Future of work and global trends: reframing the debate in an age of state capitalism and systemic competition

This chapter foregrounds the role of the state in shaping the future of work through national industrial policies compelled by geopolitical considerations. The chapter fleshes out the concept of ‘workplace geopolitics', namely the intertwined character of conflicts with the organisation and regulation of the labour process and sphere of production. Projections of technological adoption tend to be based on an economic rationality that seals off the world of work from a wider array of local, national and global factors, in particular the power play of geopolitics. But the digital and technological transformation of work in many advanced capitalist democracies is today shaped by a policy and business context characterised by intensifying military and economic competition. We suggest this has become one of the key conditioning influences on industrial work futures, but express uncertainty about the capacity for this reconfiguration of the state, domestically and internationally, to promote decent work.