<div>The problem with "immaterial" versus "material" labor as categories is that they express differences of degree rather than kind. It makes no sense to say that thought/ideas/etc are somehow lacking in materiality. Or that there is no labor in sitting in a chair and thinking. Even if such labor were immaterial at the outset (an idea with which cognitive scientists/neurologists, etc. would beg to differ), its instantiation in the social world automatically renders it material.
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<div>The same is true with the labor theory of value. How much is a thing, or labor, worth? This is a question that only makes sense in a capitalist economy, which is what Marx was analyzing in Das Kapital. Marx demonstrates that "value" is inherently fetishistic--commodity fetishism is the equivalent of saying "imaginative fantasy." In a capitalist society, for a Marxist or post-Marxist scholar to talk about _proper_ value is really only "valuable" as a tactical move within the existing social structure. It only has meaning in a culture where people exploit others in an attempt to obtain "value." In a truly communist/socialist/gift economy type society, value would be the aberration rather than the rule as the sharing of material resources and _material_ ideas becomes the norm rather than the attempt to capitalize on such things at the expense of others.
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<div>And the fact that people are willing to give away their "immaterial" labor for free to large corporations? Well, that's a two-sided coin. On the one hand you could view this as one of the most insidious instantiations of false consciousness in some time. On the other hand, one might view it in more Debordian terms, as the expression of an unarticulated and unrealized desire that is exploited in a capitalist economy by corporations, but which also reminds us of an inherent desire to share and be sociable without asking preliminary and often stifling questions about the end results of that imaginative interaction--in aother words a desire that is both social and experimental in nature. The problem, in the final instance, is not people's willingness to share for free, but the hegemony that corporations currently have over this desire to give.
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<div>Alan Clinton<br><br> </div>
<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 8/4/07, <b class="gmail_sendername"><a href="mailto:brian.holmes@wanadoo.fr">brian.holmes@wanadoo.fr</a></b> <<a href="mailto:brian.holmes@wanadoo.fr">brian.holmes@wanadoo.fr</a>> wrote:
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">Hi all -<br><br>Chris Byrne wrote:<br>> I stress that I find the critique wanting, in that it relies too heavily
<br>on Baudrillard to dismiss Scholz and Krysa: yet what intrigues is that it<br>finds an alternative source within post-Marxist theory to address the<br>question of 'sociable web media' (Scholz).<br><br>The Leisure Arts blog has no substantial discussion, so I get the
<br>impression of someone finding a clever quote and admiring THEMSELVES in the<br>mirror! However, among people who do actually work on these ideas, the<br>Marxist category of labor is a major issue. Baudrillard is not necessarily
<br>the only reference here. Lazzarato who coined the notion of "immaterial<br>labor" has more recently proposed to replace the whole concept of<br>"production" with that of "invention," so as to recognize the major input
<br>to the contemporary economy that comes through scientific discovery,<br>cultural creation and technological and other kinds of innovation<br>(something Schumpeter was suggesting a half-century ago, with his focus on<br>
the entrepreneur as the inventor of new forms of organization). Hardline<br>Marxists insist that physical labor is still the root of value production,<br>and that it has just been shifted to sites on the capitalist periphery such
<br>as China. They also say that the hourly wage still provides the only<br>bedrock measure of value, everything else being calculated on the basis of<br>what can be extorted from industrial workers. I think the situation is in
<br>flux, and that expanded role of what you might as well call "invention<br>power" really has upset the hierarchy of values: nobody really knows why a<br>particular thing is worth what it is, with the dangerous result that people
<br>can be paid almost nothing for their work, and symbolic attributes (exacly<br>what Baudrillard focused on) can become way too valuable. Trebor and Josia<br>are probably too quick to use the word labor; what people are providing the
<br>web 2.0 magnates with is their attention, their desire, their<br>inventiveness, their charisma, and above all, their valuations. The<br>greatest human capacity is probably that of bestowing value on something or<br>someone through the expression of your intimate desire. To hand that over
<br>to corporations is like consenting to voluntary servitude of your finest<br>faculties - something like giving them free labor but maybe worse actually.<br>And yet also something very common in our world today.<br><br>
freely yours, BH<br><br>--------------------------------------------------------------------<br><a href="http://mail2web.com">mail2web.com</a> - Microsoft® Exchange solutions from a leading provider -<br><a href="http://link.mail2web.com/Business/Exchange">
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