In this paper two conceptualizations of labour in current capitalism are reconstructed and opposed. On the one hand, Habermas and Gorz understand that labor loses centrality in social life while it is crossed by instrumental and productive logics, whereupon they propose to expand other social spheres governed by principles other than those dominant in the productive space. On the other hand, the Italian Autonomism envisions a qualitative change in current production processes, which gradually abandon the instrumental logic to become governed by others more related to communication, cooperation and the search for autonomy. Here a comparison of those two lines will take place, trying to elucidate its theoretical assumptions, and according to the requirements of a critical theory that can study the present detecting both its fissures and its inherent possibilities for social and political transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]