Work and survival - the world of life under menace: rationality or irrationality?

The instrumental-capitalist rationality that occupies the world of life is here discussed in a labor’s point of view. The commitment of worker’s subjectivity is one of the biggest results of the technological, technical and scientific transformation occurred in the last century and it is disposed to the capitalist accumulation, moreover after the adoption of the flexible production method. The modern automotive industry assembled in Curitiba, since the beginning of the year 1990, is one of this transitions example. The intense social transformations of the last three decades in the world of work were provoked by the innovations in the labor and production organization area. The text begins with a discussion of Weber ideas about a rational-instrumental process that emerges in modernity, presents Habermas’s communicative paradigm proposition as an alternative to the consequences of this hegemonic logic. Analyzing the advancement of the systemic world over the world of life, this paper builds up a critic to the instrumental right and opens the question of whether all this is the result of a rational or irrational capitalism. Theory and interviews with workers support the answers developed in this article.

world of work; world of life; subjectivity