Uberworked and Underpaid by Trebor Scholz

Author:Trebor Scholz [Неизв.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Published: 2016-09-06T20:00:00+00:00

3) The Fence Around the Produser Factory

Today, it becomes much harder to say: “I know labor when I see it.” Labor time is no longer bound to the factory or office; the edges of work and “labor time” have melted away. Attitudes toward labor and leisure have fundamentally changed in accord with the needs of production. For Andrew Ross, “The entire fabric of our everyday lives, rather than merely our workplace toil, becomes the raw material for capital accumulation.”12

For Paolo Virno, twenty-first-century labor includes all human activities. There are no activities, including our thoughts, dreams, and imaginations, which distinguish themselves as non-labor and the value of this labor becomes immeasurable. Free time is no longer solely dedicated to consumption or passivity; the distinction between free time and labor time becomes less meaningful. We are producing for a wage at work only to continue work off the clock at home or on the go. What used to be considered free time is also time for the production of subjectivities, big (and small) data, and cultural practices. Our abilities to communicate and interact with others are captured, sorted, analyzed, and ultimately sold. We are creating peculiar twin-identities online; we are performing ourselves just as we are becoming public relations agents for various brands.

In the face of such a broad understanding of digital labor, from supply chains to unpaid and compensated work online, is there anything that would be outside of digital labor? I'm arguing for an outside, for the possibility of non-labor. I will do so by introducing scholars for whom an outside of labor (digital or not) no longer exists and I will then show the limits of their arguments.

This discussion needs to start with Karl Marx's labor theory of value, and concepts such as “labor time” and “productive labor power.” Following Marx's understanding of what constitutes productive labor, the workday ends when the workers are leaving the factory for what Germans refer to as their “Feierabend” (“home time,” reserved for celebration) for which there is no fitting English translation.

For Marx, the labor process requires the presence of workers who change something other than themselves, in which their labor power – whatever they produced during the workday – can be measured. Or, in Marx's own words “labor power is the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use value of any description.”13

How much labor time does it take to pay for what it costs to employ a worker? From the perspective of the owner of the factory, everything in excess of that cost constitutes surplus value. From the viewpoint of the worker, surplus value is what he or she produces after his or her requirements are met, which goes beyond socially necessary labor time.

For Marx, virtuosos such as vocalists do not fall into the realm of productive labor. Marx's oft-repeated reference is that of the piano maker who, for Marx, could be safely considered a productive worker, whereas the pianist cannot.

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