In parallel (but quite by accident) with this week’s charge of American nationalist-patriotism, I have been immersed in Marx’s political philosophies on capitalism for a seminar with Langdon Winner. Dated more than 150 years ago, I am reminded of the continual relevance of many of Marx’s points to today’s Market-driven global economic climate.
More to the point, I am struck by the relative lack of engagement to these ideas by a vast majority of middle-class workers in developed western economies – particularly in knowledge economies (or what Marx would consider intellectual labor) – as these populations construct individual realities that are somehow abstracted from the very real problems of their labor being driven by the production of commodities stripped of their connection to personal contribution, and thus a sense of personal fulfillment (or what we commonly call the ‘happiness factor’). The question then is, how far removed are workers of the technoscientific class from the circumstances described by Marx in the devaluation of social labor due to the introduction and later dominance of manufacturing / industrial economies?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently updated the projections for what our economy will look like come 2018. To begin, let us reflect upon the following prediction from the BLM’s Overview of the 2008-18 Projections:
“Employment in professional, scientific, and technical services is projected to grow by 34 percent, adding about 2.7 million new jobs by 2018. Employment in computer systems design and related services is expected to increase by 45 percent, accounting for nearly one-fourth of all new jobs in this industry sector. Employment growth will be driven by growing demand for the design and integration of sophisticated networks and Internet and intranet sites. Employment in management, scientific, and technical consulting services is anticipated to expand at a staggering 83 percent, making up about 31 percent of job growth in this sector. Demand for these services will be spurred by businesses’ continued need for advice on planning and logistics, the implementation of new technologies, and compliance with workplace safety, environmental, and employment regulations.”
In visual terms, this shift in the economic climate might look like this:
If we consider for a moment the basis upon which Marx describes how human value in work is diminished – through the introduction of symbolic associations (like monetary value), as opposed to direct relational value (exchange of services and goods) – what constitutes the value of labor is established by the degree to which labor can be inserted and exploited in the production of excess commodities abstract from the labor required to produce them; for it is the excess of production that gets extracted from the individual usefulness of things. Yet, as Marx states in Das Capital, “nothing can have value without being an object of utility.” What then becomes the relative value of knowledge-economy labor, how is this value established, and by whom? It has been said that corporations operate much like nation-states described by Marx. And the reality of our global economy is one dominated by Neoliberalist ideologies centered on corporate models. As opposed to the separation of labor generating out of geographic affiliation or skill-oriented task, combined to create a “productive force” whereby the collective of workers becomes unified under the imposed direction of the ruling class – the Market-based corporation imposes similar constraints but in the creation of abstract borders and collectives of labor to create competitive exchanges with other corporate entities (or national entities reconstituted in corporate form).
Where this becomes most interesting for the sake of studying technoscientific systems is how advances in industrial processes reify these internal relationships of stratification. Marx believed, “the motion of the whole system does not proceed from the workman, but from the machinery, a change of persons can take place at any time without an interruption of the work.” As we continue to create sociolcultural environments friendly to the division of labor in knowledge-economies – namely the early indoctrination of skills through technical-oriented institutionalized education designed to insert worker into predetermined tasks (engineering schools for example) – the ability to produce without interruption becomes ubiquitous. This is evident in “job creation” political rhetoric as a symbolic measure of economic (and personal?) worth without signifiers to what kinds of jobs are created (or the extent to which these create individual sense of fulfillment). The implied connection here is that satisfaction of both intellectual laborers and those who control the use-value of technology are motivated solely by the increased commodity value that technology brings forth. Despite the fact that of these two, the former, finds itself under the thumb of the destabilizing consequences of new technoscientific arrangements. As Marx states in the Capitalist Manifesto, “Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.”
And yet, these structures are maintained, and even supported by those who populate the current proletariat body in contemporary knowledge economies (this is not a new orientation – Marx also states that while the intellectual class may have greater access to resources and are perceived to be not classified as material laborers, they nevertheless remain external members to the bourgeoisie). Why is this so? First, the depths and breadth of class division are no longer visible. Individual members of economy have lost their ability to conceptualize their place in stratified society. Second, social classes and their associated ideologies are not easily identifiable in the first place. In fact, Marx makes the point that revolutions unseating one ruling ideology for another ultimately have characteristics of both as their end result. Following this, a democratic revolution remains monarchic, and monarchies have aspects of feudalism, etc. As such, the modern proletariat perceive themselves as participants in an ill-conceived democratic system. They sympathize with their own discontent but also with content of those who control their political and economic systems. Again from the Manifesto, the lower middle class, “fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class… If by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.” The same might be said of the average wage-labor corporate employed worker, relegated to the daily cubicle office life…”Like them or not, there is simply no better way to provide your office workers with the environment they need to be effective in the workplace than well designed, affordable cubicles.”
Regarding the charge of socialism then: to rethink private property, to reinstate human considerations into the use-value of commodities, to create collective arrangements of exchange that better equate different laboring traditions. Where can these be applied in a revolution against the modern socioeconomic condition? Some evidence can be seen in the rise of rhetoric and sentiments around “the commons” instigated by new champions against intellectual property, advocates of participatory governance, and the development of the open-source economy (an example being Raymond’s theories on the Bazaar economy). Here, the value of labor becomes associated with one’s contributions to a larger project, but through which individual gain becomes associated with those direct contributions – rather than through the translation of one’s labor through a symbolic third association; in other words, the reemergence of an intellectual barter system. I think it is no small coincidence that each of these efforts to rearrange economic and political systems is strongly opposed by the contemporary equivalent of the bourgeoisie – and the portion of the labor class most concerned with being associated as proletariat (most notably supporters of the Tea Party). For if such a revolution deprives, as Marx claims, “no man of the power to appropriate the products of society,” but instead, “of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations,” corporation in a market-economy quickly find themselves without their most valuable asset necessary for survival – a mass body of use-value-less human assets.
[Note: Images garnered from google image search]
