value production and digital work Bruce Robinson Independent - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Marx's categories of labour, value production and digital work

Bruce Robinson Independent researcher bruce@brucerob.eu

Bruce Robinson, Value Workshop, June2014

INTRODUCTION

• Digital labour is heterogenous in terms of social and

economic relations and value production

• Includes direct waged production, products of labour

appropriated, autonomous, free labour and non-human automated labour

• Marx’s categories of labour enable us to identify value-

producing forms and make useful distinctions

• …and also to critique existing theories

Bruce Robinson, Value Workshop, June 2014

MARX’S CATEGORIES OF LABOUR

• Abstract and concrete labour
• Subsumed and non-subsumed labour
• Productive and unproductive labour
• Waged and unpaid labour
• Living and dead labour

Bruce Robinson, Value Workshop, June2014

ABSTRACT AND CONCRETE LABOUR

• Social relations not concrete content determine whether labour is

productive of value “...the designation of labour as productive labour has absolutely nothing to do with the determinate content of the labour, its special utility, or the particular use-value in which it manifests itself. The same kind of labour may be productive or unproductive.”

• Marx not just a theorist of industrial labour
• Abstract labour not a direct measure of labour time
• Labour time as regulator of production

Bruce Robinson, Value Workshop, June2014

SUBSUMED AND AUTONOMOUS LABOUR

• A directly subordinate relationship to capital contributing to valorisation of

capital

• Capitalist has power to: (real subsumption)
• 1. Control the labour process – goal, organisation, methods, authority
• 2. Dispose of the product
• 3. Control the worker’s labour time quantitatively (how much and when

worked) and qualitatively (what is done)

• Digital work
• Traditional waged work – 1,2,3
• Facebook / Google use – neither 1 nor 3 (with minor qualifications) nor

2 for Google

• Prosumer / crowdsourcing – 1 varies, 2 applies, 3 doesn’t

Bruce Robinson, Value Workshop, June2014

MILTON AND PUPL

• “Milton, who wrote Paradise Lost for five pounds, was an

unproductive labourer. On the other hand, the writer who turns out stuff for his publisher in factory style, is a productive labourer. Milton produced Paradise Lost for the same reason that a silk worm produces silk. It was an activity of his nature. Later he sold the product for £5 and thus became a merchant. But the literary proletarian of Leipzig, who fabricates books... under the direction of his publisher, is a productive labourer; for his product is from the

• utset subsumed under capital, and comes into being only for the

purpose of increasing that capital.”

Bruce Robinson, Value Workshop, June2014

PRODUCTIVE AND UNPRODUCTIVE LABOUR

• Two aspects: social relation to capital and function within the

accumulation process

• Non-subsumed: outside accumulation process
• Unproductive functions: circulation
• Productive labour produces surplus value but…
• …in circuit M-C-P-C’-M’ only P creates value
• Capital has an interest in reducing costs of necessary but

unproductive functions – circulation, reproduction, state expenditure

Bruce Robinson, Value Workshop, June2014

COMMERCIAL CAPITAL & ADVERTISING

• Specialisation of function C’-M’ in commercial capital
• Specialisation within commercial capital does not affect

share of capital or overall function

• Transfer not creation of value
• Advertiser’s motivation is realisation of value at lowest cost

(of circulation)

• “The costs which we are considering here are those of

buying and selling. We have already noted earlier that these resolve themselves into accounting, book-keeping, marketing, correspondence, etc... All these costs are not incurred in producing the commodities' use-value, but rather in realising their value. They are pure costs of circulation.”

Bruce Robinson, Value Workshop, June2014

WAGED AND UNWAGED LABOUR

• Unpaid digital labour productive of value has grown – e.g.

crowdsourcing, ‘traditional’ prosumer

• Subsumed goal and disposal of the product but no guarantee of

labour input

• Appropriation enforced by surrender of property rights not wage

discipline cf primitive accumulation

• Unpaid labour cannot define class location

Bruce Robinson, Value Workshop, June2014

CRITIQUE OF FUCHS-SMYTHE

• Web 2.0 as platforms for advertising mediating between users and

advertisers

• Directly dependent on non-Web 2.0 capital
• User presence as consumer of advertising necessary but…
• User labour autonomous
• User data used to cut costs of circulation..
• ..and not a product of human labour
• Users can leave

Bruce Robinson, Value Workshop, June2014

SOME DISTINCTIONS IN DIGITAL LABOUR

• Prosumers working on pre-defined projects and Web 2.0 users
• Autonomous labour vs petty production vs waged labour
• Petty producers vs outsourced workers
• Directly employed workers e.g.by Google and Web 2.0 users

Bruce Robinson, Value Workshop, June2014

CONCLUSIONS

• Need for differentiated understanding of forms of digital work in

relation to value production

• Distinctions draw on relation to capital, functional differences in the

circuit of capital

• Key issue of subsumption

Bruce Robinson, Value Workshop, June2014

Bruce Robinson, Value Workshop, June2014

ADVERTISING

Bruce Robinson, Value Workshop, June2014