Working Time Reduction in the Current Organic Crisis: A proposal from Post-Marxism and Radical Political Economy

Abstract

The present essay makes use of Social Structures of Accumulation theory in order to discern which were the ultimate causes of the current organic crisis of the Spanish economy, through an analysis of the structural dynamics that had governed it during the period 1995-2007. The theory concludes that a period of intense institutional restructuring should have taken place. However, the very terms according to which the political struggle is going to develop are relatively under-theorized. To that end, the present article will make use of the theories of hegemony and populism of the Argentinian philosopher Ernesto Laclau, in order to argue in favour of the demand for working time reduction as a potential constitutive pole of a new emancipatory subject, on the basis of arguments of both an economic and a political nature.