Re: [Marxism] Should IT workers unionize?

[Gavin Walker <gw57@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Message: 18
> Date: Fri, 05 Sep 2008 16:27:49 +0300
> From: Joonas Laine <jjonas@xxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: [Marxism] Should IT workers unionize?
>
> Anyone read any good books on the "high tech revolution", and what it
> really means? Is it a paradigmatic shift in capitalism, or more or  
> less
> the same shit in a different package? The autonomists' material is  
> heavy
> on impressionistic philosophizing, but very lean on any numbers.
> *Politically* though I think it's worth responding to, all the more so
> because they do make very good critical points e.g. on the social
> democratic left's orientation towards the "wellfare state".

Although it might seem far from the theoretical orbit and political  
range of the expected Marxist references on this question (in fact, it  
is consciously distanced from party-oriented doctrinal and gestural  
declarations of fealty), Yann Moulier Boutang's recent _Le capitalisme  
cognitif: la nouvelle grande transformation_ (Paris: Éditions  
Amsterdam, 2007) is a decisive reference. As is obvious from the  
title, Polanyi is also a source here.

The work of the many thinkers around the journal _Multitudes_ such as  
Moulier Boutang and Maurizio Lazaratto is highly pertinent to this  
question. Perhaps the demands put forward by many of these thinkers,  
centered to an extent around the movement for a global 'guaranteed  
income', might possibly strike many Marxists as insufficient and  
cursory. Nevertheless, they have the distinct advantage of seriously  
investigating the new shifts in the development of the productive  
forces, the total social processes which are in transition under the  
effect of cognitive labor, and the new possibilities for recombination  
occasioned by the increasingly general circulation of socialized  
knowledge - the well-known "general intellect" of the _Grundrisse_. In  
fact, I think that it can be argued that much of this work resembles  
strongly an attempt to give a new significance to historical  
materialism in our time, and to begin the analysis again from the  
ground up. 
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