[Marxism] Back on immaterial labor

[Benjamin Morgan <foreverblaze89@xxxxxxxxx>]

U.S Department of Commerce

The Role of Services in the Modern U.S. Economy
Office of Service Industries
Article found at 
(http://trade.gov/td/sif/PDF/ROLSERV199.PDF)

Douglas B. Cleveland, January 1999

Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, the service sector
has been both the largest and the fastest growing component of the U.S.
economy. Fifty years ago, the service sector accounted for about sixty
percent of U.S. output and employment. Today, the service sector's
share of the U.S. economy has risen to roughly 80 percent. The remarkable 
economic prominence of services is no less impressive when the sector's various 
components are considered one by one:
-- Wholesale trade, retail trade, and transportation & public utilities
each contribute over half a trillion dollars to annual U.S. output.
-- Construction, the smallest subsector, now accounts for a higher
share of economic output than either agriculture or mining
(construction is counted among the subsectors here because it is
viewed as a service in the context of international trade).
-- And each of the two largest subsectors -- finance, insurance, & real
estate, and Services, the catchall category covering all other private
services -- contributed over one and a half trillion dollars to GDP in
1997, i.e., more than the 1.4 trillion dollars in output produced by
the manufacturing sector of the economy. Aside from sheer size, the most 
crucial aspect of the service sector's ascendance is the thorough integration 
of services with virtually every
other aspect of the present-day Am erican economy. From Main Street to
Wall Street, wherever business is conducted in the United States,
services businesses are an essential component of the local economy --
a critical source of new local jobs, an essential ingredient in creating a
commercial environment conducive to entrepreneurship, and a vital link
to the wider U.S. and world economies. At one end of the spectrum, small 
companies serve and prosper within communities both large and small all across 
America. By the mid-90s, nine of every ten firms with fewer than twenty 
employees were in the
services sector, and these small services companies accounted for nine
of every ten jobs at small firms -- nationwide, over 17 million jobs, or,
on average, about 350 thousand jobs in each of the fifty states.
The relative importance of small services providers is most apparent
when contrasted with the U.S. manufacturing sector. There, the 242
thousand firms with under twenty employees accounted for three out of
every four manufacturing firms, but for only one of every fourteen
manufacturing jobs -- for a nationwide total of about 1.3 m illion jobs, or,
on average, about 27 thousand jobs in each of the fifty states.
While the importance of small services firms can hardly be overstated,
it is no more than a part of the story of the modern services economy.
For example, eight of the thirty firms that now make up the Dow Jones
index of blue-chip stocks are in the service sector: American Express,
which in 1982 became the first serv ices firm to be added to the Dow,
AT&T, Citigroup, Disney, McDonald's, JP Morgan, Sears, and Wal-Mart.
Other firms on the Dow that began as, and that are commonly viewed
as, manufacturing firms -- GE and IBM are prime examples -- also rank
among the world's largest and most competitive services operations.
And, of course, by design, not one of the firms listed among the Dow
industrials is a transportation or a utilities concern: each of these key
subsectors of the service economy is covered by its own market index.
Together, then, services firms large and small now provide more jobs
-- and more new jobs -- than all other sectors of the economy combined.
Service sector payrolls rose 65 percent over just the past twenty years,
with almost 40 million more employees today than there were in 1978.
Moreover, these new service sector jobs accounted for the entire net gain
in nonfarm employment since the 1970s, a trend that is forecast to
continue into the next decade. The result: 85 percent of all nonfarm
workers hold jobs in the service sector. Even if the nation's 3 million

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Comrade Ben: I am finally back at my computer and ready to rebutt Dogan's 
assertions
 

He asks: 

Why don't you put this question to Negri and Hardt. They want to replace 
classical theory of value. What is their justification for that? What essential 
changes took place in capitalist economy that warrants a paradigme change in 
value theory? By shifting from classical value theory to, say, neoclassical 
value theory they replace neoclassical political economy for classical 
political economy?

Reply:

I would ask them if the warrants to my initial claim wasn't already answered in 
their text. We live in a time of neoclassical economics; "Mainstream economics 
is largely neoclassical in its assumptions, at least at the microeconomic 
level." (Adbusters : The Magazine - #69 The Big Ideas of 2007 / The Revolution 
Will Begin with a Textbook Part Two) Are you suggesting not to analyze the 
economic transformations and ridgidly adapt old concepts around new 
phenomenona? Your argument and methodology reminds me of neoclassical 
economics; draw the conclusion first and fill in the rest! This is the time of 
static dogmatic Marxism which prompted Karl Marx to proclaim "I am not a 
Marxist!" Dogan the rise of the service industry is real and prevailent as the 
article above demonstrates. In the service economy when labor begins to exibit 
the tendencies of taking on a less material form (in general) the ability to 
measure value become difficult. Moreover, In Negri's
 earlier work Time for Revolution, Negri exposes metaphysically that Marx's 
theory of value is a theory of the measure of value; and that time which is key 
to the equation doesn't provide a stable foundation on which to measure under 
real subsumption has occured. (refer to 
http://www.generation-online.org/t/constitutionoftime.htm)

He states: 

"...all forms of labour are referred to as the production of subjectivity" 

Reply:

 I agree. However, what separates immaterial labors production of subjectivity 
is it's attachment to material processes. When communication, information 
technology, and or affective labor co-opt a form of material labor (which Negri 
admits in Multitude most commonly occurs) the immaterial labor involved in 
facilitating the process is extracted as surplus value and under total 
subsumption represents the clearist expression of alienated labor. Furthermore, 
the production of subjectivity is the warrant of the shift to total 
subsumption. In that all labor create social relations as a by-product of its 
function; while the function of immaterial labor is to create social 
relationships and thus society. This reflects the clearist view of immaterial 
labor as biopolitical.


      
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