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Abstract
In advanced capitalist societies, classified by Claus Offe as tardy-capitalists, one verifies a
structural contradiction among the logics concerning valorization of capital and the processes of the publicadministration
system. The continuous increase of work taxes in services, use values-producing work, or
concrete work, usually classified as improductive work of higher value in advanced capitalist societies,
according to Claus Offe, increasingly becomes a structural condition so that part of the work force may be
converted into production of abstract trade/work values or into the merchandise social form. According to the
Offean analysis on the growth of political-administrative systems in societies of tardy-capitalism, when
organizing a portion of the work force marginally to waged-work, it becomes necessary that a part of the
work force does not undergo capitalist trade relations. In that sense, so that the process or logic of capital
valorization becomes able to keep going on without further adversities, it becomes necessary to collect back
from the market, in an administrative manner, part of the work force of the relations of capitalist trade which
have their eyes turned to the merchandise social form. In short, in the conversion process of concrete work
into abstract work, one verifies a trend in the de-merchandising process of part of the work force. Such
contradiction between both logics, producers of use value and trade value, are insolvable, in Offe’s analytical
perspective, due exactly to the fact that such contradiction is way beyond the conscience and intentions of the
individual capitalist agents, as well as that of the coordination of this process.