By SILVANE ORTIZ*
The impact of neoliberalism on the subjectivity of the worker, through the lens of Ken Loach
1.
“All that was solid and stable melts into air, all that was sacred is profaned, and men are finally forced to face their social position and their relations with other men without illusions.” (Marx and Engels. Communist Party Manifesto).
The conditions of labor relations, mediated and formalized by law, which organizes and enables the maintenance of production relations in force in a given social formation, are important indicators of the economic and political situation. It is possible to infer much about the spirit of a time when we analyze the conditions of labor relations of that period.
In the movie Sorry We Missed You (2019) by Ken Loach, a well-known director of works that delve into pressing social issues, has portrayed the panorama of the advance of neoliberalism (post-Fordism) gradually implemented in the United Kingdom since the 1980s, with special attention to its effects on the degeneration of social welfare policies that emerged in the post-World War II period. The social democracy of the period, with its humanist overtones, was also a form of Western counterpoint to the developing socialism, especially in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). It was, therefore, yet another front in the growing ideological dispute that came to trigger the developments of the Cold War period.
In the work of the British filmmaker, we have a picture of the savagery of the current neoliberal mode of production. Shedding light on what we sometimes do not perceive, because it happens in a continuous and gradual way, the film shocks by focusing on the context of degradation of a family, collapsed in its affections, due to the materiality of its economic condition.
The verisimilitude present there causes discomfort due to the recognition it generates in those who end up recognizing themselves in the constant abuses perpetrated under the protection of rights, in the reproduction of sociability. Making this relationship be established and that what is hidden by the automatism of its reproduction be seen in the open, can be a role of art, when firmly based on social criticism.
The critique of the legal subject, as the ultimate organizer of social relations under capitalism, dates back to the phenomenon of liberal contractualization, where the idea of the existence of subjective equality between subjects, based on contractual freedom, is founded. However, its formal guaranteeism has never managed to link a content of material equality to this liberal subjectivity.
Even in times of economic stability, a fundamental prerequisite for maintaining political and social stability under capitalism, the discrepancy in the economic and social conditions faced by those who do and do not own capital is evident. And the legal balance, due to its structural construct, is tended to tip in the same direction most of the time.
In this social formation, where the socio-productive relations of neoliberal capitalism gain ground, there is a weakening of public policies and, by extension, of the State itself. And in its place, in this reactionary-liberal movement – a dichotomy in the approach to customs and economic issues – the market is elevated to the ultimate mediator of these relations. And, since protective legislation is lowered, dignity tends to be left out of all social relations.
The structure of capitalist society is set up for the unstoppable production of value. And the relationship that delivers this desired product is that derived from the sale of the merchandise that everyone has, innately, to participate in the market under the law. The workforce is the merchandise that produces, in a germinal way, the (more) value. Therefore, with the decline of the state's framework for the protection of the weakest party – since it is undercapitalized – in this production relationship, maximum and uncommitted exploitation is the concreteness that prevails.
After all, under the neoliberal stage of capitalism, the worker is a free service provider, who contracts on an equal footing with small companies or transnational megacorporations.
2.
In the Brazilian context, this is no different. The constant reforms that distort labor legislation, in contrast to the immutability of the instruments that codify civil relations, are clear signs of the deterioration of the current social conditions of workers. Institutes such as Law 13.874/19, on economic freedom, and, above all, Law 13.467/2017, on labor reform, are designed and implemented to foster so-called entrepreneurship – almost always by deregulating labor relations.
However, few discussions have been held to ensure decent conditions for workers, and even fewer for those who are outside the protection provided by the CLT. The defense of its normativity is even considered anachronistic by some analysts, since its implementation took place at the height of the industrialization project of the Vargas Era, still amalgamated with the ideal of social welfare that was then flourishing.
This gradual dismantling of labor rights gained a new chapter with the recent presentation of Complementary Bill No. 12/24, to regulate the activities of app-based drivers. The bill presented by the government replicates the content proposed by platform representatives. This, therefore, ends up giving legal approval to the precarious conditions of these workers, who are thus immediately recognized as self-employed workers, opening the way for the increasing platformization of work.
Once the lack of an employment relationship between the driver and the platform is recognized, what remains is a relationship of intermediation, which is not based on the concrete subordination of the worker to the platform. And this represents yet another step on the path that has been paved towards the emptying of the Labor Court. This shamelessness of the labor nature of such relationships ends up removing from its jurisdiction disputes of an evidently labor nature.
It is no wonder that, with the insecurity generated by increasingly unstable and wild work relationships, emotional illnesses are the evil that plagues our time – a time that is absolutely liquid, with journeys without beginning or end. This accelerated subject, progressively individualized, almost converted into a complete automaton, ceases to see meaning in the bonds that shape him as a social being. And without a horizon of change, he does not notice the absurdity of having a life centered on social relations mediated by the commodity form (matrix form) and its derivatives.
These relationships then become assimilated and are reproduced as the reality of life, which ends up fulfilling the foolish neoliberal mantra that society is a fiction. What actually exists is the individual, and this individual suffers the symptoms of a phantasmagorical society.
What can be inferred from this analysis is that the real fiction lies in the belief that human beings, historically understood as animals that only prospered as a species due to their social and mutualistic nature, can live – life here conceptualized by a doing-existing guided by much more than a conception of utility – in a system that has as its structuring premise predatory competition between men and their concurrent predation on nature.
* Silvane Ortiz is a graduate student at the Faculty of Law of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS).
References
ANTUNES, Ricardo. The Privilege of Servitude. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2018.
ANTUNES, Ricardo.Uberization, Digital Work and Industry 4.0. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2020.
FAUSTINO, Deivison. LIPPOLD, Walter. Digital Colonialism. Sao Paulo: Boitempo, 2023.
FISHER, Mark. Capitalist Realism. New York: Routledge, 2020.
KRENAK, Ailton. Life is not useful. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2020.
MARX, Carl. Capital: critique of political economy. Book 1. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2013.
SORRY we missed you. Directed by: Ken Loach. Produced by: Sixteen Films, France 2, Canal +, Le Films du Fleuve. United Kingdom. Le Pacte, Entertainment One. 2019. Amazon Prime.
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