The Centrality of Work: A Foundation for Political Economy

Building on Alfred Marshall's claim that political economy should be a science of activities rather than a science of wants, the paper proposes to ground political economy on the centrality of work. Work is central in three different senses: (i) factual — work plays a central role in human lives and societies; (ii) epistemic — giving work center stage has constitutive theoretical effects; (iii) political — work is a primary tool of and for the transformation of society. Grounding political economy on work entails prioritizing economic agents as workers/producers over economic agents as consumers and acknowledging that changes in the world of work are major drivers of history. This contrasts with mainstream economics, which has always overlooked the activity of work, giving priority to consumer sovereignty and treating work as if it were a commodity. We propose a concept of work, based on Dejours’ approach, that highlights the key role of work organization in making work a source of fulfillment versus suffering. The arguments and concepts proposed lead to advocating the participation of workers in firm governance.