so whats all this fuss about the precariat?

[sovietpop]

yeah I thought immaterial labour refered to a type of work ie knowledge work or work based on the production of symbols or work based on emotional labour and affect.

but I could be wrong and I'm not going all the way upstairs to check.

(and if I'm right I think its too big a catagory to be useful)

 

[kropotkin]

or he did anyway. Hasn't he abandoned that as well now, and gone for this "multitude" thingy?

 

[montevideo]

Quite. In fact isnt that what Negri et al had been formulating in their conception of the end of the mass worker and the arrival of the socialised worker prior to 1974?

And as for clerical labour... thats not an interchangeable term for immaterial labour... it is still entirely possible to be producing value as a clerical worker for a start

the point being negri's rests in the theoretical zone, braverman's very much in the empirical zone.

Which maybe become clearer after you've read labour & monopoly capital.

 

[Top Dog]

sorry but Negri doesn't hold that the immaterial doesn't produce value so i fail to see your point.

this is true... the point i dashed off at great haste, and made a spectacular balls up of, was that immaterial labour greys the whole area of what constitutes 'work' in the formal sense... (what i called 'producing value' was intended only to differentiate 'work' of the fordist factory - of which there were also great armies of clerical workers - from the immateriality of free time/work time, brain work etc. that is all a continuum of production beyond the factory gates

The point i was responding to (and which still holds), being that clerical work is not the same thing as immaterial labour - it is not a type of job, or a job sector, but a condition that has subsumed all of life... hence i dont think monte's description of braverman as 'prescient' of the multitudes or whatever holds any water. He was the contemporary of a 70s negri, not in advance of a 21st century negri imo

 

[montevideo]

this is true... the point i dashed off at great haste, and made a spectacular balls up of, was that immaterial labour greys the whole area of what constitutes 'work' in the formal sense... (what i called 'producing value' was intended only to differentiate 'work' of the fordist factory - of which there were also great armies of clerical workers - from the immateriality of free time/work time, brain work etc. that is all a continuum of production beyond the factory gates

The point i was responding to (and which still holds), being that clerical work is not the same thing as immaterial labour - it is not a type of job, or a job sector, but a condition that has subsumed all of life... hence i dont think monte's description of braverman as 'prescient' of the multitudes or whatever holds any water. He was the contemporary of a 70s negri, not in advance of a 21st century negri imo

hang on don't put words in my mouth. I haven't mentioned 'multitude'. Read it again. Plus i say clerical labour & do not compare clerical work with immaterial labour.

"Clerical labour is largely the product of the period of monopoly capitalism". Thus he makes explicit clerical labour is a 'new' phenomenon. (Naturally clerical workers have been around since the emergence of capitalism but it has taken on a new form which braverman is exploring). His chapter on clerical workers goes into great detail, from its composition, recomposition to present day formation, he uses to the term 'pure clerical industries'; banking corporations that produce nothing - & this is where clerical labour takes on the mold of immaterial labour (in the nergrian sense) - it is the organisation of information, people are paid not to produce goods, but to produce 'knowledge', as he himself says clerical labour is a result not a cause of surplus value.

Braverman is prescient because in exploring 'the transformation of work in the modern era' he chooses clerical workers & service industries as the forefront of that transformation (nothing to do with 'the multitude') given this was pre-thatcher & reagan i'd say that was pretty prescient wouldn't you.

 

[Top Dog]

hang on don't put words in my mouth. I haven't mentioned 'multitude'. Read it again. Plus i say clerical labour & do not compare clerical work with immaterial labour.

No thats true you dont mention that word. What you say is:

Which is why i think those terrified of negri's current turn would be unhappy with what braverman had to say way back in 74.

So maybe you better expand on what you mean by his current turn if its not in multitudes?

Braverman is prescient because in exploring 'the transformation of work in the modern era' he chooses clerical workers & service industries as the forefront of that transformation (nothing to do with 'the multitude') given this was pre-thatcher & reagan i'd say that was pretty prescient wouldn't you.

except that it was in the socialised worker (also pre-thatcher & reagan) that a similar attempt to identify a new social subject was developed - putting a sector of the proletariat at the 'forefront', as you say - and so a lot of what braverman was saying here was contemporary with the areas autonomia were examining

That said, Im not saying that Braverman does not have some interesting stuff to say, (tho its been a good 5 years or so since i picked up Labour & monopoly capitalism...) so maybe its time to revisit him

 

[montevideo]

No thats true you dont mention that word. What you say is: So maybe you better expand on what you mean by his current turn if its not in multitudes?

