[lbo-talk] Re: cynicism, opportunism and fear (was lefties, fulfillment)

Etienne tim_boetie at fastmail.fm
Tue Jan 25 08:54:51 PST 2005


On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 10:19:22 -0500, "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com> said:
> Etienne wrote:
>
> >the fact that there are more truck drivers than computer
> >programmers is irrelevant if the computer programmers' work is changing
> >supply chains in such a way that the truck drivers' conditions of work
> >are being radically altered
>
> But it's not irrelevant. All this talk of immaterial and affective
> labor obscures how much of work life is still about moving stuff
> around. In fact, while we're busily celebrating (or bemoaning)
> today's supply chains, the U.S. transportation system - ports,
> trucks, rail - is clogged almost to the breaking point now, and no
> one is eager to make the necessary investments to relieve the
> problem. Too much physical infrastructure, too much risk, too little
> immediate payoff. Aside from that, the immateriality story overlooks
> how many workers spend their days dealing with things, often very
> mundane things - unloading trucks, washing dishes, stacking shelves,
> inserting catheters, etc.

Right, but isn't that a qualitative, rather than a quantitative argument? That is, that the labour involved in moving things around hasn't been changed all that much by immaterial/affective labour. I guess part of what I'm wondering is how we would go about measuring whether the changes brought about to a physical job by informational or affective factors are significant enough to be evidence of the hegemony of immaterial labour.

The argument of people like Hardt and Negri is that jobs which aren't themselves informational are being reorganised by immaterial labour. Now, this may not be true, but you can't disprove it just by pointing to the relative numbers of informational vs. physical jobs.

It's possible I'm just taking too literally a fairly throwaway remark in your review of Empire from way back; but it did strike me as odd that you chose to present truck drivers as a counter-example to H&N, when that's one of the examples they give of a non-immaterial job that is affected by the supposed hegemony of immaterial labour. --

"There are very few members of the establishment press

who will defend the idea that things like aggressive

flatulence, forced feedings of swill, or even a barely-

muted hostility on the part of the candidate would

justify any kind of drastic retaliation by a professional

journalist - and certainly nothing so drastic as to

cause the Democratic front-runner to cut short a major

speech because some dangerous freak was clawing at his

legs and screaming for more gin."

-- Hunter S. Thompson Tim http://www.huh.34sp.com/



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