Flexible Labour and Capital Accumulation in a Post-Colonial Country

Abstract

This chapter links labour market flexibility with capital accumulation in the context of a post-colonial country like India. The chapter is organized in four sections starting with an understanding of neoliberal age and the nature of capital accumulation in general in the context of a post-colonial economic space. This is followed by an analysis of labour market flexibility. The liberal era which is supposedly characterized by rigid labour laws with an interventionist state in Keynesian sense is marked with growing strength of trade unions and labour organizations in the West and in post-colonial emerging economy like India. The neoliberal age is marked with a diametrically opposite tendency, namely, the weakening of these organizations by the neoliberal states all over the world, North and South alike. This too has some significant implications for both voice representations of labour as well as capital accumulation in the Marxian sense of the latter term. In the third section, the chapter delves into the issue of representation of labour in the neoliberal age. Finally, an attempt is made to decipher the connectivity of flexible labour and weakening bargaining strength of labour with the process of growing financialization and its implications for capital accumulation in post-colonial neoliberal space and time.