About the Old and New “Class Maps”: Notes on the Formation of the Working Class

Abstract

The new global labour studies argue that we need to displace the “old mental maps” about the working class in order to understand its current configuration. We retrieve this debate to point out some hypotheses about Latin American working classes. Taking into account the crucial contributions of the new strands of research, we point out some limitations, assessed from a critical Marxist perspective. We outline an examination based on the concept of class as a process of antagonistic formation, deployed by the labour force—in its different forms of concrete realisation—in the twofold process of production and social reproduction. These arguments allow for the renewal of a critical Marxist approach in the research of the social forms and meanings of social protests.