Abstract

This essay proposes a reflection on the relationship between work and emancipation in Marxist thought in the light of the dilemmas the left and working class organizations faced in the twentieth century. The main goal was to show how important thinkers and groups linked to Marxism contributed, in different ways, to forming the ideological foundations and to the concrete constitution of the two organizational models of production and social life that prevailed after the Second World War: The Fordist commitment in the advanced capitalist countries, and the Soviet model implemented in the USSR and disseminated by satellite countries that made up the socialist bloc. In this sense, the aim was to show that this action implied important dilemmas and tensions, particularly in the position in relation to the rationalization of work and the Taylorist methods of organizing production. Moreover, also shown was that the prevailing trend was an interpretation of Marx's theory that reduced the importance of the critique of industrial labor and of the wage earner, legitimizing a 'work society' project foreign to the essential foundations of the Marxian legacy. However, the crisis faced by these models, witnessed in the last decades of the last century, makes room for the reinvigora-tion of the most fertile aspects of Marx's critique of capitalist sociability.

work; emancipation; Marxism; Taylorism; USSR