Abstract
This chapter links labour market flexibility with capital accumulation in the context of a post-colonial country like India. The chapter is organized in four sections starting with an understanding of neoliberal age and the nature of capital accumulation in general in the context of a post-colonial economic space. This is followed by an analysis of labour market flexibility. The liberal era which is supposedly characterized by rigid labour laws with an interventionist state in Keynesian sense is marked with growing strength of trade unions and labour organizations in the West and in post-colonial emerging economy like India. The neoliberal age is marked with a diametrically opposite tendency, namely, the weakening of these organizations by the neoliberal states all over the world, North and South alike. This too has some significant implications for both voice representations of labour as well as capital accumulation in the Marxian sense of the latter term. In the third section, the chapter delves into the issue of representation of labour in the neoliberal age. Finally, an attempt is made to decipher the connectivity of flexible labour and weakening bargaining strength of labour with the process of growing financialization and its implications for capital accumulation in post-colonial neoliberal space and time.
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Notes
- 1.
Adam Smith uses the metaphor of ‘invisible hand’ in both his The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and The Wealth of Nations (1776) to explain how personal motivations to maximize one’s own gain will automatically ensure growth of every sector in an exchange economy.
- 2.
http://mospi.nic.in/Mospi_New/upload/asi/ASI_main.htm?status=1&menu_id=88. Accessed on 16 March 2016.
- 3.
On the technological point, see Sen and Byasdeb (2009), where the authors have empirically shown that in post-reform period in India even the high-growth industries are adopting modern labour-displacing technologies which have, on the one hand, increased labour productivity in these industries manifold and, on the other hand, contracted new jobs.
- 4.
http://mospi.nic.in/Mospi_New/upload/asi/ASI_main.htm?status=1&menu_id=88. Accessed on 16 March 2016.
- 5.
These estimates are obtained from the statistics provided by the Labour Bureau, Government of India, available online at www.labourbureau.nic.in. Accessed on 12 November 2012.
- 6.
The discouraged unemployed have no place in the late modern neoclassical theory of unemployment search. The discouraged unemployed have given up searching for jobs after getting frustrated in doing so indefinitely. Hence, they cannot be classified as unemployed after searching for jobs as claimed by the search theory of unemployment (http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/10/the_searchmatch.html. Accessed on 16 March 2016). There is no official data on discouraged unemployment in India. However, official statistics of the USA show a significant presence of discouraged unemployed in the labour force (http://www.bls.gov/opub/ils/pdf/opbils74.pdf. Accessed on 16 March 2016). Noted French philosopher Rada Ivakovic in a discussion with the author has argued that there are not enough jobs (either in the North or in the South) under the present global capitalism to exploit even all those who are willing to offer their services, or all who are in the labour force; some are left to be exploited!.
- 7.
See First Five-Year Plan, Planning Commission, Government of India, (1950–1951), p. 581; Second Five-Year Plan, Planning Commission, Government of India (1956), p. 575; Third Five-Year Plan, Planning Commission, Government of India; Fourth Five-Year Plan, Planning Commission, Government of India; and Fifth Five-Year Plan, Planning Commission, Government of India. All Five-Year Plans are available at http://planningcommission.nic.in/plans/planrel/fiveyr/welcome.html. Accessed on 16 March 2016.
- 8.
Planning Commission, Government of India, Third Five-Year Plan (http://planningcommission.nic.in/plans/planrel/fiveyr/3rd/welcome.html. Accessed on 16 March 2016).
- 9.
For details, see Kennedy (1966).
- 10.
The outcome of this survey is provided in Sen and Dasgupta (2009).
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Dasgupta, B. (2017). Flexible Labour and Capital Accumulation in a Post-Colonial Country. In: Mitra, I., Samaddar, R., Sen, S. (eds) Accumulation in Post-Colonial Capitalism. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-1037-8_2
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