The sociological debates that arose in the 1970s and in the following decades, structured in response to the perceived crisis of Marxism, are based on a common assumption, namely, the ineffectiveness of Marxist theory and of its fundamental analytical categories to understand the heterogeneous reality of the contemporary societies. The diagnosis is simple: the social class, labor, and class struggle concepts could no longer stand up to the social dynamics of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The main objective of this perspective, however, focuses not on finding the problem, rather on generalizing it to the entire Marxist literature. If, on one hand, the criticism of the notions of social class, labor, and political struggle limited to the factory is fundamental, on the other, it cannot be regarded as a moment of overcoming the Marxist theoretical problem. In this essay, I intend to clarify the starting point and the boundaries of the theories about the non-centrality of labor and about immaterial labor as a central productive force in which I will make a reading of social classes, labor, and of the political struggle unlike that which is criticized by the theses that make up these debates.
centrality and immateriality of labor; social class; political struggle and Marxism