This thesis begins by revisiting and building on themes of labour market segmentation, with particular reference given to Marx's seminal account of segmentation in Capital, Vol.1 (Chapter 25). Marx distinguishes between an active army - the stable full-time employed - and the relative surplus population - the precariously employed reserve army and the residual surplus - and suggests further fragmentation of these main groups into sub-strata. Marx's perspective of segmentation is grounded in fragments of a general theory of employment that, as a long-term tendency, identifies continual advances in constant capital that abolish work and proliferate the reserve army. This thesis builds on these themes by formulating a concept, the 'transference dynamic', which underpins a general theory of employment segmentation. A short history of segmentation under capitalism traces recent phases of development in both developed and lesser-developed nations. Stress is placed on the role of political configurations that regulate capitalism in ways that can either counter the general tendency, such is the case under the Fordist model of capitalism, or strengthen its logic. The theory of employment segmentation and the lessons drawn from the historical account are spliced together with an analysis of the contemporary phase of capitalism, labelled here as the neoliberal model of development. It is demonstrated that the coercive international regulatory dynamic of the neoliberal model reasserts and extends the competitive principle of the capitalist mode of production. Through this extension, nations are transformed into competition-states vying for scarce and globally mobile capital to operate on their shores - the primary source of national prosperity and employment - by implementing capital-friendly neoliberalized policy. This analysis of neoliberal global capitalism reveals an expanding surplus population within a context of deepening international segmentation. This employment crisis is expressed as a hierarchy of nations that is determined in part by their uneven development. Those at the bottom of the hierarchy, comprising a majority portion of the world's population, contain a massive reserve army and residual surplus population unincorporated into wage-based capitalism, without any obvious support of means of life and with little hope for the future. Finally, mainstream solutions are criticized for failing to address either long-run or contemporary drivers of the employment crisis. In response, this thesis pitches a project of multi-faceted radical reform that counter-regulates capitalism by adopting a combination of local, national, regional and global forms of democratic socialist governance.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/242629 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Stubbs, Thomas Henry |
| Publisher | The University of Waikato |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.waikato.ac.nz/copyright.shtml |
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