Energy and Labor
Context
Kolya Abramsky:
"Throughout the history of the capitalist world-system, energy has impacted on labor in general in four important areas.
1. Mechanization has been used to enhance and/or replace human labor in order to increase productivity and manage class conflict,
2. Artificial lighting has lengthened the working day
3. Cheap food, shelter, clothing and consumer goods have greatly reduced the cost of reproduction of labor.
4. Increasing the speed and reducing the speed of transportation has greatly increased labor mobility, both at a local level and world-wide, and for both forced and voluntary movement.
As such, energy has been a constitutive factor in shaping global class relations as a whole, not just within the energy sector. The replacement of coal with oil as the main global energy source throughout the twentieth century was particularly important for these processes."
Source
* Article: Energy And Labor In The World-Economy. Kolya Abramsky. thecommoner :: issue 13 :: winter 2008-9
"This paper will identify, and partially answer, three broad questions.
1. How does energy relate to labor in general? 2.
How does labor within the energy sector specifically operate?
3. How can an understanding of energy and labor contribute to understanding current concepts such as “energy crisis” and “transition towards renewable energy”?"
More information
- Peter Norre and Terisa Turner, Oil and Class Struggle (London: Zed Books, 1980), p. 15.
- Thomas Keefer, Of Hand Mills and Heat Engines: Peak Oil, Class Struggle, and the Thermodynamics of Production, unpublished MA Thesis, York University, Toronto, 2005, http://www.wwei.info/mediafiles/wwei/website-files/Keefer.pdf
- Daniel Berman and John O’Connor, Who Owns the Sun—People, Politics and the Struggle for a Solar Economy (Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 1996).