This paper presents André Gorz’s analysis of the significant shifts in working practices and of the possibilities opened by Post-Fordism which is characterised by the predominantly intellectual nature of work. The contribution to Gorz’s thinking of the school of Italian and French radical Marxism known as ‘operaismo’ is underlined first. This school of thought sheds a positive light on the increasing subjective involvement, autonomy, shared skills and knowledge demanded by this new type of work, holding them as unquestioningly emancipatory. According to his own philosophical view of autonomy, Gorz is however drawn to qualify this optimism (particularly present in Toni Negri’s writings). He condemns the full mobilisation of the worker’s personal qualities and the instrumentalisation of her/his very capacity for autonomy. The autonomy exercised in the production process has, in his opinion, a paradoxical and conflictual status: social domination on one hand, and virtual emancipation on the other. From an existentialist perspective, the emancipatory potential of the existing difficulties and contradictions must be teased out: Whilst waged-work is increasingly precarious and deprived of its statutory protections, it nonetheless continues to be held as the bedrock of social entitlements and self-esteem. Gorz therefore calls for a questioning of the central place attributed to waged-work. Granting a continuous guaranteed income against the background of increasing discontinuity represents a key strategy for this end. Gorz’s plea rests on his conviction – which we evaluate – that the work ethic in steadily weakening in the general population.
