WORK AS A GEOPOLITICAL VARIABLE: MAY 1ST IN THE MULTIPOLAR ORDER – Cristina Di Silvio

From industrial time discipline to the crisis of modern work form

The origin of May 1st in 1889, established by the Second International in memory of the Haymarket events of 1886, emerged within the transformation of industrial capitalism and the construction of modern temporal discipline. As E. P. Thompson argues, capitalist modernity is grounded in the progressive abstraction of working time, a central mechanism of social and economic regulation.

Max Weber interprets this process as a form of rationalization, in which work becomes a structural axis of Western modernity. However, this centrality is now in crisis: the modern work form is disarticulating under the pressure of new technological and global dynamics, marking a shift toward more flexible, fragmented, and less institutionalized models of work.

Neoliberalism, globalization, and the fragmentation of work representation

The neoliberal phase has redefined work through deregulation and financialization processes, producing an increasing separation between economy and society. In this context, the crisis of work representation becomes structural.

Karl Polanyi already identified the tension between market and society, while Guy Standing describes the emergence of a global precariat, characterized by instability and the absence of consolidated rights. Saskia Sassen further analyzes processes of expulsion, through which large segments of the population are marginalized from productive circuits.

The result is a systemic fragmentation of the workforce, weakening traditional forms of collective organization and reshaping power relations.

Platform capitalism and the new infrastructure of global power

The shift toward platform capitalism marks a radical transformation in production and accumulation systems. Digital platforms operate as new infrastructures of power, organizing work through algorithms and decentralized management systems.

Nick Srnicek identifies these platforms as centers of data-driven value extraction, while Shoshana Zuboff highlights the rise of surveillance capitalism, based on behavioral prediction and modification.

In this scenario, work loses further contractual stability, becoming fluid, intermittent, and often invisible, while control shifts from traditional institutions to technological ecosystems.

Work, war, and industrial reconfiguration in global security processes

The re-emergence of great-power competition has brought work and productive capacity back to the center of international security. The war in Ukraine has accelerated an industrial reconversion toward war economies, highlighting the link between production capacity, energy, and strategic security.

In the United States, expansive industrial policies aim at reshoring and energy transition, while China integrates industry, technology, and national security into a highly coordinated model of political capitalism.

In this context, work assumes a strategic function: not only an economic factor, but a critical infrastructure for stability and competition among geopolitical blocs.

Geopolitics of work and competition between models of political capitalism

The notion of “weaponized interdependence” reveals how global networks have become instruments of coercive power. The geopolitics of work thus emerges as a central analytical field for understanding contemporary global dynamics.

The European Union occupies an intermediate position, between technological dependence and aspirations for strategic autonomy, while the United States and China consolidate divergent models of political capitalism.

Work becomes a variable through which industrial policies, technological strategies, and security logics are articulated, redefining hierarchies within the international system.

From symbol to discontinuity: May 1st in the multipolar order

In the current context, May 1st appears as a symbolic device increasingly misaligned with transformations in global capitalism. Its origin, rooted in industrial work, struggles to represent contemporary configurations of work.

From a Gramscian perspective, symbolic forms outlive the economic systems that generated them, but they acquire new functions within different historical blocs. The contemporary multipolarity thus reshapes the political meaning of work itself, transforming it from a social category into a strategic variable of global competition.

REFERENCES

• Farrell, H., Newman, A. (2019). Weaponized Interdependence
• Gramsci, A. Prison Notebooks
• Harvey, D. (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism
• Polanyi, K. (1944). The Great Transformation
• Sassen, S. (2014). Expulsions
• Srnicek, N. (2016). Platform Capitalism
• Standing, G. (2011). The Precariat
• Thompson, E. P. (1967). Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism
• Weber, M. (1922). Economy and Society
• Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism