From: Bautiste-AT-aol.com
Date: Sun, 22 Feb 1998 13:00:42 EST
Subject: M-TH: Information against the worker


In a message dated 98-02-22 04:15:40 EST, Rob Schaap writes:

 >>>On this line, a new complex of social relations is coming into being as
 exchange-focussed enterprise shifts the balance of its energy from goods to
 ever more commodified information.  ...new firms come in to flog new design
and
 software to extant firms, and much more department 2 information too (ie.
 not only more, but more of it commodified).<<<

I agree with this. At least from my experience. The big question, though, is
the way that the high-tech companies get people to buy into the entire
process. There is a "king of the hill" mentality at work in high technology.
Perhaps, a "gold rush" mentality is the closest analog. People can make huge
amounts of money in high-tech. Management gets worker buy-in by promising
stock options and, in some instances, providing generous profit sharing plans.
In America, these incentives have created a worker culture that sees itself in
opposition to the working class. 

 >> 1. intellectual workers will have to be given more autonomy...<<

This point is a fact. Many office workers and high-tech folks have "flexible"
schedules. This means that I can go into work later leave earlier and even
work from home. This gives the impression that "I" am in control of my time,
as opposed to being a "wage slave." As Simone Weil pointed out, the
oppressiveness of work is the giving up of one's time and physical movements
to an outside force. That is, I become almost a thing that is manipulated by
wills and forces that I have no control over. The important difference between
management and worker is that management decides how to use people and
resources, They know what's coming down the pike and can adjust their lives to
the shocks and stress of work. A typical worker cannot adjust their lives in
this way. In the worst cases, the worker (in an office or factory) must become
completely passive. Indeed, those who exhibit too much non-passivity begin to
stand out and are targeted as trouble-makers.

The terrible irony of the recent trend in the work place is that management
has sold the idea that workers can have control over their jobs through
various means of worker empowerment. Total Quality Management promised this
kind of worker control. In my experience, though, this became a lie. Indeed,
management found that too many workers took the promise seriously and tried to
make real changes to the work environment. The reason many of these efforts
failed, is probably not because they did not provide enough financial return
but because it gave the workers some say in the decision-making process and
this threatened management's control over how things go down. In most cases,
TQM worked at a such micro level that little could be done on the individual
worker's level. The threat came when macro-level processes were analyzed and
the workers began to see what was REALLY happening in the organization.
 
 >>>2.  Some of you may have heard me speculate elsewhere that the
 international trade of information (reproducible at costs approaching zero
 - testing old-fashioned surplus value calculations to the limit?) for real
 old-fashioned OCC commodities (primary and secondary stuff) exacerbates
 core/periphery differentials, intensifies underconsumption potentials viz
 the third world, and will put first world farmers and small industrial
 capitalists out of the picture (why support 'em when their numbers are
 diminishing 'em as a political force and third world goodies cost next to
 nothing?)<<<<<

I don't see the logic here. How do you get from information to farming?
Besides, if Henwood is right, we should see the eventual loss of high-tech
jobs as they are shipped overseas to lower-wage third world labor markets. I
already see that where I work. Indian and Pakistani consultants are a common
presence in the high-tech world.
 
>>> 6.  The natural limits already implied are exacerbated by a new
 manifestation of the commodification of information; in the form of
 'scarcified' education - suddenly all that free social knowledge starts to
 dissipate ... as, of course, does recognisable society.<<<<

Perhaps. I am not sure that the problem will be scarcity of information as
much as it is too much information. So much that any one person will not be
able to synthesize it all. Perhaps this is where a realization that
information is not the central answer to the problem. Perhaps at this point,
we can begin to see where something like Havels' existential revolution comes
into play. In this sense, it is not information that leads to revolution but
individual self-knowledge and consciousness of one's true needs and source of
happiness.

peace,

chuck miller
 


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