This paper engages in a re-reading of the historical chapters of Karl Marx's Capital, in the interests of working with the concept of "labor mobility" as it has been developed in the book that serves as the underlying theoretical reference for this article: the French scholar Jean-Paul de Gaudemar's "Labor mobility and capital accumulation". The latter work is little known in Brazil, particularly within the area of Political Economy. Nonetheless, it is extremely important, given its approach to the concept and contribution toward building a more accurate interpretation of the determinants of contemporary capitalism and its new forms of exploitation (flexibilizing, sub-contracting, re-engineering, etc.) Thus, through a heightened understanding of the concept of labor mobility, we seek to make some incursions into central themes on the process of capital accumulation, with particular concern for issues such as unemployment and labor processes that lead to increased extraction of relative and absolute surplus value and that consequently lead to a drop in the wage levels of a large part of the working classes, increasing the informality and precariousness in their material conditions of life. We are able to observe that the exhaustion of patterns of capital accumulation during the transition from the 1960s to the 1970s has promoted profound changes in the way the system functions, leading to more indirect forms of exploitation and to more sophisticated and efficient forms of cultural and ideological control.
labor mobility; social control; capitalism; modernity; forms of exploitation