Module 2, Lesson 2.3: The Ugly: Precarious Lives, Precarious Jobs
In this third lesson of Module 2, Associate Professor Paulo dos Santos draws on a large number of contributions to consider a vital question about the social content of capitalist economies: In what ways do those economies rely on extractions from certain social groups and on individual appropriations from our collective or common resources? In other words, to what extent do profits depend on simply taking things from people and from the planet?
By the end of this video (4/5), learners will be able to:
Explain how social subordination helps form reserve armies of labor, and how those armies help make profits possible
Describe how immigrants, members of ethnic minorities, and the descendents of slaves in the Americas often find themselves consigned to today’s reserve armies of labor
Discuss how the material and ideological legacies of slavery have ensured millions of black wage earners are in effect members of a reserve army