The Working Class from Marx to Our Times
Description
This book reviews Marx's contributions to the debate on the working class. The first part of the work presents the synthesis of the main contributions of Marx and Engels (and 20 th century Marxist writers) to the understanding of social classes, the class struggle, and the working class. The remaining parts present exercises of dialogue between Marx's and Marxists' discussions on the working class, presented in the first part, and empirical elements of class reality today, as well as debates in the social sciences and historiography on the same issues. The thesis defended in the book is simple: the "working class," also called the "proletariat," as it appears in the work of Karl Marx, had and has validity as an analytical category for the understanding of social life under capitalism. Nevertheless, Marx's discussion on the issue is complex and the category "working class" in his approach is wider than many Marxists have presented it.
Reviews / Votes
"With verve and impressive erudition Marcelo Badaró Mattos tackles a big subject: the historical and sociological debates on Marx's notion of the working class. Applying a global historical approach, he proves that the concept is - despite the many controversies it has caused - still indispensable for understanding our world. I highly recommend this sophisticated and challenging study." (- Marcel van der Linden , International Institute of Social History, and author of Workers of the World. Essays toward a Global Labor History (2008) and many other works.)"Capitalism in our time reveals its infinite destructive and catastrophic capacities. Marx and Engels understood well that this would be the inevitable trajectory of the profit system. They outlined how the working class would necessarily have to assume the role of gravedigger of this inhumane regime of accumulation. Marcelo Badaro Mattos takes us on an exhilarating tour of Marx's and Engels's appreciation of the significance of the working class in the emergence and ultimate transcendence of capitalism. The Working Class from Marx to Our Time is truly a tour de force, an analytic sweep through the conceptual and practical issues that engage those confronting capitalism and its devastating impact on 21st-century lives. It addresses old thought and new subjects, doing so with exhilarating imagination. A must read for all who value rigorous intelligence and demand social justice." (- Bryan D. Palmer , Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and author, among many other works, of the two-volume collection of essays, Marxism and Historical Practice (2015) and James P. Cannon and the Emergence of Trotskyism in the United States (2021))
"This new book by Marcelo Badaró Mattos takes up a crucial theme of our time: who is the working class and how is it configured. The author recovers etymologically and historically the concept ofthe working class and shows its origins and movement, until finding the fullest conception in the formulations of Marx and Engels. He then takes a suggestive journey to demonstrate how the Marxian conception of the working class is broad and complex and rejects any reductionism." (- Ricardo Antunes , Full Professor of Labour Sociology at Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil, and author of The meanings of work (2012) and several other works.)
More details
Other editions
Additional editions
Persons
Marcelo Badaró Mattos is Full Professor of Brazilian History at Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil. He is the author of Laborers and Enslaved Workers. Experiences in Common in the making of Rio de Janeiro's Working Class - 1850 - 1920 (2017), as well as several other books, articles and chapters on labour history and Marxism.