The current discussion about the new concept of competence demonstrates a great theoretical and methodological incoherence. To avoid limiting this concept to a technical vision that follows a fashion and only studies how the workers' subjectivity conforms to the new, progressive ideology of capital, we intend to develop an integral concept of competence that reflects the complex relationships between the universes of work and life. We thus refer both to the discussion of the concept of work according to both Antunes, Marx and Habermas' theoretical standpoints and the empirical studies of Baethge, Rojas, Tanguy and Zarifian. Our intention is to show that, in the universal perspective of work and communication, they are linked to the roots of universal development of production and of the subject competence.
Work; Communication; Competence; Professional education