Manifestations of Barbarism

We saw in the previous section that the “civilising” phase of capitalism ended in the late 1960s. Since then, capital has systematically denied workers the hard-fought achievements of the first half of the twentieth century: limited working hours, right to formal contracts, right to retirement and paid vacations, end of slave and child labour, right to housing, right to a public health system, etc. These and so many other achievements have been partially or completely destroyed in the new phase of capitalism, which some call “flexible accumulation” and others “capitalism under financial hegemony”.