Immaterial labour being the hegemonic form of labour.

All that said braverman says things that would make the hardest of negriphiles shudder. And all the better for it.

 

[catch]

Immaterial labour being the hegemonic form of labour.

Do you think that then?

 

[revol68]

well it's hegemonic in that management, hiring, firing, finance and accounting organise the production process. Of course we could always point out that such planning takes place within very material limits eg time, space, labour intensity blah blah.

 

[catch]

well it's hegemonic in that management, hiring, firing, finance and accounting organise the production process. Of course we could always point out that such planning takes place within very material limits eg time, space, labour intensity blah blah.

Hegemonic in that sense (and since when hasn't management/hiring/firing organised the production process), isn't the same as a "new proletarian subject". According to Aufheben, Negri includes immaterial labour as smiling at the supermarket checkout, factory workers talking to each other - none of which are management by any means. This also makes it an ahistorical category since any talking at all becomes immaterial labour since it's all value producing whether directly or not.

 

[revol68]

Hegemonic in that sense (and since when hasn't management/hiring/firing organised the production process), isn't the same as a "new proletarian subject". According to Aufheben, Negri includes immaterial labour as smiling at the supermarket checkout, factory workers talking to each other - none of which are management by any means. This also makes it an ahistorical category since any talking at all becomes immaterial labour since it's all value producing whether directly or not.

well in a foucaultian analysis could be seen as internal management, bio power. which i think is one of the more interesting aspects of Negri though like Foucault it ends up so sweeping that it becomes somewhat impotent as a conceptual tool.

 

[butchersapron]

Do you think that then?

I think this sort of crude technological determinisn is dealt with and dealt with very well in Steve Wright's The Limits of Negri's Class Analysis which unfortunately no longer seems to be on the aut-op-sy website - is a is still a chapter on his book though.. Phrase mongery basically, not connected to real research - the workers inquiry bit.

 

[catch]

t ends up so sweeping that it becomes somewhat impotent as a conceptual tool.

What's the point of categories, or for that matter words at all, if they can mean anything you want them to mean? I don't think it really deals with the production of value satisfactorily either.

butchers, thanks for the pointer, I'll keep an eye out for that article.

 

[Redstar]

i think the complimentary aspect is braverman is wrestling with the idea that the factory worker (the traditional industrial proletariat), no longer plays the central role within the conflict of capitalism. Yes, to him the working class exists (as a class), but it is in the process of transformation - clerical labour (as he calls it) is largely the product of monopoly capitalism. So braverman identifies clerical labour (or immaterial labour in the negrian sense) & service industries as a 'new' form of capitalist relations, that will become dominant given 'the completion by capital of the conquest of goods-producing activities'.

I think the key word is compliments rather than concrete or direct comparisons.

Is it really that new as a form of Capitalist relations? I've worked in factories producing physical goods and in service industries - at the moment I work for BT as a diags advisor repairing Broadband faults. What strikes me is that BT are forever trying to simplify the diagnostic process by hiving different parts of it off to different groups of people, breaking it down into a more simplified, reproducible process which anybody can pick up. Where there was some degree of art to the job, the corporate scientists have broken it down to simple lego-brick components that even a child could pick up.

Capitalism as a process is reductionistic. It's forever trying to break down and simplify working processes so that it can reproduce them easily elsewhere. But it's also alienating. I've noticed more and more of my colleagues complaining about how boring the job has become, when initially it was quite interpretive and required some degree of intuition. There's a qualitative side to it too. But the same process that Henry T Ford pioneered some 80 years ago is at work in my workplace - so what's the real difference?

 

[sovietpop]

I think what Braverman was doing, that was different, was saying that this same process was also occuring in clerical work (and that work would increasingly be in the clerical and service sector). He was also arguing against the idea that we are all becoming middle class because we work in offices.

at least I think thats what he was saying, poor memory gets the better of me. monty?

