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The presented paper deals with the basic issues, dilemmas and social and cultural contradictions in the Polish transformation process against the background of Central and Eastern Europe, the processes of the establishment and development of new states and nations as well as the new markets. The author views these problems through the light of the emergence of a broad class of subcontractors in a turbulent environment and the new modes of production, which are a result of changes in the structure of human labour introduced by post-Fordism (in its final stage, lean management) and postmodernity. The author also analyzes the social change as a consequence of social relations resulting from exchanging the life chances of the actors for the class-conditioned market opportunities in the existing social and political situation (conjoncture) and at the present stage of transformation at the moment when the emergent markets get shaped and mature. The study makes use of the hermeneutic method, which is finding out the essence of the present phase of transformation through the light of new concepts against the background of the historical-comparative analysis. The present article is not aimed at ordering reality but it is an inspiration for studies and for approaching transformation in accordance with a new conceptual apparatus of social sciences, sociology, management and political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The collective work The Formation of a Welfare State and the Prospects of a Social State in Russia: Realities and Projects, prepared by the Center for the Study of Sociocultural Change (CSSCC) of the RAS Institute of Philosophy under the general editorship of RAS Corresponding Member N.I. Lapin, is discussed. The relevance of this work is emphasized. Theoretical innovations, including the introduction of new concepts in scientific and philosophical discourse, are noted, and the theoretical and empirical value of many of its chapters is shown. At the same time, in the opinion of the reviewer, some conceptual statements of the authors need more thorough substantiation, in particular, the idea of transition from a welfare state to a social state. The analysis of the deficiencies of the welfare state from the standpoint of critical social theory, carried out in some chapters, seems insufficiently reasoned. At the same time, in the opinion of the reviewer, the reasoning on modernization as the main prerequisite for the formation of a social state in Russia appears convincing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This speculative paper enquires into the discourse of the 'end of labour' or 'disappearance of labour' as a result of the development of 'intelligent capitalism' clearly seen in 'intelligent manufacturing' systems that are now pursued and developed as Industry 4.0 strategy in East Asia, Germany and others parts of the world. When 'intelligent capitalism' becomes the norm rather the exception what happens to labour as a factor of production and what happens to economy and society based on capital and labour? The paper briefly reviews the sociology of labour from a Marxist view to examine conceptions of Fordist and post-Fordist capitalism, and explore the advert of 'intelligent capitalism' to pose the question concerning education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the historical study of modern American capitalism, labor unfreedom in agriculture has been conceptualized as an exception to liberal labor relations in the post-slavery polity, from debt peonage to the threat of deportation from workplaces populated by non-citizen migrants. At the same time, state-enforced labor compulsions and restrictions are increasingly part and parcel of what scholars call neoliberal exceptionalism. This article argues that agricultural and neoliberal exceptionalisms are related, by tracing the historical genealogy and juridical production of a restrictive work status, the deportable temporary labor migrant, across political economies in the modern United States, from imperial construction in the Panama Canal Zone, to agriculture, to the knowledge economy. Contrary to existing notions of temporary work visas as a new form of unfreedom in neoliberalized advanced capitalist states, I show how the threat of deportation is older and rooted in the rise of the liberal regulatory state in a post-slavery, yet persistently racial capitalist political economy. The import of understanding this history of government intervention increases as the liberal regulatory state's coercive logics and practices intensify and circulate in agriculture and under a post-Fordist regime of accumulation, reproducing racial capitalism in the labor process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]