Anti-work, TVET and employer engagement

The paper brings together a range of debates on the left that address TVET’s future in current context. At the heart of these debates rest two issues. The first addresses competing views of capital and the second focuses on the contradiction between the interests of capital and workers. The paper argues that capital is not all of a piece and that decent work that validates human flourishing is not completely unknown. However, as with other forms of waged labour, such work is predicated on capitalist relations and interests and it is important not to overlook waged labour as a site of struggle and contestation. Consequently, when circumstances alter as a result of the development of new technology, itself is a social process, or when the balance of power shifts in favour of capital, such labour may be dispensed with or become so deskilled that it is hardly recognisable. The paper is structured in the following way. The initial sections address the paper’s genesis, a discussion of corporate social responsibility and anti-work that enables an engagement with differing conceptualisations of capital. The subsequent sections, Restrictive and Expansive Learning and Thinking about TVET focus on the contradictory interests of workers and capital. The paper closes with a discussion of TVET and considers responses to current conditions that necessitate an engagement with an earlier tradition of adult and community education.