 

[davgraham]

Is it really that new as a form of Capitalist relations? I've worked in factories producing physical goods and in service industries - at the moment I work for BT as a diags advisor repairing Broadband faults. What strikes me is that BT are forever trying to simplify the diagnostic process by hiving different parts of it off to different groups of people, breaking it down into a more simplified, reproducible process which anybody can pick up. Where there was some degree of art to the job, the corporate scientists have broken it down to simple lego-brick components that even a child could pick up.

Capitalism as a process is reductionistic. It's forever trying to break down and simplify working processes so that it can reproduce them easily elsewhere. But it's also alienating. I've noticed more and more of my colleagues complaining about how boring the job has become, when initially it was quite interpretive and required some degree of intuition. There's a qualitative side to it too. But the same process that Henry T Ford pioneered some 80 years ago is at work in my workplace - so what's the real difference?

This - in two paragraphs is the essence of Harry Braverman's book . . . . and it is still a very pertinent question

Gra

 

[Top Dog]

Immaterial labour being the hegemonic form of labour.

Steve Wright has a very good article on this up on Metamute

Continued assertions that, today, we live in a knowledge economy or society raise many questions for reflection. In the next few pages, I want to discuss some aspects of these assertions, especially as they relate to the notion of immaterial labour [...]

According to this view of the world, a quite different kind of labour is currently either hegemonic amongst those with nothing to sell but their ability to work – or, at the very least, is well on the way towards acquiring such hegemony [...]

Is one sector of class composition likely to set the pace and tone in struggles against capital, or should we look instead towards the emergence of ‘strange loops … odd circuits and strange connections between and among various class sectors’ (as Midnight Notes once suggested) as a necessary condition for moving beyond ‘the present state of things’?

 

[The Black Hand]

Think you've answered your own question there


Notwithstanding the lessons of what happens to previous militants on 'working from within'...

Greenpeace and WDM lead the NGO's that would recuperate the idea of direct action in its campaigns and media work. Cant you see that this is exaclty what the T&G would have you do?

And 'working from without' has done what?

Perhaps they do want to try new methods to recruit to the unions, it appears so on their website, but as Dave Douglass says other things ARE possible within structures. When you are at work you can change your hat, especially in those that allow some degree of autonomy, official one minute, unofficial another in official time. As you have said yourself, it is stealing time and putting it to better use. I wouldn't write it off in advance before it has been tried, especially in jobs that encourage consciousness and struggle, that would seem to me to be a somewhat mechanical Marxist position and certainly it is not a dynamic one.

 

[Top Dog]

this is pretty easy stuff to lay to rest but...

Perhaps they do want to try new methods to recruit to the unions, it appears so on their website, but as Dave Douglass* says other things ARE possible within structures.

Recuperation, of course is nothing new. What is perhaps new is the extent to which most "revolutionaries" (whether they be demanding "more nationalisation" more "self management" or "more personal freedom") are unaware of the systems ability to absorb - and in the long run benefit from - these forms of "dissent". Class society has a tremendous resilience, a great capacity to cope with "subversion", to make icons out of its iconoclasts*, to draw sustenance from those who would throttle it. Revolutionaries must constantly be aware of this strength, otherwise they will fail to see what is happening around them. If certain sacred cows (or certain previous formulations, now found to be inadequate) have to be sacrificed, we'd rather do the job ourselves...

I wouldn't write it off in advance before it has been tried, especially in jobs that encourage consciousness and struggle, that would seem to me to be a somewhat mechanical Marxist position and certainly it is not a dynamic one.

you're caricaturing again attica

 

[The Black Hand]

you're caricaturing again attica

And so are you. All struggle of ANY sort can be absorbed prior to the global revolution. Look at Paris May 1968. I think you and others are chasing a pure holy grail that doesn't exist! Apart from being patronising to Douglass, as if he/me are not aware that the system reproduces itself in many ways. Even situationism itself has been recouperated to an extent, and that is the ideology par excellance that would warn against issues such as the one you/we are talking about. I really don't see how you can have struggle of any sort which doesn't reproduce the [false in my opinion] dangers you are emphasising.

 

[Top Dog]

Apart from being patronising to Douglass, as if he/me are not aware that the system reproduces itself in many ways [...]

I really don't see how you can have struggle of any sort which doesn't reproduce the [false in my opinion] dangers you are emphasising.

