From industrial to post-industrial capitalism Reflections on labor and education

Abstract

From the perspective of education, the history of Western society is intimately linked with the major transformations in the world of labor. In rural society, knowledge was passed on from one generation to the next in lived experience itself. Thus, people’s way of acting and thinking was a family and community legacy to a much greater extent than it is today, when there is a greater diversity of influences. Since industrial society needed workers with the necessary competence to operate the machines – i.e., with specific knowledge and shop floor discipline –, it opened up the school to the poor. The latter included it in their life project. In post-industrial society, where the hegemony of immaterial labor requires a creative intellectual worker, the demands in terms of the level of education or training have changed. During all these periods, people had to create spaces of resistance and insurrection against the perversities of capitalism. This paper discusses these issues in two steps. In the first one it examines the transformations in the world of labor in relation to industrial and post-industrial society. In the second it tries to understand the general educational needs for the new context.

Key words: education, labor, post-industrial capitalism.