The Evolution of Labor in Modern Capitalism

Focus: The future was seen as a commodity producer society: something to be carefully designed, engineered, and whose production process should be followed in detail. The future was a creation of work, and work was the source of all creation.

Heavy Solid Modernity or Capitalism

It created the conditions for labor to be considered a commodity and treated as such. The model is Ford's intentions and practices, typical of modern capitalism solid or heavy ("this increased the salary of the Frisian so they could buy cars, allowing me to stop the increasing labor mobility and thus recover their money and invest in their employee training"). The link between capital and labor was strengthened by a mutual commitment, putting capital and work face to face, while the relationship was one of buying and selling. Owners of capital should be able to continue purchasing labor, and owners of labor should remain healthy, alert, and strong in order not to leave potential buyers and find it a burden. For the employee, there was a long life of labor within the capitalist enterprise, and for the family, the fortune was to be continued beyond the life of each of its members. We had a long-term mentality.

Liquid Modernity

Today, things have changed, and the crucial ingredient of this multifaceted change is the new mindset of "short-term." The current uncertainty is a powerful force of individualism; the concept of "common interest" is becoming more nebulous and losing all pragmatic value. The reproduction of growth and wealth, profits and dividends, and shareholder satisfaction are all independent of the duration of any local or individual undertaking the job. The main source of revenue is increasingly based on larger-scale ideas, not material objects; the main objective of consumers and capital is not production (Ford was interested in producing).

People embedded in economic activity can be:

• The manipulators of symbols (people who invent ideas)
• Those responsible for the reproduction of labor (teachers)
• People who provide personal services
• Routine workers

The organization today contains within it an element of organization deliberately built: the less solid and more fluid.