Introduction

The contributors to this volume [The Condition of the Working Class in Turkey] do not share an overarching common theoretical framework. However, relying on a broadly Marxist and critical political economy tradition, the overarching concept that they share and prioritise is ‘class’, and particularly ‘labour’. All chapters develop a labour-centred perspective, and labour and class struggle understood as the constitutive category of capitalist social relations. Hence, various aspects of the ‘condition of the working class’ are researched and analysed thoroughly from the standpoint of labour (see Burnham et al., 2008, pp. ++0–% for ‘working class standpoint research’), with rich empirical data and fieldworks/interviews for most of the chapters.