485 - Alienation of worker from production is well documents, but alienation of species-becoming is neglected and yet relevant today
Species-being: capacity to collectively transform this natural basis through will and consciousness. To have control over the direction of society and environment. For Marx, this power is manifested in the cooperative organization of labour, the power of humans to affect their natural environment, the emancipation of women, the formation of cities, the application of science & tech to further develop the five senses.
However, under capitalism, the "planet factory" (as Dyer-Witheford calls it) subsumes production-consumption, social reproduction and even genetic and ecological aspects of life.
486 - Through industrialization, we have permanently changed the earth's ecology and climate. This includes information technologies: robots and super computers have changed work conditions, artificial intelligence has emerged along with virtual worlds for "second lives," and biotechnologies that alter cognitive and physical human properties/capabilities.
486-487 Life itself is a "real abstraction" through capital because our lives are reduced to information which is then turned into a productive force within capitalism
487 - Dyer-Witheford suggests "species-becoming" be renamed "species-becoming" because our only essence is our "historical plasticity" (being reshaped or molded).
Marx's species-being is determined by class and conflict. In this context, alienation is not an issue of estrangement from a natural world, but rather a question of who is controlling the collective self. The concentration of control within a section of the species is who controls the trajectory of the society.
Futuristic accumulation - commodification of publicly created scientific knowledge which via copyright/patent is privatized for the extraction of monopolistic rent.
Under futuristic accumulation, "the expropriation" (taking of private property for public/gov use) "of general intellect and universal labour are the basis for the alienation of species-being."
ex. publicly funded schools tapped and captured by private interests and then re-sold to the public that originally funded the project. (I think baseball stadiums also apply to this where the public pays for the construction of the building, but are then charged to enter it or use the facilities).
488 - the crisis of Fordism in the 1970s was met with a solution of computers. Dyer-Witheford argues that the most important moment in the foundation of digital labour was the development of computing in the 70s by the Pentagon, Universities, and defense industries.
Bio-capital then came about in the 1980s (genetic investments) followed by the explosion of the Internet in the 1990s. Author says Netscape's commercialization of the browser exhibited futuristic accumulation because it had been publicly funded research.
489 - Primitive accumulation - the appropriating of land by business and the buying & selling of labour power.
By contrast to primitive, futuristic is different because it takes the basic domains of life - cognitive, biological, existential - and commodifies it. Futuristic commands and directs the evolution of life itself. This enclosure of the future is alienating species-being from the person. They do not control the ownership of their thought material or the direction of their life. (Do you think this applies to personal data as well?? It is behavioral, which is somewhat thought-related.)
490 - concept of the global worker is not new (labour is motivated by capital); however today it's positioned with the value chain - today, labour processes from start to finish add value every step of the way. They require a lot of reach and managing, which is only capable by multinational corporations. These steps include: research & development, assembly, marketing, distribution around the world, and everything is calculated "in terms of production costs, resource availability, and proximity to markets, to maximize profits."
491 - Digital Technologies cut costs in these value chains: communication, coordination, production (and thus, are essential to value chains)
But value chains are also necessary for digital technologies - developing software & programming, research & development, marketing, etc: free labour, immaterial labour, outsourced labour, (all cheap labour) I would also include co-creation and prosumption here.
Often times, hardware is designed by high-level engineers, but the systems are then built by automated (machinic) processes or cheap labor in dangerous work conditions
492 - Additionally, the planet factory command & control flow down the value chain while value & profit flow upwards to the top
494 - Singularity capitalism - constant capital (machines) versus variable capitalism (living labor)
The purpose of capitalism is to keep raising the proportion of constant to variable. This allows for more profit and future expansion, but it also increases the ratio of technology to humans.
Organic composition of capital is the ratio of humans to tech. Dyer-Witheford suggests this be called "inorganic" because of the rising disproportion of technology/machines to humans.
495 - Furthermore, informational technologies that break down or blur the distinction between machines and humans create new forms of bio-technological and nanotechnological production.
Signularity capital denies the capacity of humans to change their species-being, denying them a way to change the direction/trajectory of society, and allows a select few to trample/rule everyone else.
498 - Solution: Transititon from an organic composition of capital to a class composition of capital where the technical composition of class (labour process in which it is involed) becomes the basis for political composition (capacity to become a counter power against capitalist command).
499 - Here, the point for political struggle would be to replace organic composition of capital with organic composition of the communal, where decisions over resource allocation and investment are determined in a collective and democratic fashion.
Digital labour would have 3 roles in this new class composition:
1. allow for collective & productive decision making
2. Cooperative production would take place through open-source knowledge
3. networks become the central site of democratic planning and debate
My critique of this: doesn't this assume there is no digital divide? and post-vote, who is enforcing the decisions made? And what about policing networks to avoid censorship or blackouts?
Dyer-Witheford argues that western media has focused on the "haves" rather than the underpivileged classes where the possibility of revolt lies under the surface.
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