Labour and capitalism: the duality of the ontology of social being

Abstract

This paper presents reflections from the ongoing doctoral thesis within the "Work, Society, and Education" strand of the Graduate Program in Education at the Federal University of Uberlândia. The thesis's problematization concerns the precarization of female profesor work in the context of the implementation of management plans in public institutions. It is necessary, however, to start with a literature review to first discuss the study's underlying assumption, which seeks to describe the centrality of labor and the key Marxist concepts related to this vital activity. Similarly, it aims to problematize the duality generated by the capitalist mode of production, in this activity considered the ontology of social being, where labor is no longer used solely to produce use-value, that is to say, concrete labor, but also exchange-value, abstract labor, and its implications for human formation in contemporary times. It focuses on Marxist analyses expressed in the thought of Marx and Engels, Braverman, and George Lukács. It demonstrates the new forms of labor exploitation expressed in the gig economy of labor relations..