Politics of Global Competitiveness

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Marx predicted in Capital (1867) that as capitalism became global, patterns of work would be transformed, and workers would need to develop versatility, flexibility, and mobility. This 'general law of social production', as he called it, is now in evidence all around us, in global value chains, 'zero hours' contracts, and contract work organised through digital platforms. It results from competition between capitalists, scientific and technological revolutions in production, and incessant advances in the division of labour as production processes are broken down into ever smaller steps. This book documents the leading roles of the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Washington-based World Bank as advocates of these developments. They do not, as generally supposed, simply represent the interests of the advanced economies or the 'West' and their transnational corporations. They promote a single global model of capitalist development, without limits and on a genuinely global scale. It calls upon all states to 'adjust' continually to the structural and social demands of competitiveness, which they see as essential to the global hegemony of capital

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