevail over others, and sometimes hegemonize and homog-
enize anything social, if it does not gain control from the considered societies'
`vital' activities? It is difficult to believe that there are no necessary conditions
12 Current Sociology Vol. 47 No. 2
for the reproduction of any society in the human race, and that the conditions
specific to each society are the only ones that count.
But these general conditions are multiple: eating and drinking of course,
possibly clothing and housing oneself, but also procreating, breathing, com-
municating, being recognized, moving, not being killed and many other
known or unknown conditions. These `vital' conditions only become vital
and are perceived as such from the moment that they are no longer given nat-
urally or socially to everyone or to the greatest number. This is why some
(such as breathing) are laughable because up to now air, even though of vari-
able quality, remains directly accessible to all. This example, however, has the
merit of recalling the social and historic characteristic of reproductive con-
ditions of life in society. They only acquire the status of conditions if they
are the objects of natural rarefaction, of social appropriation, or of a collec-
tive restriction. At that point, it can be thought that material reproduction
and work as an activity which would be devoted to the latter, have not been
able to be socially important or founding, if other conditions just as essential
to life in society or to such or such a society were the preferential object of
private appropriation or political minority control.
From this perspective, each social relationship would have its worth, its
economics, its rationality, its form of sharing out and division of the activi-
ties that it governs, its technical principles, and so on, being able to become
those of a society, if this social relationship eventually prevails over the others
historically.
Thus one can hypothesize that a social relationship becomes important
when it transforms some natural or cultural data into social stakes, in non-
guaranteed conditions of life in society and in the means of differentiation
and control, and that it is fundamental when it is able to be the indispensable
path to accede to what the material and immaterial resources (of any kind)
necessary to life in the considered society have become.
What is meant by economics and by work would not exist and would
therefore only be important in capitalist societies. They would inherit their
central characteristics from what are the naturalized manifestation and desig-
nation of a social relationship which has become a hegemony by governing
certain general conditions necessary to life in society, and the particular con-
ditions belonging to our own societies.
The Spread of the Capital­Labour Relationship and the
Naturalist Universalization of Work
If it were thus, how could this term have spread to designate activities that are
not carried out under any social aspect? Two generalizations are to be under-
stood: that of salaried labour and employees, and, more largely, that of work.
Freyssenet: The Emergence, Centrality and End of Work 13
The terms salary, employees and wage-earning class seem to have
expanded subsequently to situations from whence they did not come: for
instance, the household or community employee who sells her or his services
for income and not capital and who is paid in wages; government employees
­ `civil servants' ­ whose remunerations are the recompense for the social
function that they fill on behalf of the community. Actually, despite the legal
homogenization of working conditions, the type of relationship is not the
same. Subordination is not of the same type and the uncertainty of the social
relationship does not have the same form according to the employee relation-
ship being considered. The employer's goal is neither personal enrichment nor
capital buildup. The employer spends her or his income obtaining the services
that she or he expects, without intention, hope or duty to recover her or his
capital. The goal is satisfaction with the service rendered.
If there can be, and if there really is, at more or less regular intervals,
notably on the part of communities (state, local authorities, associations,
institutions, etc.), the search for better efficiency at a lower cost through
`reforms' or `contracts', it is from political pressure from all or some of those
paying taxes or contributions and who desire to see them stop progressing or
see them diminish for whatever reason, and not from the necessity of repro-
ducing capital to avoid it disappearing.
Work Today Has Become Central, Because the Social
Relationship That Created It Is Spreading to All Activities and
Because This Relationship Is Totally Social
The capital­labour relationship was perceived and considered for a long
time as a simple merchant relationship: entrepreneurs and workers bought
and sold work at market prices. It was necessary for many debates and con-
flicts throughout the 19th century so that employees could recognize and
make it recognized around them that it was about a specific relationship, the
subject of special legislation distinct from other laws, notably business laws.
It is not then about a simple misunderstanding or a means for employers to
free themselves of all liability, notably in the case of an accident. There
would in reality exist very widely ambiguous forms: subcontracting in the
home and mobile work teams led by a supervisory worker. Since then, it has
been acknowledged that the labour contract is not an exchange between
equals.
It seals the subordination of the worker to the authority of the employer,
but, at the same time, it harbours an insurmountable uncertainty, the second
essential characteristic of this relationship ­ that which every person con-
siders as sold or bought in the act of hiring is questioned daily in work
relationships. What exactly does a sale of labour capability cover?
14 Current Sociology Vol. 47 No. 2
Is it a worker putting her or his energy, experience, intelligence, moti-
vation, devotion and imagination at someone else's disposal all at the same
time? Or, as history attests, is it a constant conflict about what each person
can demand one from another, in other words about the nature of a worker's
or employer's respective freedom? The scope of what one deems to have sold
and what another esteems to have bought does not differ only because of
divergent interests between the former and the latter, but because of a differ-
ent appreciation about that which is judged able to be bought and sold: are
devotion and fidelity a part of this? Are motivation, imagination and intelli-
gence also a part, and if so, to what extent? The precise definition of labour
is not only an employer's tendency in the form of prescription, it is also the
employee's request that limits be set on what can be demanded of her or him.
