Abstract

FRIGOTTO, Gaudêncio. A polissemia da categoria trabalho e a batalha das ideias nas sociedades de classe. Rev. Bras. Educ. [online]. 2009, vol.14, n.40, pp.168-194. ISSN 1413-2478.

The present article examines initially the polysemy of the category of labour as the result of a socio-historical construction and, in our society, with the meaning of class domination. It then discusses the approach of the Brazilian writer Sérgio Lessa, who holds that the loss of semantic precision of the word labour derives from abandoning the immanent and orthodox analysis of labour from the perspective of book I of Karl Marx's Capital and results in the non-distinction between proletarians and workers and the definition of who today is the revolutionary class. This abandonment, on the one hand, would lead authors of the critical tradition in the social sciences to give up the category of labour and educators, within the same field, to have illusions concerning the positive dimensions of science and technology and of polytechnical or omnilateral education in a capitalist society. In the same direction of analysis, the Brazilian Paulo Tumolo criticizes educators who see the possibility of polytecnical education and labour as an educational principle in a capitalist society. On the basis of Marxist authors who think with Marx beyond Marx, this article concludes that the displacement from the immanent and heuristic perspective to studies and research on the historical process of labour, class and revolutionary class have led Lessa and Tumolo to an antinomy-centred analysis. The abandonment of contradictions in their analyses may result in a double risk, although certainly not an intentional one. The first is to lead, in the political sphere, to immobilism and deadlock, leaving for an imaginary future the task of surpassing alienating labour, science, technique and education. The other risk, this specific to the field of education, is that by treating the analyses of the criticised researchers as illusions or mottos with no theoretical consistency, even with the reservations made, the conservative and neoconservative or post-modern postures already hegemonic in these times of late capitalism are reinforced.

Keywords : Polysemy; Labour; Classes; Revolutionary Class; Technology; Polytechnical Education.

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