Re: AUT: Re: [Fwd: <nettime> Toni Negri: Social Struggles in

[Arianna <above@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Harald,

sorry for taking so long to reply, but given the tone of your email, I wasn't clear whether or not you were looking for constructive engagement.

First the pretty irrelevant but to me slightly irritating referring of
>"Postfordism" to what "Marx called real subsumption of labour
>under capital". Irritating, because as it is not true, and it does
>not become truer by being repeated over and over again. The
>only reason that Marx's name is evoked seem to be the need of
>*authorisation* for a novel idea. Fordism fits much better what
>what the old man described as "real subsumption." "Postfordism"
>migh just as well, and in some repsects at least better, be seen
>as a turn back from "real subsumption" to "formal subsumption"
>of labour.
>Just-in-time was for instance pretty much the principle
>handicraft production was based on, though the process today
>certainly generally is much more complex, and the number of
>people involved far greater. Further if it is true that workers today
>generally have become more autonomous in the production
>process (which could be questioned) then this again points to
>something more like the old putting-out system/cottage industry,
>or in other words, what the old man referred to a formal as
>oposed to a real subsumption of labour under capital.

I don't fully understand here you seem to be implying that we have gone back in time.

>But to substance. The article is undoubtly elegantly written,
>but how far does it reflect lived reality for the majority of
>workers, even within in the most exonomically advanced
>captialist countries?

There must be some elegant workers in Italy...:-)

>Scarfone writes:
>
>"Whilst under Fordism the quality of labour was linked to 'the
>professional formation and training', the curriculum and
>specialisations, education and specific work experience,
>under Postfordism the quality of labour is directly proportional
>to social relations, to the ability to create sociability and
>build communities."
>
>Who is he referring to.
>I have for example very hard to see
>how someone working at a supermarket has much time to
>"build communities," or that s/he would last very long in the
>job if s/he tried. S/he may be required to smile, but  other-
>wise foremost to keep the pace at a work that has much in
>common with precisely the Fordist assembly line.  In quite
>a few places the pace is also actually electronic measured.
>It is true that (at least in some parts of the world) there
>have come far more service jobs .. and they often involve
>far more direct contact with the buyer of the commodity,
>and that the workers is thus also in another way than in
>a factory often is expected to sell part of their soul  How much
>this has to do with "creat[ing] sociability and build[ing]
>communities" is however more than questionable. Telephone
>sellers that call me at home certainly produce foremost
>irritation, and certainly not community. And their work is
>again pretty much organized factory style. Even their phrases
>seem to be  mass produced.


You hit the point. That is precisely what he is referring to: once you recognise that the mode of production has significantly changed and with it the organisation of labour (agreed?) you can't then say that workers are exploited in the same way. And they are not. The form of socialisation of labour is entirely different. The times of Taylor's trained gorilla are over. As Gramsci said, a new method of production and work requires a new type of man. The postfordist worker as you point out is invested in a deeper way: he/she has to posses a language, a mode of being, so that what disciplinary factory regimes needed the welfare state for (regulating workers' time and money out of work), now is accomplished by the employer directly. It isn't just about producer/consumer relations and how mediated they are. It is about production becoming biopolitical, investing more immediately the whole of our social being through language, communication, sociability. I don't see why you read that forming communities and creating sociability as such anathema. What the author and others are saying is that since this is what is a requirement for production right now, since the level of productivity is measured on the ability to use our brains and 'humanity', or as you say to sell our 'souls', the precondition for its subversion are created through the very process of exploitation, and you and the telephone sellers are surely equally irritated at the same thing, so don't be a snob.


>What if we put the following claim into this context? "The social
>fabric is optimally utilised. Social life becomes the fundamental
>source and creation of value. Social cooperation constitutes
>the web of relations established in the life of the subjects. Each
>relation is 'put to work' and, independently of its formal
>recognition hence retribution, it is in itself productive."
>
>I would however claim that the phone-seller soon learns to use
>as little of her- or himself as at all possible in the job, and much
>like an assmebly worker at a factory tries to cut out the job of
>their mind as soon as the waged time is over. If not they do not
>manage that, they work will soon drive them cracy. Similarily
>with for instance moust rountine office work. And whatever they
>want to tell us most wage-work is still more or less routine
>work, and the way to survive is to as dar as possible have
>youir mind elsewhere. Even most work in health institutions
>follows that pattern. And still what the last thing the vast majority
>of bosses want you do, is to be creative, in particularily not
>those who talk the most about it.

Exactly, but the point is that the worker's capacity to produce value is conferred/engendered outside of her direct relation to a particular capital. It is her social being that does that, production needs to exploit our communicative potential, the process of 'training' consists in re-directing what we already are towards what profits a particular company, which is different from 'moulding us' or 'shaping our minds', in a way that we can un-do when out of work. All they're saying is that the fact that -to put it in vulgar marxist terms- the superstructure has been put to work makes capital's command over labour all the more immediately arbitrary and nonsensical. Think of all the sacking of middle management that occured a decade ago, people have increasingly been made to cope without a physical boss, you might say through internalisation of discipline,some others might say through the enhancement of cooperation.


>Is this really generally true, apart from it can be said to  *always*
>have been partially true. "Social cooperation" to a large extent
>lrearned outside of wage work always was important within a
>factory setting, for instance,  and "independently of its formal
>recognition hence retribution."  Without this production would
>have broken down, that is also why direct actions through "work-
>to-rule" could be so effective.

? What's work-to-rule? - is it like 'arbeit macht frei'?

>However this is, I would like to see these grand theories concretized
>in relation to the kind of jobs most people still do, as well as the life
>most people live. I am not saying that there is nothing to them, but a
>bit more down-to earth approach would probably do them good.
>
>One thing is for instance certain, that much more of workers non-
>waged time (in parts of the world, at least)  is occupied by paper-
>work etc., in part in relation to the state bureaucracy, but also in
>part and  increasingly having to relate to all kind of commodities
>someone wants to sell you, paying bills etc. Before, I for instance
>only got one phone bill and one electricity bill, but now true
>privatization and semi-privatization everything seem to have
>been divided into different companies. You may pay one company
>for the access to the net, another one for the actually use, etc. And
>then there constantly comes "great offers" to change from this
>company to another, as they claim to be a lot cheaper, at least for
>a while, and depending on how you count. Etc, etc....

You're agreeing again with what Carlo wrote about the impossibility to separate waged and unwaged life-time.

>Again, I am not saying that there is nothing at all to what Carlo
>Scarfone and other with him write.  But I have often great trouble
>recognisizing what they descrive it in the life I know. Or to put it
>otherwise, the life of the majority of  wage workers does not necessarily
>has that much in common with being an "author". The script is
>mostly written for them in advance, and they better follow it or face
>the consquences.



bla bla bla. Listen, I appreciate this discussion but I really don't see the motive nor need for this belligerant and patronising tone. The fact that people reclaim their time out of work to try and understand how work is fucking them up deserves at least some less trivial kind of comment, if not respect. I think you're the one who's gotta face the consequences of his own prejudice on what the majority of wage workers are supposed to be and do. Why not keep an open mind to what people like Carlo care to write in their spare time or in between fixing cars before getting too blinded by social stereotypes, especially those the created by the right?




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