Trabalho informal: da funcionalidade à subsunção ao capital.

Abstract

This study has the objective of understanding the causes of the emergence and expansion of informal labor in capitalism, as well as to analyze contemporary relations between informal labor and capital. We start with a review of the literature on informal labor trying to understand the various theories dealing with questions related to labor market and its segmentation. The theoretical research revealed controversies among different schools of thought - Classical, Neoclassical and Marxian - about informal labor, relating to its definition and role in the capitalist mode of production. Contrary to the hegemonic view, we start with a historical, descriptive and criticai analysis to show that the seeds of informal labor were present since the génesis of capitalism. Despite this, it was verified that the debate about informal labor presents it as something new (emerging around the 1970s). The theoretical unsustainability of analyses about unemployment of the labor force, having its foundations on the Classical and Neoclassical schools is due to its incapacity to go beyond the appearance that dissimulates the mediations between informal labor and capital. As we analyzed the theories and reality we noticed the need to amplify the concept of informal labor, to include both the activities of the "informal sector" (survival activities) as well as productive and unproductive labor. When dealing with informal productive labor, even when the appearance denies the relation capital/labor, we verified that not only informal labor can be functional and subordinate, as it can be subsumed to capital, being this process intensified by the crisis of capitalism.