Re: [Marxism] In response to Sam Webb's On "The Nature, Role, and Work of the Comm

[Benjamin Morgan <foreverblaze89@xxxxxxxxx>]

Mark Derderian wrote:

what is this "we" that have moved to "immaterial labor"--do you mean what has 
been  
called the "unproductive labor" of the growing mass of service workers in  the 
strictly financial sectors of the economy or people who are living on   trust 
funds and reading Lyotard or just the intellectual work of   
self-interpretation 
and world interpretation that all economic and political  actors need to do?
 
Comrade Ben:
 
When I say immaterial labor I do not mean unproductive labor. Adversely, I 
think that immaterial labor makes all forms of labor productive. This is a 
rather big claim and I tend to debunk it. (with as least nuance as possible) 
Immaterial Labor which I am referring to takes two forms; affective and 
linguistic. Affective labor, is caring labor, labor which tends to create 
personal bonds and social relationships. To relate this back to my initial 
claim, I will turn to reproductive or kin labor. Traditionally, this sort of 
labor has been considered unproductive. However, in this day and age affective 
labor has the propensity to encompass kin labor. This is substantiated by 
analyzing the way in which service industries utilize women. It is becoming a 
tendency that women are given affective roles in which their purpose is to 
foster communicative and productive relationships. In dominant countries like 
the U.S this tendency can easily be observed in the
 structure of the fast food industry. Generally, if one ventures into a local 
McDonald's, this becomes apparent when the women at the front register smiles 
and asks benevolently, How's your day? May I take your order? The purpose of 
Affective labor is to control the way in which people feel. Linguistic labor, 
has to do with the creation of intellectual work, ideas in general, signs, 
symbols, images, new forms of communication etc. Linguistic Labor has a 
tendency to infiltrate existing forms of productive and unproductive labor and 
create efficiency and bonds. An example of the integration of Linguistic labor 
into an existing form of  labor can be visualized in on-line forums. Linguistic 
labor tends to create symbols and new linguistic forms with foster the 
productivity of on-line communication. To finish substantiating my initial 
claim immaterial labor can be viewed as bio political. Under the process of the 
shift from formal to real subsumption, or
 total subsumption; everyone contributes to the functioning of the existing 
system and are thus productive. I am not inventing or embellishing marxist 
theory' in fact I think that this shift reflects current material conditions. 
Furthermore, Marx was already here before me when he said in Das Capital;
 
"That labourer alone is productive, who produces surplus-value for the 
capitalist, and thus works for the valorisation of capital. If we may take an 
example from outside the sphere of production of material objects, a 
schoolmaster is a productive labourer when, in addition to belabouring the 
heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. 
That the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of in a 
sausage factory, does not alter the relation. Hence the notion of a productive 
labourer implies not merely a relation between work and useful effect, between 
labourer and product of labour, but also a specific, social relation of 
production, a relation that has sprung up historically and stamps the labourer 
as the direct means of creating surplus-value. To be a productive labourer is, 
therefore, not a piece of luck, but a misfortune."
 
The measure for surplus value is tending to become more ambiguous, and thus the 
duration of our lives are relegated to social production. 
 
On fighting for socialism today, we must commonly resist the everyday practices 
that assimilate us into the vacuum of production. Also we must put aside the 
petty feuds we developed when industrial labor was hegemonic; such as fall outs 
with unions and other types of workers that have previously been excluded. The 
project at hand should be a project which extends the scope of the proletariat 
to include the Multitude, or the productive singularities of the masses. This 
will allow common resistance that is truly representative of the oppressed. My 
particular advice to organizing in which some may disagree, is forming local 
communes which communicate and collaborate while still representing the 
singular goals of particular communities. In this method we can finally escape 
the homogeneity of previous organization and still fight for the common goal of 
social justice and the end of the current relations of production.
 
Ben


      
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