The capital­labour relationship demands workers' `freedom' to sell their
work abilities and the right of capital holders to purchase them. These two
freedoms are neither natural nor permanent, with neither limits nor alter-
ations. Nor does everyone enjoy these freedoms. Children up to their
majority, and wives up to recently, and still today in many countries, must
have their parent's or husband's authorization to be employed, and do not
always dispose of ­ through fact or law ­ the money coming from the sale of
their abilities. These `liberties' are in constant redefinition and limitation,
both legally and pragmatically. The debates and conflicts about working
hours cannot be reduced to divergences on the quality and rhythm of life
necessary or acceptable in deference to the `economic' imperatives and
demands of reproduction of work capabilities, but throw the `free' worker
back to the `political'.
The capital­labour relationship also implied, be it considered as morally
acceptable, that the sum of egocentric interests can overwhelm or compete
with the interest, and in the interest of, general well-being. Truthfully, capital-
ism's moral trial still remains open. The renewal of economic liberalism has
been accompanied by a discourse, not only on its efficiency but also on the
fact that it would be fairer.
Finally, through the act of selling her or his work capability, the
employee acknowledges the buyer's legitimacy, be it conceded temporarily
or partially, and in the ambiguity of the authority that will be exerted on the
worker. This recognition must be reconfirmed daily in the act of labour so
that the capital­labour relationship can reproduce. The `free' worker accepts
the alienation of her or his `freedom' to work during working hours and to
limit her or his citizen's rights which are her or his outside the time and space
of the company where she or he is employed.
The employee relationship, and notably the capital­labour relationship,
does not lend itself easily to analysis in terms of the economic, or, conversely,
of the political or symbolic. It contains all the dimensions of the social. It
does not seem simply to be a social relationship in the economic order, or an
Freyssenet: The Emergence, Centrality and End of Work 15
economic relationship embedded in the social, but a totally social relation-
ship able to order and structure all or a large part of the social, as other social
relationships are able to do in other societies.
Uncertainty, inherent to the worker's contract, does not limit itself to the
unpredictable conditions of realization that can occur, but to the very nature
of work capabilities that one would like to buy as goods, whereas that cannot
be. This explains the necessity for material, legal, relational and social explicit
or implicit rules, sanctioned or not by public power, so that the capital holder
has more assurance of getting the products she or he expects from the
employees whose work capabilities she or he has bought.
The first route consists of establishing factually, or even legally, a
relationship of confidence, through which, in exchange for her or his
workers' guarantee not only for expected volume of production but also for
growth of productivity, quality of participation and invention of new pro-
cesses thanks to voluntary professional specialization and mobility, the
employer in turn gives her or his employees the guarantee of increasing the
number of employees and their salaries, as well as the ability to find out and
check the pertinence of strategic choices upon which the obtained guarantees
depend. Along this route, the divisions of work take place between special-
ists in different areas of knowledge and know-how, each of the specialists
being not only useful but more importantly indispensable to design, organ-
ize and arrive at the expected result. The design/execution division contra-
dicts in this regard the initial trust pact, and it is counterproductive. Is this
the route taken in the past? Is it experiencing a certain revival today? Leaving
aside renewed analysis of industrial history, it appears that there are few
examples of the type of employee relationship that it presupposes, and that
the sharing out of work between specialists of similar levels of ability is a form
of dividing up work which never took root, even if, occasionally, some
examples of it can be seen.
The second route consists in intervening in the design of the produc-
tion process, of tools and machines, of work organization and of forms of
cooperation between employees so that these mechanisms limit the activity
or impose themselves, as much as possible, on those who will have to imple-
ment the tasks, an absolute framework and prescription being impossible.
An essential part of the intelligence of work then passes to the authority of
the employer, and because of this, changes content and form. The division
of work intelligence then replaces the sharing out of work between special-
ists. It limits the variety of production techniques and the forms of work
organization, rules, structuring, classification and training. The employer's
intervention in the design of the production process is already observable
in the origins of the capital­labour relationship, as well as in the construc-
tion of a group or several groups of employees aimed at helping him or her
in this task.
16 Current Sociology Vol. 47 No. 2
Is Work Losing the Centrality that it Acquired? Is it no Longer at
the Establishment of the Social Link?
In the current debate on the loss of work centrality, at least three positions
can be distinguished, leading to very different practical conclusions. For
some, work has changed its nature and must be perceived from now on as an
activity enabling each person to give proof of her or his capabilities. For
others, work is no longer ­ if it ever was ­ the only source of wealth and is
no longer economically central. Finally, for others still, possible productivity
gains are such today with new technology that it will no longer be possible
in the future to give work to everyone. It is an opportunity to practise a wide
division of work and allow the greatest number of people access to activities
of their own choosing.
