Abstract

The recent revival in Marx's scholarship leaves in the background the multifaceted investigation on labour and production processes. In spite of Hannah Arendt's vision, Marx "does not" reduce human being to "animal laborans": labor is a typical human activity, a «creative unrest» which develops cooperation and knowledge. But with the «encroachment of capital over time of labour» even the communal and scientific elements became an alien power dominating the workers. To resume such an approach could contribute to the interpretation of human activity in post-Fordist production and globalized capitalism; and to acknowledge the link between Marx's theory of human labor and his vision of social conflict would earn us a critical point of view on mainstream theories of justice (including those elaborated by Analytical Marxists).