Its not patronising at all, its worse than that! I know both you and Dave have been around long enough to know the arguments for and against. And you take your choice and decide that a path on the union payroll can be conducted with some kind of political independence.
Your line of rebuttal, that essentially, being critical of this strategy amounts to 'purism', from high up in some ivory tower doesnt wash either. Currently Im getting involved with a network of people in London that are making practical links with tube cleaners (as is monte, i think) and the lower echelons of the T&G are trying to get them organised... however, we (the group) recognise that it is important to maintain an independence... to feed in to the process where we are able and welcome people working here into ours. But that is a very different strategy to direction from the union itself. And also i recognise that the only reason the union are prepared to engage with 'outside tendencies' is because of their own relative weakness in this sector particularly, and in their 'market share' of the workforce generally.

Perhaps its true that these discussions are slightly abstract due to the low levels of class combativity... But I'd like to think if i was living through an explosion of class antagonism (like before or after WWI) that these essential strategic questions would not be blurred or that i would be seduced into a mediating role. Like Guy Aldred who

gradually fell out with the Freedom Anarchists...Their Anarchy was merely Trade Union activity which they miscalled Direct Action. Their anger knew no bounds when I insisted that Trades Unionism was the basis of Labour Parliamentarianism."

Closer to home (yours actually!) lets also remember militants like Will Lawther, Durham miner and syndicalist, who helped set up an anarchist club in his pit village and helped organise a large anarchist conference in Newcastle before WWI. He later became President of the miners union and by 1947, during a srtike:

Mr Lawther, [...] told the strikers they were "acting as criminals at this time of the nation's peril". He actually invited the Coal Board to prosecute: "Let them issue summonses against these men, no matter how many there may be. I would say that even though there were 100,000 on strike."(Daily Mail, 29/8/47) [...] What some of the miners think of these swollen-headed gentlemen may be judged by the words "Burn Will Lawther" painted up at the entrance to the Grimethorpe colliery...

No one is above the dangers of being seduced into a mediation role.

 

[The Black Hand]

Its not patronising at all, its worse than that! I know both you and Dave have been around long enough to know the arguments for and against. And you take your choice and decide that a path on the union payroll can be conducted with some kind of political independence.
Your line of rebuttal, that essentially, being critical of this strategy amounts to 'purism', from high up in some ivory tower doesnt wash either.

Currently Im getting involved with a network of people in London that are making practical links with tube cleaners (as is monte, i think) and the lower echelons of the T&G are trying to get them organised... however, we (the group) recognise that it is important to maintain an independence... to feed in to the process where we are able and welcome people working here into ours. But that is a very different strategy to direction from the union itself. And also i recognise that the only reason the union are prepared to engage with 'outside tendencies' is because of their own relative weakness in this sector particularly, and in their 'market share' of the workforce generally.

Perhaps its true that these discussions are slightly abstract due to the low levels of class combativity... But I'd like to think if i was living through an explosion of class antagonism (like before or after WWI) that these essential strategic questions would not be blurred or that i would be seduced into a mediating role. Like Guy Aldred who Closer to home (yours actually!) lets also remember militants like Will Lawther, Durham miner and syndicalist, who helped set up an anarchist club in his pit village and helped organise a large anarchist conference in Newcastle before WWI. He later became President of the miners union and by 1947, during a srtike:
No one is above the dangers of being seduced into a mediation role.

Reply to paragraph 1;
I think you misunderstand our line, I am not arguing a job on the union payroll is necessary, I look at it in a big picture (totalising) point of view. The individual is part of organised and political collective decision making beyond the union that determines strategy, and where political accountability is practiced and judged (revolutionary minority to use your lingo).

I think your pov can be purism (and it DOES wash) if you are using your argument without practice. As you have practice you are allowed an opinion but if you are operating outside of ordinary members orbit you can be isolated from the struggles. Now if you succeed good, but if it is outside of the debates/movement/action, then I don't see it as relevant as it has abandoned the field of struggle. Also, what accountability does unofficial organising have, if it succeeds in struggle great, but I don't see practical examples on an everyday level, or even on a rare level... DO please post up links, I do have an open mind you know.

