[iDC] Social Production and the Labor Theory of Value
Brian Holmes
brian.holmes at aliceadsl.fr
Fri Oct 30 07:33:24 UTC 2009
I am glad that Michael Goldhaber took the time to formulate some
critique of the extravagant and quite pointless use being made of Marx's
labor theory of value and its associated concepts, in order to explain
what's at stake in contemporary social media. I find bizarre this desire
to cast relations of consumption, on the one hand, and of relative
autonomy, on the other, in the terms that Marx so carefully forged to
describe the relation between the industrial capitalist and the waged
worker.
Rather than wanting to discover some hidden productivity in social media
that would allow you to explain with Marx's 19th century concepts why
the contemporary capitalist bothers to invest in the likes of Facebook,
could we not find an explanation that corresponds at least minimally to
what we have before our eyes? I see two things at work here, neither of
which Marx had much to say about. One, and the most important by far, is
the will of capitalists to prey on middle-class consumers via complex
and not always particularly functional formulas, algorithms, schemes,
tricks, which by now have become the common stuff of our mendacious and
conniving commercial culture, from the most complex derivatives to the
simplest advertising via the surveillance, audience metrics and
statistical tabulation of online behavior that many people on this list
have described in detail. Consumers' acts are scrutinized and their
psychology is analyzed in extreme detail because there is money to be
made by selling them things -- for unlike Marx's proletarians, the
people who use the Internet very often have savings accounts and
fungible assets and retirement packages and life insurance portfolios,
etc etc etc.
You do not need the labor theory of value to know why a salesman wants
to sell you a product, and why he or she might arrange for you an
agreeable environment within which, or as a consequence of which, that
product might be sold. Nor do you need the theory of an attention
economy either, I'm afraid. But you would have to admit that most
Internet users are being treated as marks, that is, as unwitting targets
of someone else's predatory strategy, and that they usually have a lot
more to lose than their chains. Apparently these admissions are somehow
unpleasant, so we reach for our Marx. Hmmm, marks, Marx, I never noticed
that before. Yes, it's sad and quite undignified that middle-class
people are being treated like marks, but they are, as every aspect of
the recent housing boom has shown; and I don't know why concocting
intricate theories to describe them as proletarians makes it any less
banal or disagreeable. After all, proletarian labor is pretty banal and
disagreeable too, just entirely different from middle-class consumption.
The other thing that I see happening on the Internet these days -- and
here I think Michael Bauwens is quite right -- is the relative autonomy
of people trying to enjoy themselves and cooperate more or less
playfully with others. If you take some care, you can indeed increase
the degree of that relative autonomy, and it is a very good thing to do,
especially when so many predatory corporations are expending so much
time and energy building virtual worlds in which to channel your
energies and manipulate your emotions and your beliefs, the better to
pick your pocket. The article by Greg Elmer and friends that Bauwens
forwarded explains all that very well, and without even mentioning the
labor theory of value! Because in this context, it's simply unnecessary.
The one thing that the misplaced use of Marx does achieve, I suppose, is
to distract the attention from any consideration of the varieties and
qualities and sources of care for one's autonomy: that is, one's
capacity to search, in the company of others, for ways of consciously
shaping the basic relations of coexistence. I guess we could pay a
little more attention to that, for all kinds of returns.
best, Brian
Michael H Goldhaber wrote:
>
> Let me say a little first about Marx's labor theory of value. He was
> clearly referring to labor in making commodities in the industrial
> age, where by "commodities" was understood objects that were
> interchangeable and effectively identical with others of the same sort
> made in other factories or factory-like settings, under the control of
> other capitalists. Only in such circumstances does the phrase
> "socially necessary labor time" have meaning. Here I take "socially
> necessary" to refer to (a) the level of skills reached by a
> sufficiently large pool of workers at the moment and (b) the technical
> capacities of available factory machinery, also at the moment.
More information about the iDC
mailing list