Reification in the Global Social Factory. The Importance of Lukács in the Global View of Capitalism

Abstract

This paper seeks to answer the question of what György Lukács’s concept of reification can add to the global understanding of Capitalism. Latin American studies of dependency and informality, the world-system analytical tradition that has partly grown out of these, and the analytical frameworks that have emerged from autonomist Marxism all point out that in global Capitalism, continuous rationalization is not a precondition and unintended consequence of capitalist accumulation. Rather, capitalist accumulation is based on the interconnection of different scales of production activities, rational and irrational, formal and informal, paid work and unpaid labour, so that informal or unpaid forms of labour also produce surplus value for capital in the long run. I first introduce Marx’s concept of alienation and non-productive labour, then critique the latter and finally review the phenomenon of alienation and reification in the Global Social Factory.