Reply to para 2; I don't see anything here (unions at relatively low ebb argument) which necessitates a reply - if you could clarify I would be grateful.

Reply to Para 3; Then Lawther was acting as an individual with changed politics then (he sold out). This is not a criticism of the position Douglass and I hold. And we do know that unions can be shit, and are not all the same as the NUM, the point is to change it as the great man said.

 

[Top Dog]

Reply to paragraph 1;
I think you misunderstand our line, I am not arguing a job on the union payroll is necessary

i know, not necessary, but you were defending the idea that you could both be paid (as a union organiser) to do your job: recruit, and that you could go much further and if you like subvert the role for which you're being paid and pursue political objectives that might run counter to your own job security/personal interests. That was the basis of your challenge

DO please post up links, I do have an open mind you know.

its very early days and the less said on an internet forum, the better. I can PM you details if you like

Reply to para 2; I don't see anything here (unions at relatively low ebb argument) which necessitates a reply - if you could clarify I would be grateful.

I was simply drawing some kind of parallel with your own argument

 

[The Black Hand]

i know, not necessary, but you were defending the idea that you could both be paid (as a union organiser) to do your job: recruit, and that you could go much further and if you like subvert the role for which you're being paid and pursue political objectives that might run counter to your own job security/personal interests. That was the basis of your challenge

its very early days and the less said on an internet forum, the better. I can PM you details if you like

I was simply drawing some kind of parallel with your own argument

Para 1 - yes, I do think it is possible, after all the working class must want to NOT BE working class, and hence will be operating against its own rational economic (from a bourgeois pov) interests.

Para 2 - OK

 

[treelover]

Professor Guy Standings book is out soon in paperback, 'The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class' as he says , students particulalry recognise themselves and maybe their future when they hear his arguments


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Precariat-New-Dangerous-Class/dp/1849663513

http://www.bath.ac.uk/news/2009/05/18/workafterglobalisation/

 

[gawkrodger]

Just read the Guy Standing book - bit shit ain't it, unless I've missed something?

'Watch out, the proles have lost all discipline from Fordist work-structures etc. We must paternalistically bring 'em back to proper behaviour before they are marching up and down in jackboots.' + lack of distinction between those who have nearly always been impacted by 'precarious' work and those white m-c people only know being impacted

 

[butchersapron]

Just read the Guy Standing book - bit shit ain't it, unless I've missed something?

'Watch out, the proles have lost all discipline from Fordist work-structures etc. We must paternalistically bring 'em back to proper behaviour before they are marching up and down in jackboots.' + lack of distinction between those who have nearly always been impacted by 'precarious' work and those white m-c people only know being impacted

This is what i wrote on him last week and have been telling people for years - he's not one of us. too many people see the word precariat and think he's some kind of Negri type:

Standing takes the position that the 'precariat' are a potential fascist block of human dust waiting to happen, He confuses things like underclass (leaving aside the use of that term for now, i'm just using it to stand for un/underemployed in sink estates, low-income areas with little or no possibility of moving 'upwards', facing increasing absolute poverty, policed by the social security policy measures and no longer (or never) socialised by work (ugh)) with the precariat (skilled people on temp contracts, having to pay themselves to upgrade skills etc, often choosing to work min hours in lieu of high wages+fighting over relatively high rates of pay on individual basis). By confusing the two he ends up arguing that the former must be 'brought on board' with the serious moral society that people like him represent before they bring us all down - and that basic income may be one way to try and do this. It's paternalist top-down state-led nonsense rather a class imposition on capital and i would suggest those coming at it from the latter perspective (of it a moment of our power) use him very warily.

 

[J Ed]

Just read the Guy Standing book - bit shit ain't it, unless I've missed something?

'Watch out, the proles have lost all discipline from Fordist work-structures etc. We must paternalistically bring 'em back to proper behaviour before they are marching up and down in jackboots.' + lack of distinction between those who have nearly always been impacted by 'precarious' work and those white m-c people only know being impacted

I haven't actually read anything by Standing but I get a real sense from his lectures of an attitude of 'well it was alright when these stump-speech-away-from-being-fascist-thickos were suffering from exploitative labour conditions but now that middle-class people are suffering from unemployment things are getting serious'.

 

[gawkrodger]

good to see I'm not the only one to have read it this way!