A return of class struggle without class? Moral economy and popular resistance in Brasil, South Africa and Portugal

Abstract

Since the emergence of the crisis of capitalist globalization in 2008, the deconstruction of the Fordist wage relationship and the rising unemployment in various countries have stimulated the growth of labour informality, distancing workers from labour protection, intensifying turnover and stimulating intermittent employment. Collective bargaining has become increasingly rare and decentralized, and jobs increasingly precarious and individualized, undermining the protective capacity of the 'moral economy of the poor' and transforming direct action - that is, popular action without the mediation of unions and traditional political parties - into perhaps the only credible alternative for 'precarious workers' to express their demands in a world marked by the commodification of labour, basic services and housing. A return to the era of the 'class struggle without class'? This is the conjecture that this article sets out to evaluate, comparing the class experience of poor and precarious workers in three countries from the socalled Global South: Portugal, South Africa and Brasil.