Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No. 9, 2025

Expanding Contemporary Labor Process Theory under Flexible Accumulation

(Abstract)

Wang Jianhua and Zheng Guanghuai

The existing framework of contemporary labor process theory cannot adequately address the transformation of production organization, resulting in a disjunction between research and practice. The key reason lies in the theory’s underlying assumptions, which fail to fully grasp the internal unity of production and circulation in capitalist production from the perspective of Marxist political economy. The potential analytical resources provided by political economy and related research have laid foundation for expanding labor process theory. A new analytical framework enables a better understanding of the features of flexible accumulation: capital continuously reorganizes production through the collection, analysis, and transmission of market demand information at the circulation stage; multiple capitals jointly participate in production management; bureaucratic centralized planning, coordination, and management are organically combined with market subcontracting, the labor process is spatially dispersed yet systematically interconnected; and workers lack genuine security and choice. As production organization continues to evolve and iterate, capital’s strategies for production and operation grow increasingly complex. Only by squarely addressing these structural transformations and conducting a thorough and systematic examination of labor processes and management systems under the influence of capital can theory and practice generate insights that will help a modern socialist state effectively regulate and guide the healthy development of capital.