Labor

Although the idea of labor persists in the global age, the meaning of the term labor has become transformed and contested. The concept of labor, used here synonymously with work, is among the most important and critical concepts in the social sciences, occupying central roles in the intellectual development of disciplines like economics, sociology, and legal studies, but also psychology, ethnography, and anthropology. In the 19th and 20th centuries, labor became a pillar of the social and political institutional structure of industrial society, as illustrated by the terms working class, Labor Party, and labor unions.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the concept became central to Marxism and its many varieties and served as a foundation to ideologies as different as socialism and fascism. Labor became the basic political-economic organizing principle of socialist regimes from the former Soviet Union to Cuba and from Tanzania's Harambee policy of communal self-help to the North Korean juche policy of economic self-reliance.

More enduring are the mainly European assumptions of the social market economy that sought to create and protect a vision of secure and productive labor in the context of what is basically a capitalist system. Versions of a Bismarckian system of labor protection and insurance have been in place in various European countries starting in the late 19th century, and the system of co-determination and collective bargaining in Germany has been, since the 1950s, among the most elaborate worldwide.

Today, few aspects of globalization are more contested than the future of labor and the implications of significantly changed market conditions for paid labor. In the developed market economies, there are serious concerns about deskilling and demotion of the established skilled blue-collar labor force and the decline of the working class in both numbers and political clout. In developing and emerging economies, there are issues about job security and safety.

For most of human history, work took place in the family and community context and was embedded in local relations. Forms of labor such as communal work, slavery, subsistence farming, and fee-for-service arrangements have existed in various parts of the world for millennia and continue to exist today. However, the industrial revolution changed the meaning and organization of labor in profound ways. New transportation modes (e.g., canals and railways), manufacturing processes (textile, tools, machinery), and the rise of mechanized energy production through the steam engine allowed for more efficient divisions of tasks.

Organizationally, industrialization brought the rise of factories. These expanded first in scale in terms of mass production and then grew in scope [Page 1014]by combining related product lines. The result was that work as paid employment took place in ever-larger firms that increased in complexity and interdependence, first nationally and beginning in the late 19th century in Europe and North America and by the mid-20th century also internationally, by incorporating more and more parts of the globe into an expanding network of industrial economies. In this process, changes in labor arrangements also brought changes to the social, political, and cultural structure of societies.

Throughout the 19th century, working conditions were generally horrible and the economic and political position of labor weak. The social order in most industrial and industrializing economies was in disequilibrium, and solutions to what is called the “social question” had to be found. In other words, the industrial economy not only demanded a new kind of labor but also required new social rules and institutions—be they labor unions, employer associations, management models, or social protection and justice. Countries responded in different ways, but over time a combination of improved social protection of workers by the state and collective bargaining arrangements helped ease the 19th-century conflict between capital and labor. By the 1960s, the immense, and sometimes violent, conflict potential in capital-labor relations had eased. Union strengths in Europe and North America was at its height, yet competition, new market opportunities, and technological advances, among other factors, brought a gradual opening of national labor markets as well. By the late 20th century, the network of national economies had become ever more integrated through supply chains that linked product and service markets, and therefore labor markets, in complex ways. A new global era had started.

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