>
>
> 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.
Yeah, which is why I think one should be looking at geeks and the open source movement from the point of view of class composition - what strategies are being played out by workers, where are the fault lines, the lines of connection, etc. And how does the kind of work that geeks do reflect back on them - in particular, the role of 'geeks' in "immaterial labour", i.e. labour which has as its aim producing social relations, rather than products. (There's a little argument over on aut-op-sy whether any of this "immaterial labour" stuff is new, or even more important than it has been before - after all, geeks are hardly the first set of workers to act as engineers of social relations)
There's an interesting, though rather over-optimistic, quote from Negri which relates to this:
"Labor, which has become more intelligent through abstraction, has already torn reason away from capital. The ontology of living labor is an ontology of liberation"
I always have to think twice when I hit words like 'ontology', but I think the point Negri is making is that it is precisely the 'abstractness' of labour, its flexibility and substitutability, which offers a potential new angle on the old problem of human liberation. Instead of wishing for the various trades and trade unions of the 'traditional working class', might the new anti-capitalism develop quite different structures?
Its not that I want to approach the 'blue collar workers' from a hostile perspective (I get along with them fine in our good ol' traditional beaurocratic union) - I highly value the 'reason', the smart tactics and solidarity of the blue collar communities I am in touch with. Its too good to remain frozen in one form.
>
> 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.
Some of the arguments about 'geeks' sound rather like Gramsci's argument about the 'intellectual function' of the layer of technical workers. Gramsci's argument about developing a layer of 'organic intellectuals' essentially was an argument for a strategy to split these technical workers (the 'engineering workers' who were so central to German SDP socialism in at the start of the 20th C.) from capital. G. unfortunately didn't historicise his analysis of this layer much - a fault no doubt inherited from orthodox Marxism, which tends to paint the world in terms of 'capitalist reason'.
Also, of course, G.'s concept of 'common sense vs. good sense' was a rather un-theorised take on marginalisation, etc.
Finally... while some of the heat and noise coming from 'geeks' might be related to a profession in formation, equally some of it is the effect of resistance to the pressure to dissolve back into the un-professional, un-differentiated mass of the workforce. Certain I've come across that in a couple of instances - the attempt to hold on to ways of doing a job that are more flexibile, more autonomous, but also more obscure, as a tactic used against the boss. While this ultimately doesn't challenge the organisation of power, it did for a time help align the proto-geeks in question with the general workforce's struggles.
Peter P.S. isn't it more accurate to say that the open source movement is already co-opted by capital (because it is - unless someone can point me to substantial, non-commondity based forms of living which are made possible by the open source movement), and the question is, what possibility exist for it resisting capital? -- Peter van Heusden <pvh at egenetics.com> NOTE: I do not speak for my employer, Electric Genetics "Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower." - Karl Marx, 1844