[lbo-talk] Hardt/Negri's Commonwealth as reviewed in WSJ

[c b]

shag carpet bomb At 02:20 PM 10/9/2009, Eric Beck wrote:
>On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 1:03 PM, Voyou <voyou1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Yes, and nothing in H&N's argument goes against this. The idea of a
> > shift from Fordism to post-Fordism doesn't mean that the economy is
> > shifting from widgets to symbols. It means that changes in symbolic
> > forms of production have an affect on widget-based production.
>
>Precisely. I amazed that people still make arguments like the one
>Matthias makes here. Either they aren't reading well or they are
>reading in bad faith, though it could also be that H&N are not as
>precise in these arguments as is, say, Virno, who emphasizes that
>dashboards are still being produced in the world, but that industrial
>work is being restructured to be like communicative, symbolic work.
>Has anyone else noticed that truck drivers have computers in their
>cabs?

I haven't read any of their work, but could you or someone explain why
computers in their cabs matter -- other than to make the walmart
supply chain superefficient?

if that's too much of a 101 question, ignore. I'll wait until I after
I move to read the book. :)

shag

^^^^^
Hey Shag ! chaz

I'm thinking computers in truck driver cabs is an advance in the unity
of mental (symbolic) and physical labor in one worker, and thus an
overcoming or negation of ye olde antagonism between predominantly
mental and predominantly physical labor ( workers of the head and
workers of the hand). Overcoming this antagonism, this original
specialization, is considered an achievement of the coming communist
society.  So, were cb radios, but this is even a bit ( in the computer
language puny sense) more than cb radios.

It increases the socialization, division of labor ( in Marx and
Durkheim sense; organic solidarity) and cooperation of labor.  Labor
is already highly socialized in capitalism in the 1800s, early 1900's,
mid 1900's. This increased the interconnectedness of workers , in
their technological location, so increases the socialization of the
labor process.

Walmart's increased efficiency is increased socialization and
cooperation , too. Just like the
Fordist assembly line and truck and train connected factories with
telegraph communication , then telephones were.

These electronic communication systems increase cooperation of labor
that is not face to face or within one building , plant, or city. It
allows the points of production to be more scattered geographically/in
space relative to prior levels of development of the means of
production which are communication systems. Computers allow the likes
of just-in-time delivery. World cars, for example, are produced from
computer coordinated globally scattered points of production.

Workers of the whole globe, unite !