For the first group, work represents a constraining, prescriptive and
imposed activity, with no autonomy, in other words Taylorist work, as it was
abusively described and generalized. Noticing that this type of work is being
replaced by an activity involving surveillance, intervention and communi-
cation, able to give way to initiative and invention (which stems more from
affirmation or wish than from observation and analysis [Freyssenet, 1992]),
they conclude that a new reality is emerging which no longer deserves the
name `work', to the extent that it allows for personal fulfilment.
For the second group, the theory of value founded on work is theor-
etically and pragmatically invalidated. Work is no longer ­ if it ever was ­ the
fundamental or exclusive element of production of value. Economic per-
formance can not be or is no longer linked directly to work, in terms of its
volume, quality, organization on the shop floor, production management,
design organization, relationships with customers and so on. But, in any case,
work was never conceptually limited to that of the shop floor.
For the third group, work is fundamentally and definitively constrained.
It is useless to hope to transform it into a means of fulfilment. However, it is
proper to use it to the maximum of its potential for time reduction and con-
secrate it there so that each person may concentrate on the social and cultural
activities of his or her choice and thus allow other social relationships to
emerge. This presupposes first of all growth in productivity gains, which
must always be more important than those of potential competitors in order
not to have to call into question the continued reduction of working time;
next, a ban on investment capital in new social activities which will have
revealed a potential market de facto; finally, a strong political authority dis-
posing of enough means to guarantee a share of work remaining socially
necessary or a minimum existence income for all, and the time to take care of
the periodic conversions inherent in production, technical and organizational
changes. But in this case work would remain the condition for existence and
supremacy: that is, it would in fact remain central, the object of all attention.
Freyssenet: The Emergence, Centrality and End of Work 17
If work is analysed as a historical invention, as has been attempted here,
then one is led to think that the end of its centrality will not be seen soon.
In order for work not to be central any more, it will be necessary to sell each
person's work capabilities or the product of her or his labours ­ if only par-
tially ­ not to be the condition to accede to what has historically become a
living condition, even in our society. It would also be necessary to no longer
invest capital in all former or new areas of social life, as is done irresistibly,
despite the temporary stoppages which may be from time to time imposed
on it, as this expansion to new fields is a condition for capital's reproduc-
tion.
Even though the exercise appears somewhat pathetic, some reasoning can
be risked. In order for work to be no longer central, what is needed is a back-
ward surge of the capital­labour relationship under the dynamism of another
social relationship, which would finally replace it by being more outstanding
than the other relationships in the field from which it takes its power for
expansion. It is no understatement to say that many have difficulty imagin-
ing the process.
Notes
1 This article cites and expands on a number of texts published since 1987: `Le
concept de rapport social peut-il fonder une autre conception de l'objectivité et une
autre conception du social?' (Can the Concept of Social Relationships Found
Another Conception of Objectivity and Another Social Conception?) (Freyssenet
and Magri, 1989: 9­23) and `Le rapport capital­travail et l'économique' (The
Capital­Labour Relationship and the Economy) (Freyssenet and Magri, 1990:
5­16); `L'invention du travail' (The Invention of Work), (Futur Antérieur, 1993­2:
17­26); `Historicité et centralité du travail' (Work Historicity and Centrality) (Bidet
and Texier, 1995: 227­44).
2 The position of Godelier has since changed, as he explained in his forward to `La
Transformation dans la nature et rapports sociaux' (Transformation in Nature and
Social Relationships) (Freyssenet and Magri, 1990: 19­20). Citing a text entitled
`L'Oeuvre de Marx' (Marx's Works) published in `Le Marxisme analytique anglo-
saxon' (Anglo-Saxon Analytic Marxism), he writes
When, for example, parenting relationships in a tribal society also function from the
inside as production relationships ­ therefore both as infrastructure and superstructure
­ it must be explained why. . . . [Now], social anthropology has never discovered to this
day the direct causal relationship between a mode of production and a mode of filiation
and alliance. Actually, if parenting relationships do not depend directly, for their other
appearances, on a mode of production, it is because they have their own distinct
functions and possess ­ the only paradox here is in appearance ­ an independent material
basis: biological relationships between sexes and generations, material conditions of
production of new individuals to which the rules of filiation and alliance of the diverse
systems of parenthood give a sense and social uses, etc. Thus Marx's central hypothesis,
18 Current Sociology Vol. 47 No. 2
making material and social means of production the general basis of social life, has not
been confirmed. It keeps a more restrained, though still impressive, capability of the
explanation of societies' functioning and evolution. (Godelier, 1990: ???)
3 Preface by Louis Dumont to Karl Polanyi's work La Grande Transformation
(Polanyi, 1983: xxvi).
4 It might be necessary today to retain this effort from Marx's scientific works ­
which can be seen in his writing and even more so as he puts his own analyses back
into question, particularly those of the denaturalization and historicization of
common notions and realities ­ an effort that is far from having been pursued,
including by those who denounced Marx's materialism, as seen in the widely held
conviction in all sorts of philosophical and political currents that labour is inherent
to the human condition.
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