The Labor Process and Health: A Historical Materialist Interpretation

Abstract

This article discusses the relationship between the labor process and health, using historical materialism as the method of analysis. Section I conceptualizes the relationship between the elements of the labor process and health. Section II analyzes the historical evolution of the labor process and its consequences for health, with a special emphasis on the effect on health of different forms of alienation. Section III examines the changes in the different branches of economic activity and their impact on health, with added discussion of the consequences of the international mobility of capital for different forms of expropriation of health. The awareness of the relationship between work and health, and the operational meaning of that awareness for labor strategies, are also presented.