>well, on a quick read of some of the claims that have been made here
>and elsewhere, i'd say that a lot of this is "the new class" debate
>resurfacing. it plays off of marx's claims about "floating
>intellectuals" who don't have an attachment, per se, to capital in
>the same way laborers do. marx examined this in the 18th brumaire
>suggesting that intellectuals could go either way. so there is this
>endless hope that there is a savior class that will explode the
>capital-labor standoff and tip the scales toward the revo. as
>sennett and cobb suggest in _hidden injuries of class_ (iirc), it is
>an essentially hostile view of the blue collar working class.
>
>caveat: not everyone took this position and some were arguing that
>the "new" class was a new or perhaps additional center of power for
>capital. how so? the argument is that "knowledge" workers or the
>"scribbling class" have the power to shape ideas and beliefs in
>powerful ways. in this sense, as iris marion young argues, they may
>not "exploit" others and are, in fact, exploited just like everyone
>else. but what they do is participate in one of the five faces of
>oppression which work in tandem: exploitation, marginalization,
>powerlessness, cultural imperialism, violence.
Another way to look at the phenomenon may be that geeky labor of "knowledge workers," being labor-intensive, has helped to restore profitability (see Edward N. Wolff's "What's Behind the Recent Rise in Profitability?" at <http://www.levy.org/docs/wrkpap/papers/297.html>) directly & indirectly. Just as the expansion of service industries in general -- in which women are heavily concentrated on the low-wage end -- did.
As for open source, it helps businesses in several ways:
1. to counteract the tendency toward inefficiency in product development entailed by excessively stringent enforcement of intellectual property rights;
2. to help transform the industry from the shrink-packed product model to the customer service model (fight the rising organic composition of capital!);
3. to enlist customers into product development (no-wage labor!);
4. to induce future workers to train themselves on their own time & at their own expense, not on company time & at company expense (it's a hobby!).
Yoshie