ILPC 2027

Abstract:

This paper explores how work and employment conditions for young workers are affected by the actions of the state at the spatial scale of the locality. The paper argues that young workers have experienced deteriorating labour market conditions following shifts in the form which capitalist accumulation takes in the UK. This shift has altered the composition of the British state which has in turn led to changes in both how the national state regulates local labour markets and the economic strategies of the local state.  One result of these changes is the diffusion of neoliberal labour market reforms which have led to negative material consequences for young workers; this is manifest in the expansion of low-waged work concentrated in a small number of sectors, and characterised by an intensified labour process.

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This paper re-connects work and shifts in the political economy of the British state by exploring how work and employment conditions for young workers – those aged 16-24 - are affected by the actions of the state at the ‘spatial scale’ of ‘the locality’.  Spatial scale in this sense refers to the geographic spaces within which capitalist processes occur, as well as referring to where labour concretely experiences the outcomes of capitalist processes.  (Harvey, 1989a; 2006)   The spatial scale of the locality is important because it is at this scale that key social processes occur, most notably: the reproduction of household economies; provision of state welfare services, and; paid labour, which is characterised by a varied labour process.  A focus on the state is insightful because it is the local state which is immediately responsible for confronting the contradictory outcomes of capitalist production and the labour process within a locality.

This paper argues that since the early 1980s young workers have experienced worsening labour market conditions due to shifts in processes of capitalist accumulation - from what this paper calls “full-employment” capitalism to “finance-led” capitalism. This shift is characterised by the tendency of capital to accumulate surplus value through the appropriation of value, rather than through the productive accumulation of value. Full-employment capitalism saw a contested diffusion of mass production and mass consumption integrated within a broadly defined but equally contested political compromise between state planners, capital and labour. Accumulated capital in the form of profit was then appropriated from existing value produced by labour; this circulation in the circuit of productive capital redistributed surplus-value to labour via productivity gains and capital via investment in capital stock.  The circuit of finance-led capitalism is in contrast to this strategy, and is premised on a falling labour share of income and a re-commodification of labour. The re-composition of the state and associated processes that result from these shifts in accumulation impact on the form of labour market intervention, associated regulations, and on the very capacity of the state to intervene, particularly at the level of the local state which has undergone substantial transformation.