Capitalism, Worker Exploitation and Time Conflict

Abstract

Within global capitalism, the time conflicts of financialization overlap with specific time conflicts which are inherent in worker exploitation and the associated strategies of class rule. Before developing this argument, the global economics of work will be briefly outlined and the time-epistemic features of exploitation explored. In my view, three central propositions encapsulate the time conflicts involved: the real-time operations of transnational corporations structurally increase the severity of clock-based worker exploitation; the real-time tourniquet of labour process and labour pool management threatens the temporal autonomy of working life; and global capitalism’s strategy of class rule denies coeval status to the working and wageless poor. These conflicts of time are separated conceptually in order to emphasize their complementarity in practice. I will then suggest that the time conflicts which came to shape global capitalism’s exploitation of the waged/wageless poor provide opportunities for disrupting the system.