Living Labour I: Reproduction of Life and Labour

Abstract

This chapter discusses in the framework of Marx’s concept of living labour the postcolonial context of informal conditions of work and migration. The discussion of postcolonial labour begins with reflection on the process of primitive accumulation as a feature of the postcolonial situation where labour migrates from work to work. The footloose postcolonial labour situation is also a consequence of international investment chains in production of commodities, which are overwhelmingly export-oriented, with production sites often being special zones. Wages are low, the work force is markedly female and labour-supervision rules are strict and characterised by violence. Another aspect of the same scenario is the supreme logistical sites, which require and create footloose labour. In this circuit of commodity circulation, capital will continuously change form, and value-producing labour will be more and more distant from the final stage when profit will be realised from the capital invested, and the revenue shared. In the postcolonial world this, then, is the milieu of living labour, which precisely through its footloose life proves itself also as abstract—ready to be deployed for any productive activity.